By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff, 12/3/2000

One night last week on ''Spin Room,'' CNN's nightly slugfest, host Bill Press declared: ''It's official. They've now been counted and recounted. There are more lawyers in Florida than alligators.''

Responded co-host Tucker Carlson: ''There may even be more lawyers than there are human beings.''

One thing is certain: For those who know, practice, or teach the law, the national uncertainty since Nov. 7 has offered them a second career. And nowhere are they more evident than in broadcastland.

What may be the largest army ever of legal specialists, law professors, and other constitutional know-it-alls has fanned out on the network and cable stations to explain the unexplainable, predict the unpredictable, and help impatient anchorpersons boil 75-page legal briefs down to 30-second sound bites.

Some love it when the producers call, some don't, but thoughtful counsel of all kinds recognize that living the life of the mind in a law school comes, in this electronic age, with an opportunity to speak to a classroom of millions. Call it ''public scholarship,'' as some who practice it do.

''I've done seven `Lehrers,' four `Nightlines,' an MSNBC, and a lot of local TV,'' said Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School. ''I teach a voting-rights course in the spring. Needless to say, we're updating the book.''

Terence J. Anderson teaches at the University of Miami School of Law. In the last month on television, he's seen fellow professors from Florida who he didn't know existed. ''I think I've made three of the networks so far,'' said Anderson, who is particularly sought after, having represented a court challenge by a candidate who ran for a seat in the state Legislature this fall and lost by 39 votes - after believing he had won by 39 votes.

''The market for people who know Florida election law is a little bit thin for the demands that are being made,'' said Anderson, who was on one Phoenix station three times.

Almost to a professor, they say they do it because - hey, teaching is what they do. And the exposure doesn't hurt, either.

''I'm a teacher,'' said the ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School. ''I use every available source to teach. I think we need more rather than fewer public intellectuals and public advocates. I do it without embarrassment or defensiveness.''

Jonathan Turley, professor of public interest law at the George Washington University Law School, who was overexposed during Monicagate and the impeachment period, is back in the game. Under contract to NBC then to talk about possible presidential perjury, he is now with CBS for the duration of the presidential contest.

The schedule is a little lighter this time, Turley said, because CBS doesn't have the cable affiliates NBC does. Also, Turley teaches only one day a week, so he has more time to stare into TV cameras than some others.

But why do he and the rest - normally engaged in reading, writing, or lecturing - subject themselves to the demands of what Marshall McLuhan once labeled the cool medium?

''As an academic you feel a particular responsibility not to be trite or superficial. Obviously, there's a tension between the medium and the message,'' Turley said.

But, he said, next to mixing it up with 50 bright students in the classroom, TV is the best. ''This is not a foreign experience,'' Turley said. ''For academics, this is part of a continuum of their training and expertise. ''It is very exciting to help explain a constitutional crisis to such a large audience.''

OK, but don't they just like seeing themselves on TV, too?

''That there is an element of vanity you can't deny,'' Turley said, ''but I really enjoy coming back to the office finding e-mails from people asking follow-up questions.''

Almost all of those interviewed have had to turn down TV or radio requests. Anderson said he has a stack of messages 3 inches high that represents unfulfilled engagements.

And it pays to be fussy. Legal specialists often prefer the longer shows, on Sundays or on public television, where they are less likely to be cut off for a commercial. On radio, ''Sometimes you're being shoehorned in between the traffic and the weather,'' said Karlan. She was once mistakenly signaled by a confused young producer to go ahead and start talking - about politics in Peru.

For the uninitiated, working on camera represents an education on its own. Heather Gerken arrived at Harvard Law School in July after practicing law in Washington. She had done almost no television and took up a heavy load of teaching - five hours of civil procedure. But then came the nation's tie vote and people from every continent were calling Harvard to find a legal specialist to explain the various proposed resolutions.

Gerken was quickly drafted and has now done everything from the BBC to dot.com sites.

''I said I'd be happy to help educate people,'' said Gerken. ''This is a pretty arcane area - voting rights or election law.'' She said she doesn't mind taking a side, though, on political matters, ''I am willing to give my own view, but I will not engage in spinning.''

Dershowitz recently wrote the folks at Fox News cable channel and told them he wouldn't appear there again. He objects to the conservative slant. ''They're not real news, they're not fair or objective,'' he said, though he agreed that the other networks aren't free of bias, either.

Actually, most of the specialists interviewed enforce their own standards, avoiding the shows that engage in heavy verbal combat. ''While they may be good entertainment on the same level as the WWF,'' said Douglas W. Kmiec, chairman of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, referring to the World Wrestling Federation, ''it's really hard for someone who normally thinks and writes in sentences and paragraphs to shout over four people.''

Kmiec taught for 20 years at the University of Notre Dame Law School, and credits the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, the school's president from 1952 to 1987, for bringing him to what Hesburgh called ''public scholarship.''

It's not the kind done in the office, Kmiec said, with ''articles and obscure books.'' Though important, Hesburgh held, those are read by few. ''Then there are times when that scholarship collides with public events,'' said Kmiec. ''That public scholarship has a very important contribution to make.''

Yet some of the keenest legal minds just say no to TV. One is John H. Garvey, dean of Boston College Law School. ''I don't want to risk alienating half our alumni,'' joked Garvey.

The real reason he avoids the airwaves is more complicated. ''I'm shy about talking to TV reporters,'' Garvey said. ''There isn't time to say what you want to say, and some of the stuff is complicated. Maybe I just don't want to look like a fool, or maybe I don't want to give just half the story.''

Garvey encourages other faculty members to appear, and even held a seminar to introduce BC professors to members of the media. But he said things move so fast on live TV that it's easy to err. ''It's like an oral argument in front of the Supreme Court,'' he said. ''That's a state of preparedness that I haven't often reached.''

For Karlan, ''It's an art form, which I hadn't realized,'' she says. ''You have to be able to get it right the first time, and it moves incredibly fast.''

She also said it literally changed her when she taped some evening shows live for East Coast time, then went home and watched herself on rebroadcast in California. ''I didn't really like the way I looked - a little goofy,'' Karlan says. ''I never used to wear makeup.'' Now, she says, she does.

Those legal specialists who have entered the fray in the last three weeks have enjoyed one advantage not common to most big news stories. As Karlan observed, in the current presidential predicament, it's safer to pontificate than it normally is. ''The likelihood of giving an answer that's flat-out wrong is fairly low.''