My cousin Vinnie, the suburban
real estate attorney, made his annual trek to Falmouth to watch me work on my
boat. My old
body was contorted in the bilge performing the reoccurring ritual
of replacing important corroded parts, and he had his feet up on a padded chair
sipping an ale brewed in nearby Mashpee. I enjoy our time together because it
provides me some assurance that I am not crazy, relatively speaking.
“Paulie…”, he said after pouring
a fresh golden ale, “I am thinking about retiring in the next five years or
so.” I reminded Vinnie that he has been
saying that for ten years, and then we reminisced about how we look at things
differently than we did thirty-odd years ago. “Vinnie” I asked, “What do you
wish you knew then, that you know now?”
“Where do I begin?” He barked.
“I’ve learned a lot of lessons, many of them the hard way. But clearly the most
important lesson I learned was not to succumb to the pressure tactics of
bullies attempting to get me to compromise my knowledge or my ethics. Part of
the reason that I became an attorney is that I know that I ‘do not suffer fools
gladly’, and it is always a pleasure to interact with knowledgeable counsel and
skilled businesspeople, but bullies are another story.
“When I was just starting out in
practice, I ran into quite a few bully clients that wanted me to engage in one
questionable thing or another so they could make more money. As a former Boy Scout,
I did my best to hold my ground. I quickly learned that some bullies shopped
around looking for young lawyers that they could bamboozle. Remember that guy
who ended up in federal prison?”
I knew immediately who Vinnie
was referring to. A slick guy with expensive cars, later to be named by the
feds as one of the greatest white-collar criminals of the 1990’s, found
Vinnie’s office and unsuccessfully attempted to convince Vinnie to become his
personal consiglieri. Vinnie’s internal radar told him to run. “Vinnie” I said,
“You know even his wife and eventual attorney pleaded guilty to bank fraud in
1994. You could have ended up in a federal prison like Michael Cohen!”
“Paulie” Vinnie quietly said,
“Most of the bullies I encountered have since passed away, or filed for bankruptcy.
The extra dollars they chased are no good to them now. With few exceptions,
even though the bullies were angry with me at the times when I said ‘NO’, they
stuck with me. I would like to think that internally they respected my desire
to do the right thing, and decided that it was in their best interests to have
trustworthy counsel. At least that’s what I would like to think.”
Contorted, in the bilge, I
repeated: “The dollars they chased are no good to them now.”
A former REBA president, Paul
Alphen currently serves on the association’s executive committee and co-chairs
the long-range planning committee. He is also a member of the
Executive Committee of the Abstract Club. He is a partner in the Westford firm
of Alphen & Santos, P.C. and
concentrates in residential and commercial real estate development, land use
regulation, administrative law, real estate transactional practice and title examination.
As entertaining as he finds the practice of law, Paul enjoys numerous hobbies,
including messing around with his power boats and fulfilling his bucket list of
visiting every Major League ballpark. Paul can be contacted at palphen@alphensantos.com
