4.2.12 WC: 191694 John Marshall and others. When Abe Goldstein called on each of these men, he did it nonchalantly without mentioning their heritage. But when he came to my name, he paused and said, “Dershowitz, from the famous Dershowitz family?” The class burst out laughing. For a moment I thought he was mocking me, but he explained that in Williamsburg, the Dershowitz name was quite well known. Yale Law School was an institution of meritocracy, where one could rise to the top, regardless of name or lack of heritage. I was first in my class, and became editor-in-chief of the law journal. That wasn’t enough for the fancy white shoe Wall Street firms. During my second year, I applied to about thirty such firms, and was turned down by every one of them. The hiring partner of Sullivan and Cromwell, looked at my transcript and saw all A’s, except for one C in Contracts. (I was so angry with my Contracts professor that I immediately enrolled in Advanced Contracts with the same teacher, and got an A). The hiring partner looked at my transcript and brushed me away and said, “We don’t take C students at Sullivan and Cromwell.” Years later he approached me at a Yale reunion function and told me that he had saved me from a bad experience. He disclosed that he was a closet Jew and realized that I would never fit into the culture of that firm. Within several years however, that firm along with most other Wall Street firms, had significant numbers of Jewish associates and partners. (In the late 1960s, I sued one of the firms that didn’t hire me for refusing to promote an Italian-American to partnership and won a ruling that discrimination in promotion was prohibited by the law). I got two job offers, both with Jewish firms, but even one of them discriminated against me on account of my religion. Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison offered me a summer job at $100 a week. (I still have the letter!) I immediately accepted and wrote to them that I could not work on Saturday.