Death Benefits Read Free Page A

1964. Stanley Handelsman, a German Jew and a third-generation Yalie but a Jew nevertheless, joined the firm five years later. Four Jews, two Catholics, and eight years later, A & W hit the Title VII trifecta when it hired Louise Simpson, a blind, black female attorney. She lasted fifteen months before going in-house at Monsanto.
    By the time I joined Abbott & Windsor after graduation from Harvard Law School, the firm had enough Jews for a minyan , enough blacks to field a competitive basketball team in the Chicago Bar Association league, and enough women attorneys to cause most of the senior partners to stop referring to their secretaries, at least in the common areas of the firm, as “my girl” (as in, “Let’s schedule a meeting for next week. Have your girl call my girl”).
    For the student of the legal profession, there are several criteria for determining which of the thousands of law firms across the nation belong in that most exclusive of categories, the Major League Law Firms. There are the obvious disqualifying characteristics, such as a bold-type listing in the Yellow Pages or the presence of any workmen’s compensation work or domestic relations matters. And then there are the necessary threshold requirements, such as size (generally over two hundred attorneys), percentage of graduates from the Big Seven (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Michigan, Stanford, and Berkeley), and profits per partner (over $400,000).
    Although taxonomists can debate the subtle distinctions for hours, on one issue they all agree: You cannot be a Major League Law Firm without at least one Melvin Needlebaum. But never more than three. Abbott & Windsor’s Melvin Needlebaum is actually named Melvin Needlebaum. You can look it up in Martindale & Hubbell .
    While the Melvin Needlebaums of the legal profession travel under many aliases, they all look remarkably like Abbott & Windsor’s Melvin: pale eyes swimming behind thick glasses, thinning brownish hair slicked back, a manic laugh, scuffed brown tie shoes, a fat tie anchored by a crooked tie clasp, and a Dacron short-sleeve (even in January) white shirt with the tail hanging out.
    At first glance, Melvin Needlebaums remind you of the nerds from your high school Audio-Visual Club—the extra-chromosome types who ran the film projector in driver’s ed. But first impressions are misleading. Melvin Needlebaums are not nerds, at least not in the ordinary sense of the term. Yes, they are workaholics. And yes, they can crank out reams of motions and briefs on short notice. And yes, they have astonishing recall of the thousands of court opinions they have read.
    But what truly distinguishes the Melvin Needlebaums of the legal profession from garden-variety nerds are their astounding reserves of hostility and aggression, all of which they can focus on opposing attorneys in the lawsuits they work on. Within the sunken chest of a Melvin Needlebaum beats the heart of a serial killer. Staring out from behind those smudged lenses are the subzero eyes of a contract hit man.
    Melvin Needlebaums are entirely at home within that peculiar version of reality known as the law—where a corporation is a “person,” a claim for damages is a “prayer,” and a seventy-page document is a “brief.” For obvious reasons, Melvin Needlebaums are not often seen outside the prestigious firms in which they work. They don’t mingle with the firm’s clients at social events, they seldom appear in court, they never ever interview law students visiting the firm on job interviews, and they rarely become partners.
    But they survive at the Major League Law Firms, and even prosper for many years, because they are extraordinarily profitable. The typical Melvin Needlebaum works twelve hours a day, six to seven days a week—and every minute of his time is billable to a client. Multiply 2,600 hours a year by a billable rate of $200 per hour, subtract his