Page 342 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
Crater (feel free to turn to Google on this one), had also famously said to Judge Samuel I. Rosenman that
No more mellifluous name has been coined
Than Rosenman Colin Kaye Petschek and Freund.
And here’s how my folks did it: My parents had a regular bridge game with their friends, Herb and Rita Slater. Herb, a medical malprac- tice plaintiff’s attorney, knew a trust accountant at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft. The accountant, one of the few Jews at that illustri- ous old-line firm, knew a corporate partner at Rosenman who had told him that Rosenman, a “Jewish firm” that was celebrated for its Litigation Department, had lost some young litigators and therefore needed to find at least one new associate. I made the calls and—voilà—secured an interview for the Monday of the week after the one in which I was see- ing Milbank and Dewey.
The Milbank and Dewey appointments were both for what I later learned were referred to in the trade as “courtesy interviews,” inter- views granted as a favor to, in these cases, Hughes and Rayhill, respectively, with no intention of hiring the naive applicant. The one person with whom I spoke in the incredible atmosphere of a firm located high up in 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza (Milbank) said, as I recall it, “If you were a member of the law review, we might pile one desk on top of another to squeeze you in. . . .” That was that. I didn’t even get a form rejection letter, something that I insisted should be sent in such circum- stances when I ultimately ran recruiting at Rosenman (and was buffered with time-wasting requests for courtesy interviews). They were more polite at Dewey. I met with two people, one of whom was a hiring part- ner. He seemed to be acting in more than a pro forma manner, the interview bordered on animated, and he said that they would definitely get back to me “next week.” I’m still waiting for next week, but I’m very understanding: I realize that it might be hard for them to write to me today, because almost four years after my retirement in 2008, Dewey, by
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