By any account, Robert Joffe was a man of impressive accomplishments: A Harvard Law School grad, he served as the presiding partner of Cravath, Swaine & Moore for eight years, and the primary outside counsel to Time Warner for more than three decades. He was a preeminent boardroom adviser, counseling a cadre of companies—Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., Fannie Mae, Citigroup Inc.—during some of their most troubled times. But to those who knew him, Joffe’s most distinguishing characteristic was his humanity: his devotion to fighting for the rights of others and his insistence on treating everyone he encountered with respect and dignity.
“He was the presiding partner of one of the most prestigious and high-powered law firms—he had almost a regal name and character about him—but underneath it all he was just a regular good guy,” says Richard Parsons, the chairman of Citigroup and former chairman and CEO of Time Warner. Joffe had more of a sense of his similarities to his fellow man than his differences, says Parsons. Joffe died at age 66 in January.
