Related: Dickstein Shapiro ‘No Longer Engaged in the Practice of Law’
Taskier recalled how the late David Shapiro, her father, and Dickstein had opened the law firm above a delicatessen in New York. They specialized in aiding the unpopular.
The lawyers had represented the “Hollywood Ten,” who were accused by Sen. Joseph McCarthy of being communist sympathizers as well as members of the American Nazi Party over their freedom of speech. And they defended Charles Colson, the Nixon White House counsel who eventually went to jail in the Watergate scandal.
“It grew exponentially as major cases developed,” she said, citing the firm’s more than 400-lawyer head count about five years ago. It had fewer than 120 lawyers this week. “This put food on my table, paid for my schooling, my brothers’ schooling, graduate schooling, law school.”
More than two years ago, Taskier said she realized the firm might face its end. That’s around the time when her husband, retired litigator Paul Taskier, left the Dickstein Shapiro partnership after working there for more than 30 years.
“There was a camaraderie in the firm. There was a warmth. There was a support system,” she said. “This was my family. This was my husband’s family.”
David Shapiro died in 2009 at the age of 81. Sidney Dickstein died in 2014 at the age of 89.
Ellen Dickstein Kominers, a Bethesda lawyer who is the daughter of Sidney Dickstein, declined to comment Thursday when reached by phone.
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