From Left: Ted Olson and David Boies with their clients, Sandra Stier and Kristin Perry (Photo by Gabriela Hasbun)
Folse, Neal Manne, Bill Carmody, Vineet Bhatia, Geoffrey Harrison, Max Tribble, Jacob Buchdahl – they don’t want to do well if their clients don’t. Susman has preached and lived that mantra for years, and pound-for-pound his firm can make the message resonate for decades to come. “The fact this firm turned out to be so successful as a business is really an incredible tribute to Steve,” says Folse. “He made so many personal sacrifices over the years so the firm would succeed, and so the people within it would succeed personally.” Susman and Lee Godfrey basically worked like mad dogs for years to just keep the doors open. And though Susman himself has done fabulously well, it’s because he was far more selfless than selfish, Folse says. “He wanted all of us to feel a sense of ownership in what he was trying to do, as opposed to us working like slaves and him making a lot.” From the beginning and to this day, Susman reportedly takes out less in client attribution – what a lawyer takes home at the end of the year – than almost any other partner. You can do well by doing good.
W
hich leads to David Boies. He’s epic.
Yes, he is written about quite a lot. And yes, he is famous. But his legend substantially predates the era of being famous because you are famous. He earned it. He was a partner at the nation’s quint-
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LAWDRAGON 500 ISSUE 16 | WWW.LAWDRAGON.COM
essential power firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, for 37 years, starting his second act at his own firm at the age of 57. He is a great lawyer, with a fiendish mind inhabited by a savant, an artist, a disciple of Sun Tzu and a very cool guy who likes to play poker and drink good wine. His range of impact is unsurpassed: IBM, the U.S. against Microsoft, CBS in the Westmoreland case, Bush v. Gore, George Steinbrenner, AIG and Hank Greenberg, Napster, Sony Pictures, and, of course, marriage equality. That means, in short order, his work has helped define the terms of our technology, our business economy, the presidency, social justice and press freedoms. That’s the short list. He should be forever remembered for all of those battles, but none moreso than marriage equality. With Ted Olson, he laid the cornerstone of a revolution in public opinion in favor of gay marriage. Many soldiers and field generals won and lost battles, but it was the profile of Olson and Boies that electrified the discussion. Day after day in federal court in San Francisco, Boies, Olson and Ted Boutrous pounded away at the tent erected to justify discrimination, collapsing it to show not even a white elephant inside. The case made a speed track for 30 years of efforts throughout the country to win acceptance by the Supreme Court in Obergefell, argued by Douglas HallwardDriemeier and Mary Bonauto. Boies once noted that if there’s an exciting new play or happening, he will not have seen it. His life