AN eerie quiet pervades the lofty 17th Street space that once served as home base for Isaacson Rosenbaum.
Telephones and computers are dark and silent; offices and corridors are deserted; a stray box here and there awaits pickup.
Last Thursday, June 30, marked the final day of business for one of Denvers most venerable law firms, and one of the Jewish communitys most integral legal resources. By sunset, after a final gathering of remaining staff and partners and no doubt a few tearful toasts Isaacson Rosenbaum passed into history.
Stanton Rosenbaum the firms senior partner, son of its cofounder and a man who spent virtually every working day of his career with the firm sits alone in the cavernous conference room, a panorama of downtown Denver and the Front Range positioned spectacularly behind him.
Rosenbaum turns 82 this month and looks more than great for his age.
And I feel great, he says, then indicates the empty room, his voice echoing. Except for this.
Its very traumatic for me, admits Rosenbaum, dressed comfortably and casually on his firms closing day.
This firm was formed over 50 years ago by my dad, Charlie Rosenbaum, and Lou Isaacson, who were the two founding partners, so its sort of like Im sitting shiva to see something like that happen after all of these years.
His feelings toward the firm, he offers, are very much like family. His personal secretary, Eileen Duggan, who retired earlier this year, was with me for over 40 years, Rosenbaum says, actually longer than any other woman that Ive known besides my sister and my mother.
Most of the firms lawyers there were some 15 at the most recent count have secured positions with other firms, Rosenbaum says, but he worries about the paralegals and administrative staff.
We have staff that has been with us for 30 years. Thats who I really feel bad about. Were trying to locate positions for them, but in this economy its not easy.
THE word economy also provides Rosenbaum with a ready answer when he is asked what contributed to the firms closure.
Can I quote a president of ours? Its the economy, stupid.
The quote usually attributed to James Carville, when he was stumping for presidential candidate Bill Clinton sums it up perfectly, Rosenbaum says.
Since its founding, Isaacson Rosenbaum has specialized in property law. Real estate and development have, on average, constituted some 70% of the firms business.
Before the advent of the current recession in 2008 and the resulting nosedive in credit, putting a virtual stop to private development the idea of closing Isaacson Rosenbaum wasnt even on the radar, Rosenbaum says.
Weve had ups and downs over the years but nothing this bad that has lasted this long, he says.
A lot of our clients who are developers arent developing anymore. Their development projects have been shut down. Theyre waiting to see what happens.
A layman might not be aware that legal costs constitute a significant portion of a developers investment in a project.
First of all, Rosenbaum says, he has to acquire the land. That requires lawyers to go out and find out who owns the land and negotiate the purchase.
Then he has to get somebody to finance the building, so we have to deal with the bank in making the loan documents.
And then he has to get construction loans and we have to deal with the construction contracts. Then, when he sells the houses, we review the documents on the sale of the houses.
That formidable list of tasks was long enough to keep quite a few lawyers in his firm busy, Rosenbaum says.
The recessionary credit clampdown has had a direct domino effect on Isaacson Rosenbaum.
We had clients that have been with a bank for 30 to 40 years, who have never missed a payment, who come in to get their line of credit renewed and the bank says either theyre not going to renew it or they renew it on terms that our client cant live with. So they close down their small businesses.
And small businesses, relatively speaking, have long been Isaacson Rosenbaums specialty.
Who is to blame for such a state of affairs? Rosenbaum is asked.
I dont think there is any culprit, he responds after a moments thought. Its just that the economy has turned bad.
Do I want to blame what the banks did to financing that they shouldnt have done? Or the mortgage lenders who lent money when they shouldnt have been lending it to people? I could blame those, or blame Wall Street.
Rosenbaum is, in his own right, a specialist in tax and estate law and has long advocated an ethical premise that taxes are the dues we pay to live in a free society, not something to be cleverly avoided.
He applies the same standard to the banking, finance and mortgage professions.
All these companies were not interested in protecting the public, Rosenbaum says. They were interested in making money, which bothers me.
ISAACSON Rosenbaum became a professional firm in 1960 under the leadership of the late Charlie Rosenbaum and Lou Isaacson, who had already worked collaboratively before formally forming a partnership.
The firm rapidly earned a reputation as an effective property law business. Myron Micky Cohen (destined to become a major developer himself) and Shel Friedman were among its early talent pool.
Stanton Rosenbaum joined the firm shortly after its founding, having just completed graduate courses at New York University which he attended thanks to the GI Bill. He did his military service in the Air Force Judge Advocate General corps in the 1950s.
I became a partner maybe a year or two after the firm was founded, he says. At that time, no young Jewish attorney could get a job with the major law firms in Denver. There was no sense in applying.
Rosenbaum was the firms managing partner until about a decade ago when he gradually turned over management to the younger guys so I could step back.
A point of pride for Rosenbaum was that Isaacson Rosenbaum was not only Jewish in terms of professional composition but community involvement.
The founders were both local Jewish community leaders, Isaacson most notably with the ADL and Charles Rosenbaum with Bnai Brith and the Allied Jewish Federation.
The younger Rosenbaum has continued this tradition, with a long history of lay leadership at the federation. Many of the firms attorneys have been similarly active over the years.
Isaacson Rosenbaum also did a lot of business with Jewish developers, including Jordon Perlmutter and Samuel Primack (of the residential developer Perl-Mack), Al Cohen and Philip Klutznick, a developer who later became US Commerce Secretary.
We developed substantial properties here. Going back a long, long time, our firm was one of the instruments, when Micky Miller was here, for developing Montbello, which became a city within itself. We developed The Preserve, which was a Koelbel [and Company] development; three buildings downtown which Marvin Davis built with Al Cohen.
One case that stands out was the civil case of John King in the early 60s. He was the oil guru that sold a lot of interest in his company. He ran for the US Senate and didnt get nominated. At that time it was the largest tax case that the government had brought against an individual. I think it was $15 million that they claimed he owed in taxes.
The firm also developed a reputation as an effective criminal law firm, Rosenbaum says, thanks largely to the work of attorney Gary Lozow.
Rosenbaum adds that he once considered being a criminal lawyer himself, back in the early days of his career.
I learned my lesson when I was in the service that I was not a good criminal lawyer, he says.
When youre in JAG [Judge Advocate General], one week you can be appointed to prosecute, the next week you can be appointed to defend. When I defended and I lost, and theyre hauling this guy away in handcuffs with two MPs and his wife and kids are sitting there in tears, I was sick to my stomach.
On the other hand, the next week when I prosecuted and I won and theyre hauling the man away in handcuffs and his wife is sitting there in tears, Im sick to my stomach. I said, I cant do criminal law.
ROSENBAUM, a battle-tested veteran of many legal wars, doesnt deny being nostalgic about earlier days in the legal profession.
He misses the time when most Denver attorneys were personal acquaintances, if not friends, and trusted each others word; when contentiousness between lawyers was limited to their arguments in the courtroom; when settlements were often reached amicably and sealed with a handshake.
Law today, he says, is much more combative and far less civil. Its also much less personal.
Nobody talks to you face-to-face anymore. Its either Twittering or emailing or leaving voicemails. People dont go to lunch and say can we work this out? anymore.
I also think that lawyers should have a sense of humanity underneath what they do and I think unfortunately a lot of them have lost that sense.
Such laments, however, regardless of how important they are to him, do not mean that Rosenbaum intends to allow the closure of his firm to bring about his retirement.
Old attorneys never retire, he cracks. They just lose their appeal.
In fact, starting this month, Rosenbaum will be listed as of counsel to Ryley Carlock & Applewhite, an Arizona-based firm that is taking a total of 12 former Isaacson Rosenbaum attorneys, and most of their clients, into their newly expanded Denver office.
HIS sadness notwithstanding, Rosenbaum tries to be philosophical about the fact that his family firm has reached its final day.
Institutions like nations and people are ultimately finite things, with beginnings and endings, he says.
Id like people to think that weve done a good job, he says, his voice echoing in a conference room that will soon belong to somebody else. We tried our best and weve been very dedicated, through Jewish philosophy, to make the world better tikkun olam.
Its been an absolute pleasure to have practiced law in this wonderful community for all of these years.
I have no regrets at all. Its a great community and I just hope it becomes and continues to be great into the future.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
