I'm afraid I have more sad personal news. My father-in-law William Winship died on Friday, 12 days after my mother-in-law Judith.

If Judith represented the changing face of the legal profession—a woman who wanted to be a lawyer her whole life but was discouraged by her parents, then put herself through law school in middle age and got an in-house job on Wall Street—then Bill was a throwback to an earlier, more genteel era. 

He graduated from Yale Law School in 1958 and was hired by New York trusts and estates boutique Davidson, Dawson & Clark, which back then made a point of hiring one new associate a year from Yale.

In those days, DD&C took pride in matching the going rate that big firms such as Simpson Thacher and Sullivan & Cromwell paid new associates. That meant Bill's starting salary was a handsome $6,000 a year. 

And then, Bill stayed at the firm for the next 40 years, retiring in 1998. He loved his colleagues and his clients—why go anywhere else?

In many ways, it was a kinder and gentler time to practice law—before everyone knew everybody's profits per partner, where lateral moves were the exception rather than the rule, where when you left the office at the end of the day, you weren't on call all night. 

Consider this passage from an informal history of DD&C, which was founded in 1949 as a spin-off from Carter, Ledyard & Milburn: “From inception, Saturday was not a working day at the firm, evidence of the 'gentlemanly' way in which the firm expected to conduct its law practice. At most firms all employees were expected to be in the office on Saturday until noon or 1:00 p.m. Further, it was [founding partner Sidney Davidson's] practice to disappear from July 1st through Labor Day to spend the summer at his camp on Sebec Lake in Maine.”

Not working remotely, checking email five times a day and reachable by cell phone … just away. Can you imagine?

To be sure, it was a world dominated by white men. One anecdote from the firm's history about recruiting new associates illustrates this—and also an evolving awareness of the notion of diversity.

“The interviews at law schools led to invitations to the 'best and brightest' to visit the firm at its offices. On those occasions the young man or woman would be delivered at regular intervals to a rotation of partners and associates. Then, at lunch time, a small group would gather to take the recruit to lunch.

We loved these occasions, in part because the firm paid for the lunch. One day an interviewing law student was in the office for interviews and several of us were to take him to lunch. He was meeting with Bill Winship about noon, and as the rest of us gathered in the hall outside Bill's office, we heard the young man ask Bill if the lawyers in the firm were 'diverse.'

Bill advised him that surely we were; there might not be a lot of informal fol de rol during the working day, but each lawyer was surely an 'individual.' With that, we entered and they rose to go to lunch. When we opened the closet door to retrieve our coats (lawyers, of course, work with their coats off) there was a little commotion as each retrieved 'his' coat. The point is that all the coats in the closet were exactly the same shade of gray … So much for being individuals!”

Bill, however, was one of a kind. He was incredibly funny, with a deadpan wit. Sometimes humor can have an edge of cruelty, but with Bill, never. He was one of the kindest people I ever met—brilliant but modest, with a love for coffee, The New Yorker magazine, and finding discarded treasures on the streets of Manhattan such as old tables or mirrors and refurbishing them.

As DD&C partner Andrew Tansey put it, “Bill was remarkable and a role model to me in cutting through the excesses of process and posturing right to the core and substance of a matter where his practicality, intuition and most significantly generous and compassionate heart would invariably lead to the right result.”

As much as Bill enjoyed his work, where he carved out an expertise in tax-related issues, his true passion was for his wife and family. After Judith died, I think he was ready to go too.

I'm going to be taking the next few days off, but will be back in time to pick the Litigator of the Week, so please do send nominations.

And if you are fortunate enough to have your parents still alive … give them a call. Tell them you love them.