Conflicted reviews aren’t as rare as they ought to be, but at least N.P.R. commentator Daniel Schorr, in this review for The Christian Science Monitor, admits his connection to author Floyd Abrams right up front — Abrams was his lawyer. Of course, the situation is mitigated by the fact that Abrams is not just any lawyer, but “the nation’s preeminent First Amendment lawyer,” and Schorr is famous for his own First Amendment case versus the Nixon administration. So it’s an interesting assignment, and Schorr, in reviewing Abrams memoir, Speaking Freely, “a recounting of some of Abrams’s famous cases,” makes some interesting observations. He notes that the book covers fresh observations of Abrams’ involvement in everything from the Pentagon Papers case to his “victory against the effort of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to purge the Brooklyn Museum of a display the mayor considered sacrilegious, to the lawyer’s defeat in an effort to have the McCain-Feingold restrictions on political fund-raising declared unconstitutional.” Schorr also savors Abrams’ observations on how different hard-fought decisions would be in the age of the Internet: “Imagine if Ellsberg had posted the Pentagon Papers on the Internet! Who would be Floyd Abrams’s client?”