Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?

by Reginald Lewis

  I accepted the offer and headed for New York.

  5

  * * *

  Building His Own Law Practice: The Years of Struggle

  Reginald Lewis was brimming with excitement as he and his stepfather, Jean Fugett, Sr., drove up the New Jersey Turnpike toward New York City in the summer of 1968.

  For him, as for so many others, Manhattan was the end of the rainbow. It was where he would meet his wife, raise a family, and build an international business empire. He had no way of knowing that, at the age of 25, his life was already half over.

  He and Fugett entered the Holland Tunnel, cruised under the Hudson River, exited into New York City and promptly got lost.

  PAUL, WEISS

  Manhattan was a real scorcher during July and August of 1968. I found an apartment, a five-floor walkup on 21st Street on the west side of Manhattan. It had one bedroom and the rent was $150 a month. I could afford a lot more, since Paul, Weiss raised salaries to $15,000 in response to a move by rival Manhattan firm Cravath, Swaine and Moore—I’ve always had a warm spot for Cravath as a result. But the idea of saving as much as possible was irresistible. I did splurge on a stereo, about $1,500, and a few custom-made suits and shirts, items I’d always bought off the rack. I decided against a car because of the expense and inconvenience of parking.

  I’ll always remember my first day at Paul, Weiss. I recall catching the E train at 23rd and 8th, getting off at 50th and Madison and then the feeling of walking up Madison Avenue to the firm’s office at 57th and Madison. The day was clear and sunny and everyone was in a hurry. The moment had arrived—it was time to get going.

  One of the administrative people gave me some forms to complete and I met my deskmate, Mark Weinstein, who was starting the same day. He was kind enough to let me sit closest to the window without the slightest argument. Mark is now general counsel at Viacom and a good friend. Edward Korman was also beginning that same day and we have remained good friends. Ed today is a federal district court judge in New York.

  The firm had decided to assign me to the corporate law department. Luckily for me, it was a very busy place and young lawyers were given a lot to do. Paul, Weiss had a reputation for being a “sweat shop,” but I found that to be completely unfounded. No one ever insisted that you stay late. However, they did tend to hire people who were generally ambitious and were just used to working hard. I got the feeling the place was well run.

  The relaxed, cool attitude I had my first day at Paul, Weiss disappeared quickly and I began to feel really uptight. I felt a lot of pressure to prove myself and it affected my performance somewhat, but I stuck it out and pretty soon began to get the lay of the land, so to speak.

  A number of people at Paul, Weiss went out of their way to be helpful. Leonard Quigley, who I think is one of the best corporate lawyers around, was especially supportive. Alan Thomas, one of the really fine men of the bar, Morty Rochlin, Neale Albert, Sy Hertz, and Charles Dickey all really tried to get me to relax and ease up a little.

  I developed many other friendships among the younger associates. Ted Parnall, Phillip Kissam, Gary Schonwald, Bill Levine, Robert Smith, Mike Luey, Peter Haje, and Al Youngwood were all young associates everyone said had a light around them. Youngwood was especially nice to me. We’d all go out to dinner around 8:30 P.M. and Al would sort of hold forth among the younger associates.

  I did the usual work doled out to beginning associates: Setting up corporations, preparing joint venture agreements, securities law filings, some not-for-profit corporate work. I worked on a series of transactions involving small venture capital type deals that were particularly instructive, and on several initial public offerings (IPOs) which were then all the rage. Len Quigley was an especially good teacher and the way he attacked problems and moved projects along was really good. I still use many of the approaches he took to get at the root of a problem.

  Paul, Weiss was one of the elite, blue-chip, New York law firms but, in contrast to some of the others, it was relatively “democratic,” in the sense that it was more open to minorities of all stripes. On the average, the firm hired 20 to 30 associates fresh out of law school every year. Out of this group, maybe two or three would make partner.

  Outwardly, Lewis was perceived by his peers as a bright, ebullient, outgoing individual. Mark Alcott, who interviewed Lewis, vividly remembers the Lewis of 1968. “He was much more mature than any of the other new candidates. Clearly ambitious. He had set for himself certain goals which he intended to meet. It was obvious that things had not been handed to him on a silver platter but, in spite of that, he had already achieved a lot.”

  Lewis was in the corporate law department, which included such luminaries as Arthur Goldberg, Lloyd Garrison, and Theodore Sorensen. This must have been heady stuff for a fresh law graduate, even one from Harvard. But Lewis longed to be on his own.

  The Paul, Weiss experience was a very good one for me. My skills developed and matured enormously, but at the risk of offending my many friends there, it was not an especially happy time for me and I never really felt at home or able to relax. This was undoubtedly more a matter of sensing my own shortcomings than any attitude or action by the firm itself. So after a couple of years I was ready to leave and maybe try to do my own thing.

  In the summer of 1970, I got a call from Fred Wallace, a Harvard Law School graduate, class of 1964. I was familiar with his name but didn’t know him personally. Fred was working for Gene Callender at the New York Urban Coalition and had a mandate to create more housing for low- and moderate-income people. Fred wanted to recruit some lawyers in order to form a law firm to service this aspect of the coalition’s programs. Fred’s opening line was, “When are you going to leave that place and start doing something serious?”

  We got together and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of starting my own practice. Fred was offering a floor on income for a year or so and the coalition would pick up most of the overhead in exchange for getting a priority on its work. Not a bad deal.

  When he found out about Lewis’s desire to leave, Leonard Quigley pulled out all the stops in an attempt to convince him to stay. He’d found Lewis to be a quick study, dependable and mature, and a proficient attorney. “You haven’t done every kind of merger deal, you haven’t done every kind of public offering, you haven’t done every kind of partnership agreement, so stick around and learn how before you go off and hang out your shingle,” he told the young lawyer.

  Lewis listened politely for a few minutes and then replied quietly, “Nope. I know what I need to know.” He thought the world of Quigley, but Reginald Lewis was his own man and knew what was best for him. He could never settle for being a faceless Paul, Weiss drone no matter how well he was treated or compensated.

  Colleagues at Paul, Weiss were surprised when Lewis informed them of this decision. To leave Paul, Weiss for another top law firm, Davis Polk maybe or Cravath, Swaine, was understandable. But to leave an established firm two years out of law school to start your own firm?

  “It was definitely a bold move. It made me nervous,” says Alcott. In fact, he cannot remember anyone else at Paul, Weiss who made a similar move. In hindsight, it is hard to imagine Reginald Lewis spending his career as a corporate lawyer at Paul, Weiss. Many in his Harvard class saw the firm and others like it as the pinnacle of success. But not Lewis.

  In addition, something else had happened at Paul, Weiss that strengthened Lewis’s resolve to leave. A partner at the firm implied that Lewis might not make partner; however, he told Lewis that the firm could get him a teaching position in Connecticut if a career in academia appealed to him.

  Lewis took the news calmly but it reaffirmed the correctness of his decision to go out on his own.

  STRIKING OUT ON HIS OWN

  Building a successful law practice calls for something not taught in law school: The ability to hustle and self-promote. No one beats a path to an unheralded lawyer’s door. The phone is usually quiet and when it do
es ring, chances are a bill collector is on the other end.

  Lewis realized all this when he left Paul, Weiss in 1970. As always, he had a plan. He joined Wallace and a handful of other attorneys in starting a black-run law firm geared toward business matters affecting New York City’s black community. The firm has the distinction of being one of the first black law firms on Wall Street—if not the first. Its name was Wallace, Murphy, Thorpe and Lewis, but in time only Lewis would remain.

  The firm was located in Manhattan’s financial district one block from the New York Stock Exchange, on the 19th floor of an office building at 30 Broad Street.

  I met the three other people Wallace had recruited, Charles Laurence, Rita Murphy, and Josephine Thorpe. Rita and Jo were especially bright and savvy, although they didn’t have a great deal of experience. Charlie Laurence was much older and had been a sole practitioner for many years in Brooklyn. Fred would also be a partner, but not share in any fees from coalition work. We took offices at 30 Broad Street.

  Things worked pretty well and I brought a lot of value to the group. I spent my days on coalition work and in the evenings began meeting entrepreneurs and a lot of banking types. There was a ready market in black economic development work, essentially involving small business trying to raise capital. Nonprofits were also an active area. I began to develop some friendships and attract some clients.

  I joined the Harvard Club and learned to listen to a lot of hopes and dreams. After a while, I became very good at separating the men from the boys, so to speak. I was also absolutely uncompromising about my fees. It’s hard not to laugh about it now when I think about how I had to fight for real peanuts, but it’s just part of the process.

  In any case, the firm prospered. Rita and Jo decided to leave after about two years and Charlie Laurence became a judge. I’d had some nasty conversations with Rita and Jo before subsequently buying them out for about $30,000, which seemed like a fortune at the time. I also assumed all of the firm’s liabilities, which had been at the heart of the dispute and, of course, drove me up a wall. However, wise counsel from Amayla Kearse, whom I had retained, suggested that I pay them off and move on.

  I had already hired Charles Clarkson as an associate and hired Diana Lee, who was then in her third year of law school at New York University.

  I was already working about 12 hours a day and for the next year I must have kicked it up to about 18 hours a day during the week and 6 to 8 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. As I think back on it, it was probably driving everyone nuts, but we all had a good time and felt we were making something happen.

  Within a few years, the client list grew to include General Foods, Equitable Life, Norton Simon, the Ford Foundation, and Aetna Life. We developed real expertise with small business investment companies and our practice was truly national. In fact, we did a couple of small international deals, too.

  When Lewis was a child, his mother always told him: Mean what you say and say what you mean. The advice hit home. When Reginald Lewis told a client he was going to accomplish something, he delivered. And he did so sans hyperbole and overblown predictions.

  “THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE”

  Lewis’s drive and ego meant that there could only be one kingfish at 30 Broad Street. As he began to bring in more business, Lewis also began to flex his muscles regarding decision making. Sparks would fly when anyone dared to counter Lewis.

  In 1972, the real estate work from the Urban Coalition began to evaporate because of problems inside the Urban Coalition. This development played right into Lewis’s hands. He was now the major revenue earner in the firm, or rainmaker, as they say in legal circles.

  At this point, a new side of Lewis began to emerge, that of the tough, goal-oriented taskmaster. Lewis had a sense of urgency that many of his employees didn’t necessarily share. He would never tolerate their viewing his law practice as a mere job. Everyone had to give maximum effort all the time. Anything less would prompt Lewis to dismissively utter one of his favorite phrases, “That is not acceptable.”

  Lewis’s all-time favorite target was Charles Clarkson, a white attorney Lewis hired in 1972 right after Clarkson graduated from Brooklyn Law School. The tone for their long relationship was set during their first meeting. Lewis told Clarkson he wouldn’t be able to pay that much; Clarkson replied he wasn’t making anything at the moment, so whatever Lewis could pay would be a 100 percent raise.

  “Everybody was afraid of Reg over the years and it got worse,” Clarkson says. “He would treat the opposition with kid gloves and he would scream at everybody else on his side of the table. It was warfare all the time with Reg.”

  Lewis and Clarkson had an unusual relationship, to say the least. Another lawyer who worked briefly with Lewis says Lewis was constantly threatening to get rid of the retiring, gentle Clarkson for reasons Lewis wouldn’t specify. But when Clarkson discovered he had a tumor on his spine, a malady that caused him to miss many months of work, Lewis told Clarkson not to worry about his job and to take as much time off as he needed to recuperate.

  Clarkson had a knack for bringing out both the saintly Lewis and the bullying Lewis. Clarkson was employed by TLC Beatrice International as a consultant when Lewis died in 1993.

  Diana Lee, a young law student Lewis hired from New York University, has less sulfuric memories of her days at 30 Broad Street. A Chinese-American, she got a job with Lewis in 1973 and worked with him until 1978, the year the law firm became known as Lewis & Clarkson.

  Lewis was pro-black in outlook, but when it came to business he hired only people who could deliver, regardless of ethnic and racial background. In the early days, his law firm was a rainbow coalition as he, Clarkson, and Lee worked long hours crafting deals. In time, Clarkson and Lee came to do the bulk of the legal work while Lewis concentrated increasingly on business development.

  Lee recalls that on Fridays, Lewis would occasionally treat her and Clarkson to dinner at Mary’s, an Italian restaurant he loved in Greenwich Village. Lewis was also a tennis buff and began taking lessons at the Wall Street Racquet Club. Rather than go by himself, he dragged Lee along, too. Unlike Lewis, who already knew how to play the game somewhat, Lee was a novice and only lasted three lessons before throwing in the towel.

  Lewis often used the tennis court the way some businessmen use the golf links to cultivate business contacts and hammer out deals. So he wasn’t above mixing business and pleasure if he could accomplish both without hurting the business side of the equation.

  Clarkson bore the brunt of Lewis’s verbal tirades at 30 Broad Street because Clarkson tended to knuckle under meekly instead of standing up for himself, Lee says. She, on the other hand, had a tendency to yell right back at Lewis when she felt she was right, making Lee a less tempting target. Despite those occasional run-ins, “I actually thought he was very fair,” Lee says. “He was very tough and he really drilled into us the skills of being a good lawyer. He gave us excellent training.”

  Lewis worked long hours all his life and set the pace for his employees, who both admired his stamina and resented the fact that they were expected to keep up with him. Robert Suggs practiced law with Lewis for half a year in 1976. “Most people give you a timetable to do something that has slippage in it. If you came back to Lewis in six months, there would be no slippage in his timetable,” says Suggs. “He was very focused and if he had 12 things to do to get to the next point, he’d do them in sequence. A lot of people bullshit and are vague and their story changes every time they tell it. He wasn’t bullshitting.”

  Lewis was keeping impossible hours to make his law practice successful. “I never thought that Reg was a family man: He preferred staying in the office,” says Clarkson, Lewis’s partner of more than 20 years. “He always spent a lot of time in the office. A lot of times I would think to myself, ‘Gee, why isn’t Reg going home? What the hell’s he still in the office for?’ and I hated it, because I felt like I had to stay in the office as long as Reg was there.”

  One
day in 1976, Lewis left around midnight while associate lawyer Robert Suggs, who was working on a big financing transaction, left afterward around 3 A.M. After a few hours sleep and a quick shower, Suggs was back in the office at 7 A.M., while Lewis came in about 30 minutes later. When Lewis saw his young charge already at his desk and working, he smiled. “Had Suggs been in the office all night?” Lewis wanted to know.

  When Suggs replied that he had gone home for a few hours, a look of disapproval and disappointment flashed across Lewis’s face. The display was probably for effect as much as anything else. Lewis was a master psychologist whose attorneys struggled to win his approval and praise. He was able to get maximum motivational mileage out of something as simple as a smile or two-word phrases such as “Excellent work” and “Great result!”

  But it was the stick, not the carrot, that Lewis resorted to most often when he wanted to light a fire under someone. Reginald Lewis could be extremely intimidating and intimidate was what he did on a regular basis. Even so, anyone thick-skinned enough not to be rattled by his loud voice or his sarcastic comments usually found something instructive in his remarks.

  Every now and then, a reflective, almost wistful side of Lewis would emerge. As early as 1976, he talked of wishing he’d taken more time to smell the roses, instead of being so success-oriented. He made that comment to a number of people over the years, up until the time of his death. But when those moments of reflection evaporated, as they invariably did, Lewis would put his nose back to the grindstone and work as though possessed.

  Lewis was a well-rounded man, and was aware that many of life’s interesting, pleasurable experiences were passing him by. When one of his young lawyers mentioned having taken two years off to travel the world, a fascinated Lewis listened attentively to a blow-by-blow description of the adventure. The thrill of such a sojourn would have to be vicarious.