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. I was happily ensconced in the real estate workout division, working away when my then boss, Jim Roberts (nicknamed “Jim Bob” by a colleague of mine), called me into his office.
“We’ve just received word that we’re being assigned three large apartment developments that have gone south. Not only have they gone south but all three are down South—Nashville, Atlanta, and Daytona Beach. All three involve the same developer and guarantors. I’m assigning them to you, and they’re gonna keep you busy for a while.
“Now here’s the immediate concern,” Jim Bob said, putting his elbows on his desk to bear his considerable heft as he leaned toward me. “The committee wants to meet with us at 1:00 this afternoon and wants us to have our outside counsel there too.”
Upon hearing this I thought I’d bolt back to my office and jump on the phone with one of my buddies back at Briggs & Morgan, the firm from which I’d been granted an 18-month (or so) leave of absence and to which I sent all of my outside legal work.
Before I could raise my butt off my chair, however, Jim Bob said, “Let me make the lawyer call.” It was the first time he hadn’t left selection of outside counsel to me.
Too surprised to speak up, I watched him swivel in his office chair and place a finger under the phone number next to a name on a list taped to his back wall. The heading scrawled across the top of the list was “LAWYERS.” He then tapped the speaker button on his desk phone and punched in the number.
“[So-and-so’s office (at the Twin Cities’ largest law firm)],” a woman answered.
“Is he in?”
“He is, but he’s on the phone right now. Can I take a message?”
“No, that’s okay. Thanks . . . Good-bye.”
Jim Bob then moved his finger down to the second number on the list. Same drill as before.
“[So-and-so’s office (at the Twin Cities’ second largest law firm)].”
“Is he in?”
“He was just a second ago. Let me check . . . . Hmm. I don’t see him. He might’ve wandered down the hall. Can I have him call you right back?”
“No, thanks anyway . . . Good-bye.”
Jim Bob now went to the third name and found preliminary evidence that three’s the charm: the lawyer answered, and Jim identified himself.
“Hi, Jim,” the lawyer said.
After a minimal exchange, Jim Bob asked the lawyer if he was free for a one o’clock meeting that afternoon.
“I’m tied up then,” the lawyer said. “I could make any time after two-thirty, though.”
“Sorry, that won’t work.”
It was the fourth lawyer on Jim Bob’s list who (a) answered the phone; and (b) was available at one o’clock. That lawyer got the job, which over the next two years would generate hundreds of thousands of legal fees for his firm. In the moment I realized that to get hired, not only did you have to be good and connected (i.e. be on a “Lawyer” list taped to someone’s office wall), but you had to (a) be at your desk [the time pre-dating wide use of mobile phones], (b) answer your phone, AND (c) be available for a meeting in less than three hours. I wondered how many big firm lawyers had witnessed anything close to what I’d just observed.
I’d known of the lawyer who scored the trifecta right in front of me, but I’d never met him. About a year later it was he who would . . . recruit me to his law firm—Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly . . . sponsor me for partnership but . . . get so crosswise with his certain partners that in retribution they’d deny me partnership . . . which, in turn, would lead to my taking the job at the bank . . . which journey had now led to my unhappy interrogation by the bank’s president in a process . . . that would lead to the ouster of Keith, the very guy who’d won me over to the bank.
To think this chain linked back to Jim Bob’s crude, hand-written list of lawyers taped to his wall—and strikeouts with the first three on that list!
As I looked at the president’s heavy hand scribbling the date and my name across the top of his tablet, his opener—“Tell me everything you know”—still reverberating inside my ears, I thought of a similarly unsavory incident back at Oppenheimer . . .
* * *
The lawyer at Oppenheimer who’d recruited me and later sponsored me for partnership (lawyer #1) had subsequently crossed swords with a co-leader of our department—a lawyer with whom I’d also worked very closely and who’d joined his now-nemesis in recruiting me to the firm (lawyer #2).
One fine day three years after I’d joined Oppenheimer, lawyer #1 called me into his office and closed the door. After directing me to have a chair, he handed me a thick file. I recognized the matter name on the outer tab and knew that it was a commercial mortgage foreclosure file that had been handled by the chief associate who worked with lawyer #2.
“I want you to review this file,” lawyer #1 said, “and find as many screw-ups as you can.”
I was stunned. My colleague who’d been in charge of the file was universally respected by everyone in the department. I often relied on her for advice, knowing that she possessed extraordinary expertise and was always generous and non-judgmental in imparting eminently practical guidance. We were on excellent terms, and I viewed her as a “lawyer’s lawyer.” Plus, she and her husband were big-time sailors, which gave us plenty to talk about apart from the law, even though I sailed a much smaller vessel on much smaller waters.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’ve been double-crossed by [lawyer #2],” said lawyer #1. “I’m fighting back by calling out his favorite lawyer—the one he insists can do no wrong. I want you to look over her work to show she can and does do wrong.”
“Are you aware of something specific?” I asked.
“No. That’s your job.”
With that, I put the file on his desk and said, “I’m not going to do that, [lawyer #1]. I don’t know what your beef is with [lawyer #2], and I’m not sure I want to know, but what I do know is that [my colleague] is one of the best lawyers in the department, and I’ve not encountered many lawyers inside or outside this firm who adhere consistently to such a high standard as she does. If by some crazy chance she did screw something up on that file or any file, I’m not going to be the one to point it out—all for your ulterior purpose.”
To his marginal credit, lawyer #1 didn’t swear at me. He folded quietly as I saw myself out of his office. Nothing more came of the incident—except my disappointment that he, my sponsor for partnership, would stoop so low. I began to understand, I thought, why I’d been denied partnership.[1]
* * *
Fast forwarding to the interrogation . . . The president took copious notes as I shared what I could and what I dared to divulge. I was careful to stick to aspects of Keith’s reign and behavior that I had witnessed firsthand and avoid all hearsay, of which there was plenty. If my peers could—and would—corroborate any of my story was beyond my control, as was what would be done with the information.
With the hour approaching five, the rest of the “golf team” were probably already at their weekend lake homes. . . or back at the club house for a round of beers before dispersing for the weekend—and more golf. The president, meanwhile, was finished with the unsavory task at hand, as was I. He thanked me for my input and saw me out.
Ten days later Keith presided over his last direct reports meeting. By that time every one of my peers and I had been interrogated. Keith had to have known, but bizarrely, everyone in the meeting acted as if absolutely nothing was awry. The usual box of over-glazed donuts occupied the end of the table closest to the doorway. The coffee pot by the window was open for business. Best of all, one of the leading sycophants took her place at the Keith’s right hand around the corner from the head of the table. In front of her she gripped her coffee mug bearing Keith’s smiling face (I kid you not) above the bold caption, “MY FAVORITE BOSS!” Just in case he should miss it, she turned it his way and said, “How do you like my new mug, Keith?”
At that moment I tried in vain to imagine what she’d said about Keith in her interrogation.
A week later Keith was gone. I was out of town when the ax fell but according to eyewitnesses, he’d been escorted out by two armed guards. He was allowed to carry a banker’s box—no lid—containing personal effects. (Cont.)
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Many years later Lawyer #1 would be an example of why you should never give up on people. At the time of the incident, he was going through a dark personal phase of his life. He was purportedly dependent on alcohol, and his marriage was cratering. He took things out on work colleagues, though I was spared despite having an office right next to his. As the years passed, he got help and pulled himself out of the ditch. He joined a competing firm (the same one lawyer #2 wound up joining!) and made regular trips to an indigenous reservation in South Dakota, where he “did time” in a sweat lodge and a solo wilderness retreat in search of “a vision.” We met regularly for lunch, and after he left the big firm he’d joined after Oppenheimer and went out on his own, we associated on several matters. He attended several of my “Fiddler under the Roof” recitals. Smart, well read, curious about the world, an excellent lawyer, he had lots to offer. We became good friends.
The colleague caught in the crossfire, I’m sad to report, met an untimely demise—as had her husband. I remember catching up with her once at the annual state real estate law institute. We’d not seen each other for several years. In our exchange I asked, “How’s [her husband]?” Never effusive emotionally, she burst out in tears. “He died a year ago,” she said, voice quivering. I knew they’d been very close. About a year later I was shocked to learn that she herself had died. Though she was a good deal older than I, she was way too young to perish. Without knowing more, I suspected she’d died of a broken heart, though at work she’d been 100% focused on work.
