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The winner of a proxy contest was determined in the snake pit. (Officially, it was called the counting room.)
理權競爭人的贏家一般在“龍潭虎穴”中（正式的稱呼是財務室）投票決定。
Lawyers for each side met with inspectors of elections, whose job it was approve or eliminate questionable proxies.
雙方的律師會與選舉監察員一起會面。監察員的工作是批準或否決有疑問的投票權。
The event was often informal, contentious and unruly.
人們在那樣的場合經常不拘小節，常爭吵不休。
Adversaries were sometimes in T-shirts, eating watermelon or sharing a bottle of scotch.
互為對手的人們有時穿著T恤衫，吃著西瓜或者共享一瓶蘇格蘭酒，
In rare cases, the results of the snake pit could swing the outcome of a contest and turn on the single ballot.
在“龍潭虎穴”中爭論的結果，常常很難達成共識。
Lawyers occasionally tried to fix an election by engineering the appointment of inspectors who were beholden to them; inspectors commonly smoked cigars provided by each side.
律師們偶爾會試著通過任命一個對他們心存謝意的監察員來決定一次選舉。通常，監察員抽著雙方提供的雪茄。
Management's lawyer would contest the proxies of the insurgents ("I challenge this!") and vice versa....
管理層的律師要從叛變者的手中爭奪投票權（“我抗議！”）及不道德的……
Lawyers who prevailed in the snake pid excelled at winging it.
處于“龍潭虎穴”中的律師長于此道。
There were lawyers who knew more about the rules of proxy contests, but no one was better in a fight than Joe Flom.
很多律師知道關于投票權的競爭規則，但沒有人能比弗洛姆更擅長此道。
Caplan goes on. Flom was fat (a hundred pounds overweight then, one lawyer said...), physically unattractive (to a partner, he resembled a frog), and indifferent to social niceties (he would fart in public or jab a cigar close to the face of someone he was talking to, without apology).
弗洛姆很胖（那時他至少超重100磅，一位律師回憶說……），體形上一點也不具有吸引力（對于合伙人來說他就像一只青蛙），不注意社交禮節（他會當眾放屁，或者把手上的雪茄戳到那個跟他談話的人的臉上，而不表示一絲歉意）。
But in the judgement of colleagues and of some adversaries, his will to win was unsurpassed and he was often mastful.
但在與同道者或者競爭者進行法庭辯護時，他的氣勢總咄咄逼人，結果總是他占上風。
The white-shoe law firms would call in Flom as well when some corporate raider make a run at one of their establishment clients.
那些“白鞋”層次的法律公司一旦發現有人合伙攻擊他們固有的客戶時，他們就會來找弗洛姆，
They wouldn't touch the case, but they were happy to outsource it to Skadden, Arps.
這些“白鞋”法律公司不喜歡這種案子，但他們很高興把這些業務轉讓給世達律師事務所。
"Flom's early specialty was proxy fights, and that was not what we did, just like we don't do matrimonial work," said Robert Rifkind, a longtime partner at Cravath, Swaine and Moore.
“弗洛姆最初擅長的是代理人競爭的案子，而那不是我們做的領域，就像我們不做婚姻方面的一樣。”羅伯特·瑞弗凱德（RobertRifkind），美國凱威律師事務所的一個長期合伙人這樣說。
"And therefore we purported not to know about it.
“我們因此就對外宣稱不了解這方面的情況，
I remember once we had an issue involving a proxy fight, and one of my senor corporate partners said, Well, let's get Joe in.
我記得我們曾經有一件案子牽涉到代理勸斗爭，我的一位高級合伙人說，干脆就讓喬·弗洛姆來做吧。
And he came to a conference room, and we all sat around and described the problem and he told us what to do and he left.
他來到我們的一個會議室，我們圍成一團坐著，向他解釋這個案子，他聽完后，告訴我們應該怎樣去做，然后便離開了。
And I said, 'We can do that too, you know.'
我說，‘大家知道，我們也可以這樣做。’
And the partner said, 'No, no, no, you can't. We're not going to do that.'
但我的合伙人對我說，‘不，不，不，你不能這樣做，我們不想做那些事。’
It was just that we didn't do it."
就這樣，我們沒有做成這些業務。”
