24 octobre, 2006 20:31

A look at the seamy side of law office politics

By Sacha Pfeiffer, Globe Staff | October 22, 2006

A Million Reasons Why I Fought for the Rights of the Disabled

by Alan J. Labonte with Brock Brower

Hot House Press, 320 pages, $26.

"Diagnose and adios."

That rueful phrase has long summed up the treatment options for victims of multiple sclerosis, a chronic autoimmune disease with no clear cause or cure. It also reflects a gnawing fear among many MS patients: that once their employers learn of their illness, which can cause fatigue, loss of balance, and slurred speech, their jobs will be in jeopardy.

Alan J. Labonte suspected his own diagnosis with MS was his undoing at the now-defunct Boston law firm Hutchins & Wheeler, which fired him as its executive director seven months after he disclosed his disability. But Labonte fought back, suing the firm for handicap discrimination and winning a historic jury verdict of $3.5 million. When the case was appealed, he turned down a $3 million settlement offer, instead waiting for a ruling by the state's highest court, which issued a landmark decision protecting the rights of the disabled.

"A Million Reasons" is Labonte's memoir of his five-year legal battle. Much of it reads like a diary, a self-affirmation that he did his job well by imposing fiscal discipline on a financially dysfunctional firm. Labonte's detailed explanations of how he selected the firm's life insurance and healthcare plans, managed its burdensome lease, and upgraded its phone system will be of limited interest to most readers.

But the book is a fascinating inside look at the complicated world of law firm economics, and its greatest appeal comes in Labonte's tales of the backstabbing, manipulating, and money-grubbing among lawyers. He names names, discloses top partners' annual compensation to the penny, and details the firm's disastrous finances.

It's great, juicy fun for the reader, opening a window onto the tricks law firms employ to pump up profits. Labonte speculates, for example, that management committee members intentionally made the firm's finances look worse than they were so they could eliminate several partners -- all so they could share profits with a smaller pool of people. That, he writes, would explain why the management committee chairman made more than $880,000 in 1993, two years after partners supposedly limited themselves to a $75,000 draw for the financial good of the firm.

Labonte leaves little doubt about how he feels about his former colleagues. He recalls dinners where "partners wiped their sleek chins" and describes lawyers "sitting up there in their little glass kingdom, in their plush offices and fancy clothes."

By Labonte's account, he encountered fiscal mayhem when he arrived at Hutchins in April 1990. Lawyers were badly lax in sending bills, resulting in $13 million in uncollected accounts, twice the amount normally carried by other firms. Hutchins relied on a $2 million annual credit line for working capital, yet made the financially derelict decision to pay bonuses out of that credit. It carried a $2.7 million loan for office equipment and furnishings and owed $2.6 million to other lenders.

"I could see how critically near to shipwreck . . . the firm itself was sailing," writes Labonte, who now teaches at Boston University. His prediction proves true: The firm merged and became Hutchins, Wheeler & Dittmar in 1993, and vanished after folding into Nixon Peabody in 2002.

Meanwhile, soon after joining Hutchins, Labonte began to feel unusually fatigued, then started stumbling on his way to work. That led to his June 1991 diagnosis with MS. In January 1992, despite a past raise and bonus, he was terminated at age 52 for supposedly poor performance.

The saga (which includes an odd side story of Labonte's religious conversion during humanitarian trips to Bosnia) ends well for Labonte. His was the first disability case to go before a state jury, which found that Hutchins had failed to make reasonable accommodations for his handicap.

On appeal, the Supreme Judicial Court -- which the book jacket incorrectly calls the "Massachusetts Supreme Court" -- ruled in favor of Labonte's key legal claim, although his award was later reduced to about $2 million.

"In the end," Labonte concludes, "a very satisfying result."