In my misspent youth, I worked for a very, very, very highly-respected law firm in San Francisco. I miss it to this day because we had wonderful office rituals, like flopping around together in the conference room every morning in various stages of coffee and doughnuts, while one or another of us, usually Ed Boyle, would read the morning newspaper to us.
You couldn’t start work unless you’d heard the day’s Herb Caen column from Ed’s lips.
We had many big clients. Household names. Stuff you heard on commercials. Maybe our biggest client was Volkswagen/Porsche/Audi. They never settled lawsuits, and you can hardly blame them. If they did not take that hard line, every Tom, Dick and Harry’d be suing ’em because their Beetle didn’t make it through a semi rolling over it.
This, of course, also meant they needed really topflight attorneys. So lawyers all over the planet knew suing ’em in the first place was ill-advised. Also, for the really big stuff, they’d send one of their company lawyers over to keep his finger on our pulse. We always got Bill Rauskalb. He was very cool. He was pure Cherman, but American as heck. NO accent. Would regale me with wild stories of the glories of driving his Porsche on the Autoban while we waited for Ed to show up with our Herb Caen. I loved those people.
I loved the work! ALWAYS be impeccable. Don’t futz or fudge. PERFORM. Felt great.
So this pains me something considerable.
So when Hanky sent me the Sundance link, my brain flew back into the top floors of the long defunct Alaska Commercial Building on Sansome Street more’n 50 years ago, to feel those people I loved so much. Even the ones I didn’t like very much, I loved, because we all pulled together — at all hours — work and play — top tier litigators — to almost never even come close to losing a case.
I wonder if Bill is still hotdogging on the Autoban or if he’s holed up somewhere — maybe even a rest home — in abject despair over the state of things. I wonder how all the people everywhere who KNOW about that company like I do are on the brink of tears over the degeneration to now.
the nines 