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CroWninG aCHieveMent: Harvey, tHe General Counsel
until, at my peril, I told him that I felt constrained to take the issue to the firm’s Management Committee [of which he was a member], since I couldn’t do as he and the client wished.)
I never heard an ethical question raised by a businessman at Coro- net, but I’m not sure that the concept of business ethics really exists in practice. If there was a question of illegality in connection with any planned activity, it would be brought to me with the obvious hope that I would sanction the proposed course of action, but the question was never driven by a concern about what was right. Businesspeople pre- sented borderline questions to the general counsel in the hope that they would receive absolution—and in the belief that talking to a lawyer somehow relieved them of responsibility. The same phenomenon obtained when I was dealing with clients when I practiced at Rosenman.
When I first got to Rosenman, the practice of law was seen as a pro- fession, one that the attorneys were proud to be a part of. Attorneys felt that they were deserving of respect, and, to a great extent, they got it. That attitude helped to shape the way in which people dealt with one another inside the firm. Sad to say, the culture changed for the worse over the years, as law firms aspired to be “run like businesses.” Late in my career, it seemed that most judgments were made with an eye on a computer-generated spreadsheet that listed the billable hours of each attorney, partners included, and the business activity that was “attrib- uted” to each partner, with attribution often being a subject of contention. While I had become pretty good at understanding the concerns of the clients when I was at the firm, and often suggested more effective courses of action to achieve what I perceived to be their goals, that role, which I gladly accepted and played, was nothing compared with the minute-to- minute life in Coronet. The good news was that the business environment, although frenetic and incredibly pressured, is essentially uncompli- cated. Once you understand what counts, playing the game is simple.
In a law firm, even if you grow to understand the needs of your cli- ents, there are only a few who are very active at any given time. In a place like Coronet, it is all activity. Whatever my appreciation for the concerns of businesspeople when I was at Rosenman, my appreciation
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