Dave: 00:00:03

I'm Dave Shuster, managing partner of Kramon & Graham and your host. Today I'm speaking with Andrew Jay Graham, cofounder of Kramon & Graham PA, and my colleague since 1999. By all accounts, Andy is a brilliant trial attorney. If it's a high-profile case, or if the stakes are high, Andy is at the top of a very short list of attorneys you'll want to hire to represent you. Welcome Andy.

Andy: 00:00:30

Nice to be here.

Dave: 00:00:31

All right let's talk about your background before you became a lawyer. You're a New Yorker.

Andy: 00:00:38

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, on a street called Garden Place in Brooklyn Heights in a big brownstone house that my father had bought for $32,000, which today would be worth six or 7 million. But in those days, Brooklyn was not the chichi place that it is today. And most of my friends were not wealthy, did not come from wealthy families. We had a real diverse group of kids that formed a stickball team, and we organized ourselves. We were a bunch of very well organized ten-year-old kids playing stickball in the streets of New York.

Dave: 00:01:20

And what was your household like?

Andy: 00:01:22

My household consisted of my parents, mother and father. My father was a lawyer at a big firm in New York. My mother, who came from Europe, had joined him in law school just to keep him company, even though she had to go to law school in English, which was, like, her fourth language. And both of them ended up at the top of the class, but she never practiced.

Dave: 00:01:48

Where did she come from?

Andy: 00:01:49

She came from Berlin. I had a brother and a sister and there were a couple of grandmothers and one great aunt in the house as well.

Dave: 00:01:58

Wow. And what do you remember about your childhood?

Andy: 00:02:02

I had a great childhood, and in the school year, we lived at the house in Brooklyn. When I was three or four, my father built a house out in Stony Brook, Long Island. I used to spend summers out there, and I liked both places. If I had to pick between the two, I probably would have picked the city, which was just more exciting. And it was the days of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and I had a wonderful time. Brooklyn had this terrible self-image and didn't think of itself the way Manhattan residents thought of themselves. But it was a great place to live. It had a lot of soul. And by itself, the borough of Brooklyn was like, three and a half million people and would have been in the top ten cities, population wise, in the United States, just on its own.

Dave: 00:02:55

You mentioned your dad was a lawyer. What kind of lawyer was he?

Andy: 00:02:59

He was really a trademark and copyright litigator. And his clients were big, usually big companies, pharmaceutical companies, cosmetic companies. I remember he represented Vicks. He represented American Home Products, and his cases were big, slow-moving, drawn out cases that usually got settled. I think he would have preferred a small-town practice where he was in court every day. But he liked practicing law, even though I think he would have been happier in a practice where things moved a little more quickly and when there was more personal contact in the representation instead of your client being a big entity of some sort.

Dave: 00:03:45

And what was he like as a father? Was he a disciplinarian?

Andy: 00:03:49

Yes, he was a disciplinarian. He grew up the old-fashioned way and he believed you should work hard. And it was sort of the classic American parentage. My mother was the one that you went to if you were sad about something. And my father was the one you went to if you had a problem in the street and needed some advice on what you ought to do.

Dave: 00:04:14

So, speaking of advice, did he ever sit you down as a young man and say, whatever you do in life, don't become a lawyer? Did he have that conversation?

Andy: 00:04:22

No, he would. In fact, it was the opposite. Every time I'd bring up something else, he would shoot that option down. And he said, "I'm not pressing you to be a lawyer." And at one point, to give his position more credibility, he said, "You should be a marine biologist." Well, he knew I had no interest in being a marine biologist. So that was a safe suggestion on his part. I think underneath it all, he wanted me to be a lawyer and he was proud when I became one.

Dave: 00:04:52

Before high school, were you a good student?

Andy: 00:04:55

Yeah, I was always a good student. I didn't take academics very seriously. But in looking back at my report cards from grade school, I always had good grades and teachers would write these nice things about me how I was a nice kid to have in the class and I was friendly with everybody and so on and so forth. I don't think I was particularly exceptional or unusual, although my father kept insisting or insisted twice in a row that I wasn't being challenged enough. I was going to Friends School in Brooklyn, which was a very good school. He concluded, on what basis I have no idea, that I wasn't being challenged sufficiently. And so I went to Poly Prep, which is a bigger private school out in Dyker Heights in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And I was very happy there. As an 8th grader, I was on the varsity wrestling team, so I had certain status. But, once again, he concluded I wasn't being challenged enough. So I was sent off to Phillips Academy, Andover. And I think he was satisfied that I was being challenged enough there because my grades reflected that. So I think I would have been happy staying at Friends School or staying at Poly Prep or going to public school. I was basically a happy kid.

Dave: 00:06:10

Did you like Andover?

Andy: 00:06:12

Yeah, I liked Andover. I mean, you were away from your family for weeks, if not months on end in those days. It was not coed. So you were really pretty much away from girls during the active part of the school year. But they were great teachers I had great friends there. They had great athletic facilities. It was like a small college. I'm glad I went there. Again I think I would have been just as happy staying at one of the local schools in Brooklyn.

Dave: 00:06:42

Did you wrestle at Andover as well?

Andy: 00:06:44

Yes, I did. I was a wrestling captain and I wrestled into my first year at college and then decided it was a little grim, in part because I went to Yale, and nobody came out to watch the wrestling matches at Yale. They had the best swimming team in the country, so the swimming facility would be packed. As to wrestling, we'd wrestle a school like Lehigh, which was ranked third in the country, and we'd have six people in the stands. And so I lost my enthusiasm over time as a freshman at Yale.

Dave: 00:07:20

Okay, so you mentioned you went to Yale. So after Andover did you apply to any other schools, or did you always want to go to Yale? What was the decision?

Andy: 00:07:29

No, it was rather random. People at Andover went to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, more than half the class by far. And Yale just, I'm not sure what appealed to me about it, but I was told, "You'll get in. You don't have to apply to any other school." So I didn't and I was accepted along with, like, 40 some odd other students in my class. It's not that way now. I mean, the graduates of Andover are much more spread out in terms of good universities and colleges. But I can't say that I was a very serious student.

Dave: 00:08:05

When you got into Yale, were you thinking about becoming a lawyer at that point, or was it too early?

Andy: 00:08:12

No, I wasn't thinking about it and didn't want to do it, I didn't think. It seemed to me from watching my father, practicing law from home when he would have conference calls or something like that, that it wasn't a real happy profession. He seemed to get sort of wound up in it and it didn't strike me as the most pleasant of all things you could do in life. I went to law school, really, because what I wanted to do was be a creative writer. And I had taken creative writing courses at Yale and done very well and had even sent a piece out to be published. And lo and behold, it was. So I had this notion that I could make a living writing novels. And so I went to law school thinking, "This can't be that bad. I'll keep writing stories while I'm at law school." And I entered the school with a rather, I wouldn't say negative, but not a very enthusiastic attitude. And during the first two weeks or three weeks, when the professors would be talking about a transfer of Blackacre to Mr. Smith and so on, I thought, this is dreadful, dreadfully dry stuff. Particularly after having majored in English at Yale and having had professors like Harold Bloom, who was just a brilliant analytical writer and professor. But then we had to do this moot court program where you would team up with somebody else and basically try the case. And so I was in the library reading over some of the materials, and another classmate came up and said, "You want to do this together?" And I said, "Sure." So we did it together, and that I liked. That part was fun. And I thought, "Maybe this is for me."

Dave: 00:10:18

Okay. And this is your time at NYU?

Andy: 00:10:20

NYU. Yes.

Dave: 00:10:22

Back to the creative writing. What kind of writing did you, what were the stories about?

Andy: 00:10:28

They were sort of along the lines of some of the existentialist writing stories, but I thought I could write anything. And the assignments they'd give you would be to produce a good short story by the next morning, and it didn't have to be more than two pages. So it could be sort of vignette, the kind of thing you might see in The New Yorker toward the beginning of The New Yorker, there were those one-and-a-half page treatments of some conversation or some event, and so it was along those lines.

Dave: 00:11:04

So as lawyers, we're writing all the time. Do you write for pleasure, or is it strictly for business?

Andy: 00:11:11

No, I don't write for pleasure. I mean, it's pleasurable to write something that you're writing as a lawyer, but no, I don't, in my free time write stories or poems or anything. Everybody has suggested I do. They say you have so many stories you could use, but I'm not sure many of my clients would be happy if I told their stories.

Dave: 00:11:36

You went to NYU and the moot course got you interested in becoming a trial lawyer.

Andy: 00:11:43

Yeah, I'd say the two things that got me much more enthusiastic about it, that was one, and the other was after the first year during the summer, I worked as a law clerk with the guy who I had teamed up with for the moot court thing -- Kenny Griffiths. He and I were law clerks in the Department of Investigation, which is the department in New York City that investigates crimes committed by city officials and city employees. And I remember it being part of our thing, we were investigating the bribery that was going on on the part of city housing inspectors. And so two hardened detectives smoking incessantly and I were in a big undercover car, a big old Chevrolet, listening to a guy we had wired who owned the building who was being asked for the bribe by the city inspector. And we were listening to him on the tape, and he was wired. And I thought, "This is cool. If this is if this is part of practicing law, I think I like it."

Dave: 00:12:41

What year, so what year was that?

Andy: 00:12:44

That would have been '66 or the summer of '67, I think '66.

Dave: 00:12:53

And you went to law school with some notable people.

Andy: 00:12:56

Well, two of the best known, one of my two best friends, Kenny Griffiths, ended up being one. The other was Steve Gillers, who it's accepted across the country that he is the guru of legal ethics. He's written books on it -- textbooks, casebooks, articles. He's still regularly interviewed by the media when they need an opinion, for example, as to whether Ginni Thomas is doing something that would put her husband in jeopardy ethically or not. So he became very well-known over time. He taught. Still teaches at NYU Law School. The other was Rudy Giuliani. There were others, but Rudy Giuliani is obviously the most notorious of my law school classmates. And he was a very different person back, when he was 24 years old.

Dave: 00:13:58

Yeah. What do you remember about him?

Andy: 00:13:59

I remember a guy that seemed very serious and had a demeanor that suggested to me that he was going to be a very good lawyer. Serious. Had some sort of instant credibility in terms of how he presented himself. And then the next thing I knew, he was the mayor. Well, he was the US Attorney, walking people out on the perp walk when he was bringing down financial big shots. And then next thing after that was he's a mayor. And I thought he acquitted himself pretty well as the mayor of New York.

Dave: 00:14:33

So, after law school, you had a clerkship, or did you go into private practice?

Andy: 00:14:43

I had an offer to clerk for a federal judge here in Baltimore. I think I'd been in Baltimore once, briefly, on the way to Florida. So, I came down for the interview and Judge Alexander Harvey, this young federal district judge, hired me. My wife and I had just gotten married. So my wife and I came down and rented an apartment near Johns Hopkins University. It was a great apartment, a full floor for $105 a month, and I spent a year clerking for the judge, who handled all kinds of interesting cases, one of which got so much publicity that we had to try the case in Alexandria. We commuted down there every day. I'd pick him up at his home in Baltimore County and we would drive down to Alexandria and try the case there where the theory was the jury wouldn't know as much about this guy that was on trial. It's probably the best case I ever saw tried as an observer. The prosecutor was Steve Sachs, who was the US Attorney, subsequently the attorney general of the state. And the defense firm was Williams & Connolly. It was just a great trial. The defendant was convicted. And so you really got to see good lawyers in action. I think that was a very useful experience.

Dave: 00:16:13

You mentioned your wife Stephanie. When did you two meet?

Andy: 00:16:18

We met when I was about 18. She was about 17 in Brooklyn.

Dave: 00:16:22

In Brooklyn.

Andy: 00:16:23

And dated through college and got married after my first year of law school.

Dave: 00:16:28

And what did she think about leaving New York and coming to Baltimore?

Andy: 00:16:31

No, she thought it was an adventure. Her parents thought we were nuts to go to this place called Baltimore. But we had a great year down here. We had a great time. And reluctantly went back after the clerkship ended to New York because I had a pending offer from what was then the biggest Wall Street firm, Shearman & Sterling. And they were paying what everyone thought was big money, which today would be laughable. But then it was like double what you get at. . .

Dave: 00:17:02

Do you remember what it was?

Andy: 00:17:03

Yeah, it was $16,500. But today that would be something like 300, I suppose. And so we went back to live in Brooklyn, this time in Park Slope, which today my son and his family live in. Today it's very chichi. Back then it had nothing in it. There were no restaurants. There was one terrible supermarket, where I got in the middle of a shootout leaving one day. And it was sort of a frontier. Young professionals were starting to move in, but they hadn't really taken over by any stretch. So we lived there. And I worked at Shearman & Sterling for about two years. And there were a whole bunch of us they'd hired at once, thinking we were all going to get drafted, but nobody did. So I was friendly with 20 other young lawyers there who remain friends today. And I think we all thought you had to stay there, whether you liked it or not, for some reasonably long period of time. But when I left after two years, it started something like a jailbreak, and everyone started leaving. One guy went to the Justice Department, one went to Michigan to teach at the law school, one went to Alaska. And they all realized that you could actually leave and survive.

Dave: 00:18:29

Okay, so what was it like as a young associate at Shearman & Sterling, a very prominent law firm? What kind of stuff did they have you do?

Andy: 00:18:39

Well, it depended on what department you were in. But whichever department you were in, it was all large high stakes, slow moving stuff where the legal team was staffed by three four five six people, which I realized pretty quickly was not the way I wanted to practice law. And it depended what department you were put in. Well, they put me in securities offerings, corporate and securities issues generally. I even had to participate in some financing of jumbo jets and things like that. I told them I wanted to be in litigation. And I kept complaining apparently pretty effectively, because at some point they let me out and put me in litigation. But the entire time I was there, which was two years, in that entire time there was not one case that was tried. There'd be motions argued, and there'd be plenty of depositions. So this wasn't what I thought litigation was about. So, anyway, early on, they had me in the corporate securities offerings department, where you bring a company to the public markets and it gets financed, raises a lot of money, and expands.

Dave: 00:19:55

Is that how you met Sam Walton?

Andy: 00:19:58

Yes. That is how I met Sam Walton. They told me, I'd been there only a couple of months, that I had to go out and do a corporate check on this little company in Bentonville, Arkansas. And I had no idea what a corporate check was. But I asked, and they said, you have to look through all the books and records and the minutes to see if they've handled all the meetings right and everything's been approved the way it should have been and that they're not in violation of any laws and et cetera. So I said, "Fine, I can do that." And off I went with my Brooks Brothers suit and overcoat and somehow -- I can't remember how -- I got there. I think it involved a bus or a flight. I ended up in Bentonville, and it had snowed. And I was walking up the road in my wingtip shoes and jacket and everything. And there was a guy in a Jeep stuck in a snowbank and he pointed at me. He asked me if I was the lawyer. I said, "Yes, sir, I am the lawyer." He said, "I'm Sam Walton. I'd like you to help push me out of this thing because the car is just spinning." So I got behind, and after a lot of work, we got him out. And he told me, "Young man, I'm going to take you to lunch." So I thought we would go to the club. But there are no clubs at least then in Bentonville. And he took me to what was basically a fishing and ammunition place that served tuna fish sandwiches. And he was a very tightly wound, energetic guy. So he put me in this motel where the heat was supplied by some sort of kerosene burning thing in the room. I was positive I was going to wake up dead, asphyxiated. I didn't, but it did reek of kerosene and he agreed to take me to a couple of his stores and there were these little five-and-dime type like small Woolworth's with what they were selling were things like spools of thread. So I thought it was depressing and not very likely to succeed on the bigger market if it was succeeding in Arkansas and Tennessee. So, anyway, I went through all the books. Sam was a nice guy, but he was really wound up. And when I got back, they said, "What do you think?" And I gave them my report, my notes and everything. And I said, "I don't know if you want my opinion, but this place is going nowhere." I said, "First of all, the guy that runs it is a little bit crazy if you ask me. He's really wound up." And I said, "I saw the stores, they're terrible. No one's going to go into those stores." And the next thing I knew, which was several years later, I realized the Walton family was the third wealthiest family in the United States. And I've always wished since then that I'd been given at least sort of a tip in terms of you know a thousand shares of Walmart. I have the binder, the closing binder sitting here on my bookshelf. And we did it the old-fashioned way. It was all paper. But damned if the company didn't go public and the shares were sold, and it was quite a success. Whether you like Walmarts or not, it's done very well financially.

Dave: 00:23:15

Perhaps he has you to congratulate for it.

Andy: 00:23:19

Well. I do have on the wall-- You may remember on my 70th, birthday, it might have been 75th, John Bourgeois, my partner, called the current general counsel at Walmart and asked if he'd write a letter thanking me for my work back then and it's on the wall. But basically it thanks me for making it all possible because I said that their books and records were fine and there were no problems.

Dave: 00:23:43

And you got him out of the snowbank.

Andy: 00:23:45

That's true. He might still be there, but that's right.

Dave: 00:23:50

Okay, so after Shearman and Sterling, you came back to Baltimore?

Andy: 00:23:57

I was interested in trying federal cases and I applied to the US Attorney's Office in Boston and the one in Baltimore because I was so impressed with Steve Sachs when he was US Attorney. Now there was a new US Attorney George Beall, who happened to be a great guy. And I realized from talking to some lawyer friends in Boston it's a very political office in those days at least. I said, "I don't think I want that." So I applied to George Beall, and he hired me. And Steffi and I moved back down here from our place in Park Slope in that old brownstone and ended up in Bonnie Ridge Apartments, which is not a very high end, fancy apartment complex, but we thought it was terrific after New York. You had rolling green little hills, outdoor swimming pool, tennis courts, air conditioning. So it was and we met a lot of young professionals in there that I'm still friendly with. And I lived there for two years while I was an assistant US attorney.

Dave: 00:25:10

So did you know anything about conducting a federal criminal investigation when you arrived back in Baltimore?

Andy: 00:25:17

No. When I got to the US Attorney's Office, George Beall, he's the US Attorney, and the deputy Paul Kramer showed me my office and there was one big file cabinet in it. And I said, "What's in there?" And they said, "Well, look." And they pulled the drawers open and there were, like, 50 files of investigations. And I said, "What do I do with these?" They said, "Whatever you want." I said, "Like what?" They said, "Indict the guy or dismiss it or bring people to the grand jury." I said, "I can do all that?" And they said, "Yeah." So I said, "Great." And so I started pulling the files out and deciding what I should do with each one.

Dave: 00:26:01

And who were some of the people you worked with in the US Attorney's Office at that time?

Andy: 00:26:08

Well, George Beall, who had not had any criminal law experience, he'd been a young civil defense lawyer. Paul Kramer was the deputy. Very practical guy. And then there were about four or five of us, I think, that came within two weeks of each other. One was Jim Kramon. Jerry Martin came a little later. And Jeff White who is now a senior federal judge in San Francisco. Mike Moore who passed away but had a very active practice. Timmy Baker, who runs writing seminars and literary seminars in the Baltimore area now and others and then a bunch more came half a year, nine months later. So they're a very young office. George Beall himself, the senior guy, was 35. And the next two senior people were 30, 31. And then there's a bunch of us, like eight of us who were mid-twenties.

Dave: 00:27:11

Did you know Jim Kramon before meeting him in the US Attorney's Office?

Andy: 00:27:15

No. He came in from a clerkship for a seventh circuit judge. Actually, before or after that, I forget what the order was, he'd taken a post law school one-year course at Harvard in environmental law. So I think he came from the environment. Yes, he came from the environmental law one-year program at Harvard to the US Attorney's Office. And we met, like, on the first day and immediately hit it off.

Dave: 00:27:43

What do you remember about him in those days?

Andy: 00:27:45

He was very opinionated, very smart, very hard working. His sense of humor was to me very funny. Today a lot of what he said in those days would not be acceptable. It was largely politically incorrect, but he was a very funny guy. But when it came to work, he was the most serious of all of us, I think, and took things very seriously and very personally. I mean, he really held himself to the highest standard possible.

Dave: 00:28:20

And he was also a fellow native New Yorker?

Andy: 00:28:26

Yeah, he grew up in Manhattan. The Upper East Side. His biological father died when he was pretty young. He was a business guy. And then his stepfather is the guy that he really respected a lot. And he was a heart surgeon who, at the end of World War II, had actually been up front with two generals liberating Buchenwald. And was quite an impressive guy that I got to know, too.

Dave: 00:28:53

Okay, so what do you remember about the kinds of cases that the US Attorney's Office was prosecuting when you were there? Because there were some notable ones.

Andy: 00:29:05

There were some very notable ones. But there were also smaller cases than the office typically takes on today. For example, we prosecuted thefts from the US Mail, postal thefts, because there were ongoing thefts at post offices and even from mailboxes and that had to be stopped. And so somebody had to prosecute those cases. And it was the US Attorney's Office. And today, I don't think they bother with that. And then there were the Secret Service investigations regarding counterfeit US money. And I don't know if those are pursued today by the US Attorney's Office or not, but what was nice about them is that they were two-day jury trials. Two or three. You had to use experts, usually handwriting experts and other experts, financial experts. So you got a lot of experience, and you could try a high volume of these cases. Mike Moore and I also used to try the migratory bird act cases, which were fun because they were misdemeanors. You could try them, put on two migratory game agents and you prove your case. And often the defendants were out goose hunting and often they were out goose hunting over bait, which is federal crime. And often those people would be US congressmen and people like that. So it was quite a comeuppance for them to find themselves in federal criminal court. So we did all of that stuff, plus bank robberies, a lot of drug cases and political cases. And in those days, it went from the microcosmic to the major. And at the small end were these misdemeanor cases and theft from the mail cases. I did a lot of them just because I liked trying the cases. At the other end was the investigation and prosecution of the vice president of the United States. The investigation and prosecution, actually, after I left, but while Jim was still there, of the governor. We prosecuted a county executive, bank presidents. Nobody was immune. And it was a very active office, the protagonists in which were a bunch of guys in their twenties mostly. And I say guys because it was. There was one woman, AUSA, Jean, who did civil stuff, but that was it. And the office for a while was like about 13 prosecutors. By the time I left it was more 17, 18, 19, I suppose. But we had very major cases. Jim and I were called by George Beall, US Attorney, the night that Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace while he was running for president and paralyzed him.

Dave: 00:32:07

That was in Cecil County or Harford County.

Andy: 00:32:09

It was in the state. And they brought him in on a federal charge that night. And George wanted our support -- Jim and I. And so the three of us went in there. We had to take him before a magistrate judge, like at one in the morning and get him processed and everything. So that was, you know, he was an assassin of a would-be president. And those things just seemed like another day of work. We didn't view it as something so important and with such a national significance that we should be intimidated. It was just about a case, and we took care of it.

Dave: 00:32:44

During your time in the US Attorney's Office, do you have a handle on how many prosecutions you handled?

Andy: 00:32:53

No, not really, but hundreds at least. Not that they were all tried. You know, if we could get the defendant to plead, we would. I remember had one case when we charged a bank president. The Deputy US Attorney Paul Kramer asked me to assist him. So we prosecuted the bank president. And Paul more than once asked me, "Are you sure? Are you sure this was a crime?" Because a grand jury had issued the indictment. So I said, "Well, the grand jury thought so." And he kept questioning me. And then this guy was represented by Williams & Connolly, which was not known for pleading its clients guilty. Well, they pled him guilty. And so I said to Paul, "I told you so. He wouldn't have pled guilty if it wasn't a crime."

Dave: 00:33:44

Did it ever occur, did you ever think about the possibility of prosecuting somebody who may not have been guilty of the crime?

Andy: 00:33:52

I didn't think of it, and certainly it wasn't an objective of mine. But we did that, Kramon and I. There was this group, a very far left militant group in New York of men and women. And they needed money for their organization to blow up New York or whatever they wanted to do. And so they developed this scheme where these two women in the group would go into a bank, open an account, talk with the tellers, get to know them, come back the next day and say, "I want to split deposit another check for $5,000. Deposit 2500, but give me 2500 back." And this would work, believe it or not. I don't know if it would work today, but it worked very well. And they had done it in different states. So they caught two women in the fringes of Maryland, brought them in and we were positive they were the ones that had done it in Maryland. And our witnesses were bank tellers and bank managers. And they kept having trouble identifying these two women. We had a big similar acts issue where we could put in evidence from the other states where they had -- these two women had done it in Delaware and Pennsylvania. But the witnesses had real trouble identifying the right ones, which one came to the teller, which one stayed back and so on. Anyway, we tried that. I remember Billy Murphy was on the other side and his godfather was a great gentleman from Delaware. And somehow we got to the finish, and they were both convicted. After which it turned out one of them was pregnant and sort of had a breakdown in jail and told her lawyer that she'd done it in three other states but had never set foot in the state nor had the other one. And so it says something about the validity of eyewitness testimony because our whole case was eyewitness testimony and yet they were all wrong. Neither of these women had ever set foot in the state and we had convicted two innocent people. We thought we can't let this go unredressed. And so we somehow, I forget how we did it, but undid the thing. But then they pled guilty in the other states. So in a larger sense, justice was done. They ended up with convictions, but not at our hands.

Dave: 00:36:12

And that was the case that you and Kramon tried together?

Andy: 00:36:15

Yeah, we did a number of cases together.

Dave: 00:36:18

So let's talk about your relationship with him. You met in the US Attorney's Office, both transplanted New Yorkers. My sense is that you complemented each other in maybe different ways.

Andy: 00:36:35

I think we did. Jim was more opinionated, less given to compromise, less likely to forgive some fault in somebody else that he thought was serious. I would try to emphasize the other traits that the person might have that made him or her okay. He was fair, but he was judgmental, and he was very opinionated. He didn't really tolerate well people that weren't as smart as he and I think I was frankly just basically much more easy-going and maybe required less of other human beings than he thought. Part of his problem was that he was so smart that he couldn't understand and worked so hard and why other people weren't as smart and didn't work as hard and weren't such a perfectionist. He was a perfectionist when it came to detail, when it came to writing and articulating thoughts and he didn't forgive sloppiness easily. I was much more willing to and just didn't set as high a standard for my fellow man maybe, as he did.

Dave: 00:37:52

So how did the idea of starting a law firm together come about?

Andy: 00:37:57

I don't know who hatched it, but we had talked about it off and on a little bit while we were both at the US Attorney's Office. And then I left before he did and worked for Norm Ramsey at Semmes, Bowen & Semmes. Norm was a great guy. And he was, like, known as the Maryland state trial lawyer. The top dog. He was a great guy as well. Subsequently became a federal judge. So I was working with him and liking it a lot better than I'd like the big firm in New York because I was getting in court and Jim and his wife, and I and my wife continued to see each other socially a lot. We were going out to dinner all the time. And so we just kept talking about it casually, off and on. Then somewhere along the line he said he'd gone up to West Hampton Beach where he had a house and where he lived until he recently passed away. And he said he was walking on the beach thinking about it, and he decided we had to do it and it was going to be a successful firm. So I said, "Great, we'll do that." And I gave notice to the firm I was working for. They were very nice about it. In fact, sent me cases and sent him cases. And they had a big admiralty practice, among other things. And so there's a lot of environmental issues that came from that maritime kind of practice because of pollution problems in the bay. And they would represent the big company but somebody different had to represent the officer or whoever it was, and Jim would get those referrals. So we started up our own little firm. Decided we could do it. My attitude was, look, if it doesn't work out, I'll go back to a big firm, get back on the escalator, and no problem. They don't kill you if you don't succeed.

Dave: 00:39:45

So there was no trepidation about leaving Semmes and starting your own firm.

Andy: 00:39:52

I think I knew we'd be successful. I think he did too.

Dave: 00:39:56

Okay, so let's just talk about the nuts and bolts. Where did you get the money to start?

Andy: 00:40:00

We didn't have much money. I don't remember exactly how much he had. Didn't have much more than I did. And I had $6,000. That was it. And this house we'd just bought, which had a big mortgage on it so I remember I put 4,000 of the six into the firm account. He put the same amount in. And we figured our nut, as they say, our monthly expense was about $2,000. So for secretarial, insurance, books, whatever, phone. And so we put a few thousand dollars in a bank account and started up and just hoped that work would come in soon.

Dave: 00:40:43

So did you have anybody giving you business advice or helping you, guiding you in this enterprise?

Andy: 00:40:55

Yeah, we did. We had a lot of friends who wished us well, but I think were doubtful that we'd really make good. But my friend, one of my two best friends from law school, Steve Gillers had left Paul, Weiss, one of probably then considered the best big firm in New York and started his own one-man shop. And he'd promptly written a book about it called "I'd Rather Do It Myself." And so we went up to see Steve. He said, "It's not nuclear physics. You'll be able to figure this out." And told us how he did it, showed us how the escrow account works and so on. And then we talked to a lot of people in Maryland that we knew that we'd come to know through the US Attorney's Office, or in my case from working at Semmes. And some people promised they'd send us work and others were just generally encouraging. And we met with a lot of them and many of them were very helpful. There were a couple that you could tell didn't want us to go into business. I think they were jealous or worried we'd take over part of the action or something. But almost everybody was very supportive. And the one that really just spent a lot of time with us was this criminal defense lawyer, Harold Glaser, who was a real character, a big cigar-smoking hefty guy who talked with a hoarse voice and represented all kinds of people. And he introduced us to his, he had all these friends out there in the business community and he was going to get us cut rate deals on things and he did. He took us to this furniture guy and the insurance guy and anything we needed, and I think he really was a big help to us.

Dave: 00:42:45

Why do you think he did that?

Andy: 00:42:46

I think he was just a nice guy and he gave us advice. He told us even if we got no money at all you got to look like a million bucks and you should wear rings like he had. He showed us his rings and had these sharkskin suits and he said, "Even if you're dead broke, you got to look good." And so we nodded. We weren't fully enthusiastic, but he meant well. And he passed away quite a while ago and there were other people like him who were very helpful.

Dave: 00:43:18

So, when did the phone start to ring for you and Jim?

Andy: 00:43:22

You know, I think early on I ended up with cases coming to me from witnesses that I'd had in my criminal cases and particularly one guy who had been born in Greece and didn't speak very good English. He had been a witness for me. And his brother just had a big car accident in which his brother's son, who was 17, had been killed. And he was this all-star kid. And so within almost no time at all, we had a wrongful death case with clear liability, with insurance. And that was for us, it was like striking gold. We got an excellent settlement for the client, but it was also a fee larger than we imagined would come our way for years. And then we represented a lot of other people. Lawyers would, I think, at the big firms, they'd send us clients when they had a conflict, or would have had a conflict representing that person and the big client. And they knew we wouldn't try to take the client or do anything like that. So they felt safe with us. And they thought, particularly in a white-collar criminal area, there were very few lawyers out there doing that. Norm Ramsey did, Arnie Weiner, and then it started running thin after that. So there was a wide-open field for white-collar criminal defense. We did a lot of that, tax cases and related things.

Dave: 00:44:58

Do any cases stand out, the white-collar cases you handled in the early days?

Andy: 00:45:04

In the early days I had a big bribery trial for an FDA doctor and a congressman. The congressman was trying to get certain legislation passed, and my client, the FDA doctor, an Indian guy, very sweet guy, was supposedly getting bribes to help pass this legislation. That was a big one, because it had national ramifications about the drug DMSO and this congressman who was promoting it. And that came out well. Probably the case that got the most publicity early on, and it was early on when a probation officer from Baltimore County for the circuit court that came to me and asked if we would represent the probation department, because the judges had ordered that there be a gag on their right to discuss matters of concern about how the court was operating. And I remember they had in particular a concern about what the probation officers said about the judges seeming to hire family members and preferring family members over other competent people. And the judges apparently got sick of the probation officers doing this talking and calling the court's reputation into question, and so gagged them. And it struck me and Jim that this would be a violation of civil rights, violation of the First Amendment. So we drafted a complaint, filed it in federal court, and one of my friends from Semmes, Bowen & Semmes called me and asked me if I'd lost my mind, because these were the judges where we'd be probably handling half our cases out in Baltimore County.

Dave: 00:46:57

So, okay, let's talk about this. You open up a brand-new firm. You're looking for work, and you decide that, you and Jim both decide that it would be a good idea to sue the judges of the circuit for Baltimore County.

Andy: 00:47:11

I think there was a method to our madness. I thought, we're going to win, and when we do, they'll be very nice to us because there's no way that they could retaliate against us after that, or they have another problem. We brought it and tried it in front of a federal judge and won and all of a sudden, we were sort of temporarily folk heroes for having bravely taken on this matter. And I remember after that, going out and having a case in a crowded Baltimore County courtroom, where the judge could take the cases in whatever order he wanted. And the judge, who was one of the judges I cross-examined about some of these issues, called me up to the bench and beckoned us. And he told me that he respected the way we'd handled things, thought we'd done an excellent job and was going to take my case first. So I thought, "What a class guy."

Dave: 00:48:16

And then did he rule against you?

Andy: 00:48:17

No. I don't remember what the bottom line was, but it didn't produce any permanent harm. I think we got lucky.

Dave: 00:48:26

Yeah. All right, well, I want to talk to you about some other notable cases that you've been involved in or handled over the years. And there are a few of them, some of them really do stand out and to set the stage. In 2010, the DC, Maryland and Virginia area was terrorized by the DC sniper. Later, it was revealed that there were actually two people -- there wasn't just one sniper -- John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. Seventeen people were killed over the course of a ten-month killing spree and the area at that time was basically under siege. Eventually, the two men were apprehended. Lee Boyd Malvo was 17 years old, and I believe, Federal Judge Catherine Blake appointed. . .

Andy: 00:49:21

Yes. They called me over, they being two or three federal judges, and said they needed counsel and a guardian ad litem to be sort of the parent for court purposes, and asked me which. I think they asked me the option. I said I'll be the guardian ad litem and pitched them on representing him as well. And then Josh Treem was counsel technically. And so the two of us represented Mr. Malvo. And yes, that was a big deal. I don't think today people that weren't around then have a sense of it. But fear was gripping the state. People were terrified, just standing at a gas pump, pumping gas into their car, because a couple of people had been shot doing that. And the sniping was happening at odd places. It wasn't all in one focused, in one little location. So everybody in Virginia, Maryland, DC was scared to death. So anyway, when the court asked if I would be his guardian ad litem or lawyer, I said, "Yeah, sure." And we proceeded from there. And I remember my wife called my then secretary Jane and said, "Aren't you glad that the snipers are finally caught and they're off the street?" And Jane said, "Yes, but you're not going to be too happy. Andy's representing one of them." So anyway, the case never went to trial in Maryland because Virginia somehow got hold of him, brought him back into Virginia, and I guess he pled guilty ultimately there. His case, I think, is still active in that he's trying to get a sentence reduction, I believe. But at the sentence that he was subject to was, I believe, a Virginia sentence and not Maryland.

Dave: 00:51:17

How did that make you feel when you got that phone call to represent, really, at the time, probably the most notorious criminal defendant? Were there any reservations about doing that?

Andy: 00:51:31

No. If the federal courts ask me, and others, to do certain things over the course of time and I feel it's my obligation to cooperate and to accept any assignments they might ask me to take on. And I think most lawyers would, most of my friends would do the same thing.

Dave: 00:51:58

I'm going to go forward a few more years. In 2015, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American man, was arrested in Baltimore City. And at some point, between the arrest and his transportation in a police van, Mr. Gray died while he was in police custody. Riots ensued in Baltimore City. During protests surrounding Mr. Gray's death, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that the six police officers involved, including the driver of the van, would be indicted. And the allegation was that the police officer driving the van gave Mr. Gray what's known as a rough ride that somehow resulted in his death. And you represented the van driver.

Andy: 00:52:49

Right.

Dave: 00:52:50

And after a lengthy trial, your client was acquitted, and so were the other five officers, I believe.

Andy: 00:52:57

Well, only three of the six. There were six officers, and three of the six went to trial. And after three not guilty verdicts, the state gave up and dismissed on the other three. Never did try them.

Dave: 00:53:08

And what was that experience like?

Andy: 00:53:10

Well, it was challenging and fun. Because it really was a mystery that the state explained by attributing the worst motives to the police. Which were that they either roughed him up so much in the arrest that they broke his spine,or they'd given him the rough ride. Or there were some other theories. And nobody knew exactly what happened because he was alive in the van. In fact, he was alive even after they got him out of the van. But he never came back to life, really. The case was based largely on conclusions including opinions from the medical examiner's office that we had an interesting time with because they changed from one opinion to another. But ultimately at our trial, the state in its opening statement made clear its theory that it was going to use after a number of theories had been thrown around. And that was that he'd been given a rough ride by our client deliberately and he had suffered a fatal accident and injury during the course of that. But the problem with the state's case was that there was no evidence at all of a rough ride. And in opening statement, they showed a video clip of the alleged rough ride, and it showed our client driving at what appeared to be about 15 miles an hour and making the mildest turn to the right. That was supposed to be the rough ride, which struck me as absurd and in our case, the driver was the only one, I think, charged with murder. He was charged with second degree murder and a bunch of other more minor violations, six others, I think. And so my concern was that the judge might compromise and convict him of one of the lesser things somehow. And that was my main concern. I didn't see how they could convict him of murder. But Judge Williams was an absolute straight shooter and found that the state's evidence was inadequate and acquitted our client, as well as two others that went to trial.

Dave: 00:53:10

As a trial lawyer, I'm sure you're a competitive person. Most of us are. How did the victory feel on a personal level?

Andy: 00:55:52

It felt great because I thought justice was done and because I'd gotten to like our client a lot. He was a gentle soul. This was very unfair, I thought. So to this day, we don't know exactly how the injury was sustained. We do know that when Freddie Gray was initially arrested and put in the van, he was violently gyrating all around within the van and banging up against the walls of it and so on. So it certainly is quite possible that he injured himself, for example, maybe banging his head against the wall, trying to express his displeasure and broke his neck. Nobody knows. But assuming that having to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt that means something, the right result was reached here.

Dave: 00:56:46

I want to ask you about a story that I heard, and I'll set the stage. I want you to tell it, of a businessman you represented, a property owner who was accused and charged with federal crime involving setting fire to his own property in order to collect insurance. Do you know what case I'm talking about?

Andy: 00:57:15

Yeah. Calling him a businessman might be an exaggeration.

Dave: 00:57:22

We're not going to name names.

Andy: 00:57:23

I had developed a sort of coterie of clients within Baltimore's Greek community and this was one such person. I forget his name, so no worries about identifying him. And he'd been accused of burning a place down to get the insurance proceeds. So he was charged with that. And there was considerable evidence that that might well be the case, but there was also evidence going the other way. I forget what it was and so I represented him at trial before Federal District Judge Stanley Blair, who was a serious conservative judge. Nice guy, but rather severe when it came to criminal cases and really severe when it came to sentencing. So I thought I needed to engender some sympathy with the jury on top of the logical argument. So I had his niece and nephew sit in the front row, a little boy and a little girl. And I didn't introduce them one way or the other. It was up to the jury to infer whether those were his kids or what. But they sat there quietly, they were very well behaved. And we tried the case and the jury acquitted him. Judge Blair, after the jury left said, "Mr. name unstated the jury has acquitted you, sir. You're free to go. Don't do it again." And my clients started saying, "I promise, Judge, I will not do it again. I will never do it again." And out we walked. So, that was a little bit "You Better Call Saul" I suppose. But he was a nice guy and he certainly didn't deserve to do federal time.

Dave: 00:59:23

Have you thought about what you would, maybe we touched on this at the beginning, but what you would have done professionally had you not turned to the law, become a lawyer? Would it have been writing?

Andy: 00:59:36

No not ultimately. It's hard to make a living doing that. Who knows, maybe, I'd have gone to medical school if I could have brought myself to take the science courses you had to take, which I guess I could have. I like to help people and I would have been very happy helping them medically or as a psychologist or psychiatrist. That might have been something I came to ultimately know, now that I know what being a business person or an investment guy involves. If I'd known that then I might have considered going to business school. But I didn't know that then. I didn't think I wanted to be in some dry business that a lot of my friends went into.

Dave: 01:00:30

So you mentioned potentially being a psychologist or psychiatrist. I think you would have been good at that, actually.

Andy: 01:00:38

Yeah, I think so too. I'm pretty good at understanding people, what motivates them and what makes them tick and be able to discuss with them what their issues are without being judgmental.

Dave: 01:00:53

Yeah. So my impression of you, having worked with you for number of years, is that empathy and maybe redemption sort of is a big part of your belief system, and you're willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. Is that something you think about when you're counseling clients who have been, in many cases, accused of doing very bad things?

Andy: 01:01:26

Well, I don't think about it in the sense that I'm not trying to intentionally be empathetic or be understanding of other human beings' weaknesses or faults, but it comes natural to me. I'm just not a very judgmental person. I don't think any of us is perfect. I don't expect perfection of other people. And if someone has done something that's really bad usually it's not just that they chose to. There's usually some background to it that at least helps explain it. And that should be brought into the equation when determining what to do with such a person.

Dave: 01:02:11

One of the gifts that I've observed that I think you have naturally – that doesn't seem like something you've ever had to work for -- I can be wrong about that -- but it is the ability to take somebody's very difficult circumstances, a person who is accused of doing something very bad and explaining to a court or a jury what was going on, why the person did it, and why it was a departure from something that they may never have done under different circumstances. And I've seen you tell judges that even though what the defense that was accused of doing sounds really bad, it actually isn't quite that bad. And you've gotten amazing results doing that. How did that come to you?

Andy: 01:03:23

Well, I don't think it's a strategy that I've adopted. I think it's just the way I see other human beings. I mean, I think I'm pretty good at seeing the whole picture. Maybe some people would probably say, "You're naive. You're just ignoring this horrible fault or this horrible act the person committed." But that's just me. I mean, I tend to look at the whole human being and that person's world in terms of trying to explain for myself and to others why the person did something that we probably could all agree was a bad thing to do. So, as a lawyer, I've never been a believer in going through a checklist of things or

trying to approach it like it's a mathematical thing or a scientific thing. And I don't believe lawyers that tell you, you always have to do this, you should never do that. I don't think there are many such situations where it's always or never. I think being a lawyer, you've got to roll with the punches and deal with the facts and circumstances that you confront. And you can't, for example, do canned discovery and just ask the routine same list of questions that they ask in every case. That doesn't make sense to me. I mean, you've got to figure out what the issues in the case are and then adjust your interrogatories and your entire discovery efforts to whatever those particular issues are and not try to do it in some standardized, packaged, across-the-board way.

Dave: 01:04:57

Just yesterday, I was in a mediation with a retired judge and we were chatting during one of the breaks and he asked about you and said, you know, if I were ever in serious trouble, I would call Andy. How does that make you feel when you hear people talking about you?

Andy: 01:05:20

It's gratifying. I mean, as any human being would be, you're flattered by it. But, also it reinforces that most of what I'm doing is effective. And, I don't have to change things radically to be able to do a good job. I don't think I possess any supernatural perception skills, or I don't think I use any tools that nobody else uses a lot of it in figuring out a defense and working with the client and making the client feel comfortable is intuitive stuff. Intuition is, I think it's a form of intelligence, but it's not the kind of intelligence that emphasizes organization and checking off boxes and so on. It's more fluid than that.

Dave: 01:06:23

Well, again, I've watched you over the years and you're able to establish a very good working relationship with your clients. They trust you and invariably follow your advice. At least that's what it looks like to me. Usually there's an ability to relate to people and win them on your side and develop that trust. Is that just a natural?

Andy: 01:06:58

Yes. I don't think it's an acquired trait. I try to be honest and try to be sympathetic, but most of that comes natural to me and to most people. I do think there's certain propositions we all could agree with and that I abide by, too. If you're arguing something to a judge, don't make an argument that clearly is not a winning argument and that's going to call your credibility into question. I mean, you'd be a fool to do that because once the judge thinks that you're not being truthful and candid, your credibility is gone. The judge is not going to believe you on anything else. So I do think that part is judgment and just deciding what arguments are credible and which ones are foolish to make because they're just not credible. They may be cute and clever, but they're not credible.

Dave: 01:08:02

That's the name of the game, being credible to the judge, the jury. Sure.

Andy: 01:08:09

Yeah. One example, I tried a case a long time ago when I was court appointed to represent a young guy that had held up a bank in suburban Washington with a sawed-off shotgun and had taken the money and bought clothes and I remember, alligator loafers, and actually confessed at one point. Anyway, he changed his mind about it, and we went to trial in federal court before a jury. And the only defense that might possibly work was that he didn't have criminal intent because he clearly held up the bank. There were photographs of him with a shotgun. So the defense was sort of like the Patty Hearst defense that he committed the crime, but meant well. He was waiting for his accomplice to come in, who he knew the law enforcement authorities wanted to arrest, because that guy was a real bad guy. But the guy never came in. And so my client had to continue to go through with the robbery of the bank. Now, the bottom line was hung jury. Six women agreed with me, and the six men didn't. So I'm not sure why the six dissenters who wanted the not guilty verdict, why they thought he had confessed. But I think we had an explanation for that, too. And so there that's an example of using some logical judgment to present the only defense that might possibly work, instead of saying, "It's not him." Well, there are photographs of them, and people saw him. That's not going to work. But it was at least arguable that he really was waiting for his criminal friend to come in so that he could be arrested, and my guy could gain favor with the law enforcement authorities. So there was an example of it was certainly sort of a cockamamie defense, but it at least was a factually possible defense. And the guy, he never did, I don't think I'd put him on the stand, but he was a nice-looking young guy. And I think the six women just felt sorry for him, or felt that he was a nice young man, and his story was the truth.

Dave: 01:10:35

During the course of your career, you never decided to specialize in any one particular area of the law, and was that a decision that you purposely made, or you just like to do many different kinds of things?

Andy: 01:10:51

I like to do different things. I mean I to a certain extent specialize, not to the exclusion of other things, but I do an awful lot of professional liability and professional ethics work, and so there's certainly an emphasis there, but it's not to the exclusion of everything else. Now, I've done everything, because I think it's all doable by any lawyer that's willing to roll up their sleeves and read the statute and gather the facts and figure things out. I don't think the profession, in that sense, is that difficult. I'm not saying you could be a great estate tax planner, when you haven't spent a lot of time doing that. But for most, for litigators, I think a good litigator can litigate any case under the sun. You just have to learn the subject matter, -- usually that's not an endless process – and then apply your skills on behalf of the client.

Dave: 01:11:55

Is that what you find gratifying in the practice of law? You're learning new areas of law or working with different clients in different industries or businesses?

Andy: 01:12:05

Well, yeah, it's both. I really do like learning new areas, and they come up all the time still. And I also like the relationships with the clients in these different areas. It's a big part of what I like about being a lawyer is the relationships and life, at least the enjoyability of life, is largely based on relationships. If you have a lot of friends, good family, good clients, life is a lot more fun than if you don't.

Dave: 01:12:36

I want to get your thoughts on, I guess, practice pointers or reflections that you've had over the course of your career. What practice pointers do you have for younger attorneys who are confronted with dealing with difficult clients or difficult lawyers on the other side?

Andy: 01:13:04

Well, with difficult lawyers, I think the best thing you can do is be candid with them and be a bit of a philosopher. Even if you're a young lawyer and say, "We're in the same business, handling a case like this can be a pleasure or horrible. Why don't we try to be nice and civil with each other and still vigorously represent our clients? And we'll both enjoy this a lot more." Most people will come around to that. Sometimes people just get heated up and lose track of how they're acting. That's easier to do if you're an older lawyer who's been around for a long time. You have certain credibility, and the boundaries are broader in terms of what you can say to another lawyer to try to make the relationship a more appropriately professional one with clients. If I have a client that wants to do something that's a very bad idea, if it's something fraudulent, or I tell them, "You can't do it, period. I won't be your lawyer if you do." But if it's just stupid or it's a bad idea, I just work on them until they at least understand what I'm saying and what the risks are of proceeding in this way. And I've even on a couple of occasions, rarely, but said, "I'm going to write you a letter setting forth the things I've just said and explaining again in writing, because I want you to read it and think about it -- setting forth in writing why what you're suggesting is a bad idea for you. It won't affect me except to the extent that I care about you, but it's going to affect you, and it's not good." Usually people come around, particularly if you have credibility and if they trust you, which usually and hopefully is the relationship I have with my clients. I mean, they'll listen to me. I have to remind them that I'm trying to do what's in your best interest. It's not going to affect me personally, except to the extent that I'll be unhappy you didn't listen.

Dave: 01:15:14

I'm sure at this point in your career that's not the case but early on, did you think about "How am I going to get work? What are the things I can do in order to attract clients and get clients?" What are some of those things you can pass along to the younger lawyers to help them build a business?

Andy: 01:15:36

Well, letting the world know the areas that you're experienced in is helpful. And you can do that in a number of ways. Early on, Jim and I both would make presentations at legal educational seminars and programs. And for example, I remember one time my job was to present for like two hours all the federal rules as sort of a primer for other lawyers. So I went over every rule like a machine gun fire style. But it was useful. A lot of people said they didn't realize there was such a rule and so on. So we presented things like that. We were constantly out at meetings of lawyers and local businesspeople. And at those occasions, we would talk with all these people, let them know we're around, let them know how the firm is doing, and let them know what kind of cases we handle. And other lawyers, if they think that you love what you're doing and you're committed to it, they'll refer things to you because they figure correctly that you really want clients and you really want to do a good job, and you love this stuff. You're not a lawyer who's doing this under duress. You really have bought into it. And so I think other lawyers would sense our enthusiasm. I remember I went to one state bar board of governors meeting at the western part of the state and came back with two federal cases. And really, it was just the result of letting people know that Jim and I handle these things, and we love doing it. And if you ever need us, you give us a call.

Dave: 01:17:20

What do you believe are the essential qualities or characteristics for being an exceptional lawyer?

Andy: 01:17:27

Well, you have to be intelligent. But more important, you have to have good judgment. You have to be ethical. Obviously, if you're dishonest, you're going to have problems. But you have to be ethical. You have to be reasonably intelligent. More importantly, you have to have good judgment. And in certain areas of the law, not, for example, being a tax planner or an estate planner, but being a litigator or trial lawyer, you have to have pretty good intuition and be able to figure out what questions you can safely ask next on cross examination to get the answer that's helpful instead of one that's going to hurt you. As to intuition, you either have it or you don't. And for trial lawyers, again, as distinguished from deal people, you really have to have intuition, you have to have credibility and you have to be able to sense how people are motivated and what they are going to want to say in response to a question. But a lot of it is just basically a lot of preparation. You can't be a really good lawyer in any field of law unless you are willing to do the work and to nail things down carefully. And if you really don't care too much about the practice or about your clients you shouldn't be doing legal work because there's the old saying "The law is a jealous mistress" and the law certainly requires a lot of time. You can't get away with not doing the groundwork. You've got to know the facts, whether it's a deal or whether it's trial work. You have to know the underlying facts; you have to spend the time learning them. You have to make calls to people that you may not feel like making calls to to interview them. There's a whole bunch of things that you may not want to do but you've got to do if you're going to do a good job on behalf of the client and you've got to care about your clients and the law and if you don't care, forget about it. I mean, if you don't start with the presumption that the lawyer really cares about doing the finest job possible there's no way that that person will succeed over time.

Dave: 01:20:00

Looking back, are there things that you feel that you worried too much about when you were a younger lawyer, or you didn't worry enough about? What would you tell your younger version if anything?

Andy: 01:20:18

I don't know that, I mean, I've enjoyed my career so much that I don't know that I would really change much. I might frankly substitute for the two years at a big Wall Street firm two years in the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan where one of my two best friends at law school went and I was still writing complicated legal memos and he was trying first-degree murder cases and I would rather have had his gig than mine. But on the other hand, working at a big Wall Street firm really does hone your legal writing and your analytical skills and teaches you a lot about business and business law which you certainly wouldn't get trying murder cases in Manhattan.

Dave: 01:21:11

Do you ever think about or take stock in what you and Jim built all those years ago and do you reflect on it? Are you proud about it?

Andy: 01:21:22

Yeah, I'm very proud about it and we didn't set out to become bigger, not at all. I think we thought it was just the two of us and maybe some younger lawyer and keep the overhead down and that's the way we'll go. But it was a gradual growth process. As more work came in, you end up needing help and then you hire people. And I'm very proud of the people we've hired over the years, most of whom are still here. We have great lawyers at the firm, and we've had other excellent lawyers who have passed through our doors. People who were first, second, third in their class at law school, worked here part time. Other prominent lawyers and judges have worked here for short or long periods of time. I mean, I don't know how many hundreds of people we've employed for some period of time here and added it to their experience base and helped move on to become whatever they became in life. So, yeah, I feel good that we've managed to do that.

Dave: 01:22:31

That seems like the perfect note to end this discussion. Thank you very much for spending some time with me and answering questions.

Andy: 01:22:39

It was great all right. It was a pleasure. Thanks, Dave.