In 1989, national attention was given to the unusual amount of cooperation and social connections among key policy actors in a major school-finance lawsuit in Kentucky. The case resulted in a judicial ruling declaring the entire state's school system unconstitutional. Accounts of this ruling attributed the unprecedented decision partly to relational ties between the judge and the plaintiff juries. This paper discusses findings of a study that examined: (1) finance reform actors' social network structure; and (2) how this network influenced the trial court judge's decision. Log-linear analysis was used to test the statistical significance of the distribution of mutual ties as a measure of subgroup cohesiveness. Descriptive techniques suggest that the social structure of the finance reform initiators' network was highly mutualistic. The block image matrix shows that plaintiffs not only sought advice from various key resources (education policy consultants, themselves, the trial court's select committee, and the judge), but that those key resources also sought advice from plaintiffs. Key actors could monitor information flow and perhaps strategically frame their legal arguments and political interests to achieve self-interested goals. Defense actors were isolated from the rest of this network. Implications are discussed. Included are 6 figures, 4 tables, and two appendices: sources establishing advice relationships among policy actions in Kentucky; and the "GLIM" Statistical Computing Program used to test log-linear models of Kentucky school finance reform. (Contains 87 references.) (MLH/Author)