Bill,
I know that West L.A. was one of your stomping grounds. Wish I had met you then. I moved from Brentwood to a beautiful condo in Century City, where I was in business for about 20 years. In the 80's there were approximately 3600 lawyers in the four square blocks of high rise offices there. Nobody can create paper work like law firms. They were our chief customers. But for all the different specialties we served, divorce lawyers were a breed unto themselves. On more than one occasion we found ourselves threatened with lawsuits from both sides to produce records that one side had given us. Then the other side would get a court order for two more copies of what we had already produced. That was great for me, I was making more than most of the lawyers, but the money being paid us was was only to damage each side. We did Johnny Carson's divorce in early 1984, which produced 60 legal cartons of original financial documents,(ending in 180 cartons) dating to the '50s. The judge ruled that these docs couldn't leave lawyers' offices during office hours, and could not leave the building during discovery. The service manager for Carson's lawyer (Bombastic Bushkin) was Sam Travolta, John's older brother. So we did it at night on premise. Most of these were stapled, clipped, and post-it noted many times over the years (all had to be preserved, copied and re-attached, even staples and clips) It cost a small fortune, and was just so one side could bring more misery to the other. There were so many more stories, like Hugh Hefner's trust, and a last minute call from Reagan's White House staff for press passes, complete with Secret Service watching us as we worked. |
