Clash of the Biglaw Titans: Ted Olson and David Boies Meet in Second Circuit Showdown
Earlier this week, Ted Olson and David Boies, along with lawyers from Cleary Gottlieb and Reed Smith, argued an appeal with billions of dollars at stake.
Even though I was more than an hour early for the 2 p.m. hearing, I was worried about getting a good seat in the courtroom, given the keen interest in the case in the legal and financial communities. My concern grew when I noticed news vans parked across the street from the courthouse:
And a crowd of people and cameramen massed in front of the courthouse:
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I ascended the steps and entered the courthouse. I hadn’t been in the building for years — not since 2005, when I argued a case before the Second Circuit — so I hadn’t seen the results of the court’s six-year renovation.
It’s nothing short of magnificent. The restoration preserved the building’s historic beauty while at the same time giving it a wonderfully refreshed feel. And I haven’t seen this much white marble outside of Italy. I bumped into Judge Robert Katzmann (clad in a shirt and tie, no suit jacket, no robe), and we chatted about the splendid renovation.
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My worry about getting a seat was warranted. The courtroom itself was already full, so spectators were being directed to a first-floor overflow room. Every seat in the large room was either occupied or claimed by a coat or bag; it was standing room only. I walked to the far side of the room and found an unclaimed section of wall to lean against.
I surveyed the crowd, which looked like a mix of finance folks, lawyers, law students, and journalists. Many wore suits, but there were also a fair number of tan, handsome men in expensive shirts, no ties, unbuttoned to mid-chest. Hedge fund managers, or Argentinians?
The room buzzed with conversation in both English and Spanish. As more and more people arrived, even spots for standing grew scarce. One man, a hedge-fund type, joked about auctioning off seats.
At the front of the overflow room was a large screen divided into four panes. Three of the panes would show the three judges on the panel — one judge per pane, sort of like Hollywood Squares — and the fourth would show arguing counsel. Even though the argument hadn’t started, the cameras were live, so we could see the gallery of people who were lucky enough to make it into the courtroom (and Ted Olson, hitching up his pants).
(As it turned out, I was fine being in the overflow room. The sound quality and picture quality were good for the most part, and we were also more free in the overflow room to laugh at funny exchanges. And the crowd wasn’t all hoi polloi; I later learned that the overflow audience included Lee Buchheit, the Cleary Gottlieb corporate partner who has been decribed as the “guru” and “philosopher king of sovereign debt”; Professor Mitu Gulati, one of the legal academy’s leading experts in international financial law; and Felix Salmon, the noted financial journalist.)
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When the argument started, the lights in the overflow room dimmed, and the crowd grew quiet. It felt just like being at movie night with Judge Kozinski.
Speaking of judges, who were the distinguished jurists on this panel?
