Kudos to Rich Levin and a Swipe at the WSJ

Time for a bit of bankruptcy news, and a swipe at the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reports that Rich Levin is leaving Skadden Arps for Cravath, Swaine and Moore (link). I assume it is a good move for Rich (else why did he do it?) and I'm sure it is a lucky break for Cravath--Rich has as good a skill set as you could want to move into a role as a senior financial strategist for corporate debtors in trouble, and how can you argue with someone who wrote large chunks of the current Bankruptcy Code?

The amusing part is that the Journal treats "bankruptcy at Cravath" as something on the order of gambling in Casablanca--shocked, shocked. Evidently nobody told them that bankruptcy created Cravath, just as Cravath created bankruptcy--the firm's roots are inextricably intertwined with the golden age of railway receiverships in the 19th Century. If you doubt it, take a look at Paul D. Cravath, The Reorganization of Corporations, in SOME LEGAL PHASES OF CORPORATE FINANCING, REORGANIZATION AND REGULATION (1922), or Robert T. Swaine, Reorganization of Corporations: Certain Developments of the Last Decade, 27 COLUM. L. REV. 901, 901 (1927), or Robert T. Swaine, Reorganization—The Next Step: A Reply to Mr. James N. Rosenberg, 22 COLUM. L. REV. 121, 129–30 (1922), or Robert T. Swaine, Corporate Reorganization—An Amendment to the Bankruptcy Act—A Symposium, 19 VA. L. REV. 317, 317–33 (1933).

Or take a look at Stephen J. Lubben, Railroad Receiverships and Modern Bankruptcy Theory, 89 Cornell L. Rev. 1421 (2004) from which I copped all these fancy citations.

Fun Fact: for the uninitiated: virtually every [A wretched exaggeration--say "a lot of"] U.S. railroad[s] went through "reorganization" (heh, heh) at least once in the 19th Century. A notable exception: the Norfolk & Western, whose only real business was hauling coal downhill.

Thanks, MAL, and thanks, BAM.

UpdateThe firm profile at Answers.com (link) says that "some of its post [Civil] war clients were railroads...that became involved in litigation as the industry consolidated." Well, ahem. Oddly, they are less coy about the more recent past. The profile recounts "from 1928 to 1944 the Cravath law firm worked on 16 railroad reorganizations or receiverships, a continuation of work it had started back in 1875."