Powers of Attorney
Louis Auchincloss
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
<p>Louis Auchincloss, known to most people as the author of best-selling novels, is also a practicing lawyer. In <B><I>Powers of Attorney </B></I>he combines his two vocations in a graphic and authoritative account of the internal workings of a big New York law office. Each of the twelve episodes which make up the book concerns a member of the fictional firm of Tower, Tilncy & Webb and their plots are interwoven as inevitably as are the lives of the characters involved. Clitus Tilney, the senior partner, has set his stamp on the firm. He is responsible for the growth that makes envious competitors refer to it as a "law factory" and responsible too for the retention of ethical principles considered old-fashioned by certain of his colleagues. The realm he rules is contained in two floors of a vast new office building on Wall Street, and it is there that most of the rivalries, victories, disappointments, and compromises are worked out, to the satisfaction of Mr. Tilney and of the...</p>