MARCH 7, 2024 – (Cont.) About 18 months after he’d taken over the reins, Dan announced that he wanted us—his direct reports—to take turns leading the department’s periodic “business update” meetings. These had been all-department gatherings in the ballroom-turned-corporate meeting venue at a downtown hotel, led by our fearless leader and featuring the department’s year-to-date …

MARCH 6, 2024 – (Cont.) As Dan found his stride, his minions fell into line behind him, and we all landed “in the dough” thanks in large part to the Clinton Era economy. My own group was ringing the bell consistently from quarter to quarter. In a public company, however, there’s no rest for the …

MARCH 5, 2024 – (Cont.) In time Keith’s replacement, [Dan], was named. He had no background in corporate or even personal trust. In the wake of Keith’s tumultuous reign, we needed law and order, and Dan was the perfect man for the job. Orderly, cordial, even-keeled and disciplined, he lacked originality, but after Keith’s unchecked …

MARCH 4, 2024 – (Cont.) As the president plunged straight into his interrogation of me, what flashed across my memory was the chain of my career junctions, starting on a memorable day nearly a decade earlier. At that time I was in the middle of my second stint at First Bank, which later became USBank. …

MARCH 3, 2024 – (Cont.) I prepared meticulously for my interrogation, reviewing meticulously the record of my association with Keith from our very first encounter. I relied heavily on my daily journals covering the previous three years. A few minutes in advance of the appointed time I made my way to the C-suite. It was …

MARCH 1, 2024 – (Cont.) One of the most bizarre experiences I had during my corporate life was the ignoble departure of the guy who’d hired me. Hmmm . . . one sentence into the story and I’m getting way ahead of myself. When I first met Keith [a made-up name to protect him and …

FEBRUARY 29, 2024 – (Cont.) Perhaps the biggest display of repulsive arrogance I experienced in the workplace occurred during an “off-site” meeting of my department at Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly. The idea was for partners and associates to gather at a corporate meeting center where isolated from our (land line) phones and (desktop) screens and …

FEBRUARY 28, 2024 – What I found fascinating about working in large organizational settings were the endless lessons in applied psychology—or was it simply an endless loop of the seven deadly sins?[1] I’m certain that my work places weren’t exceptional in this regard. We humans are a baffling species, especially when we occur in combinations …

FEBRUARY 27, 2024 – Recently our eight-year-old granddaughter asked my wife and me, “When you were young, did you have technology?” I thought of several snarky responses, such as, “How old do you think we are?!” and not as defensively, “Yeah. The wheel and the lever.” A less sarcastic reply to her innocent question might’ve …

FEBRUARY 26, 2024 – (Cont.) Our firm had a client who bought a local short-line railroad out of bankruptcy. The company had gone off the rails financially, and our client was able to purchase it for scrap value. Except our client, being a very clever fellow, knew it was worth far more than salvage. While …

FEBRUARY 24, 2024 – (Cont.) Few secrets can remain secrets forever, and even before Al Gore invented the internet, people figured out the means to investigate, uncover, and sound the alarm. One day well into the buyer’s due diligence period, I received a call from one of the lawyers handling the buyer’s application for a …

FEBRUARY 23, 2024 – (Cont.) No one was the wiser to Ray’s little escapade with the 55-gallon drums. The guys in the haz-mat suits did their thing, oblivious to the fact that Ray and his buddies dressed in ordinary work clothes had loaded up the drums, ferried them all the way across town, unloaded them …

FEBRUARY 22, 2024 – Anyone who’s dealt with the sale, purchase, financing, or development of commercial real estate knows that you have to cross the bridge over potentially troubled environmental waters. Back in the day, landowners dumped out the back door—or back 40—pretty much anything they wanted to. A lot of it was very nasty …

FEBRUARY 21, 2024 – (Cont.) What I experience performing or speaking in front of a crowd varies depending on the size of the crowd. I tend to be more nervous in front of 10 readily identifiable people than I am before a sea of anonymous faces. For the bondholders meeting we’d expected the latter—legions of …

FEBRUARY 20, 2024 – (Cont.) Before taking the job at Norwest Bank and getting mixed up with the ELIC matter, I’d never heard of the law firm of Hunton & Williams (now “Hunton Andrews Kurth”), based as it was in Richmond, Virginia, which from my provincial perspective might as well have been Timbuktu. But what …

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 – (Cont.) It soon came to pass that Tom Kimer and I were aboard a Northwest flight bound for LaGuardia. It was an evening trip—several years before complimentary meals in coach were discontinued. After our onboard repast, I pulled out a legal pad to outline a strategy for our “cats and free-range …

FEBRUARY 18, 2024 – (Cont.) Each trustee bank “lawyered up.” One Texas bank, in an abundance of caution, brought two six-shooters instead of one to the fight: a primary law firm and a secondary firm to keep an eye on the primary one. Norwest retained Tom Kimer, head of the litigation department of Faegre & …

FEBRUARY 17, 2024 – Very little of my daily work life in the trenches was of much interest to people beyond the immediate parties involved, who were usually quite limited in number. In a couple of instances, my name—misspelled—appeared in a back-page newspaper article about a work-related matter, but such publicity wasn’t significant enough for …

FEBRUARY 16, 2024 – Time to take a break from the practice of law to talk about the business of . . . business: money. Or more specific to my tale, money in politics. For most of the 1990s I took a break from practicing law to work as a client for others practicing law. …

FEBRUARY 15, 2024 – (Cont.) Eric Magnuson turned out to be “A Gentleman in Minneapolis.” He was perfectly civil and respectful, and if I had “baby lawyer” written all over me, he never treated me as one. After I’d served my summary judgment papers, he even asked if there was any room for settlement. My …

FEBRUARY 14, 2024 -(Cont.) Interpretation of the statutory language was a simple example of the role that case law—“judge-made” law—plays in Anglo-American jurisprudence. Filling the shelves of every law library back in 1983 were thousands of volumes of case law “reporters”; thick, handsomely bound volumes filled with case decisions by state appellate courts and federal …

FEBRUARY 13, 2024 – (Cont.) Fast forward to a day several months later. The time was close to noon, and most of the other lawyers in the litigation department had vacated for lunch or the athletic club. I was finishing up on something before I myself would head for the club a block away to …

FEBRUARY 12, 2024 – (Cont.) More than a year and tens of thousands of miles later, I was back in Minnesota. The earth being a sphere, my “runaway route” brought me back to my point of beginning. I had flirted with far-flung risks, interests, opportunities, and possibilities that stretched my imagination and more critically, my …