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Chapter Twenty-Five
Without Recourse:
Harvey, the Real Estate Lawyer
MARCH OR APRIL 1972 – AUGUST 1986
In which our author learns a whole new language, most of which can be used in polite company.
Opening
Had enough of the private side of the story? Well, at least for the time being, I have. We’ll return to that side in due time. But for now I’d like to pick up the professional thread again. That requires taking you all the way back to 1972, to focus on a process that fortuitously prepared me to become (1) a real estate partner in Rosenman in 1978, (2) a general counsel in a private real estate and lending enterprise in the mid-1980s, (3) an assistant general counsel of a federal agency in charge of the mul- tibillion-dollar real estate effort conducted by the U.S. government in the early 1990s, and (4) for the balance of my career, a real estate partner in each of three law firms, plus—oh, by the way—(5) a professor trying to teach the ins and out of real estate finance to law students whose study habits were almost as bad as mine had been.
The first step in that process, moving from the Litigation Depart- ment, which comprised more than half of the firm, to the Real Estate
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