Watch What We Do, Not What We Say

David Boies, the Adelphia bankruptcy, and "Amici LLC," Chapter 2:

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Max Shulman, a senior partner at Cravath, representing Deloitte & Touche LLP, has written to the judge presiding over the Adelphia bankruptcy (Southern District of New York, #02-41729) protesting both the "fees and tactics" of Amici, the document-management company partially founded and owned by colleagues and relatives of David Boies.

According to Shulman's letter, the requirement to use Amici was "foisted" on his client and Amici had an "economic lock-up" on the document database by making it too costly to migrate to any competitor.  Furthermore, the database was populated with patently irrelevant documents including menus, cookbooks, travel brochures, and shoe catalogs.  (We all know people waste time at work, but this puts the indirect imprimatur of a federal court on exactly how they waste time—with food and fashion fantasies, and vacation planning.)   In sum, Shulman writes:  "Using Amici has been a disaster."

Philip Korologos, the lead Adelphia lawyer at Boies-Schiller, retorts that his firm "didn't select" the documents, and that Amici's pricing and performance have been "competitive."

Entertainment value aside, I return to this unfolding saga for the hard steel of the business and economic issue being vaulted to prominence:  No matter how long and hard one may work at establishing a reputation—in this case, that of Boies-Schiller for league-leading counsel on good corporate governance—one can put that reputation at risk in a heartbeat through mis-steps. 

Clients' memories for value lists and mission statements are short, and for discordant behavior at odds with those declarations are long.

I have communicated with both Messrs. Shulman and Korologos in hopes of obtaining more "primary source" material.  Why do I think we have not heard the last of this?