Matthew P. Drain learned his most important early lessons about law and life at his family’s dinner table. He was the fourth of eight children born to a father who was an attorney in private practice and a mother who was the head librarian at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The family tradition was to gather every evening for dinner and linger at the table talking for an hour or two or even longer.
“My parents were both extremely literate people with a wonderful vocabulary,” Drain recalled in a conversation. “Everyone was very respectful. You were never interrupted. If you posited some position, you were expected to defend it. It was like a moot court program at law school.”
