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James Brosnahan, Part I · Coopers' Code

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Howdy and welcome to the show. Cooper's code examines a legal
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issue and hits the highlights so we all achieve the best results
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for our clients. I'm Miles Cooper.
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And today we're honored to have an opportunity to hear from a
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legend of the trial bar James J Brosnahan master in the
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courtroom. James Brosnan has tried 150
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cases to conclusion ranging from antitrust to wire fraud, patent
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litigation, white collar crime and murder.
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All of them bet the company or bet your future cases.
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Some you might know include defending the Crows producers
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when Bruce Lee's son Brendon Lee died on set, the defense of John
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Walker Lind in the midst of the political turmoil following 9/11
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and prosecutions relating to a little matter known as the Iran
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Contra Affair. Jim was inducted into the State
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Bar of California's File Lawyers Hall of Fame in 1996, has
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received similar awards for ethics, civility and trial
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skills from almost every trial attorney organization with its
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salt, founded what is now known as the Justice and Diversity
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Center for the Bar Association of San Francisco and has been a
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Master Advocate Board of Trustees, Member and Teacher of
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the Year for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy.
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Jim just released Justice at Trial Portland Battles and
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Ground Victim Cases, which provides his unique insights
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into trials, high stakes negotiations, and what makes
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good outcomes in cases. Check the show notes for a link
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to purchase his book. Welcome to The Show Show.
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Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
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I want to start kind of at the beginning and go into a little
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bit about rheumatic fever and some challenges you went through
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as a very young boy. I put that in the book because
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there might be young people out there who read the book and are
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encouraged that you can overcome what happened.
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I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever when I was three years old
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and the doctor thought I should stay in bed till they figured
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out what was going on. I was in bed for about 2 1/2
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years. And that meant that I stayed my
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room pretty much. Occasionally I'd be taken down
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to my grandparents house, but I remember being in a crib at the
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age of four. And then my father, he had a
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nice job, but it didn't pay very much and he got the money for a
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second opinion. And the doctor said, you know,
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things get better or they get worse.
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Let the boy out. So at six, I went directly to
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the first grade, but I couldn't read and that's the way I
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started. That led to early academic
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issues, and what got me out of that is the sports.
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And I played three sports in high school and two in college.
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Gaining the confidence that allowed me to want to express
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myself in a way that dealt with my character, I think, as a
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trial lawyer. So the background I thought was
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important. That's why I put it in the book,
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The sports background. It sounds like you were quite
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the athlete. I understand that you tried out
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for the Red Sox in high school. I did.
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I had struck out 21 batters, I think primarily because I didn't
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know where the ball was going and the batters didn't know
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where the ball was going. So the Red Sox took notice and
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invited me, and I was in Fenway Park.
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And these names might not be known to your audience, but I
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was in putting on a Red Sox uniform, and there was Ted
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Williams and all my. Wonderful heroes on the Red Sox
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team of the late 40s and early 50s.
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So I decided I was going to be a professional baseball player at
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that boy. That's what I was going to be.
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And I played three sports in high school and was invited to
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play three sports at Boston College.
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And I turned out football because I thought I better
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study. And that was an awakening for me
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because I. Found out I love to study and it
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was just the right time for me to develop my thinking process.
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So that worked out OK. And that is a good segue into a
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question I had, which is how does a student with a, as I
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understand it, a D minus average in high school?
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Yeah, later find himself at Harvard Law.
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I used to sit in high school in the back and.
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Probably go, Martin Woods would yell out Brosnahan.
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We only go this way once. You know, he kind of picked on
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me because he knew I needed it. But sports was my whole thing,
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and I just waited for practice to begin in the high school,
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basically. But once I got to Boston
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College, I got an A in a math test because I studied very hard
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after practice. In college, I played basketball
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and baseball, but I studied to keep my scholarship.
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And I really discovered that I had a brain, and more than that,
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it was the right moment for me. I began to really enjoy things
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like scholastic philosophy, which they taught at that time,
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and that actually became a lifetime interest and I was on
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the Dean's list just to keep my scholarship.
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And then I didn't think I was going to be a professional
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baseball player, but I debated it.
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You know, how young people are. They have these funny thoughts.
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And I thought, well, if I'm a baseball player, I'll be done at
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35. But if I'm a lawyer, which I was
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starting to think about, I'll be able to go till I'm 50.
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And you know, 50 was way in the future somewhere.
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And of course, I practiced till I was about 85.
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So it was a good decision for me in terms of going to law school.
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I understand that the financial implications of going to Harvard
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created a challenge for you and your family and that there was
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someone who helped out. And my subtext of that question
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is, did that help translate into some of the focus that you've
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had in your career on pro bono and other support services?
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I think so. I never thought we were poor,
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but looking back, I think we didn't have much money.
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So I guess that's four. And I worked from the age of 14.
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I had every kind of job and that helped me practice law.
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There was no kind of job that I didn't have.
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I drove a cab, I laid blacktop and the highways and work,
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construction and work by the counter, all those things.
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But I think that. That experience was very, very
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helpful. And to answer your question, we
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didn't have the money to go because the first year at law
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school you have to pay yourself and that rules been around.
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I don't know if it's still the rule at the Harvard Law School,
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but it was for many years. So I wasn't going to be able to
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go and my mother just said you're not going, we don't have
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the money. That was true.
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What she said was correct. So my dad said, you know, maybe
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I'll find a way. And in the book I described his
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job at Symphony Hall. He he had no college education.
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He started it as an office boy and eventually worked his way up
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to be one of the business administrators of the Boston
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Symphony Orchestra. But no college education.
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And he was dealing with. It's kind of interesting,
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actually. It's in the book.
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But you know these musicians and famous people like Arthur
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Fiedler who have conducted the pops.
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You audience may not remember that name, but he was very
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popular at the time. Anyway, my father went to Mr.
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Cabot and Mr. Cabot was at the top of Boston's social
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structure. The Cabots were.
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Is something that a little Diddy that's in the book that people
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can read. And Mr. Cabbages said, have Jim
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come to me, visit me? So I did.
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And he said he'd done some checking and he opened the door.
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I pulled out of check. And he said this amount will
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allow you to live in Harvard Square and that will add to your
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experience. And then he said, if you need
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more, you come back. I didn't go back because I
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preferred to work. So yes, I identify with people
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that don't have enough money to do things.
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I get it. I really get it.
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And one of the items I worked on almost my whole professional
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life is the 90% of people who go to court in civil matters small,
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medium and large don't have a lawyer.
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To me there are many great things about law, but that is
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one of the worst defects in law and I've worked on it since 1962
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with friends who are real experts on that.
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And is this what it is? Sometimes referred to as the
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Civil Gideon project. Yes, I started practice a year
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before Gideon. That's the Supreme Court case
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which held. That you have a right to a
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lawyer in a criminal case, but not a civil case.
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And the story of how I discovered that is in the book.
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And it's rather dramatic because it before Gideon, the story in
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the book is about a murder case and who's going to represent
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this person. And that whole story is in the
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book. This was a murder on the Navajo
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reservation, Yeah. And I was prosecuting it that I
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prosecuted for five years. And I was in Phoenix, having
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moved there from Boston, and with my wife, Carol, and I
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started researching, how can this be that, you know, people
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can't afford lawyers? And I've been working on it ever
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since. And because not everything needs
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to happen chronologically as we have our conversation, I feel
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now might be a good time to talk a little bit about why the Civil
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Gideon project and the right to having an attorney help you,
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whether criminal or civil. Why was that so important for
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you and what efforts have you undertaken over the years to
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make that a right? Well, I started to be active in
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the Bar Association, but even before that I was active in
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things like the N AA, CP. MALDEF I was on the board of the
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Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
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I was the secretary treasurer of that group when it they they
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started in the late 60s. And so I had it was all kinds of
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activity on my part. But when I got to be president
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of the bar, the question was what am I going to work on?
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There were two things that I thought then.
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And I think now, at the heart of the conscience of lawyers, the
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way I think of it, one is the right to representation when you
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go to court. And there's a long analysis as
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to why that's a terrible situation.
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But you know, you and I have been to law school three years
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and we studied procedure and we studied all manner of things and
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now this. Person walks up to the lectern
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and they're frightened to death. The judges do what they can, but
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they can only do so much. So I started an organization.
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There's always been pro bono. I didn't invent pro bono, but I
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started an organization and asked everybody in the Bar
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Association to commit 5% of their time to pro bono.
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And we got a lot of people to sign up because.
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That's the nature, the giving nature of lawyers in San
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Francisco and elsewhere, I must say.
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And so we staffed it. To be serious in this world, you
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have to have staff. So we've hired someone, We
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started it and it grew. It did grow over the years, but
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an awful lot of people made that possible.
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It was my idea, but a lot of people worked hard on that and
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it's functioning today and that was originally known as the
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Volunteer Legal Services Program and is now the Justice and
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Diversity Center. Yes, I'll give a plug for it.
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Having done many hours at the lawyer assistance clinics.
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I love the single serving engagements with potential
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clients and the communities, the Tenderloin and Bayview that
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those clinics serve. I went one night and there was a
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heavy set. The woman lived in the mission
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and she had signed the contract. It didn't speak much English and
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the contract was in English. And she was really concerned
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that her husband, who had a temper, evidently was going to
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and so she owed $380.00 And I the next day I wrote a letter to
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the president. I I've always kind of liked to
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go to the president of something, you know, It's
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amazing what happened. I've done it about five times in
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my career. I've got result every time.
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So I wrote to him and I said basically the entire law firm of
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Morrison Forester is going to do nothing but sue you.
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OK, that's all. We're going well, I've got all
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the volunteers. We're going to keep going until
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you know you will be like Carthage.
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There won't be a stone left on the stone.
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See. And the next day I get a letter
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that basically said, that's OK, tell the nice lady to.
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She doesn't have to worry about it.
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We're canceling with that. Well, you know, when lawyers do
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stuff like that, you feel good for a week.
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Some kind of vindication of justice, actually.
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At the heart of it, justice. What is justice?
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And it's a different subject for a different day.
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But it matters. You joke a little bit about
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Morris and Forrester and all of its volunteers getting behind
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something, but that is something that the firm has done on a
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number of occasions and gotten behind big pro bono efforts.
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I'm glad you mentioned that because from the earliest days
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Bob Raven was our chair of the firm and at that time we were
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about, I guess, 80 lawyers and he was devoted.
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Pro bono work, among other good things.
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And he picked up on that. And he later became president of
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the American Bar Association and he took that, those ideas from
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the Bar Association of San Francisco, which he had also
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been president of. And he made that a national
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program at 5%. So our firm today is doing all
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kinds of. Pro bono things, I actually
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talked to somebody two days ago that's thinking about asking for
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pro bono help and we may do that.
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But it's in the fiber of the firm and I've been at the firm
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47 years and it's been in the fiber of the firm and they've
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done some wonderful things. Let's take a step back so that
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we can get to Morrison, Forester and some of the trial work that
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you did there. Yeah, let's go back to Harvard
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now. OK.
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Did you meet anyone while you were there?
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Well, I did, but I think I know what you're asking.
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I felt a little bit on one leg at the Harvard Lust.
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I liked it. I learned a lot.
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But there were a lot of of my classmates who were from the
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storied old institution. Took me a while to get to know a
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lot of them, which I did. But so one night.
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We had a house, six guys, as we used to say, and we decided we
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should have a cook, and that'd be good.
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And Carol Simon, one of our classmates, one of nine women in
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our class at the Harvard Law School in 1958, and she was
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going to be our cook. So she came, and she prepared
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Oysters Rockefeller and apple crumb pie.
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And I don't want to disparage any cooking that I had had
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before that, but this was at a level that I had not
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encountered. And she looked at me and she
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said that there's a Catholic mix on Friday night.
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Are you going? And you know, I don't know what
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to say. And I kind of mumbled and I said
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I can get my own dates, which at that time really wasn't correct.
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Okay. I was in between, as we say, and
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we had decided we work on a date to cook because it'll be messy
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and we weren't going to do that. Three weeks later.
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Carol and I got engaged. 3 weeks after that we got married and
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didn't go to class very much, I must say.
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And then when we graduated, we got in the car, we came out
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West, and so that's the story, My son Jim.
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Talks about the row of Trek W Carol and I in the car.
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We didn't have much money and we didn't know anybody, but it was
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exciting, it was fun and we've always been glad we did it.
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I love the West. It's a whole different subject,
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but to be out in the Sierras now with the views and all of that
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is a treat for me always. And at the risk of tangent, I'm
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going to give a plug for another podcast called Amicus Presents.
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And it's the class of RBG. Yeah.
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And it it is an interview of some of those nine women.
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Yeah. And a embarrassing dinner with
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the Dean where the Dean asked them to defend.
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Yes, why they are there. Right.
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And what they're going to do with their career to make up
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with the fact that a A man is not there.
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What he said, which is burned into Carol's brain and RB G's
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brain as well because I've heard her tell the story she's not shy
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about. It was it was the 4th year that
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they had women at the school. Dean Griswold had them to
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dinner. So far so good.
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And then he told them that it was too bad they were there
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taking the place of a man. Who could really do something
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with the education? Well, if you want to be known
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for terrible thing, just look at nine women in the fall of 1956
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and tell them that because they'll never forget it.
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They never did. Three or four of the nine were
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judges. There were a couple of people
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who were professors in law schools and so forth.
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And he had stumbled into eternity as a retrograde male
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character, not understanding the potential and a case that
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involved Afghanistan. What hit me in that case was if
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you decide that you're going to exclude a group, any group,
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whether it's a minority or women, if you're going to make
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it harder for them to use their skills and their talent, you are
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depriving yourself as a country of the talent that you need.
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And if there's one thing I'm very sure about, it is that
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America needs all the talent we can get.
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And I'm glad that some progress is being made along those lines.
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But how many talented kids are out there that, for various
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reasons of bias or prejudice, are having difficulty
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contributing what they can contribute?
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And how do you know which ones are going to contribute?
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You never really know that. It's just my theory of
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inclusion, which is wildly vast quality.
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What is it? It means everybody gets a
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chance. You get a chance and it ought to
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mean everybody gets an education, that education which
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they want. I think it's pretty simple
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actually. And that seems to be a running
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seam in your efforts. As much as your career focused
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on trials, you also focused on lifting others up.
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Well, this would be so obscure before anybody's time, but I
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know too much about Irish history and my family.
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Six of my 8 great grandparents came out of The Hunger in
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Ireland in the 1840s and early 1850s.
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They were on death ships, they survived.
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They were put in slums in North Point in Boston, required to
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live there and they went on to overcome a great deal.
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Really. That's something that it's just
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so long ago. But I have a case.
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I won't go into it particularly, but I went to Northern Ireland
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and investigated the murder of two lawyers.
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They were murdered only because of who they represented, and
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that's in the book. But I learned a lot about my
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family from just walking the streets of Belfast and the
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prejudice which is also in the book that exists today, and it's
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when you're on the wrong end of it, it's terrible.
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I want to take us now to Arizona and your first job as a
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practicing lawyer. Can you tell us what you did?
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I had a job as a plaintiffs in a plaintiffs for a small
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plaintiffs for a very good plaintiffs firm.
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And when I interviewed I kept asking, you know, do you go to
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the trial, go to the trial? Well, they did, but I didn't.
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And I got lucky and got a job coming out of the Kennedy
23:32
campaign. Actually, I knew the new US
23:37
attorney and he hired me. So I appeared on the Monday
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morning and on a Tuesday morning that my boss came in and he said
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here's the file, it's going to trial next Monday.
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I'm not totally sure whether he knew what was involved.
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And would you try it? I said, Oh yes.
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And I opened the file. It was a first degree murder
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case with death penalty allegations, and that was my
24:06
first trial. And that's in the book.
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And I've had several people who read the book saying, Gee, that
24:14
doesn't sound right. Hell no, it wasn't right.
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What it's like today, there's all kinds of procedures on death
24:22
penalty and all that, but the story of the trial is in the
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book, the murder was juveniles who stabbed to death a member of
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the Apache tribe on the Pima Reservation South of Phoenix,
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and they were teenagers. Today, the law is that teenagers
24:43
cannot be given the death penalty, which is a great
24:46
advance, which is good. I have two different tracks that
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I want to go down to follow up on this.
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And the first is the here's a file, go try the case.
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And this is a common thing I hear from lawyers who practiced
25:03
before the Discovery Act. Yeah.
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And nowadays, here's a file. And three years from now, maybe
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you'll be in trial. You know, this intrigues me
25:14
because you have to go through settlement conferences.
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The client, if it's a big case, they can't afford to pay $3
25:22
billion or whatever. And if they settle, they can
25:26
settle for 800 million. These are real numbers.
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In those days, people went to trial.
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And I when I went to Morrison, Forrester, I started taking the
25:39
young ones to trial. Because I know if you take a
25:43
young lawyer to trial and they go through the trial, their
25:47
perspective changes totally. It's like taking a young doctor
25:52
to an operation and maybe even allowing them to do a little
25:57
something. Then they get it.
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And what is it they get? They get the importance of
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trial. Civil lawyers talk a great deal
26:06
about you can't get to trial because there's all these
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settlement conferences. More than once I have looked at
26:13
a settlement judge and I have said to a judge, kind of
26:18
disrespectful judge, you don't know this case.
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I appreciate your efforts, but we have to go to trial on this
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case. So there are ways to get to
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trial, but on the criminal side, the numbers are down, but there
26:34
are criminal trials. So the question is what is your
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priority and if trial is a priority, you want to be in a
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civil or criminal office where they go to trials enough?
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In that vein of the civil and criminal objects, you made a
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career where you did both. Yep.
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And I can think of a handful of lawyers, most of them of your
27:01
era, who have done something similar.
27:04
Otherwise, for the most part, people seem to specialize.
27:07
You may find a somebody who works as a prosecutor or a
27:11
public defender who makes a crossing into civil at some
27:14
point because they've got the trial experience.
27:16
Yeah, but otherwise it's exceedingly rare.
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How did you manage that and what made you decide to do that?
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Well, remember when I started, I started the year 1959.
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It was exactly the right time. If you want to go to trial, that
27:33
was exactly the right time. Damages were going up.
27:37
A man named Melvin Belli in San Francisco was making something
27:42
called the Just award, and he was getting more and more money.
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And the people I saw and admired and I would go to programs just
27:52
to hear them talk, were of a group.
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If you've tried one case, you can try them all.
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That was the conversation among trial lawyers at that time, and
28:03
they proved it. Yeah, I can do that.
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I wanted to do that. My curiosity was such that I
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wanted to experience, I think, all kinds of cases.
28:16
They're great advantages to specialization.
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We have it in our firm. If a person really likes
28:23
technology, for example, and they liked it when they were
28:28
young, maybe they did some education that got them ready
28:33
for patent cases. They have great advantages.
28:37
And there's disadvantages for somebody like myself, because if
28:41
I go into a case, I may be going against an expert who knows all
28:45
about this. I'm thinking wrongful
28:47
termination case, I tried and the other lawyer, that's what he
28:53
did. So you have to work harder,
28:55
number one, But there's a better answer to your question.
28:59
For 47 years, we started to put together trial teams and given
29:06
the momentous nature of some cases, the client tolerates
29:10
that. So I would try a case, but I
29:14
would have a patent lawyer with me.
29:17
And depending on their background, they might do some
29:21
witnesses. They might take the experts for
29:24
example. So that was one reason I wrote
29:27
the book. I literally tried every kind of
29:30
taste and enjoyed it. It turned out that was a good
29:34
thing. Child custody, for example.
29:37
Divorce I did. I did some in the early days.
29:40
Divorce and Admiralty. I tried 7 Admiralty cases.
29:47
You get the idea. There's also a tension between
29:51
the passion for trial. And the negotiating aspect to
29:57
try and get the best result for your client.
29:59
And I know that some lawyers, some trial teams, will staff
30:04
that differently. They'll be a negotiating team
30:05
and they'll be a trial attorney so the trial attorney can stay
30:09
focused. I get the impression from what
30:11
I've read that you handled negotiations as well as trial.
30:17
Is that true? One day Jim Bennett, a wonderful
30:23
trial lawyer, or I tried cases with him and he had a case and
30:28
there was an issue there. I won't go into what the issue
30:31
was, but he wanted me to help with the trial.
30:33
He was going to try it and I would try it with him.
30:37
So then when the trial was over, we had a meeting in the firm and
30:42
a lot of the young lawyers came and they were asking questions
30:46
about the trial And one person asked me, they said what did it
30:51
feel like for you not to be in charge?
30:54
And I said I thought I was. And Bennett didn't mind that I
31:03
was always lead counsel from April of 1961 until my last
31:13
trial, which was about four years ago.
31:17
And I stopped taking new clients.
31:19
And what can I say? You've embarrassed me.
31:22
I mean, I like that. I really did.
31:27
And people accepted it. I I would take young lawyers
31:32
with me. Their number are described in
31:35
the book. There are times in the book
31:37
where, yes, it's absolutely a memoir.
31:40
There's no question about that. But it's often a memoir about
31:44
other people, and young lawyers in our firm are some of the
31:48
people featured in what they did and what they accomplished, and
31:53
how judges responded to them in a good.
31:56
Way beyond memoir. I mentioned this to you before
32:01
we started. The book reminds me a lot of
32:03
Season of the Witch, which covers the 70s era of San
32:07
Francisco because the nature of the cases that you handled.
32:12
Involved rubbing shoulders and interacting with a lot of names
32:17
that people will recognize. Not just trial lawyers, but
32:21
politicians and celebrities. What can I say?
32:24
I represented Willie Brown successfully for a total of an
32:28
hour and a half, and that might be the shortest representation
32:33
ever, but I represented Mayor Marstoni.
32:37
I was representing him at the time that he was tragically
32:42
killed and he was mayor at the time.
32:46
And there were several leaders that I represented one time or
32:52
another, and I enjoyed that. I represented Dianne Feinstein
32:56
when she was mayor. And we went back to Washington,
33:00
tried to straighten out the bureaucrats back there.
33:03
So there was that. But close to my heart were the
33:07
trial lawyers. Who was One reason I came to San
33:11
Francisco from Phoenix was There were great trial lawyers at that
33:17
time, and I knew that I wanted to go against them, frankly, and
33:21
I got to know a number of them. Let's cover that in terms of the
33:25
chronology. Had an opportunity to move from
33:29
the Arizona prosecutor's office to the San Francisco
33:32
prosecutor's office, right? Tell us how that came about.
33:35
Well, you know, it's evidence of luck that I've had in my life.
33:40
In Phoenix, there was a law clerk from with Judge Swigert
33:45
and they were visiting. A lot of judges in the 9th
33:48
Circuit felt compelled to come down to Phoenix in the winter
33:53
time and help us with our. Funny that.
33:57
Yeah, it's funny how that works. Summertime, not so much.
34:00
You know, it's 110, that we didn't get too much help in
34:04
those days. But he was a law clerk, so we
34:07
went and had a beer. And he said that I he asked me
34:10
what I was doing. I was looking for a job outside
34:14
the office. And he said, well, you know, the
34:18
San Francisco office is looking for somebody who's tried
34:21
criminal tax cases because the person who did that just left.
34:25
I said, oh, so I thought, well, I mean, it's a long shot and I
34:32
don't know. And so and I went home and Carol
34:36
was sound asleep. So I walked in and she woke up
34:41
and I said there's a job in San Francisco and I'm thinking maybe
34:46
I would apply. She got up out of bed without a
34:49
word, went in the closet and took out a suitcase.
34:53
And I took it from that, that she was prepared to move to San
34:56
Francisco. And I got lucky and Cecil Pool,
35:00
and this is in the book, what a real mentor he was to people in
35:05
that office. They still meet for dinner.
35:09
The the grads and all of us are quite mature.
35:12
And Cecil Poole was one of the people that just taught us how
35:17
to use the power that we had. Prosecutors and lawyers actually
35:22
are very powerful. Lawyers have the power of
35:25
advice. We say something and somebody
35:28
might do that and you hope it's right.
35:32
So that's how I got to San Francisco and I was in the
35:37
office for three years, so total of five between Phoenix and San
35:41
Francisco. And there I was, trying cases
35:45
against some of the best lawyers that we've ever had here.
35:49
And then a time came where you determined it was time to switch
35:52
into private practice. It was.
35:54
I tried a big pages for a year. It was a bank failure,
35:58
interestingly enough, because we just had a bank failure and it
36:02
was time to go and I so I went to a very good law firm, very
36:09
old law firm. They called Cooper White and
36:13
Cooper and I was there for 9 years and they did try cases and
36:20
that was my condition when I interviewed.
36:22
The other one was I'm going to defend criminal cases and
36:27
Sheldon Cooper was a wonderful lawyer and he was the head
36:33
person of the firm and he wasn't sure that was good.
36:36
Would it be alright if I did it my own name and not in the
36:40
firm's name? It was the old days and you
36:43
didn't have criminal lawyers in commercial law firms.
36:47
You really didn't and that was fine.
36:50
So I went there and that was a good experience for me and I
36:54
will need to point. Out for our listeners that
36:56
Cooper White and Cooper, which I believe started in 1896, yes, is
37:00
no relation to Cooper's or me. This Cooper.
37:05
Yes, yes. Sheld Cooper sat in the office
37:09
his father had occupied when the firm opened in 1896.
37:15
And so it was old San Francisco. From there you got.
37:19
Recruited to where you spent the rest of your career.
37:23
I did. And can you tell us how that
37:24
happened? In brief form, there's a story
37:28
in the book about how six of us started a group of insurgents to
37:36
overthrow the Senior Bar Association.
37:39
It's too long a story, but it worked.
37:43
And then we captured the nominating committee.
37:47
It was the 60s. Your audience, I want to say to
37:50
them, you you had to be there. The mood was we're going to
37:55
reform everything now that that'd be good.
37:58
Let's do it now. So Bob Raven, as a result of our
38:02
take it over, he was nominated to be president-elect of the Bar
38:06
Association. So he called me up a couple of
38:10
years later. He did a wonderful job with the
38:13
bar and he called me up, took me to lunch, and so we had lunch at
38:18
the top of the Bank of America building and he kept talking
38:22
about his firm, Morrison, which I had a lot of respect for, and
38:26
so forth. But he didn't say, you know,
38:28
we'd like you to come. So I thought about that and I
38:32
asked him the next day I called him and I said thanks, thanks
38:36
for lunch. Were you suggesting something?
38:38
He said I was and we talked and I went.
38:42
I was the second person in the city to ever move from one firm
38:48
to another. That's one of the big changes in
38:52
the practice of law around the country, that people move from
38:56
one firm to another now hardly gets noticed, but in those days
39:01
you went to a firm and you stayed there and that was it.
39:05
So it was different, but it was one of the best things I ever
39:10
did. And I was very lucky.
39:14
And that's it for today's. Episode TuneIn next week for
39:17
Part 2 of Jim Brosnahan. Thanks for listening.