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Vol. 5, Iss. 2
February 10, 2016
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The front door of Raoul Felder’s Madison Avenue law office has the word “push” written in nine languages. That still wasn’t enough help. I pulled. I’m not even in the waiting room and already the most famous divorce lawyer in America is speaking to me.
Of course, that Raoul Felder is A-number-one, top of the list, king of the hill of divorce lawyers is not something that can be proven as true. There is no Blue Ribbon panel put together by the ABA to bestow such title. But he is. The number of celebrity divorces (and other family matters) that Felder has handled in over 50 years is breathtaking. That, and the many prestigious national publications that have profiled him (GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, to name just a few) gives Felder the nod. But, for good measure, throw in the numerous law books that Felder has written – not to mention a few others with legendary comedian Jackie Mason. Felder is also the media’s go-to for commentary when a divorce is in the news. [I can’t find a national news program that hasn’t featured him, including 60 Minutes, 20/20, The Today Show.] |
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But to define Raoul Felder, by only a checklist of accomplishments, is to say that Woodstock was a concert. You’d be right -- but. There is only so much about Felder than can be learned from his resume. The rest of him is a je ne sais quoi that can’t be captured by written words. Pulling, despite all the notices to push, is Raoul Lionel Felder’s way of saying welcome – my way.
I spent an hour with Raoul Felder. It is one that I will not soon forget. Nor my fifteen minutes on the phone with Jackie Mason – talking about the man -- that Felder kindly arranged. My conclusion: The lawyer most famous for divorce has one himself between what you think you know and what there is to know. |
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“Meeting” Raoul Felder
It is a jarring sight when you exit the elevator on the 36th floor at 437 Madison. The door to Felder’s law firm is glass. But it is flanked by two 1930s-esque faux doors. To the left is a door that leads to the office of Philip Marlowe, Private Detective. To the right is the door to Sam Spade, Criminal Investigations. I’m still in the hallway and my education has begun.
When you finally get inside, the nostalgia, and Felder’s unspoken welcome continues. A table in the small waiting room is covered with several copies of Time – from the late 1930s. Across from the old magazines is a tall, antique carnival game. It’s called “The Love Tester.” Drop a dime in the slot and “Measure Your Sex Appeal On This Love Meter.” More periodicals abound. But these are more current -- the walls are covered with newspaper and magazine articles about Felder. The selection rivals a Hudson News. There is a happy framer in the neighborhood.
I am escorted back to Felder’s corner office. It could have a jogging track. He is finishing up a meeting and points me to a chair. I take a seat and wait. His office is a sea of stuff – a combination of nick-nacks as well as objects that are no doubt very expensive. But there is no question that, while their value may differ widely, these things all share one thing in common – a great story about how they ended up there. |
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My attention is immediately drawn to the candy dish put out for visitors -- M&Ms, but not the kind they sell at Walgreens. On one side of the candies are the initials RLF. On the other is a picture of Felder. I can’t help but smile. He still hasn’t said a word to me, yet he’s told me so much. But the funny artwork stops there. Behind me there is a Picasso hanging on the wall.
I take note that I’m already acquainted with my chair. In Reflections in a Mirror, Felder’s 2012 memoir, he eloquently described the chair that faces his desk: “The strumpet chair welcomed with indifferent embrace the grifters, the greedy, the confused, has-beens, wannabes, the victims, the scared who had good reason to be scared—and of those even some who ended up murdered—the women frightened of losing Park Avenue apartments or Hampton homes—death by real estate—and those who were simply frightened of life itself: the beaten, battered, pampered, lied to, deceived; the purveyors of rehearsed, overtold stories, told so often that the self-deceiver becomes a true believer; the seducers, the angry, the hate filled and the seekers of reparations for all the wrongs and inequities visited upon them like Ahab heaping upon a whale’s hump, ‘All the hatred and rage that had been in his race since Adam down.’”
Felder finishes up his meeting, we exchange pleasantries and the man known for being a clothes-thoroughbred doesn’t disappoint. His shirt, jacket, tie and pocket square and perfectly coordinated and the tailoring impeccable. I later ask him to pull his jacket aside so I can see the monogram on his shirt -- “sly fox.” Felder in fact pays me a compliment on my suit. I express my appreciation. But since it has been reported that Felder owns 350 suits, I chuckled and provided the obvious comeback – I guess you have it.
I am immediately struck by how soft-spoken the 76 year old Felder is. And as the hour went on, the lawyer whose trademark is aggressive advocacy (“[I]t is the lawyer's function, using all ethical, legal and moral means, to bring his adversary to his knees as fast as possible.”) was speaking to me in a whisper. This from the guy who once had a piranha in his office and fed it during tense negotiations. At several points I am panicky, convinced that there is no way that my $30 tape recorder on Felder’s desk could possibly be picking up a word he’s saying.
But that’s not the only you-can’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover aspect of Raoul Felder. Felder’s life has revolved around celebrities and he is undeniably one himself. But, despite all the expectations and obligations that that would seem to create, Felder says in his memoir that he feels “uneasy at parties,” adding that, “as the party progresses, an empty closet begins to have an unnatural attraction for me.” Felder’s trick for getting away unnoticed – not coming with a coat. When I express my surprise about this he tells me he sometimes feels uncomfortable speaking to strangers. [Although that didn’t stop him from once walking up to newlyweds, who were taking pictures outside Radio City, and handing them his card.] |
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The Client List
Talk is, as they say, inexpensive. So here I’ll back up the claim that Raoul Felder’s family law practice is, well, impressive. Felder has reportedly handled cases involving (not necessarily representing) Martin Scorsese, Johnny Carson, Rudy Giuliani, Joseph Heller, Peter O’Toole, Carl Sagan, Tom Jones, Lawrence Taylor, Frank Gifford, Brian DePalma, Al Roker, Mike Tyson, Mark Gastineau, David Merrick, Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Johnnie Cochran, Carol Channing, Richard Harris, Patrick Ewing, Riddick Bowe, Tom Clancy and Mick Jagger. There are still lots more – but at some point a list has to stop. Not to mention that there are no doubt others that have not been made public.
Felder represents more wives than husbands. He attributes this to a simple consequence of opportunity, as explained in a published interview: “When men leave their wives, they tend to get recommendations for divorce lawyers from their colleagues. Women, especially women married to rich men, often don’t have a network of professional contacts. So they turn to me.” Many of Felder’s clients are repeat customers. The record is a tie between two women – seven times. I jokingly ask him if he has a frequent client club – nine divorces and the tenth one is free.
That Felder is a celebrity divorce lawyer should come as no surprise. After all, the first divorce he handled was for a celebrity client. Felder’s brother, Jerome, was Doc Pomus, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame songwriter, who, together with Mort Shuman, wrote the words and music to hundreds of songs, including “Save The Last Dance For Me,” “This Magic Moment” and “Viva Las Vegas.”
Felder represented Shuman in his divorce. Mid-trial, Felder devised a way to determine that Shuman’s wife was having an affair with her husband’s best man. Without knowing if the best man had or hadn’t, Felder had Shuman call and tell his friend that he knew about the affair, but the friendship was more important. It worked. The best man came clean. The Daily News, covering the trial, reported the affair the next day. After that Felder’s phone began to ring. The rest is, well, you know. |
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A Career Built On Necessity
Some people’s explanations, of why they made certain significant life decisions, are expressed in terms of a big master plan that had been devised. For Raoul Felder, it was much simpler.
For sure he didn’t always dream of being a lawyer. Much to the contrary, law school was preceded by a stint in medical school in Switzerland. But as Felder described the experience in Reflections, “[d]ays went by, aimlessly, without purpose or commitment and toward no goal that I wanted to achieve.” The decision was made to come home to Brooklyn. He says it wasn’t defeat or embarrassment that bothered him, but, rather, the life that “stretched before [him]:” “I pictured myself striving for mean little things, surviving in an apartment facing a brick wall of an alley in Williamsburg, working at a second-rate job married to a second-rate wife who hung laundry on a clothes line. I saw myself groveling to bosses during the week and then, in summer, spending my spare time on public beaches after sweaty subway rides, or evenings sitting on the steps of a tenement, exchanging banalities with neighbors. I saw myself having little pride in my children to whom I could impart little culture or knowledge as I struggled to exist from paycheck to paycheck to meet my bills. My dreams would be limited to what I could see at the movies at the Rainbow Theatre on Graham Avenue.”
So “with no particular enthusiasm other than preventing [himself] from ending up on life’s scrapheap, a prospect that was becoming increasingly likely,” Felder enrolled at NYU Law School. Perhaps Felder’s experience, with dissecting a human body, has something to do with his talents as a divorce lawyer.
Felder’s desire to avoid a life of drudgery sent him to NYU Law. It likewise played a part in his decision to pack his bags at the U.S. Attorney’s Office after a few years. He explains in Reflections: “Trapped, sitting behind a government-issue desk in a government- issue chair, reviewing government-spawned papers was, to me, a one-way ticket on a treadmill to oblivion. … I waited and waited for my merry-go-round to take me to within snatching distance of the ersatz ring of gold while doing the sovereign’s work and taking the king’s shilling until opportunity entered my life in the form of the angry ring of a telephone that tore me from my sleep in the early morning hours, eventually transporting me to—at the time—the pantheon of the divorce gods: page three of the Daily News[.]” That phone call was from Mort Shuman. |
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Taking The Romance Out Of Divorce
Felder has been practicing matrimonial law long enough to have seen its development. Back in the day, when the only ground for divorce was adultery, the practice had a gum shoe component – raiding love nests with cameras in hand. But times changed. The advent of more grounds for divorce and no-fault divorce and equitable distribution has made the divorce business “terribly boring,” Felder says in one published interview. “They’ve taken the romance out of it now with this influx of new laws[.] It’s an accountant’s game.” Divorce law may be an accountant’s game, and perhaps the days of staking out motels are over, but Felder still seems to have fun with it.
I think of hiring Raoul Felder for a divorce case as good news – bad news. Bad news: your marriage is over. Good news: you have enough money to hire Raoul Felder. It is widely reported that Felder turns down lots of prospective clients. So who gets to sit near the M&Ms seems the logical opening question.
It has to do with personalities Felder tells me -- some people you just don’t want to work with. And, of course, some people can’t afford him. He will not represent a husband who has beaten his wife and he turns down cases involving child abuse. They take too much out of you, Felder tells me, adding that it’s also not healthy for a client to have a lawyer who has contempt for him. Felder points out that clients are replaceable. For this reason, he says, he has a “better racket than a judge.” “A judge is stuck with somebody,” Felder observes.
But sometimes the tables are turned and prospective clients don’t want to hire Felder – but they visit his office, pretending to, with the objective of later conflicting him out from representing their spouse. This happens many times Felder tells me. I’m amazed at the blatant unfairness of it. Is there a way to stop it?, I ask. Yes, Felder tells me, don’t be successful. He laments the problem but says that the alternative is worse.
I tell Felder that the insurance law business is open to all personalities. But surely divorce law isn’t for everyone. So what are the required traits I wonder. Felder doesn’t hesitate in his answer. You can’t be judgmental and must take people as they come, he tells me. Felder points to a sign on his desk with a Philip Marlowe quote: “Everybody has something to conceal.”
Of course I have to ask Felder about what is surely a hot topic in divorce law circles these days: same sex divorce. I had read Felder’s views on the subject before coming in. In published interviews he has said that, in his experience, same sex divorces are more contentious than heterosexual divorces. Same sex couples, he says, fought so hard for the right to get married. So when it doesn’t work out they are angrier. This societal institution failed them and now they are looking for a remedy to the injustice. He confirms all of this and tells me that they feel that they have been “double-crossed.” |
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Schmucks! and Speaking To Jackie Mason
Felder is a prolific writer – eleven books and scores of articles and editorials for national and New York-elite publications. A book of short stories (non-legal) is scheduled to be published in June he tells me. While most of Felder’s books are on the subject of divorce -- including his constantly updated Encyclopedia of Matrimonial Clauses – a few are a world away from the subject. Felder and his great friend, legendary comedian Jackie Mason, have collaborated on Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder’s Survival Guide to New York; Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder’s Guide to New York and Los Angeles Restaurants; Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder’s Guide to Chicago, Miami and Washington Restaurants and Schmucks! You can probably guess what that last one is about. But the sub-title will save you the trouble: “Our Favorite Fakes, Frauds, Lowlifes, and Liars.”
Schmucks! devotes one or two or three pages to numerous people who Felder and Mason believe are deserving of that label. I have the latest – the 2008 Bonus Schmuck Edition (with fifteen new schmucks revealed and reviled). To be sure, Felder, Chairman of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct when the book was released, took a lot of heat for it. Some saw things in the book as offensive and the Commission issued a vote of no confidence in him. Felder vigorously defended the allegations. He didn’t back down. But his critics did. |
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Incredibly, there is an insurance entry in the book. And coverage no less! Felder and Mason take on World Trade Center owner Larry Silverstein for his “shameless” campaign to increase the insurance payment on a two events theory. The authors say that this is like arguing that “God handed down five Commandments – twice.” [Page 28 if you want to use that in a “number of occurrences” brief.]
One seeming challenge to writing Schmucks! is that, just like Felder’s Encyclopedia of Matrimonial Clauses, it is in constant need of updating. While of course there are always opportunities for new entrants, a perusal of the table of contents reveals that the book withstands the test of time. I ask Felder about this. He takes pride in how prescient he and Mason were in one particular case. Schmucks! devotes a vignette to a man who spent $10 million on his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Well after the book was published, the guy (a supplier of body armor to the military) was found guilty of insider trading, fraud, lying to auditors, and obstruction of justice in a $200 million case and sentenced to seventeen years in prison. According to the FBI, he used the money to finance an extravagant lifestyle, including an armor-plated luxury car, plastic surgery and a $100,000 belt buckle.
I ask Felder if he can arrange for me to speak with his dear friend and co-author. He says he’ll set it up. Lo, and behold, three days later Jackie Mason is on the other end of my phone.
A profile of Felder in one national magazine says that he and Mason met by chance outside the Carnegie Deli. I’m dubious. It’s one thing for two funny Jewish guys to co-write a book called Schmucks! But for them to have met, by chance, outside the Carnegie, just sounds contrived. The narrative is too perfect. I ask Mason if this is true. He tells me he can’t remember how he and Felder met because it’s been so long. But he’s sure it wasn’t outside the Carnegie Deli because that he would have remembered.
I mention to Mason my surprise that, despite all the expectations to the contrary, Felder is an introverted person. Mason agreed wholeheartedly, telling me that Felder “is not particularly much of a mixer with strangers” and avoids situations involving groups that require you to introduce yourself. However, Mason is quick to add that Felder is “remarkably humble” and exceptionally friendly and solicitous when people approach him and want to speak. “Just because he doesn’t enjoy all kinds of strange situations doesn’t mean that one-on-one he’s ever pretentious or arrogant.”
I tell Mason that I have tickets to see him perform at The Keswick Theater in Philadelphia in May. There is a pause. Mason is thinking. He tells me that he forgot all about it. We both laugh. |
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Raoul Felder: What You Think You Know And What There Is To Know
In so many ways, Raoul Felder is a contradiction in terms. The man who has spent a half century, mired in divorce, has been married to the same woman for a half century (herself a divorce lawyer). [Felder says he doesn’t argue with his wife. “I’m paid to argue. Why should I give it away for free?”] The man whose life has revolved around people who keep the cocktail napkin business afloat has a plan to escape parties. The man with the piranha speaks to me in a whisper. Ten feet away from his kitschy M&Ms hangs a Picasso. When he speaks he is a zinger machine. But the humor in his memoir is so subtle, that when you get it, you laugh even harder.
But Felder saves his biggest contradiction for that which he is best known – his public persona. To be sure, he is a publicity machine, the power of a GE turbine. And lots of media stories over the years are fond of describing his wealth – several luxurious apartments in New York, homes in the Hamptons and Palm Beach and a chauffeured-driven Rolls. What, of all this, he currently owns is none of my business -- so I don’t ask him to confirm the current status of his holdings. But suffice to say, he’s a wealthy man. However, for a rich and famous guy, with a couple of vacation homes, and the rest of the world a snap of the fingers away, I sense that he’s happiest in the solitude of his Madison Avenue office – pursuing his passion for writing. I ask Felder about retirement. It’s not in his genes he tells me. That’s good news for the unhappy glitterati, and miserable well-healed, who need the best that money can buy for saying au revoir.
As I’m leaving Felder’s office, and saying my goodbyes, I remark: “It’s been a life well-lived, sir.” Felder senses a fatalism in my comment: “Well, it’s not over yet,” he corrects me. |
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