David Lat linked to a November 2017 profile of Tom Goldstein in the University of North Carolina alumni magazine. He was interviewed in April 2017. In that period, he had two back-to-back oral arguments in California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities, Inc. (4/17/2017) and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California (4/25/2017). In my post yesterday, I listed some of the allegations made in the indictment from that time frame, which involved high stakes poker games, suffering losses of nearly $10 million, and moving funds around from the firm to pay those debts.
Here is how the alumni magazine described his experiences during that time:
On a Sunday in April, Goldstein secluded himself in a 10th-floor suite at the Park Hyatt Washington hotel. For two days before every Supreme Court appearance, he leaves home to focus. . . .
In stories from his younger years, Goldstein came across as larger than life, dabbling in high-stakes poker and once shipping a Ferrari to Las Vegas for a drag race. In person, he’s soft-spoken and selfeffacing. He gave up poker. He traded the Ferrari for a Tesla P100D (still fast, but with room for the kids). He quit posting YouTube spoofs about his work. These days, most of what he talks about are legal briefs and oral arguments. “I think most people,” he said, “would find what I do boring.”
That evening, Howe planned to bring their daughters down for dinner from their home in Chevy Chase — eating together is a family commitment they rarely forfeit, not even for the Supreme Court. But other than a rare break for an interview, at the Hyatt there were few distractions. “When I left home last night, the dog started throwing up and my daughter was sick so it was just good fortune that I had separated myself, and then I’ll be back home on Monday,” Goldstein said. “Now it’s just a question of putting it all together, refining the answers, filling in all the little holes of what I don’t know. That sort of thing. … I’ll learn things until the last possible minute.” . . .
“We’re a good team,” Howe said. Said Goldstein: “I wouldn’t have time to do what I do without all she does with the family and the blog. And my law practice makes her job possible. So each of us contributes equally to the success of the other. … The only time we’ve had a problem is when there’s been a hierarchy. We figured that out so we’re never in an environment where one reports to another.” . . .
Howe, who blogged about Neil Gorsuch’s first day on the court that morning, took a seat in the spectator section to watch her husband’s argument. She doesn’t write about his cases; Columbia Law School professor Ronald Mann covered the hearing for SCOTUSblog. Goldstein was up against Paul Clement, a former solicitor general who is considered a leading contender for justice if there’s another opening under President Donald Trump. “One of the things I love about what I do is that the people on the other side that you’re dealing with are super talented,” Goldstein said. “They push you. You cannot sleep on any case. The other side is going to make all the best arguments that can be made, in the best way they can be made. It really causes you to up your game. I find other places where you can just wing it very boring.”
I was also struck by this quote from Nina Totenberg, Goldstein’s former employer and mentor:
“The thing about Tom, you’ve got to understand, is he’s a quintessentially decent person as a human being,” Totenberg said. “When somebody is as smart as he is, there’s always the chance he will lose that sense of personal decency and become completely obsessed with himself and all that. And that didn’t happen to him. I give him a lot of credit for that. I give her [Amy Howe] even more.”
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