Legal News

A Few More Words on Joe Flom, From a Former Skadden Partner

By Ashby Jones

Lots of ink (and pixels) were spilled last week (LB, WSJ, NYT) about Joe Flom, the legendary Skadden lawyer who, throughout his long career, changed both corporate America and the practice of law. Flom died last week at age 87.

But allow us to revisit Flom, at least briefly, courtesy of this interesting post over at WSJ’s Deal Journal, by Ronald Barusch, a former Skadden M&A partner.

Barusch explains his relationship with Flom like this:

I spent 32 years at Skadden, joining the firm about half way through Joe's legal career. I rarely worked directly for him and I didn't have a close personal relationship with Joe. I had never even heard of him when I decided to go to law school or even when I interviewed for a job at Skadden in 1976. However, outside of my own family, there is probably no individual who had a greater effect on my life than Joe.

Much has been written about how Flom changed how lawyers at big firms practice. But Barusch gives good personal insight into this. Next time you insist on returning client call from an anniversary or graduation dinner, you can thank Joe Flom.

Writes Barusch:

[Flom] made the practice of law about being competitive in the delivery of the best possible service to clients.

When clients called, he insisted that you immediately return calls. When clients had deadlines that seemed impossible, you met them. When clients had what seemed like impossible problems, you didn't give up. . . .  In short, you lived, ate and breathed your client's objectives, issues and tribulations. And there was almost always a perpetual and urgent search for the very best talent to work at the firm, regardless of where candidates came from.

The drive for the best made law firms more meritocratic and, along the way, more inclusive, writes Barusch.

Sterling, Cooper from the television show "Mad Men" would have been a progressive organization in comparison to the big law firms of the mid-20th century. Law firms then were, for the most part, all-white, all-male, all straight (or deeply closeted) and overwhelmingly Protestant . . . .  In short, firms could compete on the basis of their lawyers coming from a "good" family and having the right contacts. A sense of entitlement was key to big-firm practice. No one expected that a little Jewish guy who was smarter and worked harder than they did could outflank the establishment firms. By the time I joined Skadden in the late 1970′s those firms were beginning to figure out just how wrong they were.

. . . In short, being smart became more important to the practice of law than who you knew and what of the arcane case law you could memorize.

Barusch also explains how Flom was able to grow Skadden so steeply so quickly.

When I joined Skadden in 1978, takeovers defined us. We had two practice groups: corporate and litigation. And the litigation was largely limited to cases arising out of takeovers.

Joe . . . made a conscious determination to leverage the firm's takeover dominance. Joe did this by expanding the firm into new practice areas that were thought to be disciplines in which skilled lawyers could deliver high value to clients. Then the firm began a series of acquisitions of its own: identifying the most talented individual it could find in these strategic practice areas.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 01, 2011 (boomark / email).