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♪ [Theme Music] ♪
MICHAEL STOLER: So they grow up in Sioux Falls,
South Dakota. They don't even know what New York City is.
They finally end up in Princeton, New Jersey, then
Harvard, Boston, then they go to Wall Street Law Firm
and then they get involved with cases, trying cases in front of
the Supreme Court. And really involved in truly trusting the
state. I have the legendary Bill Zabel who is the founding
partner, head of the Individual Client Services Group at Shulte
Roth and Zabel. I'm so happy you're here today.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Thank you very much. Pleased to be here.
MICHAEL STOLER: So tell me, it's very interesting,
most people thought that the Russian Jews who came here
came to New York. But your great grandparents came-
they ended up in Galveston. Tell me the story. It's the
Warburg's and the Shiffs were always helping people out.
Tell the story.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: It's a very interesting story. Both sets of
my grandparents landed in Galveston, Texas thinking they
were going to land in Ellis Island and see the
Statue of Liberty and become Americans but between
1900 and 1904 there were several wealthy German Jewish
families in New York paid ship owners leaving from Hamburg
mostly, to not land in Ellis Island but to take their cargo,
the German, Russian and Lithuanian and Polish Jews,
not German Jews, to Galveston. So 200,000 Jews ended up
in Galveston. They get off the boat looking for the Statue of
Liberty and I guess somebody says you want some barbecue.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now what was interesting in Galveston
is your father's side was the Russian side and-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: But my mother's side was German
but they got on the wrong boat so to speak.
MICHAEL STOLER: So your mother was a German side.
Now your father you said to me was Zabelski?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Zabelski.
MICHAEL STOLER: Zabelski. Okay, so both people end up in
Galveston. Where do your mother's parents to go?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: They go because of other relatives who
have earlier gone to Omaha, Nebraska where my mother was
born, where I was born and-
MICHAEL STOLER: And your father's side?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: My father's side, for reasons I've never
been totally clear, ended up in Rock Island, Illinois.
And he grew up there.
MICHAEL STOLER: So he's in Rock Island, Illinois. Your mother
who was a beautiful woman goes to University of Nebraska.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes.
MICHAEL STOLER: And when she's at University of Nebraska
she meets this guy who at that time was living where?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: He was living in Lincoln, Nebraska.
That's where the University is.
MICHAEL STOLER: He was in Lincoln, Nebraska. Your father's
side was involved with the scrap business at that time.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes.
MICHAEL STOLER: Your mother's side, if they would have stayed
in Omaha, some of the relatives met a guy who did rather
well in Omaha, Nebraska.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yeah, Omaha Buffet.
MICHAEL STOLER: Buffet, okay. So you're born in-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Omaha.
MICHAEL STOLER: And how does the family now go to South Dakota?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: My father and his brother in law, my
mother's brother, had a disagreement over running
his scrap iron business and they decided to keep it friendly
by parting. And my father and mother and I because I was five
or so, moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and he started a
scrap iron business there.
MICHAEL STOLER: Sioux Falls is the home of the credit card
processing for Citibank. It was written up by Worth Magazine
as one of the best places to live. Tell me about growing up-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: It's a wonderful city to grow up.
We call it the queen city of the upper north middle west,
carefully defining that area. And actually in the five state
area, when I grew up, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota,
South Dakota and Montana, Sioux Falls was the largest city,
even though it was about 100 to 150,000. There was no
prejudice. There was no crime essentially. It was not a very
good sophisticated city. I had a great childhood there. I
had no anti-Semitism.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now you said when you were there you work
one summer in the Dairy Queen. You were debater and also one
thing that you did you worked in the scrap iron business
with your father and like in the James Bond-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Well he had one of these machines that
takes an automobile and crushes it into- it comes out a little
box. There's a James Bond movie where that happens but
there's a body that's in the little square bleeding through
the iron. And I ran that machine and then I also did some other
work. My family likes to joke about my brother and I being
lousy drivers because we learned to drive with cars in the junk
yard and we could just crash while we learned. Bumper cars
because no one cared and my father just said don't hurt
yourself. And so we learned how to drive in a very, I
guess, irresponsible way.
MICHAEL STOLER: So while you're in Sioux Falls you're a good
student in high school and the furthest you had really
traveled was Chicago, Illinois at that time and you said to
me you applied to- you thought you applied to four colleges.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes I did.
MICHAEL STOLER: Okay, you applied to Harvard, Yale and
Princeton. And you thought Northwestern.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: And I wanted to go to Northwestern.
MICHAEL STOLER: Because-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I had gone to a high school debate
institute there. That's how I'd been to Chicago.
MICHAEL STOLER: So what happens? Mom hid the facts?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Mom says you'll be fine. I'm sure you'll
get into all. And I said I don't want to get into all. I want to
get into Northwestern. She said just show me you can get
into these others. So I got admitted to Harvard, Princeton
and Yale and I don't hear from Northwestern. Mother says
I'm sure you'll get in, Billy. I'll call them. So she calls
them and she says very sorry, they seem to have misplaced
your application. They're not very efficient. You have to go
to one of these other schools. I don't care which one. So the
only person I knew in Sioux Falls who'd gone East to these
schools was a congregational minister's son named
Charles Gurlinger. I went and had a talk to him. He said go to
Princeton. That's where he had gone. So without much knowledge
and never having been to any of the three
schools I went to Princeton.
MICHAEL STOLER: So now this is, what, like 1952?
WILLIAMD. ZABEL: '54.
MICHAEL STOLER: '54. The 18 year old kid ends up in Princeton,
New Jersey and something happens at Princeton which has an
effect later on in your life, the Emmett Till thing.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes. The famous *** of a boy in
Mississippi, Emmett Till who whistled- allegedly whistled at
a white woman was in the news then and the killers were
acquitted in about an hour by a jury but my roommate and
I started a petition to have the Federal authorities prosecute
them under some civil rights acts. And it got quite a bit
of play because Einstein was among the signers of the
petition. So the New York Times ran the story. That night we got
a knock on the door. My roommate and I at the dorm and we
opened the door and the three men with guns and white sheets
with Klu Klux *** apparel and they said- I won't use the
words. If you keep helping these blacks we're going to come
back and really hurt you. Well they made a big mistake because
they forgot that all the laundry of the students at Princeton
was done by University Laundry. So the University police
looked at the laundry and found the sheets which had the eyes
cut out because the three fellows weren't very smart
about that. Now today those three fellows would have been
expelled and in those days it was a little more lenient even
though they should have-
MICHAEL STOLER: Now one of them became-
you kept a relationship.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yeah one of them became a great liberal
writer and a proponent of progressive politics named
Bill Greider. He was an editor of The Nation Magazine.
He wrote for Rolling Stone. At our 25th reunion he wrote
a piece apologizing to us saying the worst thing he ever did
was posing as a Klu Klux *** and trying to frighten my
roommates and me.
MICHAEL STOLER: So you're a Princeton and you said to me
one of the reasons you wanted to become an attorney was the
dog and the poisoning. Tell me the story.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: My grandfather was a great guy, very religious
man. He had a white beard even in Omaha. We had a dog
and the neighbors, purposely we found out, put poison
where the dogs went. This dog. And the dog died. And my
grandfather was so offended that he found a lawyer and they
took them to court and there was some legal way to fine-
you couldn't put them in prison or anything but fined
malicious destruction of a dog. And I thought you know that's
a pretty good thing the law did. Got some justice for my
dog, which I loved. And so it always stuck in my mind that
maybe the law would be a thing I'd like. But I also was
a debater and I think debaters tend to be troublesome.
MICHAEL STOLER: So now you're at Princeton and you want to go to
law school and you decide hey I'm in New Jersey. Maybe I'll go
to Massachusetts, right? And you go to Harvard. Okay,
what happens at Harvard, certain interesting things happen?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Well one thing that plays a part later in
my life is I got interested in moot court in the laws that
prohibited interracial marriage and you could not marry in
America in most states even up until the '60s. And I wrote a
brief in the moot court competition in a case involving
miscegenation and then I wrote an article in The Atlantic
Monthly on miscegenese. So some years later when I graduated
law school, the ACLU asked me to write the brief in Loving
vs. Virginia which is the case that throughout all the
laws the prohibited interracial marriage and made it a
constitutional right to-
MICHAEL STOLER: Didn't you plead that case?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I wrote the brief in the Supreme Court.
MICHAEL STOLER: For the Supreme Court case.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I consider it one of my proudest
accomplishments, maybe the proudest, in the law.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right but didn't you also get involved in a case
which related to Medicaid?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes, I did. You've done a lot of homework.
I represented two older ladies from New York. One was named
Politzer and one was named Wyse. The Wyse was the mother
of the founder Paul Wyse and they refused to sign the loyalty
oath in that they weren't communists in the Medicare.
So I took it for the ACLU again to court saying it was
unconstitutional require loyalty oath to get Medicare.
And the court decided very preemptively that that was
correct and they kicked out the loyalty oath.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now, later on you graduate-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: '61.
MICHAEL STOLER: -in 1961 and you go to this law firm by the
name of Cleary Gottlieb.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes.
MICHAEL STOLER: And Clearly Gottlieb had a very interesting
partner, Mr. Leo Gottlieb who basically took you
under his wing, right?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes.
MICHAEL STOLER: Leo and Leo was a German Jew.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes.
MICHAEL STOLER: And Leo-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: And a Harvard Law School grad.
MICHAEL STOLER: And a Harvard Law School graduate.
And he really like Bill Zabel and he-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I think he did. I liked him.
MICHAEL STOLER: It was a mutual admiration. But he introduced
you to a world of people like the Lehman's. You worked on the-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: The first case he had me work on was the
Children's Zoo in Central Park named for the Lehman Children
Zoo at that time. It's now the Tish Children's Zoo. But I
worked with all kinds of- Guggenheim's. Leo Gottlieb
represented most of the eminent German Jewish
families in New York.
MICHAEL STOLER: You didn't tell them about dad being a Zabelski
with the Russian Jews.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: No, I didn't think it was necessary and he
had the Guggenheim's, the Lehman's, the Solomon brothers
family and we attended- some people called the law firm
Clearly Gottlieb because he had so much clientele.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now over there you were in what
department originally?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Trust and Estates.
MICHAEL STOLER: Trust and Estates.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: And litigation.
MICHAEL STOLER: And litigation. Because later on in your career
I mean people know you as the preeminent trust in the states
or individual client services that you've changed. But you've
been involved- and we'll talk about it later on in many
major matrimonial matters more as a mediator and to
resolve these cases.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes.
MICHAEL STOLER: As opposed to litigate these cases. So you're
at Cleary Gottlieb for a number of years and you meet some
guys and I'll call them the seven apostles or the seven
disciples and it's like 1969 right? And what happens?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Well we form a new law firm.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now who were these- Schulte Roth and
Zabel and know about both there was four others.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: There was Goldstein, Shapiro,
Lehman and McGoldrick.
MICHAEL STOLER: Okay and you're still at this law firm and
you're what 33 at this time?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: 32.
MICHAEL STOLER: 32, 33. And you had great expertise and it's
interesting when you start off the law firm you didn't want
it to be ethnic so you called it Bear and McGoldrick.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Right. Tom Bear was the last.
MICHAEL STOLER: Okay so the seventh disciples and your
original office was in the Waldorf Astoria?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Waldorf.
MICHAEL STOLER: How did that happen?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Well we decided somewhat spontaneously
and the only space we could get temporarily was in the Waldorf.
We were there for about a year. And then some funny things
happened at the Waldorf. One night Schulte and I had worked
very late and we were coming down on the escalator and these
two very lovely ladies were riding on the other side of the
escalator and they said would you like to have a drink and it
was midnight and we were talking and we thought we're pretty good
looking guys. They must want us to have a drink because of our
physiques. But then we got to the bar they wanted
to know how much money we had.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right. So you learn the other human rights.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: We learned it wasn't our looks.
MICHAEL STOLER: But now during- to build the TNE
business, okay, you lectured a lot, a lot of POI lectures.
You spoke around and through that you met some people
because of your cases. I mean that's how you got involved with
George Soros from your lecturing and other things and the
Rockefellers and other people.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: And the lecturing was very heavy and I
went to University of Wisconsin, which had a famous trusts
and estates summer session. I went to Miami Estate Planning
Institute which is sort of the deseminar for TNE lawyers and
I lectured when anybody wanted to hear anything about-
MICHAEL STOLER: Now but as we were talking about the cases
later on, because the secondary case that which went to the
Supreme Court, as you said to me,
Obama's parents had to get married-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Right in Hawaii.
MICHAEL STOLER: -in Hawaii because it was interracial
marriage over there. Okay when did you get involved with this
human rights organization? You've been
involved for like 30 years.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes, civil and human. I got involved heavily
in civil rights by going as a volunteer lawyer in '65 to
Mississippi. That was the famous summer when Goodman and
Shrooner was murdered and I went for the Lawyer's
Constitutional Defense Committee. And in fact I had the
run in with the real Klu Klux *** that summer. They attacked
a core shack. Congress was racial inequality- where we were
helping some African Americans get registered to vote.
MICHAEL STOLER: But this human rights organization that you've
been the chairmen of for how many years?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Since- about 15.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right but you've been involved over
there and I mean you met the Dali Lama over there.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: That's called Human Rights First. It was
called Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. It's a great
organization. For example, defends anyone seeking asylum
without charge. We figure we give about 40 million dollars of
free legal service. We defend Tibetan monks fleeing Chinese
oppression, political dissidents from Russia before Paris Stroka,
political dissidents in any country. We actually defended a
woman feeling female circumcision which was a
hard case because the statute says you get asylum for fleeing
political persecution, not cultural. And they argue that
circumcision was a culture. We convinced the court that it
was both things and we're able to get asylum for
the woman fleeing.
MICHAEL STOLER: So how did this world renowned trusts and
estates attorneys get involved with matrimonial?
You represented the other side of Jack Welch
over there. You've been-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Rupert Murdock.
MICHAEL STOLER: Rupert Murdock. I mean how did you get
involved with the matrimonial side?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Howard Stern- I actually mediated
Howard Stern, *** Johnson. I'm trying to think exactly how-
someone came to us and said would you do a matrimonial case
and we didn't really want to get into that area of the law. But
I said I would mediate it. I think it was an author whose
name isn't important. And if you're willing to mediate
you'll save a lot of money. You'll save a lot of angst and
aggravation and they did it and I did it and so then I started
doing that. I'd take only four or five cases a year, always
mediation, not litigation. So my wife didn't even like the idea
there's people calling me a divorce lawyer. She gets very
annoyed when anyone does-
MICHAEL STOLER: Your wife over here, right?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: We've been married 35 years and she said
you're not a divorce lawyer. So on the Jack Welch case we
actually went to the- it's trite but the courthouse footsteps-
MICHAEL STOLER: You resolved it.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: And settled.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now also you've been involved with lots
of charitable groups. I mean you're involved with the Soros
Foundations. You were also involved with a very
interesting case, you were involved with the
Picower situation.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes I was.
MICHAEL STOLER: And Picower was the largest settlement paid
to the Madoff estate. What happened over there?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Well Jeffry Picower was the largest-
his estate. He died during the process when he was being
sued to put a claw back paid 7.2 billion back to the
government to use to pay Madoff all of the money he had taken
out of- he was legally liable only for 2.4 billion. But his
wife Barbara Picower and we advised her, wanted to pay I
tall back so there'd be no question because it was
remaining assets he created a foundation for charitable
purposes which Barbara is president of and runs. It was
a very unusual- that whole Madoff thing is so unusual but
for him to make that kind of vast 7.2 billion it may be the
largest individual settlement of a civil case in the law books.
MICHAEL STOLER: And you're still involved with the foundation.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes, we represent the
foundation and Barbara.
MICHAEL STOLER: And what work do you do with the Soros
Foundation these days?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Well the Soros Foundation are all over the
world. They're called the Open Society Foundations. He has 32
of them and we advise them when they have a legal problem.
He's my good friend and probably the most interesting client.
MICHAEL STOLER: On this celebration of your 60th
birthday I think Mr. Soros and a couple of other people came
together, a real nice picture of you as opposed to your bowtie
with your tie over here in Sioux Falls and-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: And I wore a regular tie there?
MICHAEL STOLER: Yeah you wore a regular tie and he was of the
presenters over there with your late brother and your son
over there. So you've been involved with them.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I have three sons.
MICHAEL STOLER: Three sons. I know. A number of years ago
you decided to write this book which has become like one of
the bibles of trust and estate called The Rich Die Richer
and You Can Too. Now you said to me that this is about
close to 20 years ago?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: '95.
MICHAEL STOLER: 1995, so you know this year may be the 19th
anniversary are you thinking about writing a new one?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes I am.
MICHAEL STOLER: And what's that going to-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Well there's several titles and my publisher
suggested The Last Wife wins. I think I will write a new book.
MICHAEL STOLER: You were close to your dad but your mother
was really an instrumental person.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: She was very-
MICHAEL STOLER: You have this picture of you
and mom over there.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: More recently.
MICHAEL STOLER: And the family genes are interesting because
mom was 91 when she passed. And her mother you said-
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Was 105.
MICHAEL STOLER: 105 over there. Talk to
me about your three sons.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I have three wonderful sons. I'm a very
lucky man. The oldest, Richard, is Deputy U.S. Attorney of the
Southern Districts of New York.
MICHAEL STOLER: Prior to that he was a partner
in a law firm, right?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: In an Akin Gump law firm.
We have a nepotism rule.
MICHAEL STOLER: No relatives.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Which I'm not sure works very well with
respect to my son. Although he wanted to be on his own.
And then my second son, David, is a television writer
and he's done very well.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, you told me had some good shows.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: For ER, for sometimes and then he had two
shows on this season but they were not renewed.
We don't talk about that they-
MICHAEL STOLER: And your third son?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: My third son is a business man in the classic
car business, Gregory, and he has a show room in Beacon,
New York and is an art dealer in effect in automobiles.
MICHAEL STOLER: So tell me about your lovely wife for
35 years. Your wife's name is?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Debra.
MICHAEL STOLER: And how did you meet Debra?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I met Debra at a party that Paul Roth's
sister and she was sorority sisters at the
University of Pennsylvania.
MICHAEL STOLER: And let's talk a little bit about, as I said,
the firm that was started by the seven disciples, that was 1969.
This year are you going to be celebrating
your 45th anniversary?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Yes. We have 450 lawyers now.
We have offices in London, Washington and New York.
The major one in New York. We're noted for- still for our
hedge fund practice.
MICHAEL STOLER: Which is what you originally started with.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: We did a lot of in the- before other law
firms would do it, I must say the individual client services
department we're noted for too. And it's very collegial,
even with that size. But at the time we formed it we said
we would never be more than 30 lawyers. We'd try to be
like a small U.S. attorney's office, everyone would know
everyone. Well we just couldn't do that.
MICHAEL STOLER: We've mentioned the three sons. Tell me about
how many grandchildren do you have?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: I have seven grandchildren.
MICHAEL STOLER: And the names of the seven
grandchildren? You better figure it out, grandpa.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: My three oldest are Clare, Joseph and
Anna. Two of them are at Stanford and one is at
St. Anne's in Brooklyn. I'm really blessed. Maggie and
Charlotte are my two granddaughters with David in
California. They're just seven and three and Owen and Wyatt
are my two youngest grandsons who live in New York.
MICHAEL STOLER: Would you like the grandkids to go into the
legal profession do you think?
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: You know years ago I would have said
yes immediately to that. I have reservations now that we'd
have to have another program. I wouldn't deter them from
it but I wouldn't advocate it to where I used to.
It's become in some ways too business oriented. Too much
emphasis on profitability and money.
MICHAEL STOLER: As opposed to the people.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: As being a profession.
And the people right.
MICHAEL STOLER: So I'd like to say it's fortunate that
in Lincoln, Nebraska mom and dad met, good life in
Sioux Falls. Happy that you never ended up in
Northwestern because you might have not ended up
at Princeton, Harvard and I think what you've done for the
community and civil rights and especially the trust and
estate business you've been a legendary person I'd like
to thank you for being here.
WILLIAM D. ZABEL: Thank you for having me.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪