BOOK REVIEW Regal Legals: Final Sentence Passed on a Fallen Law Firm Home Edition

• Published in: The Los Angeles times
• Main Author: Kirsch, Jonathan
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, Calif Los Angeles Times Communications LLC 16-05-1990
• ISSN: 0458-3035

The firm was Finley Kumble Wagner Heine Underberg Manley Myerson & Casey-no, that's not a joke, at least not an intentional one-and its rise and fall are described in fairly breathless prose by journalist [Kim Isaac Eisler] in "Shark Tank." Eisler makes a valiant effort to enliven his book with colorful asides (" `Think Yiddish, dress British' was the Kumble refrain"), snippets of dialogue that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper ("You call me a liar again, and I'll call you a . . . again") and oblique portraiture of the two heavies in the Finley Kumble debacle, Steven Kumble ("I don't get heart attacks, I give them") and Marshall Manley ("We come up against older guys who interviewed us for jobs when we were coming out of school, and we kick the . . . out of them"). "Shark Tank" is cast in the patented journalistic mold of "American Lawyer," a magazine whose editor-Steven Brill-played a self-appointed but crucial role in inflating and then puncturing the Finley Kumble bubble. Eisler confesses that he works for one of Brill's publications, but insists that "Brill had absolutely nothing to do with the research, reporting, writing or anything else having to do with this book."