A Cruise to Die for

"Jonathon Derek—aged twenty-seven, a graduate from Fordham Law School—is presently a junior associate in the prestigious law firm McKenzie, Dillon, and Reeves, LLC with offices at 250 Broadway, New York; 15 Main Street, Hartford, Connecticut; and 4-14 New Hyde Park Place, London, England. Jonathon is assigned to maritime matters, which include shipping contracts, demurrage claims, and form registry of ships with Bahamian registry as well as representing crew members with personal injury claims suffered in the course of their employment. He is engaged to Sandra Thompson, a twenty-three-year-old blond beauty who graduated from fashionable Sullins College in West Virginia. Her father, Tom Thompson, owns Mercedes dealerships in Paramus, New Jersey; Westchester; and Ridgefield, Connecticut. They reside in tony Alpine, New Jersey.Stephan Kirkland—aged twenty-eight, a graduate of New York Law School, high school classmate and best friend to Jonathon—is also a junior associate of McKenzie, Dillon, and Reeves. He is assigned to handling jury trials in complex contract cases as well as a member of the American Arbitration Association.McKenzie, Dillon, and Reeves is composed of 250 lawyers and thirty-two partners, including ten junior partners. McKenzie, seventy-nine years old, is a well-respected trial lawyer who started the firm sixty years ago in an abandoned garage in Hackensack, New Jersey—which his brother Earle, a contractor, constructed into a designer building with Doric columns with a bronze statue of Justice prominent over the entrance arch. He graduated from Harvard, class of 1961, along with classmates Bob Dillon and Charles Reeves, whose families were investment brokers as well as owners of real estate along Edgewater and Weehawken waterfront, which eventually became the Golden Mile with multiple high-rise condo and town houses that permeated the costal line from the George Washington Bridge, south to the Lincoln Tunnel. The firm prospered through the representation of developers, bankers, and prospective buyers of realty and handled multiple applications for variances and permits on behalf of developers who became the moneyed clients for the fledgling firm.The firm leased office space at 250 Broadway in Manhattan to cover clients who were in the concrete business as well as structural components needed for the development along the Jersey side of Hudson, which seemed to mirror the New York skyline. McKenzie hired young Yale and Harvard graduates direct from law school, many of whom came from wealthy families who in turn transferred their legal work to the firm which more than paid for their children’s salaries. He always took the position that a firm could have a million lawyers as long as they put in at least 1,800 hours a year at a $350 rate. McKensie also saw fit to hire law students from Fordham, Brooklyn Law School, and Pace whose duties were confined to trial preparation, handling depositions, and landlord and tenant complaints to avoid the ultraelitist mantel that would discourage and perhaps intimidate prospective blue-collar contractors."