"Lots of sexual tension, Harry," Arabella says at one stage. "Isn't there just?" Harry replies. While the cases in the book are drawn from his career, Littlemore is keen to point out that Harry Curry isn't him. "It's not autobiographical," says Littlemore, 67. "What I've done is take these cases that I have done or know about and put them in the hands of this bloke who is more courageous and rebellious than I would ever be." Harry, then, is Littlemore as Littlemore would like to be – the last of "the rugged individualists", equally at home with convicted murderers as sexy barristers. But he is also a cipher for many of the author's pet peeves, from the growth of majority verdicts to the introduction of jury anonymity, which both Harry and Littlemore consider unconstitutional. "Even middle names tell you a lot," Littlemore explains. "If their middle name is Xavier or Patrick or Joseph, they're Catholics and that is often worth knowing if it's a sexual offence. The age, religion and the gender of the juror, they are all factors that you take into account. But now all you get are numbers." Littlemore says he wrote the book, in part at least, to provide some "anecdotal access to the law for people who might otherwise feel alienated from the process". Far more enjoyable, however, is the portrait it paints of Sydney's legal fraternity, a murky little fishbowl with a caste hierarchy – judges above magistrates, barristers above solicitors, corporate above criminal – that makes feudal India look positively benign. This is a world of condescending judges and boorish barristers who, when they aren't overcharging their clients, can be found standing on the Supreme Court steps "praising themselves".

So will people recognise themselves? "Oh yes, lots," Littlemore says with relish. "They might try to guess who is who but they will probably get it wrong." But if the lawyers are bad, the media is worse. Harry regards reporters as a kind of parasite in the guts of the legal community, retarding its function and distorting its aims. This is, of course, pure Littlemore, whose contempt for journalists remains powerful enough to generate its own weather. As the brains behind the ABC's Media Watch program, which he fronted from its launch in 1989 to 1997, Littlemore became famous for skewering reporters, ridiculing everything from their grammar to their non-existent ethics. "Media Watch wasn't really about the media," he says. "It's about journalists and the compromises they are only too willing to make." The program proved a hit, not only for holding the media to account but for Littlemore's waspish delivery and his ability to register an almost radioactive level of disdain with a single raised eyebrow. Indeed, so low is his opinion of most reporters that it's easy to forget he was one. "The only reason I even got into law is because I got sacked too many times as a journalist," he says. After school, at Scots College, Littlemore dreamt of being a playwright and so joined the ABC, which he rather naively believed would pay him to become the next Edward Albee. Instead, they sent him to work in their Kellett Street office, in the heart of Kings Cross. "It was right up there among the brothels and baccarat dens. People were stabbed in the street outside. When you are a young person wanting to write about life and don't know anything about it, it's pretty good to be parachuted into the middle of it." Following his cadetship, he flew to England, where he talked himself into a job as a studio director at the BBC. He covered the Vietnam War (getting into strife for referring to US troops as "the Allies") and the Aberfan disaster, in Wales, when a slag heap collapsed on a primary school, killing 116 children. "I remember we interviewed a father who explained how he'd had to break his daughter's leg to get her out."

Back in Australia, Littlemore worked as a reporter on This Day Tonight and Four Corners before leaving, in 1975, to study law. Admitted to the bar in 1979 (and appointed a QC in 1992), he has proceeded to forge what even his detractors admit has been a remarkable career, specialising in defamation, criminal law and personal injury. In recent years, he has represented Mercedes Corby, the sister of Schapelle Corby, in her successful defamation action against the Seven Network, and Pauline Hanson in her defamation action against News Ltd, after The Sunday Telegraph published nude photographs it claimed showed a young Hanson. (The parties settled out of court.) He has had run-ins with everyone from ethnic publisher Theo Skalkos, who accused him of overcharging in 2001 (Littlemore charges $6000 a day), to American publisher Steve Brill, who called Littlemore "more arrogant than the most arrogant journalist" after the two clashed during a live interview on the ABC's Lateline program in 1997. "Terrific, I wish you well," Littlemore shot back at Brill. "I hope you make another couple of million." Indeed, for a veteran court warrior, Littlemore can be surprisingly thin-skinned. The Brill incident was "just a pathetic set-up"; Theo Skalkos (who before their stoush had been a long-time client) is "one of the greatest scoundrels of all time"; and Richard Ackland, who accused Littlemore of using libel suits to intimidate his critics, is "terminally jealous . . . I don't give a rat's arse about what Richard Ackland says. I have never read a word he's written." Littlemore describes himself not so much as a misanthrope as a well-informed cynic. "I think most people are actually shits. Lawyers are shits. Journalists would sell their mother for a front page. Doctors are shits; they overservice beyond all belief."

It's a mistake, he says, "to heroise or demonise people and yet that is what the popular media depends on. And lawyers do it, too; they are some of the worst: they praise themselves for working these ridiculous hours, as if that makes them a better person. But nobody is better than anyone else." Not even Harry Curry? "Oh god no, especially not Harry Curry." Harry Curry: Counsel of Choice is published by HarperCollins next week, $29.99.