Biglaw, Lawyerly Lairs, Money, Real Estate

Lawyerly Lairs: It's Good To Be King A Biglaw Partner

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The miseries of life at a large law firm are regularly chronicled in these pages. But don’t forget: It’s a living. And if you make partner at a top firm, it’s a very, very good living.
From an anxious reader:

I’m a 2L about to start the whirlwind of OCI at my law school. So I’ve been following the recruiting threads, if not eagerly, at least with an acute sense of anticipation and dread for what life will be like after the honeymoon of next summer.

I’m left with an overriding question: What keeps people in these high-compensation, high-stress jobs? Is it costly court settlements to pay ex-spouses? Mob debts?

I guess it could just be the overwhelming urge to consume luxury goods, but I can’t comprehend someone making their lives hell for 60-80 hours a week just to buy a bag with a fancier pattern on it. Those who leave within three years make sense to me, but what about the tortured, hollow souls who soldier on?

We have a few responses. First, many law school graduates carry significant educational debt loads. By the time these debts are paid off, there are new financial needs: down payments, mortgages, tuition bills for the kids.
Second, some law firm associates — those who “soldier on,” in the words of this tipster — actually enjoy their work. The unhappy associate is a stereotype, and every stereotype has its exceptions. We know a number of Biglaw associates — and partners — who wake up each day excited about going into work.
Third, the lifestyle rewards of working at a big firm should not be reduced to “a bag with a fancier pattern on it.” They also include… nice real estate! Especially for those who snag the brass platinum ring of partnership.
Time for a Lawyerly Lairs post. In Lawyerly Lairs, we take you inside the luxurious abodes of prominent members of the legal profession.
Today we peek inside the multimillion-dollar apartment of Schulte Roth & Zabel partner Richard Presutti (pictured above, with his family). It was featured prominently last month in the New York Times.
Check it out — including floor plans — after the jump.


(Yes, this item is old. We meant to write it up a long time ago, but never got around to it. If this troubles you, we apologize.)
The “Most E-mailed List” of the New York Times tends to be dominated by yuppie-lifestyle-oriented articles. Like this one, entitled In Search of the Elusive Three-Bedroom:

BUYERS looking for apartments with three or more bedrooms in New York City should brace themselves.

It could be a long, hard search, and even vast sums of money won’t necessarily make it easier.

The elusiveness of these large apartments is hitting people with budgets of, say, $8 million just as hard as buyers with only $2 million to spend. And the fights for the apartments that are available are being won or lost in bidding wars.

So who can afford such delicious digs? Biglaw partners, that’s who:

Leticia and Rick Presutti got lucky. They looked at more than 40 apartments over six months last year before deciding to buy a Classic 7 on Madison Avenue for just under the $2.5 million asking price.

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Rick Presutti is a partner at Schulte Roth & Zabel, which last year had profits per partner of $2.16 million. He specializes in private equity, one of the hottest practice areas these days, and counts Cerberus Capital Management as one of his major clients.
So is a $2.5 million apartment slumming it for the Presutti family? Actually, no. They paid two and a half million for a fixer-upper, which they’re renovating. The apartment that they’ll eventually be living in will be worth far more than that:

The 2,000-square-foot apartment they ended up buying was actually the first apartment they saw, but it needed a gut renovation, which apparently was scaring off other buyers.

“You would think that with so many apartments in New York, there would be much more out there,” Mr. Presutti said. “But the more we looked, the more we kept coming back to this one.”

Their broker, Fern Hammond, a senior vice president at Halstead Property, said that the Presuttis’ six-month search for a Classic 7 — a three-bedroom apartment with a maid’s room and a living room, dining room and kitchen — would be impossible in the current market.

She explained that last February, when the Presuttis closed their deal, was just about the time that the city’s sluggish real estate market began to recover and the market for large apartments turned white-hot. “That’s when the market tightened like a vise, and the prices just shot up,” she said, adding that the same apartment would now sell for close to $3 million.

When the renovation is complete, the Presuttis’ pad will be palatial. Here are the mouthwatering, real-estate-porn details:

As they watch the progress on their renovation, which includes a new kitchen, four new bathrooms and refinished floors and woodwork throughout the apartment, the Presuttis look forward to moving into an apartment they have custom-designed.

Awesome. Once the apartment is done, maybe the Presuttis’ can have a few summer associates over for dinner.
We have just one suggestion for them. Be sure to put locks on the bathroom doors!
As promised, here’s the floor plan. It’s a thumbnail image, so click to enlarge:
Correction: Oops, we just noticed this NYT correction: “The floor plan, supplied by the developer of a $4.5 million apartment on East 74th Street, was for another apartment in the building.” So you should take this floor plan not as Rick Presutti’s, but as the floor plan to another three-bedroom in the same building.

In Search of the Elusive 3-Bedroom [New York Times]
Richard A. Presutti bio [Schulte Roth & Zabel]

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