NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Arthur Andersen LLP will be fighting for more than a not-guilty verdict when the criminal trial against it begins Monday. A loss for the troubled accounting firm could mean the once-powerful partnership's days are numbered.

Andersen attorneys and Justice Department prosecutors are set to face off in a Houston federal court Monday and begin the process of selecting jurors.

Chicago-based Andersen is charged with destroying "tons" of Enron documents last year while it was on notice of a federal investigation.

Andersen served as Enron's auditor for 16 years before it was fired. The legal teams are slated to present opening arguments Tuesday.

Weeks of negotiations on a settlement broke down late last month when the Justice Department rejected a proposal from Andersen. The two sides still may renew their talks to resolve the charge. Andersen could clinch a settlement anytime during the trial until a verdict is reached, legal experts said.

"We are ready for trial," Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said Friday.

Chicago-based Andersen faces a relatively short time to make its case to jurors. The Justice Department, which will be up first, has said it needs 15 days to depict how the conspiracy to shred documents spread throughout Andersen.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Melinda Harmon denied Andersen's lawyers' request for more time, and the trial is set to end May 29 when Harmon will leave for vacation.

This gives Andersen less than three days to present its defense. "That doesn't leave much time to put on a defense," Rusty Hardin, Andersen's lead attorney, said. "All I want is equal time."

Harmon is best known for putting Vanessa Leggett in jail when the crime writer refused to turn over her notes in a 1997 murder case.

Much of Andersen's hope for a victory will rest on Hardin, the folksy former prosecutor who is well known among Houston residents and has a reputation for being an aggressive trial lawyer. Hardin led the team that beat former Guess jeans model Anna Nicole Smith's attempt to wring $2 billion from her late husband's estate. (A judge later gave her $89 million in a related case.)

Judge Melinda Harmon is overseeing the Andersen criminal case

But even with Hardin's bulldog trial skills, Andersen has a slim chance of winning, legal experts said. Under the doctrine of respondeat superior, corporations generally are held liable for the acts of their employees. Stan Twardy, a former U.S. attorney for the state of Connecticut and now criminal defense lawyer with Day Berry & Howard, said the firm is likely to try to avoid a guilty verdict by seeking a jury nullification ruling, in which jurors vote their conscience, ignore the law and acquit defendants.

"Andersen will try to paint the government as over-reaching and using heavy-handed tactics to try to bring down an international accounting firm," said Robert Mintz, a former U.S. prosecutor and expert on white-collar crime, and now partner at McCarter & English, a Newark, N.J., law firm.

The original indictment and now the trial could speed up Andersen's collapse. The firm already has lost some serious business this year. More than 250 audit clients have dumped Andersen since January. This, in turn, was one of the factors leading it to lay off 7,000 of its U.S. employees.

"[Andersen] has to win this case if they have any hope of surviving," Mintz said.

A little over a month ago, Andersen was confident of winning the case and pushed for a speedy trial. But the firm lost much of its momentum when former partner David Duncan turned on it. Andersen fired Duncan, its lead audit partner on the Enron account, in January and attempted to place much of the blame for the shredding on him.

Duncan is now a government witness and prosecutors will try to use his testimony to show that the plot to destroy documents spread throughout the firm and across multiple offices, experts said.

The former auditor is expected to make the government's case stronger by implicating others at the firm, said Ira Sorkin, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New York who is now a criminal defense lawyer with the New York law firm Carter Ledyard & Milburn.

It is unknown who else the Justice Department may call as a witness and the government will not make its witness list public. But Duncan's appearance is virtually assured. In fact, part of his plea deal with the Justice Department was his agreement to testify at the Andersen trial.

"Duncan continues to cooperate [with the government]," said Barry Flynn, his attorney, who declined further comment.

For its part, Andersen will stick with its "rogue employee" defense and seek to discredit the former audit partner. Duncan initially denied any wrongdoing when he oversaw the destruction of Enron documents but then admitted in April that he tried to foil the government's investigation.

"Andersen will take desperate measures to save itself by shifting the blame," Mintz said.

It is still unclear whether Duncan will serve any jail time or what sort of sentence he will face. He is to be sentenced Aug. 26. Under Duncan's plea deal, he is immune to any further prosecution related to the Enron case as long as he continues to cooperate fully with federal authorities -- which could include testimony at future trials -- and agrees not to sell his story or otherwise profit from the debacle.

The government likely will use Duncan to testify against Enron executives, including former CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling and ex-Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, in future hearings.

"Duncan will not be sentenced until he has testified in every case that the government believes he will be a useful witness," Mintz said.

Andersen in-house counsel Nancy Temple also likely will be called to appear in the Andersen case. Temple is the Andersen attorney who sent the October e-mail that reminded executives about the firm's retention policy. Duncan has told congressional investigators that the Temple e-mail spurred the shredding.

Some legal experts have said that Temple could face possible prosecution for perjury and aiding in the conspiracy to shred documents. Temple, in congressional hearings in January, denied that she told anyone to destroy documents. But in March, when quizzed by attorneys in the class-action lawsuit against Andersen, Temple refused to testify when asked about her role in shredding the documents.

The Andersen attorney is expected to remain silent and assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to testify. Temple also could opt for a deal similar to Duncan's, in which she would testify against executives in exchange for some kind of immunity, experts said.

Temple, through her attorney Mark Hansen, could not be reached for comment.

Andersen served as Enron's auditor for 16 years before it was fired in January. The firm had a dual relationship with Enron, providing consulting work (for which it received millions of dollars in fees) while also serving as the firm's outside auditor. The Houston-based energy trader filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Dec. 2 and cut thousands of jobs.

The speed with which the government filed charges against Andersen has caused some to question the merits of the case. But Andersen did have a chance to resolve the case in March when it rejected a settlement proposal that would have called for the firm to acknowledge its guilt. Then came the Justice Department's rejection of Andersen's proposal and the subsequent collapse of negotiations.

"They are still being Andersen," said Arthur Bowman, editor of Bowman's Accounting Report, of the firm's reputation for arrogance. "There is the Andersen way and the wrong way. They played this all wrong."

And now the shredding of Enron documents (which have not been determined to be material to the Enron investigation) could bring down the 89-year-old firm.

"At the end of the day, Andersen didn't have liability in Enron," Carter Ledyard's Sorkin said. "Sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime."