First Jewish partner in a major Wall Street law firm, Cleary Gottlieb. Daughter established memorial fund at The Trust.
Leo Gottlieb (1896-1989)
On January 1, 1946, seven attorneys, including four from the prestigious Root Clark firm, formed a new law firm with offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., one that would soon become a leader in international corporate finance. Among them was Leo Gottlieb, who became the first Jewish partner in a major Wall Street law firm, Cleary Gottlieb.
“Most Jewish attorneys followed Gottlieb to Cleary,” notes Paul Hoffman in his 1973 book, Lions in the Street: The Inside Story of the Great Wall Street Law Firms.
Leo (known to his family as Lee) Gottlieb was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, on June 21, 1896, to Isedor Gottlieb, a Polish-Russian immigrant and civil engineer, and his wife, Dora. He was one of eight children. Leo was drafted in 1917 and served as a staff sergeant in the Army during World War I.
Leo studied engineering at Yale University before attending Harvard Law School and graduating at the top of his class.
In November 1922, Leo, then a promising young lawyer, married Tekla Picard Landauer, a volunteer with the Infants’ Relief Society, which provided care for children seriously afflicted with asthma. They lived on the Upper West Side before moving to an apartment on Park Avenue. Their daughter, Elinor, was born in 1927, and a son, Leo Jr., came along five years later.
In 1954, a private plane piloted by the younger Leo Gottlieb crashed near Pearl Harbor, killing the Navy ensign and his passenger. Later that year, his grieving parents established the Leo Gottlieb Jr. Memorial Scholarship at Yale.
Leo’s burgeoning new firm provided solace and a comforting distraction. Early clients who had previous associations with the partners included Gerard Piel, founder of Scientific American, one of the most important scientific journals of the post-World War II era, and Pan Am, European Coal & Steel Community and, later, the European Common Market and the European Atomic Energy Agency, Pennsylvania Railroad, AT & T and New York Telephone Company.
The partnership’s first new client was movie star and singer Bing Crosby, according to the book Leo Gottlieb self-published in 1983, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton: The First Thirty Years.
NBC and the Kraft Cheese Company sued the popular crooner because he prerecorded several “Kraft Music Hall” radio programs, and NBC’s elite Red Network refused to air them, insisting on a live audience. Cleary Gottlieb helped Crosby settle the suit, and eventually prerecorded broadcasts were allowed.
By 1949, Cleary Gottlieb became one of the first U.S.-based firms to open a European office. They hired and trained local European lawyers, included them as equal partners, and established a leading position on the continent. Soon after, the firm expanded to Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
In the 1950s, Cleary Gottlieb gained as clients R.H. Macy & Co., and early industry giants General Instrument Corp. and Monroe Calculating Machine Co., as well as the Foreign Petroleum Supply Committee that included Gulf and Exxon. The firm was soon representing Venezuelan Petroleum Co. and Standard Vacuum Oil Co. In the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, Cleary Gottlieb increased its oil industry client list. In 1963, the firm began representing the American Petroleum Institute, the New York City trade association that comprised virtually all the big oil companies. During the 1967 Six Day War in the Middle East, 26 oil companies organized as the Middle East Emergency Committee hired the firm, and in December 1974 the firm again was retained by major oil companies facing the Arab oil embargo.
In December 1970, Automobiles Peugeot, S.A. of Paris retained Cleary Gottlieb. Leo Gottlieb described this as “a major development in the firm’s history,” as it accounted for substantial revenues and enhanced the firm’s reputation in international legal practice.
Leo retired in 1974, but maintained ties with the firm and began setting up bequests to his family’s alma maters, including the Leo Gottlieb Professorship of Law at Harvard Law School, held for nearly 20 years by Elizabeth Warren, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012; and scholarships at both Yale and Bennington College. He served on many professional and civic boards, including Bennington College and Mount Sinai Medical Center.
In the early 1960s, he was elected president of the New York Lawyers’ Association. He also was president of the Harvard Law School Association of New York City. He died at age 93 on September 26, 1989, and is buried alongside his wife and son at Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island.
By 2021, Cleary Gottlieb was ranked by The National Law Journal as one of the largest law firms in the United States.
Elinor Gottlieb Mannucci established the fund in The New York Community Trust in her father’s honor. The unrestricted fund has supported many New York City nonprofits, including Legal Aid Society, Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, and Citizens Committee for Children of New York.
