Kim Eisler - Masters of the Game: Inside the Worlds Most Powerful Law Firm

MASTERS

OF THE GAME

ALSO BY KIM EISLER

SHARK TANK :

Greed, Politics, and the Collapse of Finley Kumble,
One of Americas Largest Law Firms (1990)

THE LAST LIBERAL :

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and the Decisions
That Transformed America (1997)

REVENGE OF THE PEQUOTS :

How a Small Native American Tribe
Created the Worlds Most Profitable Casino (2002)

INSIDE THE WORLDS
MOST POWERFUL
LAW FIRM

KIM EISLER

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
ST. MARTINS PRESS
NEW YORK

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS .

An imprint of St. Martins Press.

MASTERS OF THE GAME . Copyright 2010 by Kim Eisler. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eisler, Kim Isaac.

Masters of the game : inside the worlds most powerful law firm / Kim Eisler.1st ed.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-312-55424-8

1. Williams & ConnollyHistory. 2. Law firmsWashington (D.C.)Biography.

I. Title.

KF355.W27E38 2010

First Edition: June 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Judy

This is my second book for Thomas Dunne, who started me on the path to popular writing about lawyers and law firms with the publication of Shark Tank in 1990. I am indebted to him for reaching into his memory bank to recall our glory days and to want to make it happen again. I am also extremely grateful to my never-say-die agent, Jane Dystel, who was willing to forget a few awkward moments in our professional relationship and help me restart my career writing books. In both cases, it has been a fulfilling reunion.

I had no idea at the time I broached this proposal to Jane that she would end up being a character in the book. This naturally caused me a little discomfort and uncertainty about how to deal with her part, and while I feel confident my account is accurate, I hope I have not offended either Jane, or her sometime competitor Robert Barnett, with whom I have had good professional relationships. I have attempted to deal with their conflicted involvement in Barack Obamas autobiography in a neutral fashion.

For over two decades, I covered Williams & Connolly as a law beat reporter, first for The American Lawyer magazine, then Legal Times, and later for Washingtonian magazine. Some years ago, I wrote a story for Washingtonian about the amazing web of clients that Williams & Connolly represent, on all sides of the political spectrum. In our office we called such stories octopus, since the long arms of the firm seemed to shoot out in all directions. This particular octopus was rarely harpooned.

In the course of reporting on the firm for those twenty years, I became one of the few reporters in the country to win access to Brendan Sullivan, Larry Lucchino, David Kendall, and Bob Barnett, and at various times had written profiles of all of them.

Gregory Craig I had interviewed on the phone, from time to time, but did not know as well. In the world of Washington lawyers, they stood head and shoulders above any other attorneys I have ever encountered as interesting and iconoclastic subjects. Washington law is populated with a great deal of self-important, self-promoting individuals and clearly the culture at Williams & Connolly, in the postEdward Bennett Williams era, was not typical. The notion that a firm that was now famous for representing a president had also represented the man who shot a president was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to irony or coincidence. It seemed that there was hardly an event on the world stage in which Williams & Connolly wasnt always in the background, if not front and center.

At various times, each of the principal partners had told me that they would never write a book about their cases. Brendan Sullivan, in particular, delighted in saying that just as Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black used to boast, he would burn his papers and take his secrets to the grave.

Following the publication of my article on Williams & Connolly in Washingtonian, entitled The Firm That Runs the World, it occurred to me the firms web of relationships would make for an interesting and revealing book about who really pulls the strings in Washington law, media, politics, and, to a degree, even business.

I was still uncertain how to proceed because I knew that each of the partners would probably not be cooperative once the word book, was mentioned, although each of them had always been helpful and cooperative when I was simply writing stories or asking them questions, a happenstance that many of my colleagues found rather amazing.

A breakthrough in my thinking came when the normally reticent Brendan Sullivan called me one morning and asked if I would meet him for lunch. I cant say what the topic was that prompted the invitation, but it was a unique event. There was a question that he wanted to ask me and we ended up having a delightful conversation in a quiet Italian restaurant. During the course of that lunch, Sullivan said that he thought it was worthy of my noting, in future articles, how many Williams & Connolly alumni had gone on to bigger and maybe better things outside of the field of law. Few Williams & Connolly partners leave to join another firm, but quite a few, like Jeffrey Kindler, the CEO of Pfizer Corporation, have gone on to become titans of business, industry, and, in the case of Larry Lucchino, sports.

I had never heard Sullivan make a story suggestion before, so I attached some significance to it, and concluded that if I were to write a book about Williams & Connolly, as the firm that runs the world, Brendan wouldnt necessarily come to my house and strangle me.

Subsequently I had another lunch with Brendan Sullivan at Washingtons Metropolitan Club, where I learned that I was only the second reporter he had invited to lunch in the past ten years, which I took as a badge of honor, especially since I had now had lunch with him twice. I subsequently met with David Kendall, who had forgotten my e-mail telling him about the book, and seemed genuinely stricken when he was reminded of it later. He seemed, however, to overcome his natural shyness and cooperated, providing me with the details of his colorful life before joining Williams & Connolly. Nevertheless, he never discussed any of his cases, nor did he make any comments about his involvement with Hillary Clinton or the Senate trial of her husband, President Bill Clinton. The closest he came to mentioning her name was relating how he had had a car accident while campaigning for her during the Iowa caucuses in 2008.