Part I: The end of my brilliant career
names changed to protect the innocent
As usual, I had many interpersonal problems with my boss at the large U.S. law firm where I worked in Frankfurt am Main. When I look back, (we moved to Berlin in 1993) I see it could have all been entirely different, had I been more passive, more normal, less of my usual careless self. I was all wrong about everything anyway, and now I know that the world is not run by the experts.
When I first started working for O´Connor, I’ll call him, he was sort of a sole practitioner of U.S. law in Frankfurt, performing odd and sundry U.S. legal services for small- and mid-sized German companies with subsidiaries, agents or distributors in the USA. He had recently acquired his first client engaged in a US Government contract in Frankfurt. He also had the very best connections to some of Germany’s largest companies through his marriage to a quite wealthy woman, Gerlinde, I’ll call her.
As for myself, I was just very grateful to be able to continue practicing US law at all. I had sent an inquiry with my resumé to the law offices of O’Connor and Schmidt, and was surprised when O’Connor’s American secretary called and set up an interview.
There were very few chances to actually work as a U.S. lawyer in Germany. Turns out, and as I later learned, O’Connor had just fired his legal help, Josh Parley, an American who was admitted to practice in the U.S.A. and was actually just finishing up his law studies in Germany. O’Connor had thrown him out when he learned that Parley and another young lawyer, Saul Tengel, were plotting to throw him out completely and continue the law practice with Tengel’s connections and Parley’s German-law capability. Tengel was an up-and-coming associate in a mid-sized Philadelphia law firm which was happy to help O’Connor’s German clients with their more complex legal problems while doing business in the U.S.A., and he was in our Frankfurt offices about once a month. The association of O’Connor and Tengel’s Philadelphia firm was not a formalised deal but, due to Tengel’s enthusiasm about working with German clients in Germany (his grandfather had been President of the Deutsche Bank before World War II, and he had spent his summers in Bavaria as a child, visiting relatives and becoming fluent in the language) the relationship was blossoming, and O’Connor was deeply satisfied to work with Tengel, a Harvard undergrad who had studied law at the University of Pennsylvania and was quite the expert at banking and corporate law. O’Connor wasn’t an expert at anything legal.
After O’Connor intercepted a communication between Tengel and Parley about their plot, Parley was thrown out, and O’Connor threatened to sue both of them and the Philadelphia firm for business interference. O’Connor was usually faking it but everyone knew he had the best connections in Germany. So Tengel somehow wiggled out of trouble and swore loyalty to O’Connor for ever after. In this way, the loose association of the two firms was still in effect when I started working there.
What about Schmidt? you might be thinking. I met Schmidt after about a year. He was actually a Professor in Heidelberg and had nothing to do with the firm aside from lending his German name to it. He and O’Connor were old pals from the time O’Connor was in the Army working in the JAG Corps in Frankfurt. O’Connor got to know many of his pals and references back then, including fellows who were now running the legal departments of some of the largest publicly held companies (AG’s they are called) in Germany. They also sent work our way when they could.
To digress, it is good to explain that prior to working for O’Connor, I learned that it was not so wise to study law in the first place if you were going to move to another country only a few years later. German law is fundamentally different than US law, and I learned that I would have to do a complete course of studies there, beginning just as any 19-year-old just out of Gymnasium, if I wanted to be a German lawyer. I would have no trouble being admitted to study law in Frankfurt but it would take me about eight years to actually be admitted to practice German law, assuming I was able to pass the two state exams, which were given in two separate years, with an apprenticeship in between.
Fortunately, it was just fine to give advice on US law, in this case, contracts, once you had cleared a few formalities.
My husband had advised strongly against studying law in Germany, and I took his advice. If I had, however, I would probably not be writing these lines today, and we would quite possibly never have moved to Berlin because I would have been comfortably ensconced in an international law firm in Frankfurt, while my husband managed our properties in Darmstadt and the surrounding area. The fall of the Berlin Wall would not have wiped out my law practice.
I would never have taken up riding again because I would have had no time. We might have even moved to Frankfurt. There we would have continued to be members of the Union Club.
Remembering the Union Club, just around the corner from our former law offices in Frankfurt’s West-End and conveniently across the street from the US Consulate, I find another weak point in my career — I do not do small talk nor do I seek out “connections”, possibly with dubious claims, to infuse my career, and I am therefore not a “rainmaker” — one who brings in the business. That was O’Connor’s specialty though, and together we were actually quite good.
I do not find the same things important or interesting or even worth noticing which are or were the subjects of small talk at a club like the Union Club. I am more of a hyper-concentration type, much too intense for small talk. Probably mildly autistic. If I am in a situation in which small talk is required, I freeze up, even though you can put me on a stage anywhere, and I’ll play piano and sing for you. Or I can talk with you one-on-one for hours about something which really interests me, like icelandic horses, their breeding and gaits, translation of poetry, imitation of life in culture and whether it is the other way around and why. But I do not want to talk to you about the latest anything at all — whether it is the current best baker, butcher or restaurant near the Frankfurter shopping mile — the Zeile, for example, because even though I do know these things, I don’t care, and my answers are not the same as yours, and we probably don’t live in the same neighbourhood, and that’s what all this is about — signalling that we are in the same class, eternally just making certain that you are in the “right” group. Stupid, actually. Horses do this for the first few minutes in a new herd, figure it out quickly and then just let it be. But people in the Union Club, like O’Connor, can never stop checking whether they and everyone around them are in the right place and have always been in the right place (whether it is your school, your neighbourhood or your vacation destination) because the confirmation makes them feel better than anything else. Back then, I lived in Darmstadt and the club was in Frankfurt. But at least they were pro-American, which was not a given in West Germany back then.
Usually O`Connor and I were the only lawyers in the office, except for Herr Hinkelmeyer, a German tax lawyer, who shared offices in the 19th century villa with us. Herr Hinkelmeyer was rarely there, however. It seemed like his girlfriend showed up more often than he, looking for him. When he was there, he was always desperately finishing some task, ten days late, before leaving on a Thursday afternoon in November in his Mercedes coup, headed down the A5 for the first snow in the Berner Oberland. Sometimes he took his girlfriend. On Mondays, O’Connor’s wife, Gerlinde, was also there, doing the bookkeeping and keeping an eye on O’Connor, who would always rather be doing anything than actually working. O’Connor had also hired Maria, a German secretary who was fluent in French, German and English and Jo, an American secretary (one language) whose civilian husband had a job with the Army as an engineer. On Thursdays, Cheryl, an accountant whose husband was an officer with the US Air Force, came in to do US tax returns for American citizens in Germany.
While O’Connor was gossiping with Hinkelmeyer or discussing which hotel was the best in the Berner Oberland, I would be drafting a distribution agreement for ACME GmbH to enter into either with someone in the US or with ACME’s US subsidiary, which we also had helped found, usually in Delaware. While O’Connor was enjoying a very long lunch break, stopping in for a fitting at his tailor’s, for example, I was writing an appropriate employment agreement, with the non-compete and protection of trade secret clauses, for ACME’s US subsidiary to enter into with the person who was going to actually manage distribution of ACME’s products in the USA. While O’Connor was at the American Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon, I was meeting with ACME’s Geschäftsführer, Herr Roettger, explaining the pros and cons of having an L- or an E-Visa which would allow him to live and work in the USA for two- to five years. Herr Roettger didn’t really want to move to the USA but he wanted legal permission to work in the USA and to avoid any problems at the border because of the frequent entries which would be required to start up his US business. While O’Connor was lingering at the markets on the Zeile, picking the finest Bleu d’Auvergne or Morbier, I was back in the office, gathering the forms, and listing the matters Herr Roettger would need to inform me about and support with documentary evidence, for presentation to the US Consulate in order to procure his E-Visa. When O’Connor returned from the Zeile at 15 hours, laden with fresh bread, cheeses and a leg of lamb for a dinner he and Gerlinde were throwing for the heads of two publicly-held companies in Germany and their wives, I was studying the details of my clients’ U.S. government contracts, so that I could begin explain to them just how and why the US Army had suddenly found fault with them and how we should respond.
O’Connor was out and about but he was definitely the one bringing in all the clients.
It went on like this, quite swimmingly for a while. I had more and more work and more and more money. I always left the office at 5 pm sharp, though, usually making it back home within a half hour, racing on the A5. Back then it was so easy. Nowadays the traffic is impossible. Our Nanny always waited until I was home to leave but my husband was in his office there all day anyway. I enjoyed time with our first daughter, and then with both of our daughters, after our second child was born. They both went to the lovely pre-school of the Lutheran church across the street from us beginning at age three, for four hours a day. Then they were in the Grundschule, in a stately 19th century building just behind our house. It was lovely.
By the time our second child was born, though, things had picked up wildly at the law firm. O’Connor had fished his biggest client, which ran the Mainz Army Depot for the U.S. forces in Europe, and had the largest U.S. government contract in Europe and essentially endless money for legal bills. Meanwhile Tengel had become a junior partner in a much larger law firm, with offices in London, Tokyo and all over the USA, and he was pushing to get O’Connor taken in as a partner. I was never sure if O’Connor really wanted to become a partner at Fieldmann & Partners because it was clear from the start that the pressure was going to heat up very quickly. I could feel his skin itching as the controls slipped out of his hands. Our old, comfortable life was endangered.
Women are guaranteed six weeks’ paid leave after the birth of a child, and then may take a leave of absence from their job for one year, while the German government pays monthly “Elterngeld” to them, a percentage of their salary. In my case, O’Connor was badgering me after two weeks: “Jane, this isn’t a boutique! This is a law firm, and you can’t just drop your work . . .” I ignored him for six lovely weeks. Our nanny was still there, and a midwife, courtesy of the German health care system, came by twice a week during this period, to check on the baby’s weight and general health, to assist in giving the baby its first bath at home, to answer any questions I might have and to just listen or give general advice.