Paul Drennan Cravath

Paul Drennan Cravath (July 14, 1861 – July 1, 1940) was a prominent Manhattan lawyer and a partner of the law firm today known as Cravath, Swaine & Moore.[1]

Paul Drennan Cravath
Born(1861-07-14)July 14, 1861
Berlin Heights, Ohio
DiedJuly 1, 1940(1940-07-01) (aged 78)
Locust Valley, New York
NationalityUnited States
EducationOberlin College
Columbia Law School
OccupationLawyer
Known forThe Cravath System
Height6 ft 4 in (1.93 m)
Spouse(s)Agnes Huntington (1892–1940)
ChildrenVera Agnes Huntington Cravath
Signature

Education

Cravath graduated from Oberlin College in 1882, where he was considered both "brilliant" and a prankster. Oberlin also awarded him an honorary A.M. degree in 1887.[2]

He embarked on the study of law in 1882, which was interrupted, three months later, when he contracted typhoid fever. Recovered, Cravath worked for the Globe Oil Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil, as a salesman, then resumed his law studies in 1884, financed by his earned wages. At school, he worked as a tutor; vacation time was spent in Minnesota, working on his father's farm and visiting Quaker relatives. Cravath graduated cum laude from Columbia Law School in 1886; he was awarded the school's first Municipal Law prize.[2]

Law career

While at Columbia, Cravath was a law student with the firm of Martin & Smith, and was admitted to the New York State Bar Association in June 1886.[2] An early client was George Westinghouse,[3] who was being sued by the Edison Illuminating Company for infringing on Thomas Edison's incandescent lamp patent.[4]

He joined the law firm of Blatchford, Seward & Griswold in 1899. His book of business included Bethlehem Steel, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Chemical Bank, E. R. Squibb & Sons, Columbia Gas & Electric, and Studebaker Corp.[5] His name was added to the firm's moniker in 1901.[6]

Cravath was the authoritative head of the firm from 1906 until his death in 1940, and his formal statement of his conceptions of proper management of a law office still controls its operations.[7] Cravath, Swaine & Moore endures as a leading law firm, and celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2019.[8]

Cravath System
Main article: Cravath System

His law firm growth and operating structure remains widely known today as the Cravath System. White Shoe author John Oller credits the Cravath System as the model adopted by virtually all white-shoe law firms, 50 years before the term came into use.[9] The Cravath System has been partially adopted by most large law firms.[10][11]

Foreign policy

As a leader of the Atlanticist movement, Cravath was influential in foreign policy. The organization was composed of influential lawyers, bankers, academics, and politicians of the Northeastern United States, who committed to a strand of Anglophile internationalism. For Cravath, the First World War served as an epiphany, building a deep concern with foreign policy that dominated his remaining career. Fiercely Anglophile, he demanded American intervention in the war against Germany. His goal was to build close Anglo-American cooperation that would be the guiding principle of postwar international organization.[12]

He was one of the founding officers of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921. The founding president of the CFR was John W. Davis, a name partner of the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, while Cravath served as the inaugural vice-president. Cravath became chairman of the Metropolitan Opera in 1931. He died in 1940.[5]

Fisk University

Cravath spent most of his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee, where his father, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, was a co-founder of Fisk University, and served as its first president from 1875 to 1900. Cravath later served as a member and chairman of the Fisk Board of Trustees[13] for over 30 years, until his death in 1940.

Personal life
Paul Drennan Cravath with daughter Vera circa 1913

In 1892, he married the opera singer Agnes Huntington. Their daughter, Vera Agnes Huntington Cravath (1895–1985), was born on August 28, 1895.[14] Vera Cravath married at least twice: to Lt. James S. Larkin, about 1917, and to William Francis Gibbs in 1927. She died in Rockport, Massachusetts in July 1985.[14]

A fictionalized Cravath (name unchanged) is the protagonist in Graham Moore's 2016 historical novel The Last Days of Night, which received generally positive reviews,[15][16] A cinematic adaptation of the "historical thriller"[17] is in development, starring Eddie Redmayne as Cravath.[18][19]

References
  1. Richard E. Mendales (July 1, 2001). "Paul Drennan Cravath". American National Biography. Retrieved September 16, 2008.
  2. The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors, 1819-1947, by Robert T. Swaine, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 1978, pages 585-586.
  3. Blair, Rebecca (August 15, 2016). "Cravath Lawyer Spotlighted in Book, Movie with Eddie Redmayne". Law.com. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  4. Dewey, Katrina (August 29, 2016). "Consider The Lawyer: How A Young Paul Cravath Took On Edison". Lawdragon. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  5. "Died". Time magazine. July 8, 1940. Retrieved December 8, 2008. Paul Drennan Cravath, 78, massive, magisterial corporation lawyer, head of one of the nation's greatest law firms, Cravath, de Gersdorif, Swaine & Wood; of a heart attack; in Locust Valley, L. I.
  6. "Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 28, 2006.
  7. Robert Taylor Swaine, The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors (New York: Ad Press, 1946-48) Archived 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine
  8. Two Centuries of the Law: Cravath, Swaine & Moore exhibit, New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, March 22 – June 9, 2019. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
  9. Levinson, Marc (March 20, 2019). "White Shoe Review: Lawyering Up the 20th Century (book review)". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
  10. William Henderson (2008). "Are We Selling Results or Résumés?: The Underexplored Linkage Between Human Resource Strategies and Firm-Specific Capital" (PDF). SSRN 1121238. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. Henderson, Bill. "How most law firms misapply the "Cravath system"". Retrieved March 22, 2019.
  12. Priscilla Roberts, "Paul D. Cravath, the First World War, and the Anglophile Internationalist Tradition." Australian Journal of Politics and History 2005 51(2): 194-215. ISSN 0004-9522 Fulltext in Ebsco
  13. Opportunity, Volumes 5-6, National Urban League, 1969, page 18.
  14. "Vera Cravath Gibbs, 89, Dies; Was Active in Opera Groups". The New York Times. July 30, 1985. Retrieved November 30, 2009. Vera Cravath Gibbs, a former member of the board of the Metropolitan Opera Association and widow of William Francis Gibbs, the naval architect, died Saturday at her home in Rockport, Mass., following a heart attack. She was 89 years old.
  15. Hawley, Noah, "Fighting for the Light", The New York Times (September 4, 2016), p. BR7.
  16. Anderson, Patrick, "The Last Days of Night: The flaws of Thomas Edison, both real and imagined", The Washington Post (August 22, 2016)
  17. "Eddie Redmayne to star in 'The Last Days of Night'", Business Standard, July 31, 2016.
  18. Nolfi, Joey (July 25, 2016). "Last Days of Night: Eddie Redmayne to star in big screen adaptation of Graham Moore novel". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  19. "The Last Days of Night - IMDb". IMDB. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
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