異類之不一樣的成功啟示錄 第76期:瑪麗的一刻鐘

Chapter Five. The Three Lessons of Joe Flom

第五章 弗洛姆的三節(jié)

"MARY GOT A QUARTER"

“瑪麗的一刻鐘”

Joe Flom is the last living "named" partner of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom.

喬·弗洛姆(JoeFlom)是世達律師事務所最后一位尚健在的“指定合伙人”。

He has a corner office high above the Conde Nast tower in Manhattan.

他在曼哈頓康泰納仕塔樓(CondéNasttower)最頂層的一角擁有一間辦公室。

He is short and slightly hunched.

他身材矮小，稍微有些發(fā)福。

His head is large, framed by long prominent ears, and his narrow blue eyes were hidden by oversize aviator-style glasses.

他的腦袋比較大，一雙大耳朵顯得挺長，他細長的藍眼睛隱藏在一幅特大號的太陽鏡后面。

He is slender now, but during his heyday, Flom was extremely overweight.

與壯年時期相比，他已經(jīng)算是苗條了不少，那時候他的體重嚴重超標。

He waddles when he walks.

他走起路來有些搖搖擺擺，

He doodles when he thinks.

他思考的時候常顯得心不在焉，

He mumbles when he talks, and when he makes his way down the halls of Skadden, Arps, conversations drop to a hush.

他說話的時候總喜歡喃喃而語，只要他一走進世達律師事務所的大廳，里面立即會變得安靜起來。

Flom grew up in the Depression in Brooklyn's Borough Park neighborhood.

弗洛姆自小生活在布魯克林市區(qū)公園附近一個令人沮喪的地區(qū)。

His parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

他的父母是來自東歐的猶太移民。

His father, Isadore, was a union organizer in the garment industry who later went to work sewing shoulder pads for ladies' dresses.

他的父親，伊薩多，是外衣制造業(yè)一個協(xié)會的組織者，后來他改成專門縫制女裝的披肩。

His mothers worked at what was called piecework, doing applique at home. They were desperately poor.

他母親的工作屬于計件工作——在家里為別人的衣服縫制飾品。他們窮困潦倒。

His family moved nearly every year when he was growing up because the custom in those days was for landlords to give new tenants a month's free rent,

在他的記憶中，幾乎每一年他們就要搬一次家，因為那時候的租稅制度規(guī)定，房東必須免去新租戶一個月的房租，

and without that, his family could not get by.

正因為這樣，他們搬一次家，就可以節(jié)省一部分費用。

In junior high school, Flom took the entrance exam for the elite Townsend Harris public high school on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan,

讀完初中，弗洛姆通過了湯森哈理斯公立高中的入學考試，這是位于曼哈頓列克星敦大道的一所著名高中。

a school that in just forty years of existence produced three Nobel Prize winners, six Pulitzer Prize winners, and one Supreme Court Justice,

在這所高中短短的四十年中，培養(yǎng)出了三位諾貝爾獎獲得者、六位普利策獎獲得者、一位最高法院法官，

not to mention George Gershwin and Jonas Salk, the inventer of polio vaccine.

脊髓灰質(zhì)炎疫苗的發(fā)明者喬治·格什溫(GeorgeGershwin)和喬納斯·索爾克(JonasSalk)也來自這所高中。

He got in. His mother would give him a dime in the morning for breakfast- three donuts, orange juice, and coffee at Nedick's.

弗洛姆來到這里，他的母親每天早上都會給他一角硬幣吃早餐——在勒迪克(Nedick’s)吃三個油炸圈餅、喝杯橙汁或者咖啡。

After school, he pushed a hand truck in the garment district.

放學之后，他就到外衣制作區(qū)推手推車。

He did two years of night schools at City College in upper Manhattan, working during the days to make ends meet,

他在上曼哈頓地區(qū)的城市學院讀了兩年夜校——為了維持生計，他白天一直在工作

signed up for the army, served his time, and applied to Harvard Law School.

隨后他報名參軍，在服役期間，他申請了哈佛大學法學院。

"I wanted to get into the law since I was six years old," Flom says.

“從6歲開始，我就希望自己能進入法律界，”弗洛姆說，

He didn't have a degree in college.

但他沒能在學院獲得學位，

Harvard took him anyway.

哈佛大學遺棄了他。

"Why? I wrote them a letter on why I was the answer to sliced bread," is how Flom explains it.

“為什么?我給他們寫了一封信，告訴他們?yōu)槭裁次抑贿m合去切面包，”他解釋說，一如他言簡意賅的言談風格。

At Harvard, in the late 1940s, he never took notes.

在20世紀40年代，正在哈佛大學讀書的弗洛姆從來沒有做過筆記。

"All of us were going through this first year idiocy of writing notes carefully in the classroom and doing an outline of that, then a condensation of that,

“我們無一例外都要經(jīng)歷枯燥無味的一年，我們必須呆在教室認真做筆記，根據(jù)筆記寫一個綱要，然后再把要點整理出來，

and then doing it again on onionskin paper, on top of other paper," remembers Chars Haar, who was a classmate of Flom.

最后寫在一張放在最上面的薄光澤紙上，””弗洛姆的同班同學查爾斯·哈爾說，

"It was a routinized way of trying to learn the cases. Not Joe. He wouldn't have any of that.

“我們循規(guī)蹈矩地學習那些案例，但這對喬不適合。他幾乎從來不記筆記。

But he had that quality which we always vaguely subsumed under 'thinking like a lawyer.' He had the great capacity for judgement."

他擁有一種潛質(zhì)，能‘像律師一樣思考’，而我們在這方面卻總是差強人意。他擁有過人的判斷能力。

Flom was Law Review- the honor reserved for the very top students in the class.

弗洛姆曾是《法律評論》(LawReview)的編輯——這是賦予班級最拔尖學生的一項榮譽。

During "hiring season", the Christmas break of his second year, he went down to New York to interview with the big cooperate law firms of the day.

第二年的圣誕假期屬于弗洛姆的“應聘季節(jié)”，他來到紐約參加一些大的律師事務所的面試。