On lawyers, government spying, and the NYC garment industry

*First appeared in the July 11, 2013 edition of the Laurel Chronicle

When I read a bio on Glenn Greenwald, the columnist and lawyer who most recently achieved international fame (or infamy, depending on your perspective) for his role in revealing the government’s spying on law-abiding Americans, I couldn’t help but wonder: Did the New York garment industry lead to all of this?

Let me explain.

Greenwald’s bio, in short: He was a Constitutional and civil rights litigator and has authored several New York Times bestselling books. He formerly wrote for Salon and currently writes for that paper across the pond, The Guardian. By all accounts, he’s an eccentric yet highly capable individual who often finds himself at odds with both sides of the political aisle.

What really caught my eye was the high-powered law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, & Katz, where Greenwald began his litigation career. WLR&K is one of the most prestigious merger and acquisition firms in the nation where getting hired is a “small miracle.” Its website boldly declares: “We handle some of the largest, most complex and demanding transactions in the United States and around the world…We are thought leaders.”

To understand the culture of this law firm, we must go back – way back – to the New York garment industry…that is, if we give any credence to sociologist and author Malcolm Gladwell’s theory on success.

In his national bestseller Outliers, Gladwell argues that an individual’s success is not only tied to personal aptitude and drive, but also to external factors such as history, community, and opportunity. In one chapter, he focuses on how top law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, & Katz was founded through a combination of unlikely factors.

First, the partners were Jewish, meaning they weren’t considered hirable by the old-line Wall Street firms in the 50s. Often boxed out because of their “antecedents,” Jewish lawyers had to stick together and take whatever legal work the “respectable” corporate firms didn’t want. Turns out, what the old-line firms didn’t want was litigation work, particularly hostile corporate takeovers. That left only one option: firms like WLR&K.

Second, the partners enjoyed a bit of demographic luck, having been born during the “demographic trough” of the 1930s. The economic hardship of the Depression meant fewer families were having children, and the resulting generation was significantly smaller. This meant our four founding partners enjoyed smaller class sizes through grade school, which promoted their educational growth, and highly qualified teachers, since teaching was considered a high-status career in a post-Depression America.

Finally, the garment industry provided a way for New York Jewish families to make a living while honing business skills. Looking way, way back, European Jews had for centuries clustered in cities and took up urban trades and professions. The most prevalent of these lay in the clothing trade – a skill Jewish immigrants brought to the American land of opportunity.

From the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century, New York’s most economically vibrant industry was the garment trade, driven in large part by the Jewish communities. The industry provided a modest living and another benefit: It was, as Gladwell says, “explicitly entrepreneurial.” Jewish clothing makers were learning market research, manufacturing, and negotiation techniques.

You won’t be surprised to learn, then, that our founding partners grew up in households built on the garment industry: Wachtell’s dad was in the ladies’ undergarment business; Lipton’s father was a manger in a factory; Rosen’s father was a presser in Manhattan’s garment district; and Katz’s grandfather did sewing piecework out of his house. The entrepreneurial skills of the garment industry helped these young legal minds develop a wildly successful law practice.

Fast forward to 2013, when former WLR&K lawyer Glenn Greenwald drops a bombshell on the nation – nay, the world – by breaking the year’s most important story: The U.S. government is spying on citizens by collecting phone and internet records, emails, and other forms of communications…regardless of whether we Americans are suspected of any wrongdoing.

Greenwald broke the story because he gained the confidence of Edward Snowden, a former U.S. defense contractor who read Greenwald’s work and understood his passion for liberty. Snowden’s familiarity with Greenwald was made possible by outlets like Salon and The Guardian, which gave him a worldwide audience. These news outlets hired Greenwald after reading his blog entries on the legality of government spying – an area where Greenwald had gained expertise through litigating cases at a law firm he founded. Greenwald was able to found his own practice after learning the legal tricks of the trade at WLR&K, a firm which, as we’ve learned, owes its very existence in no small part to NYC’s garment industry.

As a real-life “outlier,” Greenwald’s life tracks nicely with Gladwell’s theory on success – the measure of which is subjective, of course. But I’m betting Greenwald’s gold standard is to have citizens call into question the proper role of the government in the areas of national security and preservation of personal liberties.

In that case, I guess I’m a Greenwald success story.


NOTE: Major h/t to Malcolm Gladwell, whose writing made this column possible. Read more about him. Or, read more about his book, Outliers.