chapter 14 Early Years of Law Practice
Page 181 →After completing my second year of law school, I took a summer clerkship at Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C), a leading “white-shoe” Wall Street law firm. (The term “white-shoe” refers to a prestigious law firm traditionally populated by white Ivy League graduates.) S&C was founded in the late nineteenth century and has represented the titans of Wall Street, including J. P. Morgan. When I arrived, S&C did not have any Black partners and only a handful of Black associates.
The firm provided a rich learning experience, for I had no idea what type of work law firms handled. Being the product of a small town, I knew only lawyers who were either solo practitioners or in small partnerships. One of those memorable practitioners was Shadrack “Squire” Morgan, a family friend and neighbor. He was called Squire, a shorthand for Esquire, a common suffix for members of the legal profession.
I applied to work at S&C because summer clerkships were promoted by Harvard Law School as a resume builder that positioned you for future employment. When I arrived at the 48 Wall Street office, I quickly understood the basis for S&C’s stellar reputation. The firm housed the leading practitioners of the New York City bar. There was much talk of John Foster Dulles, who once anchored the firm. S&C embodied the profile of the lawyer-statesman. At different points in his life, Dulles served with distinction seamlessly as a consummate corporate lawyer and US Secretary of State. Many others in the firm had similar profiles. His brother and fellow partner, Page 182 →Allen Dulles, was head of the Central Intelligence Agency. During my summer experience in 1969, Arthur Dean, who was the chief negotiator of the Korean Armistice Agreement and one of the “Wise Men” who counseled Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the Vietnam conflict, was active in the firm. So was Robert MacCrate, who had been counsel for Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The plethora of excellent legal talent at S&C was dizzying. At a summer gathering at the Greenwich, Connecticut, estate of Eustace Seligman, a retired partner at S&C, I had the opportunity to engage him in private conversation and learned that he had a family connection to South Carolina. Mr. Seligman was a quintessential gentleman, who founded the Voluntary Defenders Committee in 1917, which later became a part of the Legal Aid Society of New York City.
The summer got off to a rocky start. The law associate with whom I shared an apartment had an issue with my girlfriend visiting me. Things came to a head after one week of living together. I suspect the real issue was my roommate’s difficulty in accepting my interracial relationship with a Radcliffe College student, whom I had met at Harvard during my second year. The issue created a crisis for the firm because it had an interest in recruiting African Americans, and my situation did not reflect the image it wanted to portray. The remedy was far beyond what I had expected. Michael Cooper, a young partner who coordinated the summer program, moved me to a lovely Brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, two subway stops from Wall Street. Richard “Dick” Carlton, the young partner who lived in the Brownstone, was given the house of a leading partner in the Hamptons for the summer, and he graciously gave me his house rent-free. I loved living on State Street in Brooklyn Heights. I especially enjoyed strolling along the Promenade, a couple of blocks away, overlooking the downtown cityscape. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to my Wall Street office was also a treat.
That summer, New York City was bustling with commercial activity. The World Trade Towers were under construction, and I saw Page 183 →the deep excavation that provided the massive foundation for what would become New York City’s tallest buildings. Law firm salaries for starting associates were the highest in the nation, which provided a great recruiting advantage for attracting the brightest Ivy League law school graduates. S&C provided a sweetener to encourage longer working hours for associates. If you stayed past 6 pm working on a client’s case, you were rewarded with dinner at the client’s expense. I dined at many of the finest Wall Street restaurants that summer because of my work initiative.
That summer, New York City offered a cornucopia of entertainment to sample. I enjoyed going to nightclubs and the theatre. I especially enjoyed the production of The Fantasticks, a light musical, performed in a small, quaint theatre in Greenwich Village. The quality of the musical was so spectacular, with continuing performances for forty-two years as the longest-running musical, that I took my kids to see it years later when they were in their teens. My favorite watering hole was Chumley’s, also located in the Village. Chumley’s was an historic pub that was established as a Prohibition-era speakeasy. It was a gathering spot for writers, poets, and playwrights (including e. e. cummings, William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill, and John Steinbeck), and the walls were adorned with pictures of the covers of books supposedly worked on there and portraits of writers, like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who were regulars.
The living arrangement, salary, and other benefits were a great recruiting enticement. They made it difficult for me to turn down the offer I would later receive to join the firm after graduation. But I did turn it down. I just wasn’t ready to throw in with the firm and move to New York City.
After graduation, I was torn over what I wanted to do with my law degree. Rod Hills, my Collective Bargaining teacher, had arranged interviews with several leading law firms in Los Angeles during my last year at law school. I received offers from most, including his law firm, Munger, Tolles, Hills & Rickershauser. Charlie Page 184 →Munger, the lead partner, was a national powerhouse in the law and business, eventually hooking up with Warren Buffett’s investment conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, as vice chairman. Being firmly rooted on the East Coast, I was apprehensive about moving to Los Angeles. When it became obvious that I was not going to make that move, a good friend who had just been hired at Hale & Door, a leading Boston firm, persuaded me to go for an interview with the firm. I did and got an offer, which I accepted. I accepted out of financial desperation and had to ask for a one-month salary advance.
First Legal Job at Hale & Dorr
In the 1970s, leading law firms were frantically trying to attract African Americans. With the Harvard Law credential, I had the pick of any firm in the country. I joined Hale & Dorr as its first Black associate.
In 1970, Hale & Dorr was an attractive place for young associates. It had been the home of Joseph Welch, the man who in 1954 orchestrated the destruction of Senator Joseph McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings. The hearings involved two issues—the legitimacy of McCarthy’s allegations of Communists infiltrating the arm forces, and Roy Cohn’s (chief counsel of McCarthy’s subcommittee) alleged improper influence on behalf of an Army recruit. It was in those hearings that Joseph Welch famously said to McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
I had the privilege of working with lead partner James “Jim” St. Clair in opposing Boston’s first rent control law. While I sympathized with the opposite side of the case, the experience of assisting Jim St. Clair in an argument before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was a fabulous experience. As a young lawyer, Mr. St. Clair had assisted Joe Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings. Later in 1973, he acted as chief legal counsel for President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal and assisted his defense before the US Supreme Court to withhold incriminating tapes. Nixon lost unanimously.
Page 185 →Notwithstanding the few good experiences, overall the time I spent at Hale & Dorr was less than satisfactory. Law practice was not at all what I expected it to be. It felt like I was still in law school with endless research assignments. I did not have the maturity to appreciate what a first-year associate had to endure to establish himself. Further, I found it difficult to reconcile my values at that time with the role that law firms played in defending powerful business interest. Working for an institution dedicated to this mission was not the reason I went to law school. I also found myself becoming addicted to the glitzy lifestyle that came with working at a firm. This quandary caused me to lose interest in law firms and seek work experiences more aligned with serving the public interest.
Legal Wilderness
My love for the mountains of Vermont took me there in search of employment. Dr. Samuel Bell, a close friend and physician who worked at Harvard University, introduced me to his good friend James L. Oakes, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Oakes’s judicial district included Vermont, and he had a house near Brattleboro, Vermont. He suggested an experience with Vermont Legal Aid and arranged an interview at a Legal Aid office in Bellows Falls. However, after thoughtful consideration, I passed on that opportunity because I did not want to remove myself from what I considered to be the mainstream of legal practice. I continued to communicate with Judge Oakes over the years and considered him a friend.
I was rescued from my ambivalent law firm experience by my close friend, Earl W. Coblyn, whom I met in 1965 while he was teaching law at the all-Black South Carolina State Law School and practicing law part-time in Orangeburg. The South Carolina State Law School was hastily established in 1947 because of a federal district court order, imposed by federal Judge J. Waties Waring. The order was rendered to provide Black students with legal education Page 186 →that was “separate but equal” to white law students thereby avoiding the necessity of Black students attending the white-only USC School of Law. The South Carolina State Law School was inferior from its inception and never measured up to the quality of the all-white law school in Columbia.1
Earl graduated from Suffolk Law School in Boston, Massachusetts and practiced there while assisting his wife in managing a restaurant. In 1961, he was hired by Dean Leo Kerford to join the law faculty in Orangeburg. Earl remained on the faculty teaching business law until 1966 when the USC School of Law was desegregated, and the South Carolina State Law School was closed. While teaching Earl teamed up with Zack E. Townsend in a two-person private practice. The partnership handled many civil rights case during that period. They defended many cases involving students jailed during civil rights protest marches and handled school desegregation cases as well. They worked closely with Matthew J. Perry, who was the principal NAACP attorney in South Carolina. Earl was also involved in many community organizing efforts, including the Summer Community Organization and Political Education project to register eligible Black voters.
Earl’s wife, Donnesse (Donnie) Slade Coblyn, was the daughter of Renner Slade (1881–1945), the original owner of Slade’s, the historic Black restaurant in Boston. Through her father, Donnie knew the Black elite in Boston, including Edward Brooke before he became the first African American to serve in the US Senate since Reconstruction. When the restaurant failed, Earl and Donnie moved to Orangeburg. Orangeburg had opportunities for Black lawyers, two thriving historically Black colleges, Claflin University and South Carolina State College, which supported an emerging Black middle class.
When the South Carolina State Law School was shuttered in 1966, Earl left Orangeburg. He had hoped that the USC School of Law in Columbia would offer a few positions to individuals who Page 187 →taught at the Orangeburg law school. That never happened, which was a shame, because Earl was acknowledged to be a very able lawyer and teacher. He subsequently moved to Washington, DC, to work at a think tank called T-Square that worked on novel educational programs for African Americans. He eventually left T-Square and began teaching business law at what would become the University of the District of Columbia.
Earl was handling consulting work while teaching. He asked me to assist him with a consulting assignment for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (the precursor to the Department of Health and Human Services). The task was to analyze the child labor laws of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey for a new education model. That was the experience I needed. I had the flexibility to be creative, and I enjoyed working with Earl, who had become a mentor. During that consulting project, I lived on Capitol Hill, a few blocks from the US Supreme Court. That was a convenient location because I did most of my research at the nearby Library of Congress.
Washington was always a magical place for me, and I enjoyed being there again. I looked forward to frequenting places in the Georgetown area, walking the cobblestone sidewalks to the Tombs and Clydes, favorite drinking holes; eating at a French market that sold delectable sandwiches on French bread; and visiting Dumbarton Oaks, the historic estate owned by Harvard University, where I attended many invitation events. Dumbarton Oaks is the site of the international conference that developed plans for the founding of the United Nations. On Sunday mornings, I always had brunch at an interesting Capitol Hill restaurant, my favorite being the Gandy Dancer, where Eggs Benedict was my favorite dish.
The consulting assignment led to a job as associate director of an American Bar Association public interest project. My assignment was to assist state legislators in drafting and lobbying bills to remove ex-offender employment restrictions. That job was perfect because it afforded me the opportunity to travel to many states. The Page 188 →association’s ex-offender project was led by Dan Skoler, a socially conscious graduate of Harvard Law School. On the project board of directors sat Richard Hughes, former governor of New Jersey; Robert McNamara, former secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; and A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., judge on the US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania. I especially enjoyed the interaction with Secretary McNamara. I was impressed by the quickness of his mind and the wisdom he had gained from his service at the Department of Defense. I commiserated over his travails in trying to manage a favorable outcome to the Vietnam War.
While working at the American Bar Association, I lived in an apartment building called Triangle Towers in Bethesda, Maryland. I preferred that location because my close friend Earl Coblyn had a house in Garret Park, a fashionable area in Bethesda. I developed a close friendship with my next-door neighbor, Herbert Mulqueen. Herb was very smart and enjoyed doing adventurous things. He had once traveled across Afghanistan packing a gun for protection. He enjoyed running, as I did, and we often ran together at the end of the day from the apartment building through the National Institutes of Health complex near the Naval Hospital and back, about five miles.
Through Herb, I met many people with varying interests, including mountain climbing, war-game junkies, and electronic aficionados. I especially enjoyed the company of his cousin, Joseph Henry, and his Naval Academy friend, Edmund Giambastiani. Both were young submarine officers in Admiral Hyman Rickover’s Nuclear Navy who rose to the rank of admiral. Ed Giambastiani was so talented that he was later appointed Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2005 to 2007. I admired Ed and we developed a strong relationship of mutual respect for each other.
Herb and I were such good friends that we were in each other’s wedding parties. He introduced me to his parents, Herb Sr. and Moya Mulqueen, who lived in Sherwood Forest, Annapolis, Maryland. Sherwood Forest was a gated community next to the Severn Page 189 →River. All houses in the community were required to be painted green to resemble a forest. I grew attached to Herb’s parents, and they included me in many family activities. I attend the 1973 Preakness horse race with them; it is the second jewel in the Triple Crown of thoroughbred horse racing. (The first jewel is the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, and the third is the Belmont Stakes outside of New York City.) We had front row seats in an exclusive section of the Pimlico Racetrack at Baltimore. On that occasion, I saw the great Secretariat dominate the field of thoroughbreds, and three weeks later he won the Triple Crown. Years later, I learned that the exercise rider, George “Charlie” Davis Jr., and horse groomer, Eddie Sweat, for the famous horse were natives of Orangeburg County. They were hired in the early 1970s by trainer Lucien Laurin, who owned the Branchdale Racetrack, now known as the Holly Hill Training Center.2
Herb told me that his mother was very connected in Republican politics in Maryland; Moya knew everyone, including former Governor and Vice President Spiro Agnew. Moyer was so connected that she had a permanent pass to visit a friend who worked at the White House during President Richard Nixon’s administration.