Office of Bar Counsel, 1017 WYBJ, Vol. 40 No. 5. 12
| Author | Mark W. Gifford, Wyoming State Bar Office of Bar Counsel Cheyenne, Wyoming |
The Law: A Profession in Trouble?
Mark W. Gifford, Wyoming State Bar Office of Bar Counsel Cheyenne, Wyoming
I started law school at Stanford in September of 1978. Dressed in blue jeans, a fiannel shirt and hiking boots, I stood out like a sore thumb among my classmates, a sea of Ivy Leaguers in khaki pants, Izod shirts and top-sider shoes (sans socks). One of the fast friends I made was Warren Malone, a kid from Long Island who was enrolled in the JD/MBA joint program. Warren was easy to be around—funny, engaging, unpretentious, scary bright. I introduced him to the Dirt Band, cowboy boots and jackalopes. He introduced me to Springsteen, the Talking Heads and the Yankees.
After graduation, we went different directions, Warren to a Wall Street firm and I back to Wyoming. We kept in touch, visiting each other often over the years. Warren’s career path took him from Cravath Swaine & Moore to Bear, Stearns. After spending a few years as a senior financial executive with Progressive Corporation, Warren teamed up with two other Bear, Stearns alums to form the Daystar Special Situations Fund, an investment fund that catered to the endowments of Ivy League schools, among others. Warren achieved spectacular financial success—a home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a wife and two beautiful children, involvement in his children’s exclusive, private schools, all the other trappings. He maintained his passion for running and could often be found putting in ten miles around Central Park Reservoir.
As the years passed, Warren and I kept in touch but with less frequency as we started families and our lives got busier. We still managed to get together every few years. Whenever I made it to New York, we would take in a Yankees game. Tat had been our tradition going back to the early 1980s.
Several weeks ago, I called Warren and told him I was coming to New York for a conference in early August. The Red Sox were going to be in town; I told him I would get tickets. He was upbeat —recently divorced, his children graduated from Ivy League schools, he was looking forward to seeing me. I went on StubHub and purchased tickets for the August 12, Saturday afternoon game.
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Saturday, August 12, 2017. I attended the final session of my conference, a session devoted to a groundbreaking report that would be released by the...
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