The firm had weathered the miserable end to the 1980s, and then picked up speed after the recession had finally subsided. Now it was going full-bore as many of its competitors had downsized. It was loaded with some of the best attorneys in virtually every field of law, or at least the fields that paid the best. Many had been scooped from other leading firms, enticed by signing bonuses and promises that no dollar would be spared when chasing a new piece of business.
Three senior partners had been tapped by the current administration for top-level positions. The firm had awarded them severance pay in excess of two million dollars each, with the implicit understanding that after their government stint they would be back in harness, bringing with them tens of millions of dollars in legal business from their newly forged contacts.
The firm’s unwritten, but strictly adhered to, rule was that no new client matter would be accepted unless the minimum billing would exceed one hundred thousand dollars. Anything less, the management committee had decided, would be a waste of the firm’s time. And they had no problem sticking to that rule, and flourishing. In the nation’s capital, people came for the best and they didn’t mind paying for the privilege.
The firm had only made one exception to that rule, and ironically it had been for the only client Jack had other than Baldwin. He told himself he would test that rule with increasing frequency. If he was going to stick this out, he wanted it to be on his terms as much as that was possible. He knew his victories would be small at first, but that was okay.
He sat down at his desk, opened his cup of coffee and glanced over the Post. Patton, Shaw & Lord had five kitchens and three full-time housekeepers with their own computers. The firm probably consumed five hundred pots of coffee a day, but Jack picked up his morning brew at the little place on the corner because he couldn’t stand the stuff they used here. It was a special imported blend and cost a fortune and tasted like dirt mixed in with seaweed.
He tipped back in his chair and glanced around his office. It was a good size by big-firm associate standards, about fourteen by fourteen, with a nice view up Connecticut Avenue.
At the Public Defenders Service, Jack had shared an office with another attorney and there had been no window, only a giant poster of a Hawaiian beach Jack had tacked up one repulsively cold morning. Jack had liked the coffee at PD better.
When he made partner he would get a new office, twice this size — maybe not a corner just yet, but that was definitely in the cards. With the Baldwin account he was the fourth biggest rainmaker in the firm, and the top three were all in their fifties and sixties, looking more toward the golf courses than to the inside of an office. He glanced at his watch. Time to start the meter.
He was usually one of the first ones in, but the place would soon be stirring. Patton, Shaw matched top New York firm wages, and for the big bucks, they expected big-time efforts. The clients were enormous and their legal demands were of equal size. Making a mistake in this league might mean a four-billion-dollar defense contract went down the tubes or a city declared bankruptcy.
Every associate and junior partner he knew at the firm had stomach problems; a quarter of them were in therapy of one kind or another. Jack watched their pale faces and softening bodies as they marched daily through the pristine hallways of PS&L bearing yet another Herculean legal task. That was the trade-off for compensation levels that put them in the top five percent nationwide among all professionals.
He alone among them was safe from the partnership gauntlet. Control of clients was the great equalizer in law. He had been with Patton, Shaw about a year, was a novice corporate attorney, and was accorded the respect of the most senior and experienced members of the firm.
All of that should have made him feel guilty, undeserving — and it would have if he hadn’t been so miserable about the rest of his life.
He popped the final miniature doughnut into his mouth, leaned forward in his chair and opened a file. Corporate work was often monotonous and his skill level was such that his tasks were not the most exciting in the world. Reviewing ground leases, preparing UCC filings, forming limited liability companies, drafting memorandums of understanding and private placement documents, it was all in a day’s work, and the days were growing longer and longer, but he was learning fast; he had to in order to survive, his courtroom skills were virtually useless to him here.
The firm traditionally did no litigation work, preferring instead to handle the more lucrative and steady corporate and tax matters. When litigation did arise it was farmed out to select, elite litigation-only firms, who in turn would refer any nontrial work that came their way to Patton, Shaw. It was an arrangement that had worked well over the years.
By lunchtime he had moved two stacks of drift from his in to his out basket, dictated three closing checklists and a couple of letters, and received four calls from Jennifer reminding him about the White House dinner they would be attending that night.
Her father was being honored as Businessman of the Year by some organization or other. It spoke volumes about the President’s close nexus to big business that such an event would be worthy of a White House function. But at least Jack would get to see the man up close. Getting to meet him was probably out of the question, but then you never knew.
“Got a minute?” Barry Alvis popped his balding head in the door. He was a senior staff associate, meaning he had been passed over for partner more than three times and in fact would never successfully complete that next step. Hardworking and bright, he was an attorney any firm would be fortunate to have. His schmooz skills and hence his client-generating prospects, however, were nil. He made a hundred sixty thousand a year, and worked hard enough to earn another twenty in bonuses each year. His wife didn’t work, his kids went to private schools, he drove a late-model Beemer, was not expected to generate business and had little to complain about.
A very experienced attorney with ten years of intense and high-level transactional work behind him, he should have resented the hell out of Jack Graham, and he did.
Jack waved him in. He knew Alvis didn’t like him, understood why, and didn’t push it. He could take his lumps with the best of them, but then he would only allow himself to be pushed so far.
“Jack, we’ve got to get cranking on the Bishop merger.”
Jack looked blank. That deal, a real pain in the ass, had died, or at least he thought it had. He took out a legal pad, his hands twitching.
“I thought Raymond Bishop didn’t want to get into bed with TCC.”
Alvis sat down, placed the fourteen-inch file he was carrying on Jack’s desk and leaned back.
“Deals die, then they come back to haunt you. We need your comments on the secondary financing documents by tomorrow afternoon.”
Jack almost dropped his pen. “That’s fourteen agreements and over five hundred pages, Barry. When did you find out about this?”
Alvis stood up and Jack caught the beginnings of a smile tugging at the other man’s face.
“Fifteen agreements, and the official page count is six hundred and thirteen pages, single-spaced, not counting exhibits. Thanks, Jack. Patton, Shaw really appreciates it.” He turned back. “Oh, have a great time with the President tonight, and say hello to Ms. Baldwin.”