Nostalgia

One of the nice things about my current job is that I get to reaquaint with a lot of people from my professional past. This week was a good example.

Last week I sent out a blast email to all the members of my association about a working group that I was forming. In response, I received an email from a lawyer who was a first year associate with me at Lord Day & Lord 26 years ago. In fact, we had shared an office and, more importantly, worked for the same partner.

While I left the firm after 3 years, he stayed on and became a partner himself, and still works closely with our original partner ("OP") albeit at a different firm. After noting that he wanted to join the working group, my old colleague suggested that we get together for lunch. I asked if he could also hook up OP. He did and we had a delightful lunch on Tuesday.

Life can be very random. Who you get assigned to in a large law firm can effect the rest of your professional life and having been assigned to OP certainly effected mine in many positive ways.

OP was a great young lawyer when I started to work for him. He was brilliant, careful, demanding and very hard working. He had a great sense of humor, never yelled, was a family man and managed to keep things in perspective. He was also very careful with his client's money. He billed them precicely and demanded that from us. Moreover, he had very interesting work (mainly film finance) and introduced me to the professional world that I still more or less inhabit (leveraged lending, not film finance).

I am very grateful for having had the chance to work with a skilled, smart, fair and funny man. That experience has left a lasting impresion and has guided how I've tried to manage younger lawyers.

So, a toast to OP, a real mench.