Chaim, the following article directly relates to what I mentioned to you last month. The next time I see you, I plan on bringing the part of the article that's part of premium content of this website:
http://los-angeles-business-journal.vlex.com/vid/said-prominent-rocked-fly-sours-56469025 Los Angeles Business Journal
November 26, 2001
She said, he said, they said: prominent law firm rocked as charges fly after relationship between partners sours.
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SUMMARY
Greenberg Traurig attorney's Carol Perrin and Steve Goldberg
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CAROL Perrin says it all began one February evening over dinner with Steve Goldberg.
Perrin, at the time managing partner in the recently opened L.A. office of Greenberg Traurig LP, had been working with him for less than two months and was becoming uncomfortable over the attention he had been giving her.
Theirs had been an unusual relationship for some time: He was her divorce attorney, and had since become a partner at Greenberg. His house in the gated community of Bel Air Crest was across the street from hers. His two children were friends with her children.
Perrin suspected that Goldberg was interested in a romantic relationship, so she asked him one night to meet her at the now-defunct Italian hideaway Santo Pietro to clear the air. She wanted to tell him that she was dating again and asked him to leave her alone. "Our relationship was creeping me out," she recalls.
She says he didn't take it well.
"He just turned to me and in a normal tone said, 'You have no idea how evil I am and you have no idea how evil I can be,'" she remembers. "He said, 'I've never done anything evil to you, and I don't know that I can control myself."'
The next morning, Perrin claims, she found Goldberg in her office with several of the firm's partners. He had called an emergency meeting to question her management style.
"He said, 'Well, everybody has complaints, and we think it may get out of hand, and we want to talk to you about it,"' Perrin says.
What followed would rock the L.A. office of Miami-based Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation's fastest growing law firms that among other things is noted for representing then-candidate George W. Bush in the litigation following last year's presidential election.
There were accusations of billing fraud against Perrin, a months-long investigation conducted by Greenberg Chairman Larry Hoffman, unexpected hirings and promotions, Goldberg's ultimate resignation, and, as could be expected in a story involving lawyers, lots of litigation.
To this day, two questions linger:
Did Goldberg hold a personal grudge against Perrin?
Was Perrin as bad a manager as Goldberg claims?
Both tell very different stories. Goldberg claims that he and Perrin had a one-month "fling" before they formed Greenberg's L.A. office, and that it ended by mutual consent. He says he never even had dinner with Perrin that February evening, nor arranged an emergency meeting the next day. And he continues to believe the firm covered up months of over-billing in the thousands of dollars -- at least $20,000 a month.
Perrin flatly denies ever having a sexual relationship with Goldberg and defends her billing practices and management style, although in retrospect she recognizes why things got out of hand. "I didn't really get it," she concedes in a lengthy interview with the Business Journal, the first time she has spoken publicly about the matter. "I didn't take time to meet with the people I was working with and say, 'Hi, how are you, how's your daughter?"'
'Like caged animals'
Law firms are often not the best-managed businesses. Because they are formed as partnerships, where organizational lines of authority and profit participation are sometimes murky, infighting and recrimination are not unusual. Inflated egos don't help.
"The training lawyers receive and the skills they can bring to their legal practice ...are at odds with the reasoning and human interaction it takes to run a good firm," says Samuel Culbert, professor of management at UCLA's Anderson School and author of the new book, "Don't Kill the Bosses."
"A lot of attorneys work so intensively on cases -- sitting in an office, pouring through legal briefs and case law," he continues. "They're like caged animals and when they come out for air, they're often seen in the office as socially inappropriate."
But what happened at the L.A. office of Greenberg Traurig is extreme, even by law firm standards. It's also a lesson in what could happen when a fast-growing...
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