Page 372 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
Moore, the firm that amazed the profession by moving its starting salary from $7,800 to $15,000 in 1968, had set in, I believe, 1972, as it continued to be the recognized trendsetter in New York.
The “going rate” was important not just for first-year associates; every associate up the line would benefit from any increase in the starting salary. I learned from Peter, who learned from Sy, that our firm was considering making a big splash by announcing that it would now pay starting associates $20,000, a stunning amount. There was, however, division in management, and no decision had been made. Seizing the opportunity that was clearly presented to me, I decided to tell Peter that “there is a rumor—can you believe it?—that Cravath is going to go to twenty!” (There was such a rumor, and, no, I don’t think that I started it. Of course, there were always rumors in the air. I hope that the Bard of Avon would forgive me, but, in this case, one could have said that “rumour hath twenty thou- sand tongues.”). Peter was upstairs with Sy within five minutes, and that afternoon the firm proudly made headlines by announcing that it would pay $20,000 to starters. Cravath and the rest of the presti- gious firms in the city soon followed suit.
• United States v. Manning. Two very significant cases for my career were pro bono federal criminal appeals that were assigned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to Gerry Walpin and George Gor- don, respectively, both of whom had been an Assistant United States Attorney. Each of them essentially handed the research and writing to me, but their ultimate approaches were quite different.
Manning had been convicted of dealing in heroin and cocaine and had been arrested after the police crashed through the door of his girlfriend’s apartment in Harlem. They had done so without a warrant and solely on the basis of information supplied by an undis- closed informant not previously known to them, who had given them a tip that Manning would be there.
I made three basic arguments in my draft brief: (1) that there • 354 •