"If you had a client who was coming in and you asked him to stop and say hello, he would stop by the conference room," Fitzpatrick said. "Clients loved his personality."
Koch graduated from New York University School of Law in 1948. He was a solo practitioner handling real estate and transactional matters before becoming a partner at Koch, Lankenau, Schwartz & Kovner from 1965 to 1969.
"I was very proud of the fact that ours is the only law firm in the history of the city to produce one mayor and two corporation counsels; Victor Kovner became corporation counsel in David Dinkin's administration," he wrote in "I'm Not Done Yet!"
Allen Schwartz was Koch's first corporation counsel in 1978 and was later appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Southern District bench.
Gill, who persuaded Koch to join Robinson Silverman, said Koch had offers from other firms. Koch in his book said he was close to joining Proskauer Rose, where Schwartz had gone to practice. Thinking back, Koch wrote, he was glad he went to Robinson Silverman.
"Lord knows, if I'd gone with a really large firm, and if business soured, I'd be one of the first to go in any kind of downsizing because I was never going to bring in a massive number of new clients," he wrote.
"For me, working as a partner in a midtown law firm was certainly not the same as being mayor of the greatest city in the world," he wrote. "It wasn't even the same as being a congressman representing 520,000 people in the greatest city in the world, but it had its own important and interesting challenges."
@|Christine Simmons can be contacted at csimmons@alm.com.
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