Page 538 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
(even though, as I also knew, there would be nothing that I could say that would be damaging to me). I also knew that I did not want to get involved and that testifying might, as I saw it, violate the attorney-client privilege to which I believed I was subject. (Lawyers can’t be compelled to testify about conversations with clients, unless the clients agree and “waive the privilege.”)
The law firm disagreed and referred me to a Supreme Court case that they said held that a trustee in bankruptcy succeeded to the privi- lege of the bankrupt and thus could waive it. Not happy about their continuing request, I read the case and concluded that it dealt with a corporate bankrupt only. As Coronet was a partnership, and its general partner was an individual, Norman, I took the position that the privilege was personal to him, and that if Norman waived, I would testify. I never heard from the trustee’s counsel again.
Even though things ended badly at Coronet, I believe that being the general counsel there provided me with invaluable experience. As I expected, being a partner in a law firm and representing commercial clients is different from being inside a commercial enterprise. The law firm environment, for all that it arguably lacked, was essentially driven by college-educated people whose conversations occasionally touched on subtle topics and were, just as often, spiced with wit. That certainly was not generally the case in Coronet, where there were only about eight executives who’d gone to college. But many more, Norman included, had not, and humor was not the coin of the realm. Lawyers occasionally spoke about things that were not related to their day-to- day jobs; people at Coronet did not.
Most lawyers take the issue of ethics very seriously. They are bound by the Canons of Ethics and are—or, at least, usually are—well aware of that fact. (And dealing with ethical questions was, especially as practic- ing law became more of a business, not always easy: one of my most difficult moments came when I learned that a client was about to com- mit what I believed to be a fraud, and I couldn’t stop him by threatening to have the firm resign the representation, except by calling the very powerful partner whose client he was; the partner dug in, however—
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