Law School. We wanted to remind our classmates that there was a philosophy different from theirs and that the Yale Law School needed to understand and entertain some of these thoughts and ideas. The experience was great fun, partly because it infuriated many of our liberal friends. We were thrilled to attract five or six well-known conservative figures to the law school to make speeches. Our kick-off speaker was William F. Buckley, Jr., who had just stirred things up in the Yale community for publishing his controversial book God and Man at Yale. I had the great privilege and fun of having dinner with Buckley after his speech and being absolutely astonished at his ability to communicate his views. I hope that the Conservative Society, in some form, continues at the law school to this day. If it doesn’t, it should.
Meanwhile, Marilyn and I were settling in, making friends (primarily with the other married couples), and enjoying immensely living in New Haven. For example, many of the plays and musicals that were headed for Broadway tried out in the Schubert Theater in New Haven. We bought third-balcony seats for practically nothing (binoculars were a must) and saw an incredible array of shows while we were in New Haven. Some of them went on to be great Broadway hits and others were never heard from again.
I HAD MANY memorable experiences during my academic career at Yale—such as the time I was running late for a final exam in property law and forgot to bring the course textbook with me. This may seem trivial, except that it was an open-book exam! I managed to survive by borrowing a book from a student who had taken the exam the day before.
But if I had to pick one episode as the most memorable of my law school years, it would probably be my involvement in the Moot Court finals. Moot Court was a program in which every student argued cases in an elimination process that ultimately led to four students surviving and arguing before a very distinguished panel of judges in the “finals.” I was fortunate to be in that group of four, and we argued before three judges—a U.S. Supreme Court Justice (Tom Clark), the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, and Bruce Bromley, an outstanding trial lawyer from one of the large New York City law firms.
My colleagues were extraordinary. My partner was a fellow named Gordon Spivack, one of the most intelligent human beings I have ever known. He went on to be a significant figure in the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice. Our opponents were two equally impressive classmates—Charlie Haight, who went on to become a U.S. Circuit Court Judge and Bill Dempsey, a standout speaker and debater who had led his class at Notre Dame, later clerked for Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and had a very distinguished legal career. I was excited but extremely nervous. My mother and dad came from Ohio to watch the argument, and I worked extremely hard to prepare. Although I was intellectually ready, physically I was struggling. I had done a lot of public speaking, but I had never done anything quite like this, and I must confess that I was intimidated by the quality of the three-judge panel and by my opponents. Though I have never admitted it publicly, I spent a half hour or more before we left home soaking in a tub of hot water to attempt to calm my frazzled nerves. Marilyn of course was supportive and helpful and continued to reassure me that I would not make an idiot of myself.
To make a long story short, everything went very well. Once into the arguments, the nerves went away, and the “thrill of the game” made it a very memorable evening. In the final judging, Bill Dempsey was recognized as the best, and I came in second. Although I have never been thrilled when coming in second, in this case I had no qualms or reservations. Bill Dempsey was a fantastic speaker and debater and deserved the honor. I felt privileged to snuggle up to him in second place. Bill remains a dear friend, and I admire him as much today as I did then.
As my third year began to wind down, all of my thoughts turned to getting a job. Representatives of firms from all over the country came to the law school, and we students signed up for interviews with those firms in which we had an interest. Although I interviewed with several big-city firms, I knew that I really wanted to return to Ohio. Both my parents and Marilyn’s were living, and we had many, many friends in the area. This turned out to be easier for me than I thought it might be because I got a job offer from the highly respected Cincinnati firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, and, upon graduation, we headed back to Ohio.
In the Yale Law School library.
CHAPTER VI
Back in Ohio
THE FIRST ORDER of business when we got back home to Ohio was to study for, take, and hopefully pass the Ohio State Bar Examination. This was a three-day ordeal upon which, literally, your entire future rested. Technically, in those days, if you failed in your first effort, you could take the exam again. But, obviously, a failure on your record was not calculated to enhance your career opportunities! I frankly admit that I was traumatized by the enormity of the Bar Exam. I found it very hard to focus, and, as the day approached, my nerves were increasingly frayed. I even contemplated postponing taking the exam until another time, but my father put me straight on this in a hurry. He insisted that I stop being a “wuss” and go forward with the exam. He was right. It was a very good lesson for me at a relatively early age. Postponing dealing with major decisions or challenges only makes them more difficult to deal with and undermines your confidence in your own abilities.
To make a long story short, I took the exam, passed it, and officially joined the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister. Though it is hard to imagine now, I was only the twentieth lawyer on the firm’s letterhead. Today there are more than 250. There are only two of us left of that original twenty.
Robert Taft, Jr., later to become a United States Senator in the footsteps of his distinguished father, was a good friend of our family and took me under his wing from day one. I remember him showing me into my small, spare office, and giving me my first assignment. I have often laughed to myself that that was the last time my desk has ever been totally free of papers!
My time at the firm was limited because I knew that I would be drafted into the Army within a year. Indeed, I entered the service in the late winter of 1956. However, my seven months at the law firm before entering the Army were challenging, exciting, and extremely intense. I was assigned to the senior partner in charge of the corporate department, a man named John Bullock. He was a brilliant and demanding boss from whom I learned a tremendous amount, not only about the law, but also how to deal with and relate to clients.
My experiences over the months before I went into the Army were quite varied. In a small firm, you are required to do a variety of things. However, there was one especially memorable episode. There was a case that had been around the office for years. It involved an attempt by the U.S. government to collect a significant sum of money from one of our clients, arguing that this was money owed by our client to a German company, Maschinenfabrik Augsberg-Nürnberg,* and could be appropriated by the U.S. government because of Germany’s status as an “enemy nation” during World War II. Although every young lawyer who came into the firm was given the case, nothing really happened for some years. But, as fate would have it, shortly after I was assigned to the case, the government became aggressive. This had nothing to do with me but rather with the government’s need to accelerate the case so as not to be precluded by the statute of limitations. My boss called me into his office one day and said, “Charlie, I need you to go to Germany and review all the files of the German company to see if there is any way we can defend against the government’s claim.” Needless to say, I was overwhelmed. First of all, neither Marilyn nor I had ever been out of the country, and, further, I had been handed a big and challenging assignment.
I could write a chapter on this case alone, but suffice it to say, Marilyn and I went to Germany, and I had the great good fortune to find some documents in the files of the German
