Eggers nodded, pleased that his largess had been noted. “Let me give you the scoop on us. We’ve got eighteen partners at the moment, and thirty-six associates. That’s certainly not big by Manhattan standards, but it’s big enough for us to be able to cover a lot of bases. There are seven corporate specialists—we tend to attract companies somewhat below the Fortune Five Hundred level, outfits that don’t have huge legal departments; we have four estate planners—that’s very important to wealthy individuals—and, just as important, four tax specialists, all Jewish. Nobody seems to take a tax lawyer seriously who isn’t Jewish. We’re something of a polyglot firm—blacks, women, Irish, Jews, Italians—not unlike the New York Police Department, I expect. That’s important to us, because the firm is active in liberal Democratic causes—you’d be surprised how much business comes in that way. Finally, there are three generalists—two of them Woodman and me.”

“I liked Woodman when I met him.”

“Woodman is a genius, as far as I’m concerned. He’s a client man, first and last; he inspires trust. Also, he has a facility for going into a meeting—corporate, tax, whatever—and immediately grasping the issues involved. Clients think he knows everything, which isn’t exactly true, but he can give that impression effortlessly. I’d be willing to bet that he could engage you in conversation about a homicide investigation and make you think he was an ex-cop.”

Their first course arrived, and they dug in.

“You didn’t mention any criminal lawyers,” Stone said between bites.

“We don’t have a criminal lawyer as such, although you’d be surprised at how much criminal work comes our way. Nowadays, it’s the corporate executive or stockbroker who’s stepped over the line; also, our clients’ kids get into trouble—drugs, rape, sometimes even murder.”

“How do you handle that?”

“In different ways. If it’s something big, we refer to a hotshot mouthpiece; more often, we bring in a consultant and handle it internally. A client likes it when his own lawyer seems to be in charge. Of course, there’s a fine line there; we have to make the judgment on when an outsider best serves the client’s needs. We can’t afford to make a mistake and underrepresent a client. We’re very, very careful in the matter of malpractice, and we’ve never had a suit against us.”

“That seems a good area to be careful in.”