Ground Zero

WTC Firms Regroup

By Ashby Jones

JACK Williams, managing partner of Thacher Proffitt & Wood, has gone from being a lawyer to a counselor and a carpenter. After the two towers of the World Trade Center crashed to earth, his first concern was the well-being of the staff of the 160-lawyer firm, whose headquarters on the 38th, 39th, and 40th floors of south tower evaporated into dust and debris on Sept. 11, 2001.

Williams' second task -- rebuild the firm "from the ground up." After the dust settled, all staff members at the 160-lawyer firm were accounted for. But all tangible evidence of the firm's presence in New York had vanished: desks with handwritten notes; computers with drafts of documents in progress; calendars with court dates penciled in.

Williams says that the firm routinely backed up its computers but that it had nonetheless lost some data. "We think we'll be able to reproduce most of our documents from our clients," he said.

Clients, he says, have been amazing. "We've had a tremendous outpouring of sympathy from clients, which has been really gratifying," he said. "We've had offers of space, offers of any kind of help. . . .The cooperation from everyone has been enormous."

The firm immediately ordered servers and computers, redirected phone calls to its White Plains office, and struggled valiantly--and successfully-- to get its e-mail system up and running. The search for new offices in the city has already begun.

Thacher Profitt wasn't prepared for the ultimate disaster. Few firms would be, says Robert Dolinsky, a law firm technology consultant at Arlington, Va.'s Potomac Consulting Group. While most firms backup their data and move it off site, far fewer test those backups routinely.

For the past two years, Dolinsky has been advising firms to put in place a disaster recovery plan: a detailed map of how to rise again if the worst happens. But not all firms heed the warnings. And few firms ultimately pay the price.

Dolinsky estimates that a 100-lawyer firm would have to spend $20,000 to $40,000 to prepare a detailed contingency plan that anticipates everything that Williams now faces.

Harris Beach

The NYC office of Rochester's Harris Beach was located on the 85th floor of WTC's south tower. At press time, five employees were missing, said managing partner Gunther Buerman.

But its computer data was intact. "We have backups of every document created through Monday stored on servers in Rochester," said Gunther. "We're still fully in business."

The firm is coming up with real estate for its 113 New York City employees, 50 of them lawyers. A client offered space in the city in midtown. Others will work from the firm's offices in Newark and at Gainsburg & Hirsch, a recently acquired firm.

Drinker Biddle & Reath L.L.P.

Philadelphia's Drinker Biddle & Reath L.L.P.'s 16-employee office in the north tower did not suffer any human casualties. The sole employee on premises at the time carried a flashlight and walked down 89 floors after the door of the office blew in and the ceiling collapsed.

Firm chairman James Sweet immediately sent a letter to all clients of the New York office saying that they would be serviced from the firm's Florham Park, N.J. offices, where the lawyers will temporarily relocate to. Computer files were saved. Papers were lost. Sweet anticipates that the firm will be visiting courts, clients, and opposing counsel to recreate paper files.

Below 14th

All firms located below 14th Street were affected by the disaster -- because all businesses in downtown were ordered shut. The list includes heavyweights such as Sullivan & Cromwell; Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton; and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

All three firms immediately set up offices in small, auxilary offices in midtown Manhattan, and rerouted all phone calls through these offices. The firms pushed hard to make sure their lawyers could check e-mail or access documents stored internally.

At Cadwalader, laptops were distributed to the attorneys who had left theirs in the office on Monday night. Cleary prepared its Washington, D.C. attorneys for the potential arrival of lawyers from Manhattan.

Disaster Preparation

Many of the large firms were prepared with disaster plans in place. Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy established one shortly after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"Right away, we established a midtown office that we could use as an emergency bunker," said Ava Thorin, the firm's director of client development. "We don't use it much, but right now we're incredibly glad that we have it."

A few years ago, Cleary, Gottlieb did the same thing. "We decided that in an event like a fire or a blackout, we absolutely had to have somewhere else in Manhattan for us to go," said managing partner Peter Karasz. So it purchased a small office in midtown. According to Karasz, the plan hasn't worked perfectly. "But we have a place to coordinate everything, and we're very close to giving all of our attorneys access to our network."

Ashby Jones is a technology reporter for American Lawyer Media.

Additional reporting by Mark Voorhees and Mike Godwin.