Malcolm Lassman: The Man in the Cape

From the Seinfeld episode, "The Chinese Woman."

 GEORGE
 
All right. So let me ask you a question. Who was the man in the cape?

FRANK

He was my lawyer.

GEORGE

Your lawyer wears a cape . . .?

FRANK

Yeah. So what?

GEORGE
 
Who wears a cape?

FRANK

He's very independent; doesn't follow the trends.

ESTELLE

He looks ridiculous in that thing . . .

FRANK

You have no eye for fashion!!!

ESTELLE

I have no eye for fashion?!?!?!
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One of two lawyers who had opened the Washington, D.C. office of the Dallas-based law firm of Akin, Gump, Struass, Hauer & Feld, Malcolm Lassman, left the firm in the early 2000s after a falling out with the partners.  To them Lassman had become a poor fit for the firm -- someone who might show up in a cape, smoked cigars, used coarse language, and could not operate in a large corporate climate.  To Lassman, the partners appeared greedy, taking far more money out of the firm as a percentage of Akin Gump's income than they ever had before. When Bob Strauss was dominant at the firm, he always wanted to minimize the gap in pay between the top earners, including himself, and everyone else.  In the 2000s, the disparity in pay between top earners and everyone else grew enormously.