are too busy for, doing firm committee work, still hoping, after eighteen years in private practice, that somehow, somewhere there's some million-dollar client who wants an ex-drunk former copper for its principal outside counsel. Between slouching work habits and a lack of clientele, my economic value to this enterprise is dwindling toward zero. True, I cash a hefty draw check every quarter, notwithstanding three straight years of reductions; and there are folks, like Martin, who seem inclined to support me as an act of enduring sentiment. But I have to worry about when someone like Pagnucci will call time's up--and then there's the matter of my pride, assuming I have any left.
Not happy thoughts as I looked over the Blue Sheet, our daily bulletin, and the remainder of the lost forest of memos and mail that are generated within G &G each day. I had some desultory work to do on 397, the air crash disaster that has provided nearly full-time employment for Bert and more than occasional toil fo r m e in the last three years. There were letters to sign and a draft of payout documents which were due over with Peter Neucriss, the lead plaintiff's lawyer, an exacting prick who'd force me to rewrite them four times. Today's letters purported to be from TN, written on TN stationery--various proclamations regarding the settlement fund that we were supposed to safeguard and which TN controlled--and I applied my flawless imitation of Jake Eiger's signature, then went back to the Blue Sheet, shifting for interesting news. Only the usual. A corporate department luncheon to discuss interest rate swaps; time sheets due by 5 :00 or we'd get fined; and, my favorite, mystery mail, a photocopy of a check payable to the firm for $275 with a note from Glyndora in Accounting asking if anybody knew who sent it and why. There was once a check for about 750 grand that ran for three days straight which I very nearly claimed. Carl and various subalterns had also sent four separate memos to the partners, hard copy and E-mail, telling us to giddy up and get our clients to pay their fees before the fiscal year ended next week on January 3 1 .
This thought of bills coming due reminded me of the Kam Roberts credit card. I told Lucinda where I'd be when Wash called and rambled through the halls to the law library, a floor above on 38. Three associates, all in their initial year of practice, were yakking around a table. At the rare sight of a partner in these surroundings, they embarked on a silent, quailed departure from each other's company to resume making profit of their time.
"Not so fast," I said. I had recruited each of them. A large law firm is basically organized on the same principles as a Ponzi scheme. The only sure ingredients of growth are new clients, bigger bills, and--especially--more people at the bottom, each a little profit center, toiling into the wee hours and earning more for the partnership than they take home. Thus we have a lecher's interest in new talent and are always wooing. In the summers we give fifteen law students a tryout on terms that make over-
night camp look like hard labor. Twelve hundred a week to go to baseball games and concerts and fancy lunches, an experience that is a better introduction to life as royalty than the practice of law. And who's in charge of sucking up to these children this way? Yours truly.
When I was assigned to the recruiting subcommittee, Martin tried to explain it as a tribute to my raffish charm. Young people would relate to my offhand ways, he suggested, my casual eccentricities. I knew that with his native bureaucratic dexterity he'd struck on some last-hope way to demonstrate my usefulness to our partners. The fact is I do not particularly care for younger people. Ask my son. I resent their youth--their opportunities, the zillion ways they are inherently better off than I am. Nor, frankly, are they particularly taken with me. But nineteen times each fall I sit in some desolate hotel room
Not happy thoughts as I looked over the Blue Sheet, our daily bulletin, and the remainder of the lost forest of memos and mail that are generated within G &G each day. I had some desultory work to do on 397, the air crash disaster that has provided nearly full-time employment for Bert and more than occasional toil fo r m e in the last three years. There were letters to sign and a draft of payout documents which were due over with Peter Neucriss, the lead plaintiff's lawyer, an exacting prick who'd force me to rewrite them four times. Today's letters purported to be from TN, written on TN stationery--various proclamations regarding the settlement fund that we were supposed to safeguard and which TN controlled--and I applied my flawless imitation of Jake Eiger's signature, then went back to the Blue Sheet, shifting for interesting news. Only the usual. A corporate department luncheon to discuss interest rate swaps; time sheets due by 5 :00 or we'd get fined; and, my favorite, mystery mail, a photocopy of a check payable to the firm for $275 with a note from Glyndora in Accounting asking if anybody knew who sent it and why. There was once a check for about 750 grand that ran for three days straight which I very nearly claimed. Carl and various subalterns had also sent four separate memos to the partners, hard copy and E-mail, telling us to giddy up and get our clients to pay their fees before the fiscal year ended next week on January 3 1 .
This thought of bills coming due reminded me of the Kam Roberts credit card. I told Lucinda where I'd be when Wash called and rambled through the halls to the law library, a floor above on 38. Three associates, all in their initial year of practice, were yakking around a table. At the rare sight of a partner in these surroundings, they embarked on a silent, quailed departure from each other's company to resume making profit of their time.
"Not so fast," I said. I had recruited each of them. A large law firm is basically organized on the same principles as a Ponzi scheme. The only sure ingredients of growth are new clients, bigger bills, and--especially--more people at the bottom, each a little profit center, toiling into the wee hours and earning more for the partnership than they take home. Thus we have a lecher's interest in new talent and are always wooing. In the summers we give fifteen law students a tryout on terms that make over-
night camp look like hard labor. Twelve hundred a week to go to baseball games and concerts and fancy lunches, an experience that is a better introduction to life as royalty than the practice of law. And who's in charge of sucking up to these children this way? Yours truly.
When I was assigned to the recruiting subcommittee, Martin tried to explain it as a tribute to my raffish charm. Young people would relate to my offhand ways, he suggested, my casual eccentricities. I knew that with his native bureaucratic dexterity he'd struck on some last-hope way to demonstrate my usefulness to our partners. The fact is I do not particularly care for younger people. Ask my son. I resent their youth--their opportunities, the zillion ways they are inherently better off than I am. Nor, frankly, are they particularly taken with me. But nineteen times each fall I sit in some desolate hotel room
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