“He would be very marketable to some law firms,” said Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Bar Association. “There is a possibility that a firm would enter­tain him on a short-term basis, more in a rainmaker kind of a capacity, and may be willing to tolerate his aspiration to seek higher office.”

Warren Tolman, a former Democratic state senator who is of counsel to Holland & Knight, said a firm that wanted to pay Brown for a short-term burst of publicity might hire him with an understanding that he may leave to run for office. But the firm would not pay Brown as much if its partners believed he would stay only a short time.