SHARK TANK: Greed, Politics, and the Collapse of Finley Kumble, One of America's Largest Law Firms

by Kim Isaac Eisler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 1990

Finley Kumble changed its names more often than Elizabeth Taylor during a 20-year campaign to become America's largest law firm. Eisler (senior editor of Legal Times) offers much frequently sordid detail on just how vaulting ambition landed the Manhattan-based juggernaut and its celebrity partners, not at the top, but in bankruptcy court. The architect of the ill-fated, cachet-free enterprise's rise and ruin was Steven Kumble, an attorney arguably more intent on empire building than practicing law. During the early 1970's, he began recruiting rainmakers, mainly out-of-office pols deemed able to attract big-time clients. By the time Finley Kumble collapsed at the start of 1988, such luminaries as Paul Laxalt (first friend of the Reagan Administration), Russell Long (former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee), and Robert Wagner (an ex-mayor of N.Y.C.) were on its megabuck payroll. In the meantime, Kumble was also raiding rivals for talent and opening or acquiring lavish new offices in over 20 more cities, including Dallas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, D.C. Though business-minded to a fault, Kumble never quite managed to gain control over either the firm's costs or the 700-odd lawyers on its far-flung staff. As a practical matter, the firm was living on borrowed time--and money--while many of its contentious mavericks went their own way, engaging in practices that reflected precious little credit on the spendthrift Finley Kumble's already gamy reputation and intriguing against one another. Unbeknownst to the schemers, mercenaries, and lesser fights, however, the overextended organization began experiencing severe financial difficulties as early as the mid-1980's. Finley Kumble's many. splendored woes did not escape the attention of Eisler's publisher (Steven Brill), whose bylined articles disclosing them did as much as anything to precipitate the crisis that put paid to the firm's turbulent existence. Steering well clear of conflicts of interest with his boss, Eisler offers a dirt-dishing case study on a sizable, albeit ramshackle, law firm that, in retrospect, was bound to self-destruct from the start.

Pub Date: March 19, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION