Authors: Jeremiah Lambert and Geoffrey Stewart

Publisher: LP Lyons Press

ISBN: 978-1-4930-5633-0

The rise of the most powerful, prestigious white-shoe New York Wall Street law firms can be traced to around the turn of the twentieth century. Who are these firms, how did they begin, how did they attain their prominence, what influence did they have on society, the economy, politics, legislation? These are some topics that Jeremiah Lambert and Geoffrey Stewart examine with their The Anointed: New York’s White Shoe Law firms: How They Started, How They Grew. And How They Ran The Country

The book's introduction states, “these were white-shoe bastions with the social standards of an exclusive gentlemen’s club.” By today’s standards, these firms would have been considered small, yet, they were able to develop institutional and specialized practices that served wealthy banking clients as Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty, Marine Midland, Chemical Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Kuhn Loeb that all had a prominent Wall Street law firm handling their affairs. The creativity and ingenuity of these lawyers revamped outdated laws. This resulted in lasting relationships with financiers and bankers that helped them in restructuring and merging bankrupt railroads. This also helped in raising vast amounts of capital, which enabled the formation of large corporations.

Many of their attorneys ended up becoming cabinet secretaries, advisors to presidents, and prominent company executives, all exercising profound economic and political power.

According to the authors, they resembled a legal cartel, even though they competed. They even shared the same office buildings or nearby ones. They drew from the same pool of associate attorneys, paying them roughly the same salaries.

The organizational structure, which was often referred to as the Cravath System, was based on distinct characteristics. We have two types of attorneys (partners and associates). The firms emphasized teamwork rather than individual work. Admission to these firms was restricted to lawyers that were white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASPS). Jews, African-Americans, women, and other ethnic and religious groups need not apply. They recruited young men (seldom women) from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and a handful of other law schools. Some, such as Cravath, recruited new lawyers from only the “right social” background, who had graduated with high marks. Salaries were kept very low, and clerks worked for one year without being paid and then earned twenty-five dollars a month. Cravath, in 1920 stated that to be successful at the New York Bar, “family influence, social friendships and wealth counted for little.”

Until recently, many of these firms concentrated their practices on corporate finance, bank loans, bond underwriting, mergers and acquisitions, and high stake lawsuits. They rejected bankruptcy law work and other specialties that they considered undignified of Wall Street practitioners. Ironically, this enabled pockets, where many other firms, such as Jewish, fill the gap.

Among the household names were Sullivan & Cromwell, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and Davis, Polk & Wardwell. Lambert and Stewart. It should be noted that in earlier incarnations, the authors were associates of the latter two. From their personal experiences, they narrate the story of how and why these firms and their peers, Sullivan and Cromwell, expanded from their nineteenth-century entrepreneurial origins into icons of institutional law practice.

The book divides itself into eighteen chapters and ends with notes, a bibliography, index, and authors' bios. The introduction provides readers with a broad summary of the topics that will be covered, which include the ancient rivalries, J.P. Morgan Attorney General, railroads and railroad organizations,t age of trusts and the progressive era, William Nelson Cromwell and The Panama Canal, Sullivan & Cromwell, the Cravath System, and Cravath the man, early Cravath alumni, Robert Swine and Cravath’s reorganization practice, Davis, Polk & Wardell, John D. Davis’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell and the aftermath of the war, the advent of regulation, fighting the New Deal, the Dulles brothers and postwar, tradition and reform of David Polk, and back to the future.

The one hundred and eighty-two pages rigorously researched book is loaded with insightful references that give readers a complete picture of the rise of the White-Shoe New York law firms and their immense influence on society.