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January 30, 2010
The Beat Years: The Real Story Behind The 7 Habits.
With apologies to Stephen Covey but on some days we think he's wrong about almost everything anyway. Lawyers who won't take a stand is a time-honored tradition. Our hero, "Ernie from Glen Burnie", who is not such a lawyer, is a life-long friend. He'll stand up for people who pay him--and people he just met on the subway. It's his nature.
Ernie played football for one of the Ivies. He thinks in terms of collaboration but getting things done. He's smart but friendly. Guys' guy. Ladies' man. Lawyer's lawyer. Renaissance Human. Charmer. Playful rogue. A reveler in words. A trial lawyer with business sense. Ernie even writes well.
Ernie's "available" and "comes to play". He will tell you what he thinks. He will act. If you are a GC, you can call him in the middle of the night with your insider-trading problem, or report that your kid at Dartmouth just thrashed a waiter and both Hanover cops. And, as the M Street crowd will tell you, when he's not working, he's the kind of guy who never hits on married women over 40.
You can read Ernie's story--it's about an old parchment he claims was discovered in Alexandria, Virginia around the same time we both began practicing law in The District--at "The Seven Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers".
This is a true story, mostly. So listen.
Stand-Up Guys: Ernie, a dead-ringer for 1950s icon Neal Cassady, and WAC? during their pre-lawyer Beat years at Nathan's, now a D.C. saloon for older players.
Posted by JD Hull at January 30, 2010 12:59 AM