By Elizabeth Valk Long

The People v. O.J. Simpson has proved to be a trial by ordeal for almost everyone, including reporters. At the center of TIME's trial-coverage team are Elaine Lafferty, who has covered the case since the day after the murders, and Jim Willwerth, who started reporting when the trial began in January. Both have been consumed by the case as it unfolds in the courtroom as well as in the world outside. Senior editor Lee Aitken, who supervises TIME's O.J. coverage, compares the assignment to an overseas posting: "Jim and Elaine have immersed themselves so totally in the language, customs and history of the trial that I'm afraid they're going to suffer culture shock when the case ends."

Maybe so, but Willwerth points out some of the rewards. "Virtually every serious issue confronting American culture is being debated-or manipulated-in this case," he says. "The justice system, racial conflicts, domestic abuse, violence-they are all here."

Whereas Willwerth, a 28-year TIME veteran, has covered many of those issues for us for years, Lafferty is one of our newer correspondents, having come aboard last January. She has given her home phone number to virtually everyone involved in the case-and, to her mixed gratification and dismay, many sources use it at almost any hour of the day or night. "Catching them at less harried moments means being around early and being around late," she says.

The daughter of a jazz musician, the New Jersey-born Lafferty originally sought a more placid career than her father's by attending Southwestern University School of Law, where Simpson trial prosecutor Marcia Clark had graduated 16 years before. "I knew after a year or so that lawyering was not for me, and I dropped out," she explains. "Clark hung in." After working as an assistant press secretary for a New York state senator and then as a newspaper and free-lance journalist, she started with Time as a Los Angeles stringer in 1988. Pre-O.J., she contributed to eight cover stories and helped report on such events as the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake and the devastating brush fires of two years ago.

O.J. coverage, she says, is a "multidisciplinary challenge." A Simpson trial reporter needs to be "a lawyer, a sleuth, a Hollywood entertainment specialist, an expert in race relations, a sociologist and a political strategist." That's why we're glad to rely on a couple of correspondents with a multitude of gifts.