Interview with Lloyd Cutler on May 20, 1992
BLOCH : Lloyd, when and where were you born?
CUTLER: I was born in New York in 1917. I attended Yale
College, and then Yale Law School. I started working
in the Cravath office just before World War 11. I had
clerked one year for Judge Charles Clark on the Second
Circuit. He had been the Dean of the Yale Law School
and I was his first law clerk after he became a judge.
And then right after Pearl Harbor, like so many others,
I wanted a job in Washington as part of the war effort,
and I came down. A number of my friends from law
school were at the Lend Lease Administration and I got
hired at the Lend Lease Administration, in February
1942. I then went, after several months, to North
Africa as the Deputy Chief of the Lend Lease mission
serving under the former president of one of the
General Motors subsidiaries, and it was one of those
typical wartime operations that mushroomed from two to
150 professionals. We were part of what was called the
North African Economic Board. After that, I came back
to Washington to enlist in the army.
BLOCH : When was this, Lloyd?
CUTLER: This was toward the end of 1943. I ended up (it’s not
relevant to anything you’re doing) but anyway I ended
up in the military intelligence group that read the
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Japanese and German coded message traffic and wrote
them up into intelligence materials.
BLOCH : Where were you, in this country?
CUTLER: I was in the Pentagon. I served for a while in the
Philippines.
adventure was when the eight Nazi saboteurs landed by
submarine on a beach in Long Island in 1942. The
general counsel of Lend Lease in those days, Oscar Cox,
was also the Assistant Solicitor General in the Justice
Department, which is now the same post that is called
the Office of Legal Counsel, and he got tagged to work
on that case. He found me on a Sunday afternoon and I
spent three months as part of the trial team in the
prosecution of the eight saboteurs before a military
commission up in the FBI part of the Justice
Department.
BLOCH : What was the outcome?
CUTLER: Naturally they were all sentenced. It was all very
My only other interesting wartime
interesting because the FBI had seized these fellows
and made it appear to the public as if they had been
detected landing on the beach or coming into New York,
where they were to make contacts with various
Americans. In fact, two of them had decided on the way
over that they were going to defect. They all landed
and disappeared into the American landscape without
being detected, but these two fellows went to the
Mayflower Hotel in Washington, called up the FBI, and
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because, by mistake they had called the D.C. FBI rather
than the national FBI, it took four hours before
anybody arrived to collect them.
Then, they revealed the location of the other guys?
They knew the locations of the other guys and the FBI
was able to round them all up.
But only two were defecting? What were the others
doing?
They had all been trained at a German sabotage school.
They had been given contacts, mostly German-Americans,
to find over here and they were in the process of
establishing those contacts.
So they ultimately were a threat.
Oh they were saboteurs. They were planned saboteurs.
But had two not defected, we might not have survived?
They were German saboteurs, not our saboteurs. We sent
lots of people like that into Europe, of course, also.
And the most interesting part of all of that is that
that case ended up in the Supreme Court and Francis
Biddle was the head of our team and argued the case
and, in his opening statement to the Supreme Court, he
kept referring to the #!war of lawtt instead of the !!law
of war.” That case did go through the Court of Appeals
but on a very fast track.
And the Supreme Court upheld their convictions?
The Supreme Court upheld their convictions.
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What made you decide to be a lawyer? What made you go
to law school?
That’s easy. My father was a lawyer and,. after I
wanted to be a trolley car motorman, the next thing I
wanted to be was a lawyer.
And how did you choose Yale?
Well I had always been interested in Yale and in those
days — that is Yale as an undergraduate — in those
days it was very easy to go to law school. All you
needed was your AB degree and your father’s checkbook.
I think even at Yale the admissions ratio couldn’t have
been any higher than 1.1 to 1, or some such thing, and
we were literally recruited. The law school professors
would come over to the college and urge us, anyone
interested in the law, to go to the Yale Law School.
What did you major in in college?
I majored in history and economics.
Was that common then — to do a joint major?
Yes. But now I wish it had been in literature.
Well you can go back.
At the end of the war, four of us who had been in the
Lend Lease Administration legal staff and had also come
from New York law firms decided we would start a law
firm in Washington, instead of returning to New York.
That firm was called Cox, Langford, Stoddard, and
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Cutler. Everyone in that firm was a partner. We had no
associates at the beginning.
And what year was this, Lloyd?
This was 1946.
And so you started with just four people?
We started with four. We grew to 18 or 19 by 1962, and
the bulk of us merged with the firm Wilmer and Broun,
which had its own history as the local branch of the
Cravath office before it started as a separate firm
after the war. In ’62 we merged with them, and I think
our total complement in ’62 was 19 or 20 people.
When you formed Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, how many
did you say you were?
We were 19 or 20 when we began.
Did you have a distinctive philosophy for the firm?
Why did you merge?
I would say we merged really for diversification and
growth. Within Cox, Langford, some of us had had a
disagreement with Oscar Cox, our senior partner, about
growth and recruiting more people, more bright young
people, Supreme Court law clerks and so forth, and
promoting them rapidly. And I think that was my
motivating factor.
You wanted to expand and to recruit more?
That’s right, and John Pickering, who was one of the
partners at Wilmer and Broun, was my close friend going
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back to the Cravath days and all during the war, and in
talking to him, I found they were interested in the
same thing. So, after rejecting some other
invitations, one of which was from Paul Weiss to become
their Washington office, we decided to start this firm.
BLOCH : Judge Oberdorfer was with Paul Weiss at that time?
CUTLER: Lou Oberdorfer was with us. He had been a young lawyer
at Paul Weiss but then he had come over to Cox,
Langford, Stoddard and Cutler.
BLOCH : Prior to the merger?
CUTLER: Right, before the merger.
BLOCH : Do you think it was easier to start a law firm in those
days than it would be today?
CUTLER: No, I really don’t. I think there is always room in
Washington for a good young firm. Take a firm like
Jack Miller’s firm, Miller, Cassidy. Because of their
small size, they can sometimes recruit people we would
like to have, young Supreme Court law clerks for
example, because they are a small firm. There are
always significant penalties to growth. There are
rewards from growth. You do become an all-purpose law
firm. You are no longer as heavily dependent on any
single client. You can fortify one another. There’s a
great deal more security for retirement, pensions,
illness, everything else. You become much more
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diversified as to your specialties, but you pay a
penalty for growth because the bigger you are, the less
opportunity for colleagueship there is. .You finally
get to this ridiculous point of the law firms with a
thousand lawyers and 300 or 400 partners. That’s an
oxymoron; that’s a contradiction in terms — to be a
partner with three or four hundred other people. We’re
already up to 80 ourselves.
BLOCH : 80 partners, and how many total?
CUTLER: We’re about 210 or 220, something like that.
BLOCH : Have you sort of stabilized, or is it still growing?
CUTLER: No, it’s still growing. It probably grows at a 5 to
10% a year level.
BLOCH : Does it have to? Is that the nature of law firms
today?
CUTLER: Well, I think, no, of course it doesn’t have to. Now
there are law firms that are shrinking, as you know.
But I think in order to provide rapid opportunities €or
your very bright youngsters you need to expand to some
degree. They are not going to be satisfied just
waiting around until some old partner’s place is
available to be filled. It’s not like a bank, where
there are just so many positions. You have to keep
growing in order to fulfill the natural aspirations of
the younger people.
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And, as you add more partners, you have to add more
associates.
That’s part of the economics of a law fir;m, but our
partner/associate ratios are much lower in that we have
fewer associates per partner than the New York firms.
That’s one reason why the New York firms make more
money. You can call it exploiting the young people or
whatever you want to call it. But it’s true, as a
partner you make more money on your younger people.
The more you have that you can keep busily employed,
the more money you’ll make.
Let me ask you what were some of your favorite cases
that you brought in the D.C. Circuit.
The cases I have enjoyed the most have not been D.C.
Circuit cases. I’ve had several through the D.C.
Circuit that got to the Supreme Court.
That’s a D.C. Circuit case.
I guess you could call that a D.C. Circuit case. I was
involved, along with John Pickering, in the Younustown
case which of course was a great battle.
Whom did you represent?
Well, John was representing Bethlehem Steel. I was
sort of coaching on the sidelines, in the course of
that.
Did either of you argue it?
We were much too young in those days.
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You were one of those lowly associates.
We were involved in a number of the auto safety cases
that had different parts of them go through the D.C.
Circuit like the airbag cases. They were partly in the
Sixth Circuit and partly right here. And they went
through the D.C. Circuit. I suppose the most
interesting case I had was the Gramm-Rudman case which
strictly speaking was not a D.C. Circuit case because
it went through a 3-judge court directly to the Supreme
Court.
The statute provided €or that?
That’s right. But the 3-judge court included Judge
Scalia.
What happened in the airbag case?
We were also involved in Powell auainst McCormack, the
Adam Clayton Powell case which went through this
circuit also. Well, in the airbag case, we were
counsel for the auto company. Several iterations of
the airbag regulation were thrown out, ones that the
auto companies resisted and finally in the Republican
days there was one which the auto companies supported
and that got thrown out also. The cases went on for 15
or 16 years.
What period?
It’s roughly 1965 or so, all the way through 1987; the
last one I think was only about five years ago.
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What was your least favorite case?
My least favorite cases are almost always reviews of an
administrative record, as you know. Ilva had several
appointed cases back in the days when the D. C. Circuit
did criminal appeals.
But you mean those to be your least favorite, or just
additional cases?
No, I think I’ve helped let one or two criminals out of
jail.
Has the profession changed significantly in the time
you’ve been practicing?
Well, I think the practice of law has changed very
significantly, but sticking to the courts for a while,
I don’t think the appellate process has changed very
significantly, other than this growing mountain of
cases that you have and the reduction in time for oral
argument which, I think, is too bad.
Do you see changes in the Court of Appeals €or the D.C.
Circuit in the time that you’ve seen it in operation?
Yes, I suppose the Court of Appeals changes that I see
have more to do with quality of judges than anything
else.
What do you mean?
And there is a lack of intimacy in the court. The
court itself is so much bigger and the court now sees
and hears many more lawyers than it ever did before.
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I”
Apart from the government lawyers, most other lawyers
make fewer and fewer appearances in the Court of
Appeals.
Supreme Court. Apart from a very few people like Larry
Tribe, it’s quite rare for anyone in private practice
to have argued more than a dozen Supreme Court cases in
their whole career. I think I’m up to 10 or 11 or
something like that. I haven’t had one myself for the
last three years.
The same thing is true of course in the
BLOCH : Do you see a change in the quality of the judges at the
Court of Appeals level?
CUTLER: Well yes. I think there is a change, both in the
quality of the judges and certainly of course in what
you might call the politics of the judges. But
remember this was a court of people of the stature of
Harold Leventhal and Skelly Wright and Barrett
Prettyman. There is a natural tendency of course to
think that the judges who were older than you were,
were greater than the ones who are younger than you
are. That’s inevitable. But even allowing for that, I
think the great days of this court were 10, 15, 20
years ago. There is no Carl McGowan on this court
today. There is no Harold Leventhal on this court and
I’m not disparaging anyone. I think Pat Wald is a
wonderful judge. I think there are other good judges
on the court, but the general quality is quite
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different from what it was then. However, in my view
the same thing is true of the Second Circuit; the same
thing is true of the Supreme Court; and as I said it’s
a natural tendency to feel that your contemporaries or
your seniors were better than your juniors.
BLOCH : Do you think that the nature of the appointment process
could be changed, or it is just a question of who is
appointing?
CUTLER: Well, at least part of it is that being a judge is a
career choice that fewer and fewer top quality lawyers
are willing to make.
BLOCH : Do you think people are turning it down?
CUTLER: A lot of people are not willing to get into the
process.
BLOCH : Because they don’t want to be a judge, or they don’t
want to go through the process, or both?
CUTLER: Well, I think it’s a little bit of both. A lot of it,
in my view, has to do with the relatively low
compensation of judges compared to what lawyers can
earn. Part of it, is the asceticism of being a judge,
the fact that you don’t get many phone calls, not too
many people call you up and invite you to lunch. There
is a lot more glamour to an active Washington law
practice than there is to a career on the Washington
bench.
BLOCH : And yet that part — the asceticism – – was always true.
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CUTLER: Of course, that hasn’t changed. But I think it was one
thing when being a judge brought you a decent salary.
Now I was chairman of one of the quadrennial
commissions and I was a member of an earlier
quadrennial commission and what judges have to go
through, especially if they become judges in their 40’s
and SO’S, while they are still raising a family and
sending them off to universities, is terrible. It’s
even true that judges from impoverished minority groups
find that they can’t afford to stay on the bench. You
should listen to Leon Higgenbotham up on the Third
Circuit, who was one of our very best witnesses at the
time of the last quadrennial commission. He said he
cannot provide his children with the educational
opportunities that he had, and he grew up as a poor
kid. You don’t want to use up all your tape on this
issue, but I do think fewer top flight lawyers with the
capacity to be top flight judges are interested
anymore. I also think there is a sense that quality
doesn’t count as much as political service or political
reliability as judged by whoever the appointing
President is. The D.C. Circuit, as you know, over the
last years has been used to place people who have no
real connection with the practice of law in the
District at all.
BLOCH : That was not true though with President Carter, was it?
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CUTLER: Well it was always true to a degree in the sense, for
example, that Skelly Wright was put on this circuit
although he had no previous background in the
Washington law practice. That’s always been true to a
degree.
BLOCH : That was to get him out of the South?
CUTLER: I think it was part of a deal between Senator Eastman
and the administration of those days, and it also had
to do with getting some other judges’ appointments
approved.
that; I think he knew about it at the time. But the
tendency has been to pick people who are either in the
administration — in the Justice Department — or to
pick people from other parts of the country and put
them on the Court of Appeals here because there was no
vacancy or no room anyplace else.
You should talk to Nick Katzenbach about
BLOCH : And no Senator here to object.
CUTLER: And of course the control that Senators have over the
District Court appointments outside Washington, and
around the rest of the country, is virtually complete.
As long as they pick somebody who didn’t steal money
and has at least a decent reputation at the bar, he’ll
be taken.
BLOCH : Is it your impression that that has changed over the
years or has that always been true as far as you know?
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CUTLER: I think it’s getting worse. Carter fought that much
more. I mean Carter was so determined to increase the
number of blacks and women that he oftensfought what
the Senators wanted to do.
BLOCH : Didn’t he set up a different system?
CUTLER: Well he had a Court of Appeals review commission. He
had a review commission right here which he
unfortunately put in the hands of — what’s the name of
that fellow who later got convicted on a bribery
charge, the one who was involved in bribing the judge
in Florida? He was the chairman of Carter’s commission
to pick judges for the local D.C. courts. (I should
remember his name, Borders, I think, something like
that.) But I do think that there is a difference in
quality and, as you know, there has been a lot of
really serious infighting among the judges of this
court,
BLOCH : At the appellate level.
CUTLER: Their colleagueship could be improved, to say the
least.
BLOCH : Can you think of ways we could improve the judiciary?
You said one, raise the salary.
CUTLER: Well, raising the salary is one. Certainly, opening
the field on merit is another. It’s almost
inconceivable today, for example, that an outstanding
Washington lawyer who had not been of political service
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to the administration and who is a middle of the roader
politically, would be picked for this court.
BLOCH : And that’s probably true nationwide, don’t you think,
or more so here?
CUTLER: It’s probably true nationwide. Nationwide there is
more of a chance because a Senator might back a
particular outstanding lawyer and get him through even
though he had not been of great service to the
administration.
BLOCH : Is there anything you could change if you could in the
appointment method or the confirmation process?
CUTLER: Well, I was involved in the Carter appointment method.
I’m not sure ours was much better, but I think what it
takes more than anything else is real interest on the
part of the Attorney General and the White House
Counsel in finding first class people, regardless of
and removing, the element of political service.
BLOCH : And the only way you could do that is urge them, right,
there’s no right procedural mechanism?
CUTLER: That’s right. I guess it’s true that when it comes to
Supreme Court appointments, the President has or should
have a minimum standard of quality and pay a great deal
of personal attention to the person he selects. But the
president is hardly involved in the selection of court
of appeals judges; it’s done at a relatively lower
level. And if the Attorney General himself is passive
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or if the white House counsel is passive, it tends to
fall along political lines.
BLOCH : Would you want to see a system where the’Senate sort of
floated names, not that the President would be bound by
them?
CUTLER: No, I don’t think I would. I think essentially I would
leave the Supreme Court selection system alone. Let
the Senate raise serious objections when they think
there is someone they think is unqualified. When we
get a run of 12 Republican years and two presidents as
disinterested in legal principle as the last two
presidents, you are going to have some bloopers and we
have, and when you have divided government — a
Republican President and a Democratic Senate — you are
going to have some big fights, but on the whole I think
it has worked out all right. I was for Bork. I think,
in hindsight, Bork would have been better than other
Reagan possibilities. There was more of a chance that
Bork would have done some original things on that
court, I think.
BLOCH : I think that’s right.
CUTLER: Let’s not discuss Judge Thomas. I did argue a case in
front of Judge Thomas in the Court of Appeals and he
was perfectly competent in that case, and we won that
case.
BLOCH : So that’s why he’s competent.
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CUTLER: But I do regard that as a very cynical appointment.
BLOCH : who have been your favorite judges, the judges you
respect the most, on the Court of Appeals’?
CUTLER: Can I go to the past?
BLOCH : Sure.
CUTLER: Certainly I would guess McGowan, Leventhal, Skelly
Wright, Prettyman would be the four that I would
respect the most.
Why?
important in a judge?
BLOCH : What are the characteristics that you think most
CUTLER: Well, I think any one of them would have made a very
distinguished member of the Supreme Court; maybe that’s
one way to say it.
quality, and a great sense of fairness. I think I
would add Judge Fahy to the list too; he was a
marvelous man. They were totally objective, much more
so say than David Bazelon. They wrote beautifully. We
still go back and cite their opinions and if they wrote
an opinion you don’t say: “as the court held;” you say
“as Judge Leventhal held.” There’s a wonderful story
about Fahy that Acheson has told that ought to get in
this history someplace:
in the Supreme Court, when he was Solicitor General,
the way Hugh Cox did and to some extent Larry Tribe
does today. There was a case, according to Acheson, in
which Fahy was asked by one of the justices the real
But they all had high intellectual
Fahy would argue without notes
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BLOCH :
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$64 dollar question on the case, and his response was:
“Mr. Justice, many is the time I have asked myself that
question and I have no really satisfactoGy answer. But
the answer that satisfies me the most is this,” and he
then proceeded to give his answer. As Acheson put it,
from then on Fahy and the Justices were walking down
the garden path, hand-in-hand, searching for the truth.
That’s great.
He had the capacity to admit the weaknesses in his own
argument, which is to me the essence of good advocacy.
And that ability served him when he was a judge as
well?
Well, as a judge, he showed the same capacities. I
don’t sit in the conferences, but I suppose a judge
needs that capacity in the conferences. He had the
intellectual qualities and the openness of mind to
write wonderful opinions and make very good decisions.
Who have been some of your favorite judges on the
District Court?
Judge Gesell, Judge Oberdorfer, Aubrey Robinson. I
think I’ll stop right there. Oh, I like John Pratt,
I’ve always liked John Pratt.
What qualities do they have that you admire?
Gesell, of course, is a litigator, as you know. He
might lack the necessary patience to be a really good
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judge, but he disposes of things very quickly. He’s got
a great capacity to simplify. I remember a class
action antitrust case in which he was dea’ling with a
public interest lawyer who insisted on filing requests
for admissions. Gerry just said to him, “Mr. Brodsky,
or whatever his name was, Ityou don’t really want to
file this demand for requests for admissions.I1 He
said, “By the time these very good lawyers on the other
side have finished, you not only won’t get any answers,
you’ll be sorry you asked the questions.” And he
talked this fellow out of it and moved him on to
summary judgment.
BLOCH : What is your idea of what makes a good lawyer?
CUTLER: That’s very hard, but the qualities are not very
different. It’s openness of mind, quick study,
soundness of judgment, ability to persuade, ability, as
I said, to admit the weaknesses in your position,
capacity to be seductive, certainly honesty and
integrity.
BLOCH : Do you think legal education has changed over the years
and if so which way? What’s your view of it?
CUTLER: Well, I am not that familiar with legal education
today. I have taken a couple of teaching sabbaticals,
one at Yale and actually two at Oxford. I’ve done some
teaching, and I go up and lecture in law school classes
from time to time. But I don’t think it’s changed that
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much and, on the whole, I think it is very
satisfactory.
BLOCH : Are the kids you see coming out here welL trained?
CUTLER: They are very well trained. I think more suffer today
than was true 20-30 years ago from an inability to
write clearly, which to me means inability to think
clearly, but part of it is basic pre-law school
education and literature, and logic and sentence
structure and such things. It’s remarkable how many
very bright people, very articulate on their feet,
don’t write well.
BLOCH : How would you remedy that if you had the ability, the
power?
CUTLER: Well, we used to have a Yale course, a freshman course,
called Daily Themes, in which we would literally have
to write something everyday — one page, two pages. I
think the class met three times a week, and the
professor — these were very good full professors of
literature, I mean they were not teaching assistants or
anything else — would then mark it up and give it back
to you. Then in the class they would read out
somebody’s piece and they and the whole class would
tear it apart. Of course, they wouldn’t say whose
piece it was, but when that happened to your piece, it
taught you a lot about writing.
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BLOCH : And they would tell you what to write on? They would
give you a theme for the day?
CUTLER: No, you had to think up your own.
BLOCH : As well as write it, you had to create it.
CUTLER: Apart from that, I think law school education is as
rigorous and as mind-grabbing as it ever was. I can
still remember many classroom events in law school,
better than I can remember college days. I do think
the urge to do good in the world, to be a full service
well rounded citizen, has fallen off. The 80’s
generation, even the kids coming out of law school,
were very much a rime,fi “what about me” generation,
rather than a public service generation. Part of that
again is that at least federal government public
service became unattractive to a lot of people who
thought they had missions in life because of the
attitude of the last three administrations.
BLOCH : Do you see any change now at all in the other
direction, or does it look the same?
CUTLER: No, not much. I think we will see a change again. It
used to be, 10-15 years ago, that we would be — of
course these were the days when everyone was scrambling
to recruit young lawyers — we would be questioned very
rigorously about our pro bono programs. Now hardly
anyone asks. And we’re the ones who insist we’re going
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to put at least five, I think we put seven percent, of
our time in pro bono work.
BLOCH : Are you unusual in that?
CUTLER: I think we lead the country. The good old ”American
Lawyer” has, in addition to their charts about how much
money people make, they have one on public service in
which by their rating system we came out number one.
BLOCH : Would you favor a required service of all lawyers, an
ABA requirement on something? I don’t know how you
would enforce it.
CUTLER: Yes, I’ve spoken about, although I don’t know how you
would enforce it. It could only be a goal I think.
And this law firm — we had our 30th anniversary a
couple of weeks ago as you know — and the firm gave
scholarships in John’s name [John Pickeringl to
Michigan and in my name to Yale.
requirement for eligibility for the scholarship that
the recipient has to commit to devote at least 10% of
his/her future career to pro bono and public service
work. It’s a good thing to keep in youngsters’ minds.
We put into the
BLOCH : I remember when I was recruiting and being recruited,
that was the big question. I guess one reason why
students might not be asking it now is either they
don’t care, or they’re so anxious to get the job,
they’re afraid to ask.
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CUTLER :
BLOCH :
CUTLER :
BLOCH :
CUTLER :
BLOCH :
CUTLER :
I think they care, or some care, but also they need the
jobs, they need the money, and remember most of them
have probably gone $40,000-$50,000 in debt by the time
they are out of law school. And, of course, when they
join a big firm they want to get ahead in the firm and
they don’t identify doing public service work in the
firm as a way to get ahead. You [the firm] have to
work hard on that in the firm and make clear to
everybody that if you get assigned to a pro bono case
it’s just as important as a paying case.
Do you think that associates here at Wilmer understand
that?
I hope so.
What was your experience as White House Counsel like?
People would say to me, are you having a good time?
And I would say !’no, but I wouldn’t have missed the
experience.I! And it was fascinating — it was only 16
or 17 months. You are so close to the center of
decisionmaking and you can have an impact on the
decisions. I would rather be the White House Counsel
than the Attorney General.
Why?
Because you are closer to the President and because you
are at a preventive stage. I mean the Attorney General
may never hear about a legal issue unless itls brought
to him after the fact. The White House Counsel can
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spot it and say this is something that has to be
resolved because he’s sitting there, if he’s used
properly, in the policy meetings. When I? was asked to
come in, the President said to me, I want you to play a
Clark Clifford role, so I literally got that in
writing. Every time that I was left out of something
or wasn’t invited to a meeting, I’d go to Hamilton
Jordan or I’d go to the President and I’d say: “Harry
Truman would have invited Clark Clifford to this
meeting.” Nobody there of course remembered what had
really happened in the Truman Administration. Clark
has embellished it so much by this time that I was able
to get into anything I wanted to get into.
CUTLER: Do they want us to talk about the Washington law
practice? I thought you really wanted to know more
about the Court of Appeals.
BLOCH : They seem to want to have a general picture of practice
in Washington. Who were your favorite teachers at
Yale? Most inspiring?
CUTLER: I go back pretty far. It was Arthur Corbin, Harry
Schulman, Myres McDougal.
BLOCH : Did they influence you in ways that, if you had not had
them, things might have been different?
CUTLER: Well, Corbin was not only a wonderfully open, smiling,
gentle person but he had a wonderful analytical mind
and he loved to play his way through the whole class.
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We had the man climbing up the flagpole for days. If
you climb to the top of the flagpole 1’11 give you
$100, and he’s 3/4 of the way up, and the fellow down
at the bottom says “I revoke’l. Is there a contract or
isn’t there a contract? Then we would go on through
that for hours. I can still remember a number of those
sessions. Schulman was a wonderful man too. He was
our torts professor. I don’t think that has changed.
The quality of the present people is every bit as good.
BLOCH : And do you have any comments or criticism of some of
the law and humanities, law and sociology, law and
literature trend? The criticism is, I guess, that
people coming out can’t think like a lawyer.
CUTLER: Well, I don’t think that matters much really. It
really doesn’t matter what you study in law school. I
would favor a mandatory first year — I mean, torts,
contracts — because they are so analytical and
logical, but other than that it doesn’t really matter.
It doesn’t matter whether you have taken evidence or
not, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve taken tax law or
not. It’s the ability to analyze and think and write
that really counts. I do wish there were more law and
humanities courses, a lot of lawyers are non-readers,
as you know, or non-visual, or not perceptive of their
own or other people’s feelings.
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BLOCH : Well I think that, unless there anything else you think
we should do, we can call it a wrap. Thank you very
much for your time.
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