Law Review: Lawyer Jerome J. Shestack inspired many others

As a Washington reporter for The Inquirer during the tumultuous years of the President Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings and, later, the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq, I certainly knew of Jerome J. Shestack, the prominent Philadelphia lawyer who died Aug. 18 at age 88.

He had been the American Bar Association president in 1997 and 1998, and earlier had sat on the ABA screening committee that split on the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, a result that helped derail his appointment.

He served on important commissions. He was well-respected by top lawyers in town.

But I hadn't met Shestack, and I knew of him then only in the way that most people whose careers play out on national and international stages are known. A distant, distinguished eminence - important, to be sure, but so shrouded by accolades, titles, and commendations it is hard to get past the resume and hagiography to the real person.

That changed a few years ago when I came to Philadelphia to write about the world of law firms and litigation. Shortly before leaving Washington, I had a chat with Shestack's old friend William Coleman, the former transportation secretary and key litigation strategist in the Brown v. Board of Education battle.

The first thing Coleman said was that if I really wanted to understand the law as a business, and Philadelphia's distinctive mix of high-end corporate and plaintiffs' practices, I had to look up Shestack.

Shestack not only knew that world thoroughly but also would be delighted to talk about it.

Everything that Coleman said was true.

What struck me most about Shestack the first day I met him for lunch at the offices of the WolfBlock L.L.P. law firm was his generosity and graciousness.

Shestack had been all over the world, had served presidents, had written speeches for top political candidates like Hubert Humphrey and Sargent Shriver.

He was a leading human-rights activist and had taken part in weekly telephone calls with Andrei Sakharov to buck up the dissident's spirit during his confinement by Soviet authorities.

Yet here he was in the WolfBlock cafeteria asking me what I wanted to know about lawyering in Philadelphia and beyond, and what he could do to help me.

 I didn't know it then, but soon I would learn that this was the essential Jerry Shestack.