When Fighting Important Legal Battles

It always helps for the other side to be fighting among themselves. From the January 2, 2008 Washington Post:

Acting D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has fired the city lawyer who had been preparing to defend the longtime District ban on handguns in the high-stakes Supreme Court case this spring.
Alan B. Morrison, who has argued roughly 20 cases before the high court, was asked to leave his post as special counsel by the end of this week, Morrison said today. Morrison had been hired by former Attorney General Linda Singer, who resigned two weeks ago, and put in charge of arguing the handgun case.
The city has appealed to the Supreme Court to maintain the handgun ban after a lower court overturned the ban in the spring. The high court agreed to hear the case, probably in March, which would mark the first time the Supreme Court has examined a Second Amendment case in nearly 70 years.
Singer cited frustration that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) had relied more heavily on Nickles, who had been his general counsel, to make key legal decisions. Upon Singer's resignation, Fenty replaced her with Nickles, a former high-powered corporate litigator at Covington & Burling and friend of Fenty's family.

Okay, maybe who is at the top of the team doesn't make that much of a difference on this, especially since DC's brief is due at the Court on Friday. But at a minimum, it means that the new guy either is, or has been, playing catch-up on the work that Morrison was doing.