By L.P. LUPO

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Bush administration defends the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers on the three prongs of a purportedly glorious legal resume: crack litigator, law-firm managing partner and groundbreaking bar association president.

Rather than supporting her nomination, the three-prong defense disqualifies her.

Let’s look at the claim of a top-notch litigator. A Lexis legal database search of all reported state and federal cases in which Meirs appeared as counsel discloses a grand total of . . . drum roll, fanfare . . . one reported case. One measly case.

This was an appeal of a case lost by a wacko lawyer against 10 defendants because he was not told when he bought his house that a local utility had an easement on a corner of his driveway.

Great Moments in American Jurisprudence this is not. It does not even qualify as a minor moment in the annals of feminist litigators. In that one case, Miers is listed as second chair lawyer for one of 10 defendants. Not only that, the first chair for the client she represented is none other than her reputed “boyfriend,” Nathan L. Hecht.

On appeal, an oral argument lasts at most an hour, usually less. The practice in multi-party appeals is one lawyer per side. The first lawyer listed in the counsel section for the 10 defendants is probably the only lawyer to argue for them.

Neither her “mentor” Hecht nor Miers is listed first. Her entire public record of being a “litigator” is an hour of sitting next to her boyfriend in a sea of dark pinstripe suits.

Indeed, the court’s written decision chided the suits because they took an insignificant case and over-lawyered it to the tune of half a million dollars.

So much for the litigator mystique.

Let’s move next to what it means to be the managing partner of a law firm. For this, you need a tutorial on how law firms work, law firm politics 101. Unless you founded the firm, being managing partner means absolutely nothing, or worse. It most likely means that you are what is derisively called a “service partner,” or one who does not have clients of his or her own.

Service partners do two things to make up for the fact that they may not have enough work and do not generate fees beyond their own hours. They busy themselves with “firm administration,” which they can put on their time sheets to show they are “contributing.”

They also solicit work from the rainmakers who do have clients and are in a position to delegate billable hours. Both of these activities amount to sucking up to the real powers in the law firm.

Rainmakers have neither the time nor interest to decide whether to lease or buy the copiers, whether the firm should use Microsoft Word or Word Perfect or to oversee the build-out of the new space on the 34th floor.

The lack of a litigation paper trail suggests that Miers mastered the diplomatic art of survival, as a partner without clients, the legal equivalent of Doctors Without Borders. Her cute little sycophantic notes to President Bush are a window to her “success” at her firm and in the bar.

The same need and diplomatic skills that apply being named to run a law firm apply to election to the presidency of the bar. Bar associations are like most trade and professional associations. Their heads are not the leaders of the profession, but titular caretakers of the association for a year. They are not the aggressive advocates of legal doctrines; they are not the legal policy wonks; and they are most definitely not legal scholars.

They manage the rainmaker egos, invite the scholars and muffle the advocates in order to put on the annual meeting, without antagonizing any of the factions. At the annual meeting, they give rousing introductions to speakers and honorees. Bar presidents spend their careers using their ability, inclination and time to do the administrative business of the association and the glad-handing needed to progress up the association ladder.

These are not unworthy skills, but they do not qualify one for a seat on the Supreme Court. The Nobel Committee does not give the Nobel prize for physics to the chair of the professional association of physicists but to the scientist with real accomplishments.

No amount of “boning up” for her confirmation hearings will transform the survivor of law office and bar association politics into a legal powerhouse.

Miers is the Republican (maybe) counterpart to Pat Schroeder, the former Democrat Congresswoman from Colorado who was known as the queen of the “smiley face.”

Bush must do better than a firm administrator and bar association hack with an hour of silence in a courtroom.