Cochran is big, a bigger celebrity even than the man he says is going to be his last criminal-defense client, rapper Puffy Combs. Combs goes on trial this week on gun and bribery charges stemming from a shooting incident at a club in late 1999 that involved Combs's posse and his on-again, off-again girlfriend Jennifer Lopez (the only member of the group who wasn't charged). To defend Combs, Cochran signed up a heavyweight local lawyer, Ben Brafman, who is expected to present the opening argument. Their strategy in the Combs case is a modified version of his O.J. defense: Puffy's a celebrity, and the D.A. is out to get him for it. "To the D.A., this is major!" Cochran says. "The D.A.'s office is treating this like it's the most heinous offense of the year 2000!"

Cochran claims he's confident that the beleaguered rapper will be acquitted, although he appears to be eager to share the glory (or the blame) with Brafman. "We will both do the jury selection, and the closing we'll do together," he says. Once the Combs case is over, Cochran says, he's done with criminal law. He says he wouldn't even take O.J. if he happened along today.

Not that he admits even the slightest regret about defending a man generally believed (by whites, anyway) to have gotten away with double murder. "The main reason why I think he didn't do it? Look, he was makin' a million dollars a year, he had the world by the tail, why would he ruin his life?" Pause. "But then, that's thinking rationally."

He does disapprove, however, of the way his former client has conducted himself since his bombshell acquittal. Cochran doesn't deny press reports that he told O.J. to start dating black women when he got out of prison, notwithstanding the fact that his own secret affair with a white woman made headlines when it was revealed during Simpson's trial. "I told him you better know who was lookin' after you on that jury," he says. "It's middle-aged black women. And my advice was, you have to give back. It's one thing to be a great athlete and do all these things, but don't you have to have a social consciousness?"

When church is over, Cochran rises -- a shortish, solidly built man in a bespoke suit and shirt with monogrammed cuffs and little clock cuff links that wink out as he reaches to shake hand after hand. He's mobbed as usual. He and Dale get separated, reconverge, get separated again in the surging crowd. He peels endless business cards from his small leather clutch and hands them to all who ask.

A man in a business suit approaches to say he's unhappy about a matter the Cochran Firm is handling for him. "It's just draggin' on and on," he complains. Cochran smiles genially and promises to look into it. A little old lady in a fur hat interrupts, extending her quaking hand. Cochran gives her his full attention, brimming with good cheer. "I saw you on TV," she coos. "God bless you and your family." In the back of the crowd, another elderly lady futilely tries to get his attention. She clutches a reporter. "Tell Johnnie Cochran to come to Sunnyside Heights. We need him. The police aren't doin' their job!"

"They find us. We get a lot of calls." Cochran is sitting at his desk in the Woolworth Building, explaining how business works these days. There are pictures of Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby mounted behind his head; another photo shows him shaking hands with Bill Clinton. African objets cram the walls and shelves. Cochran talks at a rat-a-tat-tat pace, his cadence and slang a combination of Valley Girl, old-time religion, and crisp legalese.

He has a motto he uses on reporters in the seven cities -- Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and three locales in Alabama -- where he's opened offices, a motto worthy of his friend Jesse Jackson: "Not only do we represent the O.J.'s and the M.J.'s, but also the No-J.'s! We represent them as vigorously as anybody else."

He says his practice is for the little guy. That's why his firm has a toll-free line, 800-lawyer-1. For the little injured guy, not the little felon. If you're in jail, he doesn't want to hear from you; these days, he's interested in pursuing only civil cases. If you have a good case, he -- or, more likely, another of the 60 lawyers at the Cochran Firm -- will gladly represent you.

In New York, the Cochran Firm was formed as a result of a merger last year between Johnnie Cochran and the former Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz, Damashek & Shoot. Managing partner Phil Damashek met Cochran when they were both representing injured parties in the same accident. They ran into each other again at the first Lenox Lewis-Evander Holyfield fight at Madison Square Garden, and agreed to talk about joining forces. By last January, the Cochran Firm was in business.

Damashek says he and his partners had no problem dropping their names from the top of the letterhead. "He's probably the most famous lawyer in the history of the world," says Damashek. The bottom line is that "he's a magnet for new business. And Cochran, Schneider, Kleinick, Weitz, Damashek & Shoot is too much even for me."

Along with his celebrity, Cochran brings to New York three decades of experience suing the LAPD. And he's putting it to use, filing civil cases against the cops in all the big-name brutality cases here. He's got Abner Louima, on whose behalf he's suing not just the cops and the city but the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. "We are not just talking dollars; we're talking equitable relief -- change!" he says. He wants the PBA to agree to abandon the controversial so-called 48-hour rule, which allows cops not to be questioned for two days after an incident. Cochran also had the Amadou Diallo civil case until he was unceremoniously fired; he still represents other victims of police shootings, known and unknown, including the family of Patrick Dorismond, Dante Johnson, Dukens Kernisant, and the four teenagers wounded by police gunfire who were later dubbed the New Jersey Four. Suing the cops is what he built his legal reputation on, and he arrived here at an opportune moment: Last year, the city's reported payouts for police-brutality cases nearly doubled, with lawyers taking a handsome portion of the proceeds.

There is a larger community of activists who stand up for victims of cop brutality in New York, meaning more camaraderie but also more competition for Johnnie.

"In L.A., I was the voice in the wilderness," he says. "I'd say, 'These guys are framing people,' and they'd say, 'How un-American of you.' The LAPD never saw a shooting they didn't think was good. Here you get a few indictments. If Louima happened in L.A., they would have talked about it for a while and the D.A.'s office would have investigated and that would have been it. I've seen many more officers indicted here than I ever did there."

Its a little-known fact that Cochran's own son is a California Highway Patrol officer and his brother-in-law a county sheriff, which he says often makes for "interesting dinner-table conversations about what police should do. My son says, 'If somebody has a gun, what do you expect me to do?' And I think, God, I don't want him in harm's way. Throughout all my cases, I'm always aware of the fact that my own son is a cop."

In addition to his high-profile police cases on the East Coast, Cochran has a hand in scores of civil cases around the country. He's represented dozens of sports figures in contract and criminal cases -- including Latrell Sprewell when he was booted from the Golden State Warriors after choking his coach. He's involved in race-discrimination cases against a shipbuilder in Pascagoula and against the Lockheed Corporation in Atlanta. He just won a suit against Disney on behalf of two white clients who claimed that the company stole their idea for a sports complex. (Cochran won his clients $240 million -- the seventh-largest civil judgment of 2000, according to USA Today.)

Though critics charge he can't possibly devote adequate attention to his cases, Cochran denies he's stretched too thin. "I see myself as a worker in the vineyard," he says. Cochran doesn't want to go into politics or become a movement leader, but he does think he's carved himself a minor place in the civil-rights pantheon. Sure, the Cochran Firm makes bucketloads of dough suing corporations and municipalities in cases that have nothing to do with racism, but what he's really interested in is using the law for social change. Cochran wants to model his career on Thurgood Marshall, not the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. For now, at least, he has it both ways. While the Cochran Firm takes lucrative slip-and-falls, he retains an association with Scheck and Neufeld, and they are inevitably in on the cases he really cares about: those that highlight what he sees as pervasive racism in American law enforcement. "It's not about being popular all the time," Cochran says. "It's about trying to make some real change."