Q & A: Faye B. Feinstein

Faye B. Feinstein

Age: 55

Family: She and her husband, Charlie, have three children, Mike, 28; Ricky, 23; and Danielle, 19.

Education: She graduated from Brooklyn College in 1973, and New York University School of Law in 1984.

Professional: She worked at Antonow & Fink from 1984 to 1988; Altheimer & Gray from 1988 to 2003; and is now chair of the commercial bankruptcy, restructuring, and creditors’ rights group at Quarles & Brady’s Chicago office.

1. What is the strangest thing that ever happened to you as a lawyer?

The year that there was the flood we had a deposition scheduled in a case I was working on and, because of the flood, a lot of people got kicked out of their offices, and there was limited transportation in the Loop. A lot of people just went home. But we had this deposition scheduled and for some reason it could not be rescheduled.

We had about four lawyers, the deponent, the court reporter, and we all went to somewhere on the North Side, to somebody’s house, to take this deposition. The whole situation was so bizarre. You’re so used to doing it in a formal setting and here we are in somebody’s kitchen, taking the deposition. …

Another situation, which many more people have had, but I’ve only had once. I had a case where I got a phone call from a disgruntled creditor and it made me very uncomfortable. It wasn’t threatening, per se, but I was very nervous. I learned that you can call the U.S. marshal and ask for protection in the courtroom. So I did and I told them the time of the hearing and they said they’d have somebody come up there. On the day of the hearing, this U.S. marshal that they sent came in and he was a guy probably in his late 60s, overweight. He didn’t have a billy club. He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t have handcuffs … I’m thinking, ”Geez, I hope there’s not a problem.”

2. If you could have lunch with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

I would really like to have lunch with my father. He’s been dead for probably about 15 years. He was a Holocaust survivor and it was interesting that he pushed me to go to law school because that generation was not really in favor of — it was not a priority that women should become professionals. It was okay to be a teacher, and then when you have kids, be a mom. He pushed me to become a lawyer and he was very proud.

I would like to bring him up to speed now on everything that has happened because in the last 15 years a lot has happened in my career …

3. What advice do you have for new lawyers or those wanting to become lawyers?

Make sure this is really what you want to do. The profession is not the way it used to be. It’s really very much a business — not that it wasn’t a business. But when I started I never worried where the work was coming from. You always worry about where the work is coming from [now], and you have to spend a lot of your time selling yourself and selling your firm and selling your partners. As much time doing that as doing the work.

Those are things I think new lawyers need to appreciate very early in their careers. Start developing a network of contacts, and start learning how the work comes into their firm and how they can participate in that process.

I also think they need to go, if they can, and do a minimum of one summer, if not more, being a generalist in a firm that allows you to kind of see the opportunities in the various practice areas, because law school does not prepare you for the practice. Law school teaches you how to think like a lawyer, you hope, and to do some research, and maybe how to write a brief. But other than that it is nothing like the practice …

4. What do you like the most or the least about being a lawyer?

I actually like the work that I do. I practice in an area, which is commercial bankruptcy, restructuring, and creditors’ rights. The work in our area is diverse, a microcosm of a lot of different areas of the law. I can be doing litigation in the bankruptcy court. I can be doing litigation in state court or federal district court. I can be negotiating contracts. I can be drafting loan agreements, modification agreements, forbearance agreements, and purchase agreements. I’ve directed all kinds of purely bankruptcy-related issues and pre-bankruptcy related issues. So it’s never boring. The work is really great.

But the politics, I’ll call it politics, though I don’t mean the relationships within the firm. I mean the business aspect of it; the fact that you practice in a firm and the firm runs a business. How much you charge for what you do, how many hours do you have to do it, where the work is going to come from, is getting tougher and tougher and taking more and more time …

5. What was your favorite childhood vacation?

Every winter over the winter break we went to Florida; we went to Miami every year. We took the train because my mother didn’t like to fly. It was kind of cool because we get on the train and it would be cold, then two days later you get off the train and it would be hot.

And then in the spring we always went to the Catskills. That’s what Jewish people did in New York - they went to the Catskills. It was the same week every year, it would happen to be Passover, and we went every year and you would go and see the same people, in the same place. To me it was like going to the country because that’s what it was like …

6. What is the most important thing going on in the world or legal community today?

In my area, especially, there is a lot of moving and a lot of expansion. The bigger firms are getting bigger. This is not really new, but it seems to be to the point where a lot of mid-size firms are just either dissolving or being sucked into the larger firms so that you have the small boutique firms and the much larger firms.

The larger firms are all kind of moving in the same direction because they are all being advised by the same advisors. They are being driven by profits-per-partner, which is important, but it just seems to be so much higher on the list now than it used to be. I just think that has changed the practice. I think a lot of the more senior people like myself are happy to be at the back end, instead of coming in now.

— Interviewed by Olivia Clarke