Jones, Day, Reavis, & Pogue
When I started this article, I thought it was going to be pretty short, not much to write about other than how lucky I was to have worked at Jones Day, along with a few highlights. Then as I started writing, I realized there were some interesting moments and memories worth mentioning. I hope this article is not too long, and I will try to keep it to a minimum.
Background:
Jones Day Reavis & Pogue, now known as Jones Day, is one of the most prominent law firms in the United States and the world, with origins dating back to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1893. Over the decades, the firm expanded from a regional practice into a major national and international legal institution, known for sophisticated corporate representation, complex litigation, appellate work, mergers and acquisitions, and high-stakes legal matters involving global business clients.
By the late twentieth century, Jones Day had developed a reputation as an elite and demanding firm, attracting highly credentialed attorneys and representing some of the largest and most influential corporations in the world. Its Los Angeles office opened in 1973, and during the Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue era, the firm was already firmly established as a major presence in American corporate law and international law. Locations include United States, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Jones Day Website
First Exposure to Law
When I was in college, I took a business law class. This was my first formal entry into contract law and business law. I found this subject matter to be very intriguing. I was also surprised how quickly I liked this class and the study of law. I thought it was going to be just another credit requirement to fulfill, but once I started, I really enjoyed the discipline of law and how it explained so much about business. I then took a hard look at my goals and realized I wanted to become a paralegal. Shortly after, I enrolled to become a certified paralegal.
Getting Hired:
It was in April of 1986 when I was finishing my paralegal certification in Los Angeles. One of my class mates worked at Jones Day and advised I should apply. He said that Jones Day just started a very big case and were hiring paralegals. So with this, I thought yes and was able to get an interview. I drove to the Los Angeles offices and interviewed in person. At that time, I was living in the San Fernando Valley and driving into Los Angeles was a pain, but this was a great opportunity.
Once there, I got to meet the head of personnel and luckily everything went smoothly. After the interview was done, I drove home. As soon as I got home, I saw I had a voice mail message waiting. (Yes we used answering machines then. Cell phones were still a few decades away for consumers.) The message was from Jones Day’s head of personnel. They said I had the job, and if I would be able to drive back to their office today. I called and advised I was on my way. Now back again on the 101 freeway to the 405 freeway, and into downtown LA.
Upon returning, we completed all the paperwork. They issued my employee documents, and parking pass. I was very happy. I recall starting my first day after my two week notice at the grocery store was finalized. Note, I was advised this was a temporary paralegal position, but I also knew this was an opportunity of a lifetime, to work at Jones Day. My goal was to prove myself during my temp status and hopefully be able to stay on permanently.
Later during my employment, I had to sign an acknowledgment regarding confidentiality and stock trading.
Acknowledgement Letter Directly to Mr. Pogue. Our head administrator, Roger, was a retired Marine. I remember he used to run everyday in downtown LA during his lunch. He was a tough intimidating guy, but fair.
The Los Angeles Offices:
I started working at the main Los Angeles offices located at 355 Grand Avenue Suite 3000. The buildings were referred to as the twin towers. Jones Day had three or four floors close to the top, and the view from the high rise was awesome.
On my first day I recall not even knowing how to use their copy machines, but I learned office work fast. It was sink or swim. To be fair, their copy machines were pretty advanced back then. You had to enter a sequence of employee and client codes before you could copy anything. Every photocopy was confidential and a billable event.
Working at Jones Day was such a great experience. I was working with the best lawyers in the country. Each day was a challenge, as their pace was so fast and there was no: “Could you please explain that again?” moments. After a few months I felt I could move in and out of each task much better and by that time, I had gotten to know a few of the associate lawyers and partners.
Jones Day Downtown Los Angeles Offices
I was working with about 15 other paralegals on a very big case. It was the beginning of the Jordache Jeans brothers vs the Guess Jeans brothers lawsuit in 1986. The Nakash’s versus the Marciano’s. We were tasked with reviewing thousands of documents, cataloging and writing a synopsis for each item. There were thousands and thousands of documents. Boxes of documents lined all the halls. This case had all the similar elements that the Gucci Movie had, except murder, I hope.
Here are a few open source references about the case:
Guess and Jordache Jeans Settle War Over Ownership
Book Synopsis: An Old World-style feud betwen two immigrant Sephardic Jewish families, makers of 1980s fashion jeans, is evocatively related by New York magazine columnist Byron ( The Fanciest Dive ). Blow by blow, he recounts the seven-year Jeans War (including accusations of tax and customs fraud) waged by the four Marciano brothers to recover the 50% interest in their Los Angeles-based Guess? company that they had unwisely sold in undervalued stock to the three Nakash brothers, founders of New York's Jordache denims. The convoluted drama, played on four continents by a cast worthy of a suspense novel, involved countless members of the judiciary--federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani among them--IRS agents and armies of lawyers and private eyes. In 1990, when asked why he had finally agreed to a settlement, one of the exhausted combatants observed that otherwise ``the fighting would have gone on forever."
Until writing this article, I never knew a book was ever written about the case. And yes, I just had to purchase a copy for my own!
Arriving at The Jones Day Offices:
Once you exited the elevators on the 30th floor of Jones Days’ main lobby, it was an immediate impression. I was told that they spent one million dollars on just the main lobby entrance decor.
One of the administration staff I got to know was a person in billing. One day I was asking her about my recorded billing hours as she was printing out monthly billing statements to one of our Fortune 500 clients. Remember this was in the 1980’s. For one month of attorney’s fees, for just one client, it was approximately $84,000. I could not believe it, it was crazy. In today’s dollars that is well over $200,000. But this firm was the one of the largest firms in the world and they had a ‘take no prisoner mentality’ when it came to litigation and winning cases.
On the lighter side of things, Fridays was a bit more relaxed. At the end of the day, they would have an open social in one of the main conference rooms for all the new lawyers, and everyone could drop in to say hello and have a drink. Also on Fridays, just outside the building in the main courtyard, there were restaurants serving casual outdoor food and drinks. It was a lot of fun.
Jones Day Downtown Offices Main Courtyard Area.
It was a great learning experience also. It was my first exposure to the high end white collar world. I learned a lot about working with and interacting with highly educated people. I also recognized how hard they worked to get to his moment in their life. Most were very nice and generous with their time.
I also went to one of the Christmas parties that Jones Day had put on. It was the fanciest party I had ever attended to date. There were huge engraved glass serving dishes that had mountains of food on each of them. I recall these glass dishes were as big as the tables they were seated upon. One dish had shrimp piled higher than I stood, it was crazy. It turned out to be a great party, and everyone appeared to be having a very nice time.
I recall one newer associate attorney who was one to two years in. He and I used to chat quite a bit. He was a very nice person. Unfortunately he had a bit too much to drink and unknowingly embarrassed himself pretty good that evening. The next Monday he was gone. I heard they transferred him to a different state regional office. Jones Day had an impressive reputation, and it did not surprise me when he was abruptly transferred, no goodbyes, nothing, just gone.
Tech in the 1980’s:
Jones Day had their entire computer system from Wang Computers. Right before one Christmas vacation, I found an option in the computer system that allowed me to edit the home screen for all of Jones Day computers, system wide. So that evening before leaving work, I put on the home screen “Merry Christmas” which then went out to every Jones Day computer, at least in the Los Angeles offices. (Disclaimer: this was not a hack. There was no manipulation of the software. This was a option, menu driven access, which existed in the system that allowed editing of the default home screens, for any user. The computer systems back then were very basic compared to today.)
To give perspective for this decade, below is a 1987 article about Jones Day starting to incorporate their new computer systems. It really sheds light on the mindset back then that everyone held for computers in the business world.
This is the actual article I saved from back then.
From Temp to Permanent:
At a certain point the Jordache Jeans vs Guess Jeans paralegal work was winding down. I was advised that my position would be ending soon, but that I could apply to stay on as a full time employee. I remember having to go through the interview and hiring process once again. This time it was bit more involved and challenging. The one person I was competing with was a recent college graduate and appeared to be very sharp. Luckily I got the position, in part, because they knew my paralegal work product, and had shown I could blend and work well with associate attorneys and partners.
So I finally became a permanent employee, just by the skin of my nose, and was very happy. I still worked out of the downtown offices but had a new assignment, that being working in the real estate section. Jones Day had some of the biggest real estate clients in the country. The real estate projects we were working on were multi-million dollar ventures, and on a massive scale.
One project I got to work on was the complete redevelopment of the downtown Hollywood district. This is when I felt like the bad guy. I had to revalue the balance of the downtown leases, then send out letters to the businesses regarding next steps. It was basically preparing several blocks of the Hollywood district area for a complete redevelopment. The good part was that there would be more jobs and a greater business environment, but with an upfront cost.
Another project, which was very enjoyable, was being the liaison for all new associate attorney hires. I had a welcome binder prepared for each new hire and was the point of contact for their on-boarding. It was very cool because this was a great vehicle to get to met the new associate attorneys. All new associates were from the top law schools, and hearing their stories of how they got to Jones Day was amazing to hear.
To note, back in the 1980’s and 1990’s Japan was the dominant economic force, as far as California real estate and business ventures were concerned. The Japanese were purchasing real estate and corporations like crazy. With this, Jones Day represented many Asian corporations, like Fuji Bank. We also had to learn proper etiquette if we met any Japanese clients, like how to greet and exchange business cards. You always hand your card to a client with both hands, and you always accept their business card with both hands, as a sign of respect.
One of Jones Days' main partners had his client, Fuji Bank, the 4th largest bank in the world at the time. He assigned a research project to me regarding a talk he was to give the Directors of Fuji Bank in Hawaii.
Back then Lexus Nexus online was limited. I recall doing this research the old school way, by walking from Jones Day to the downtown law library. Actually looking up relevant language in books, citing research and case law, which was sorted though the old style index cards. I checked out the books that had relevant information and then carried them several blocks, back to Jones Day. Then prepared the citations and references for the Partner to review for his talk. It actually turned out to be very cool. Working at Jones Day taught me how to do extensive research and properly cite case law, which helped me greatly when I became a law enforcement officer later in life.
Another cool project I got to work on was in environmental law. This a was still a fairly new area of law in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Jones Day had one the top environmental lawyers in the country at our LA offices. As background, in 1980 the Super Fund was created by the EPA for environmental cleanups. Also, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, things were pretty busy. It was amazing to see how fast millions of dollars was burned through the Superfund on big hazardous cleanups.
DOS Boat:
At this time I was just learning about online research. There were no online magazines, no online university research papers, and no graphical user interfaces (GUI) to access data. So having the ability to search any existing databases from around the world was still in it’s infancy.
Through Compuserv, I had access to a few of the major databases that existed at this time, at least for an end-user. Through these databases I was able to retrieve articles and documents from around the world which would have taken weeks or months to obtain in the past. The process was very archaic compared to today. But this was a new experience for me, and I was excited to be learning so much about technology and how corporations and big money works.
My actual Compuserv magazine subscription from 1988. The cover illustrates using online databases to find the needle in the hay stack. The articles and ads in this magazine are very nostalgic now.
Yes, this is how you had to change your password back then. Only a week to get your new password in the mail.
Robert Bork and The Federalist Society:
I can not leave out this next experience. I had the great fortune to work an extremely intelligent attorney, Dennis. He was a law school graduate from West Virginia Law School. He worked at the White House under Reagan before coming to Jones Day.
Dennis gave me this actual photo from when he in the justice department. He was seated on the White House Lawn during then, Vice President's Bush speech. This was before digital photos of course.
(Later in life I got to personally meet President H W Bush, which is for another story.)
Dennis was the attorney who complied the list of 10 Justices to be nominated to the Supreme Court. This was the list that President Reagan was given to select the next nominee. The Supreme Court Nominee that President Reagan selected from that list was Judge Robert Bork. I remember going with Dennis to UCLA one afternoon. I watched him debate UCLA’s law professor on why Bork was the best nominee. Looking back on this debate now, it was an amazing legal debate to watch live, especially from an historical perspective.
Dennis was also the LA Chapter President of the Federalist Society. Until then I never knew of the Federalist Society, but once I learned who they were and what they were about I immediately joined and then became his official assistant. My job was to help recruit law students, promote the Federalist Society, and a great perk was getting attend meetings with him in Los Angeles.
I got to attend two meetings with Dennis, which were two of the most amazing intellectual interactions I’ve ever had, to date. One was at the Jonathan Club, which is a very exclusive club in Los Angeles. We met and had dinner with the democratic version of the Federalist Society. It was a great exchange between these two organizations. The Jonathan Club
The next meeting was at the California Club. One of the most, if not thee most exclusive club for the wealthy and influential in Los Angeles. This place was so exclusive, they were the only club, at the time, that did not allow women past the fourth or fifth floor. The California Club
If there was ever a place that inspired the look and feel where John Wick goes to have a drink with other assassins, The California Club would have been that place. We we there in the evening. There were several rooms I got to visit, which were warm and darkly lit, with very unique fancy furnishings. There were lots of works of art and books which were aligned on the walls. Not many people were there, but the people that were there, looked like they definitely had something special about them.
Century City:
I had been working in the downtown offices for awhile now when Jones Day had just leased additional offices in Century City, on Avenue of the Stars. This was the latest and greatest new tower office space in the Los Angeles area. This building was new in architectural design and was just around the corner from a few major movie studios. Century City was were a lot of the business took place, for the movie Industry. It was an artsy area and there were a lot of cool places nearby.
I found out I was being transferred to the new Century City offices, which actually sounded pretty interesting. If I worked there, I would not have to drive into downtown LA, which was a big plus. I would also be working in a more hip part of town, and since it was a new building, it sounded like a nice change and hopefully, a lot of fun. The building was called Fox Plaza, and our new office address was 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 2100.
Fox Plaza in Century City.
Working in Century City was actually a lot more work than the downtown offices. It was very busy there. Maybe because it was a smaller office than downtown, and they had less attorneys working there? I do recall always being busy with very little down time.
Working there was also very cool of course, as it was right next to the Century City outdoor plaza where restaurants and a lots of other cool places were located, all within walking distance.
The Century City plaza actually had one of the last Playboy restaurants, still in operation. A few of us from the office went there one day for lunch, and it was actually a sad let down, in the sense that the restaurant looked old, and the food was not that good.
If you've read a couple of my blog articles, you may recall that in LA, there are always movies being filmed everyday, somewhere in town. So seeing an active film shoot is more of a pain regarding traffic, than being excited to see a film personalty. In LA you’re more likely to see a famous person in a restaurant or hanging out downtown, rather than on an actual film set.
With that said, since Fox Plaza was the newest building in LA at the time, it was used as a filming location more than once. I remember one day, trying to leave the building to the underground parking. We were stopped by the film crew because they were actively filming a scene. You can imagine, that leasing office space at Fox Plaza was very expensive and some of the business executives became very upset that anyone would dare waste their time due to filming.
One day, I remember seeing in the main lobby, a movie prop being staged. It was a small snack and magazine counter in the hallway where the elevators are located. I was so tempted to turn over one of the packs of gum when no one was looking, just to see if the upside down pack would make it in the movie release. This is why I thought it was entertaining to me at the time: films have a continuity director, and their job is make sure the set is exactly as it was, from one take to the next.
You never know the name of these movies when they are being filmed. Some get released, most do not. So when this particular film was taking place at our offices, I did not know the name of it, but I knew I would remember the film props if I saw it again in a movie.
Shortly after this, on one morning when I arrived to work, I remember seeing a lot of rubble in the main Plaza entrance. It looked like a bomb had gone off. It was definitely eye catching. By the end of the day though, all the rubble was completely gone and you would have never known that they were filming the night before.
I say all this because I later found out the name of the movie that was being filmed at Fox Plaza, or should I say, Nakatomi Plaza? Yes, I was working at the Nakatomi Plaza during the filming of the original Die Hard movie. That was so cool!
This is the candy and magazine movie prop that was in the hallway where the elevators were located. I remember walking by this movie prop a few times, after work.
Little was I to know that in about 10 years years, I would be hanging out with Bruce Willis and Demi Moore in their private club on New Years Eve. That’s for another story, Bruno.
We did have a little fun, from time to time. On this particular day, there was the annual conference for the California State Bar in Century City Plaza. We crashed the party activities and I got my folder souvenir-attorney picture.
This was me trying to be funny in the 80's.
Folder Insert: This photo was taken with an actual Polaroid camera.
Working at Jones Day opened my eyes to what is possible in the world. Seeing people being successful and wealthy is not only about how educated you are, but the mindset and imagination you also possess. I was so lucky to have been given the opportunity to work there and see how so few with pen and paper can impact so many people in the world.
As a note, I want to post something that was a personal highlight for me. Although this was so long ago, I feel this type of document is not an issue to post now, but I did removed some content to keep it generic.
A moment in time that helped me gain confidence working among so many intelligent people and friends.
There were so many Jones Day people that helped me grow in my professional life. Partners, associate lawyers, paralegals, and office staff who took time to share their experiences and give me advise on how to be successful. Learning how law firms operate, proper office decorum, and the high standards expected at Jones Day prepared me for what was to follow in the next chapters of my life.