For more than two months, prosecutors in the Dewey & LeBoeuf criminal trial have walked jurors through Byzantine accounting adjustments applied after the firm was created through a 2007 merger. The Manhattan district attorney's case revolves around accounting and the argument that the firm's leaders used it to deceive lenders and partners before Dewey's collapse in 2012.

Lawyers for the defendants—former chairman Steven Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine, and ex-chief financial officer Joel Sanders—have tried to sow doubt as to whether those maneuvers were actually illegal.

But in the end, some criminal defense experts say, it may not matter how Dewey was allegedly fudging its numbers. What matters is the who—and the why.