Page 622 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
This was not a good sign.
To me it was a metaphor that spoke to the difference between the
inexpensively furnished New York office, on the one hand, and the very professional offices in Atlanta and D.C., on the other. It was not really meaningful in and of itself, and I didn’t place any significance on it at the time. But maybe I should have.
My bumpy flight four weeks later to Dulles International for an all- firm conclave was loudly punctuated by fits of reverse peristalsis suffered by a New York partner who had sustained himself in the LaGuardia lounge by wolfing down two slices of greasy pepperoni pizza. Now a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, I didn’t place any significance on that either.
I did, however, find something that happened at that conclave to be fraught with significance. It was a perfectly normal partnership meeting (introductions of the new partners, applause for a soon-to-be-retired member, positive financial reporting, someone using the phrase low- hanging fruit, someone pushing for faster collections, and so on). It was normal, that is, until the New York office responded when the presiding partner (from Atlanta) asked everyone to sign the latest amendment to the partnership agreement during the break. As soon as this request was made, Burt and Roger told each of the New York partners to meet with them in the lobby at intermission. Why? They wanted the New York office, which I had just joined, to act as one and to refuse to sign the amendment! In my experience at Rosenman, by the time at which an amendment was ready to be signed, no one would balk; any objection to the language or substance had already been dealt with.
Burt and Roger’s stand seemed to be designed to demonstrate pub- licly the independence (and unanimity) of the New York office and, perhaps, to extract some concession from the partnership at large. I don’t recall the concession, if any, but I do recall the discomfort that Burt and Roger’s demand caused me. I had joined the illustrious Sutherland firm and had hardly seen the New York outpost as anything other than a place in which to do my work with Charles et al. New York was not the magnet; it was a convenience, and its relatively new existence was an
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