After The First Few Years Of Their Term (ePub)

Joe Flom is the last living founder of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. He has a working corner on the top floor of the Condé Nast building in Manhattan. He is short and slightly hunchbacked. Big head, big ears with long earlobes, small blue eyes hidden behind oversized aviator-style glasses. He's quite skinny now, but in his glory days, he was very imposing. He was dizzy when he walked. He stood still as he thought. He mumbled as he talked, and by the time he walked down the halls of Skadden, Arps, conversations were reduced to silent whispers.

Flom grew up in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, right during the Great Depression. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father - Isadore was originally a union organizer in the garment industry, then switched to sewing shoulder pads for women's clothing. His mother took on handmade decorations to make at home. They are pitifully poor. When Joe was growing up, his family moved almost every year, because at that time, it was customary for landlords to give new tenants one month's rent free, which was very important to the Flom family.

Growing up, Flom enrolled in the prestigious Townsend Harris public high school, a school that in its forty years of existence had produced three Nobel laureates, six Pulitzer Prize winners, a United States Supreme Court justice Ky, not to mention George Gershwin and Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine. Flom was recruited into the school. Flom's mother gave him ten cents for breakfast every morning-three donuts, orange juice, and coffee at Nedick's. After school, Flom worked as a wheelbarrow pusher in the garment district. He spent two years studying night shifts at City School in upper Manhattan, worked hard all day to make ends meet, registered to join the army, completed his service and then applied to Harvard Law School.