Page 461 - WhyAsInY

WitHout reCourse: Harvey, tHe real estate laWyer
Inside Story
In 1986, I did what would have been unthinkable to me years before, and might even have been unthinkable at the time: I walked away from the partnership. I announced my intention to retire from the practice of law in a law firm setting and to “move inside,” becoming the general counsel of Coronet Properties.
I loved Rosenman once I gained the confidence that I could make the grade. I had developed a large number of friends there, many of whom are still my friends, and I look back fondly at the great lunches with them in local hamburger joints, later in the seventeenth-floor con- ference room with store-bought or homemade sandwiches, and, later still, when Rosenman got into the bigger, more institutional leagues in the new Rosenman cafeteria (!). We laughed together, griped together, gossiped together, threw thousands of papers out of the nineteenth- floor file room window together when, on October 16, 1969, the Mets stunned the world by beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. We lived Vietnam, Kent State, Fischer-Spassky, and Watergate together; played softball in the Lawyers League for years together; bet on who would be named a partner together; and many of us served as partners together. I had run the annual Legal Aid campaign for the associates and had recruited for the firm, visiting campuses, interviewing in the office, and, for a number of years, chairing the Recruiting Committee. Joel Sternman once told me (probably after I announced that I was leaving) that he considered me to be the “spirit of Rosenman.”
But it turned out that the social aspects of the firm, important as they were, and the fact that I had become a partner in 1978, an achieve- ment of great importance to me then, were just not enough to keep me there, as many factors contributed to my decision to move on and make a career change. I stated earlier that the Integrated Resources represen- tation might have accelerated my disenchantment with big firm practice (something that had already become an issue for me when I left the
• 443 •