The Common Scold: September 2011

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Tuesday, September 11

Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I’ve been struggling with my own reaction to the milestone — which ranges from wanting to just shut my eyes and not have to ever think about it again; to my frustration that I am not nearly articulate enough to effectively wordsmith the poetry the situation requires.

I still harbor survivor guilt. How could I have had the “personal best” day of my career — with colleague David Horrigan of The National Law Journal, at Ground Zero, finding members of our legal community and chronicling their escapes and losses — and at the end of that day walked home without so much as a scratch? I think about that often, and can take comfort in just one word from that sentence: community.

Unfortunately, before that Tuesday, I already had too much experience covering California disasters, including the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Oakland firestorm, and the brutal shooting by a deranged former client at Pettit & Martin — all events that turned acquaintances into widows and rendered friends homeless.

As Horrigan and I walked downtown on September 11, 2001, I knew from the San Francisco reporting that it would be the strength of the people I would meet that would carry me through the day. And that it was important, to the living and the dead, to tell their stories.

We interviewed New York Law School students (from left) Yadhira Gonzalez, Kelly Lerner, Nanette Aridas, and Joshua Sanders. Lerner was buying a new suit for a recruiting interview when the planes hit, her boyfriend, Joshua Sanders recounted his panicked race to find her and shakily described the horrific images of people so desperate they jumped. Aridas also tried to keep her composure as she worried about her husband's fate.

We listened to attorney Alan Chorne (right), who ran from his office at 150 Broadway, convinced he was doomed. He recited his prayer: “I’m going to die. Please make it quick.” We talked with administrative judge Merryl Snow (left) and attorney Peter Haskel (lower right). We sat with Father George Rutler (lower left), a Catholic police chaplain who works with local bar associations, who had been at the World Trade Center, performing “last rites” for victims. His friend, Father Mychal Judge, was blessing firefighters as they entered the burning buildings, and administering last rites to the dying. He was killed when the South Tower collapsed, the first official fatality documented by the city of New York.

We told their stories in the September 12 edition of The New York Law Journal; our reports and photographs were picked up throughout ALM.

On Sept. 11, 2001 we were just about finished producing the October issue of Law Technology News. But on Sept. 12, we jettisoned the near-finished pages, and turned to our community for help. Within 48 hours, you delivered. We reconfigured the entire issue to the theme of disaster recovery, offering checklists, advice, consolation, and, hopefully, comfort.

Among the many contributors, Lindsay McCall, then with Morrison & Foerster, outlined how firms could conduct business on cell phones and wireless PDAs when servers were down. Loren Jones, then with West (now Thomson Reuters) offered a comprehensive guide to how lawyers could use scanners to rebuild document files. Consultant Edward Poll provided a detailed disaster recovery protocol plan. Michael Latz, then a senior account manager with Cingular Wireless, wrote about why his plane did not leave Newark airport. Our legal technology community also immediately offered their services to those who needed anything from lawyers to help process claims, to replacing office technology.

Our friends at The Late Show with David Letterman graciously allowed us to publish Letterman’s searing monologue that many observers said helped stabilize the emotions of New Yorkers, when he returned to air, at Mayor Rudolph Guiliani’s urging, on Sept 17.

Judith Flournoy, then at New York’s Kelley Drye & Warren, submitted a moving poem, including this passage: “In our pain and our anger there is honor and more; What we cannot forget, What we will not forget, Our memory is long. .... We will overcome, we will survive, We will win this battle, we will live life.”

Indeed. We are a community.

A decade has passed, and I am again editing the October issue of Law Technology News magazine. As I did 10 years ago, we will dedicate it to a member of our community, Arizona lawyer Donna Killoughey. Her husband Gary Bird called her that Tuesday morning, to say he just had one last quick last meeting -- breakfast with this new employer Marsh & McLennan, before he'd be heading home to her.