Likelihood of Success

I knew him … pretty much.

Oct 25, 2009 Heart and spirit, Sisyphus

This was originally posted on Dean’s World on November 16, 2007 (there are comments there too). I’m reposting it because of the story I am linking to below.  They’re not the same; the details are significant in their differences, it would seem — but the lesson, for me, is one that is essentially identical:

This picture is from his v-card on my hard drive. I’d sent him an article of mutual interest earlier this year. I had worked with him, as an adversary in a real estate fraud case in federal court in Brooklyn. He had it all.

He was one of those people who was roughly my age — younger, damn it — regarding whom I used to say, “That guy has the career I was supposed to have.” He wasn’t just a high-earning partner in a top international firm. I saw the quality of his work: He really knew what he was doing. He had the confidence. The look. The credentials.This was one of the lawyers I was jealous of.

Not any more.

–

Now, this one (via @abajournal) — it happened last spring, but I had not heard the story:

He pulled his Jaguar into the garage at the law firm two blocks from the White House just before 5:30 and took the elevator up to the 11th floor.

Always an early riser, he enjoyed getting a jump on the news of the day and sharing it with friends and colleagues. His were often the first e-mails they received—a pitch to attend a Democratic fundraiser, a pat on the back for a well-written article, or his take on the latest from the U.S. Supreme Court.

But this particular Thursday morning something was different. Levy had cleared his calendar, coyly dodging the reason when he canceled lunch the day before with a longtime friend.

“He said something had come up, and that I’d be able to read about it in the papers,” the friend says.

“I thought he’d gotten a big case. I was happy for him.”

Levy, 59, was one of the most skilled appellate lawyers in the country. He was of counsel at the firm and chair of its Supreme Court and appellate advocacy practice. He had argued 16 times before the court and in January had posted a 9-0 victory in an em­ployee-benefits case for DuPont.

He was one of Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s classmates at Yale Law School. The future Supreme Court justice once house-sat for Levy when they worked together at the Justice Department—watching after the Levy family’s golden retriever. When another classmate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, ran for president, Levy knocked on doors in the middle of an Iowa winter on her behalf.

Relentlessly upbeat, if a little uptight, he was passionate and enthusiastic about even the most arcane aspects of the practice of law. An impeccable dresser, he always looked like he was ready to go to court.

If he was distressed with the arc of his career, even his closest professional colleagues had no inkling—and they certainly had no idea that he would sit down in his office chair the morning of April 30 and, with a .38-caliber handgun, fire a bullet into the right side of his head.

Mark Levy had a loving family. He seemed financially secure. He had earned the admiration and respect of his peers.

What Levy did not have, however, was a job.

Just days before he killed himself, he found out that he was being let go by Kilpatrick in a round of cost-cutting driven by the unraveling economy. He had been one of 24 lawyers nationwide laid off by the 500-lawyer firm.

Different career arc.  Different pain.  But both men I may well have wished I could switch places with in some way.

There but for the grace of God goes Ronald Coleman.  Literally.

Don’t get me wrong.  I knew someone who jumped off a bridge when he was told he was not making partner in a major law firm, too.  I was never afraid I would do that — just not that ambitious, not that way, anyhow.  I was never going “to kill myself” over that sort of thing, and that’s what I am grateful for:  Having the ability to know not to, despite an ego and a love of “the good things” that would have loved nothing more.

I didn’t know Mark Levy, but, yeah, I knew him, too.

UPDATE:  Similar thoughts from Carolyn Elefant.