The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [4]
It was an hour after his bar association speech, and Scott was standing on his Persian rug and admiring Missy, a twenty-seven-year-old ex–Dallas Cowboy cheerleader who ran the firm’s summer clerkship program. In the fall of each year, Ford Stevens lawyers fanned out across the country to interview the best second-year students at the best law schools in the nation. The firm hired forty of the top candidates and brought them to Dallas the following summer to work as summer clerks for $2,500 a week plus room and board, parties, alcohol, and at some firms, women. Most partners in large law firms had been frat rats in college, so most summer clerkship programs had all the markings of fraternity rush. Ford Stevens’s program was no exception.
Thus the first Monday of June brought the invasion of forty summer clerks, like Bob here, each trying to catch the eye of powerful partners, the partners in turn trying to divine if these budding legal eagles were the Ford Stevens type. Bob was. From the look on the face of the law student standing next to Missy, he was dreaming of having just such an office one day. Which meant he would bill two hundred hours a month for the next eight years without complaint or contempt, at which time the firm would show him the door—the odds of a new associate making partner at Ford Stevens being one in twenty. But the ambitious students still signed on because, as Scott himself told them, “You want odds, go to Vegas. You want a chance to get filthy rich by the time you’re forty, hire on with Ford Stevens.”
“Mr. Fenney?”
Scott pulled his eyes off Missy and turned to his frumpy middle-aged secretary standing in the door.
“Yes, Sue?”
“Four calls are holding—your wife, Stan Taylor, George Parker, and Tom Dibrell.”
Scott turned back to Missy and the student and shrugged.
“Duty calls.” He shook hands with the pale, homely, top-of-his-class student and slapped him on the shoulder. “Bob—”
“Rob.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Now, Rob, my Fourth of July bash, that’s mandatory attendance.”
“Yes, sir, I’ve already heard about it.”
To Missy: “You bringing some girls over this year?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?” Scott whistled. “Ten ex–Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.” The firm paid each girl $500 to spend a few hours in bikinis acting interested in law students. “Bob—”
“Rob.”
“Right. You’d better work on your tan, Rob, if you want to snare one of those cheerleaders.”
Rob grinned even though he had about as much chance of getting a date with an ex–Dallas Cowboy cheerleader as a one-legged man had winning a butt-kicking contest.
“Mr. Fenney,” Rob said, “your speech at the bar luncheon, it was truly inspiring.”
First day on the job and the boy was already brownnosing like an experienced associate. Could he possibly be sincere?
“Thanks, Bob.”
Missy winked. Scott didn’t know if the wink was because she knew his speech was bullshit or if she was flirting again. Like all good-looking single girls in Dallas, Missy had made flirting an art form, always managing to catch his eye when crossing her long lean legs or brush against him in the elevator or just look at him in a way that made him feel as if they were on the brink of an affair. Of course, every male at the firm felt that way about Missy, but Scott was annually voted the best-looking male lawyer at Ford Stevens by the firm’s female support staff, not that it was much of a contest. Scott had been a star football player in college; most lawyers were star chess players. Like Bob here.
“Rob.”
“Right.”
Missy and Bob departed, and Scott went around behind his desk and sat in his high-backed leather chair. His eyes found the phone; four lines were blinking. Without conscious thought, his trained mind instantly prioritized the calls: Tom, Stan, George, wife. Tom had paid the firm $3 million last year, Stan $150,000, George $50,000, and