Clean Hands

It transpired, on the cusp of partnership, that one of the lawyer’s junior associates arranged a meeting with a CEO of a tech startup and presented an irresistible synergy.* The startup was a match for a client, a deep-pocketed conglomerate on the lookout for an investment. A buy-out of the startup would rocket the client’s value on the market and establish the lawyer as the go-to man for equity financing, credit facilities, a corporate governance overhaul, an IPO, and produce corresponding billings. Such a catch would net him first partnership, then power dwarfing the law firm itself and finally propel him into an international spotlight to dine with kings and, undoubtedly, to become a king.

So it goes, he fired the junior, despite earlier promising to give full credit and compensation, citing a subpar quality of work. Upon protest, the lawyer invoked his list of contacts, promising a carrot of a job offer within weeks with one of his friends, whilst threatening with his stick a blacklist should a whiff of a complaint arise. Placated and cowed, the associate disappeared into the ether and was immediately forgotten. Indeed, when the lawyer received a follow-up email from the junior weeks later, he did not recognize the target of his abuse.

Meanwhile the CEO, on the hunt for investment, was fed a steady diet of salesmanship worthy of a Ferrari dealership. Such technology and IP, the lawyer said, must be protected with invulnerable patents and copyrights, without which the startup should sit in as much fear as optimism. Seduced by squash at the racquet club followed by a meeting in the large white room on the penthouse floor of the King Street office followed by lunch at Richmond Station, the CEO threw the lawyer some legal work to investigate what else could be protected. The lawyer put his associates to work combing through every nook and cranny of the technology, directing them to find any potential infringements of existing copyrights. One such was found with a former client.

It was easy work to run into the former client at Barberian’s on a Wednesday night, sitting at a favoured table, and, with a bottle of Château Smith Haut Lafitte in hand, the lawyer walked over and mentioned with surprise that no one had copied their technology, despite startups that looked ever-so-similar. It was a mere matter of days when the former client sued the CEO, citing copyright infringement, and the CEO came running to the lawyer.

There was, the lawyer said, only one way to escape, and that was to sell the company quickly and at a discount. As luck would have it he knew of a conglomerate that would swoop in to the rescue. Calling in a favour, and dodging a conflict of interest, the lawyer arranged the CEO to retain a friend of his, a former law-school buddy who needed work and had no expertise in the matter. The deal was done quickly and the CEO relieved, having escaped, or at least was so persuaded of, a millions-dollar liability. It was not until a few years later, when the technology was used in a popular app owned by the conglomerate, that the CEO realized who was played, and sued the lawyer’s friend for providing poor counsel.

When the lawyer was offered the managing partnership he turned it down. Instead he conspired with his friends (re-defined as those who could either work on his files or bring in clients) and left the firm to create his own. The firm, however, had become over-reliant on his rainmaking and was forced to close. At the final partners meeting when they asked him why, he stood up in the boardroom, paused, without a word went to the bathroom, neglected to wash his hands, returned to shake the hands of all the partners, and laughed. He would always, he said, keep them in mind should they need a place to land.

*This is fiction. Any resemblance to reality is accidental.