This story was reported by Globe Spotlight Team members Marcella Bombardieri, Jonathan Saltzman, and editor Thomas Farragher. It was written by Bombardieri.

Last of three parts

“You got me.’’

The young financial worker said it four times, according to police, as he flubbed each field sobriety test near a Papa Gino’s in Plymouth, where he had almost caused a head-on collision.

He’d had a few beers, he said, and hadn’t eaten since noon. Now it was 1 a.m. When he blew into a breathalyzer, it registered .25, more than three times the legal limit.

They had him. Almost.

Most defendants would have pleaded guilty to a first offense like this, but the 23-year-old had another idea: He came up with the big money it takes to hire Stephen L. Jones, the dean of drunken driving defense lawyers in Massachusetts.

After a string of bad decisions, that move paid off.

Jones got the breath-test result thrown out of court. Then he masterfully recast his client’s feeble performance for police as a by-product of fatigue, not beer. The judge’s verdict: not guilty.

“I probably look like the cat that ate the canary,’’ Jones said, beaming after a hearing.

Call it OUI Inc., the cottage industry of lawyers and expert witnesses whose livelihoods are built on getting drivers charged with operating under the influence of alcohol off the hook - and back on the road.

When drunken driving cases go to trial in Massachusetts courts, it is often a clear mismatch, a Spotlight Team review has found - and not just because some judges, as the Globe has reported in this series, are inclined to find defendants not guilty no matter the weight of evidence against them. There are also lawyers like Jones, with thousands of trials behind them, who time and again triumph over relatively inexperienced prosecutors struggling under heavy caseloads.