評論
打印
No one rises to the top of the New York legal profession unless he or she is smart and ambitious and hardworking,
如果一個人，他十分聰明、擁有野心、工作十分努力，那么他就有機會進入到紐約法律界的最核心層面。
and clearly the four men who founded the Black Rock firm fit that description.
很顯然，最初建立黑石集團的四個人就完全符合這種描述。
But we know far more than that, don't we?
但是我們知道的要遠比這些更多，不是嗎？
Success is not a random act.
成功不是隨隨便便就可以取得的。
It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities, and at this point,
這完全取決于你的預見能力和對環(huán)境以及機會的把握。
after examining the lives of Bill Joe and Bill Gates, pro hocky players and geniuses, and Joe Flom, the Janklows, and the Borgenichts,
回顧一下前冰球選手比爾喬伊、一位偉大的天才比爾蓋茨、喬·弗洛姆、詹克洛以及鮑各尼特之后，
it shouldn't be hard to figure out where the perfect lawyer comes from.
就不難看出一名優(yōu)秀的律師是從何而來的。
They will have been born in a demographic trough, so they had the best of New York City's public schools and the easiest time in the job market.
這些人可能出生在競爭壓力很小的年代。并且有機會選擇進入紐約最好的法學院上學，并有著很好的就業(yè)前景。
They will be Jewish, of course, so they had the great fortune to be locked-out of the old-line downtown law firms, on account of their "antecedents."
他或她可能是猶太人，并且因為其“前輩人”的一些原因被過去的法律事務所拒之門外。
They will have had parents who did meaningful work in the garment business, so they could have learned autonomy and complexity and the connection between effort and reward.
他的父母親或許在服裝行業(yè)做了很多有意義的工作，并且將工作需要有自主權、挑戰(zhàn)性以及付出多少回報多少的想法傳給了兒女。
They will have gone to a good school, although it doesn't have to be a great school.
他們會進入一所優(yōu)秀的院校-也有可能并不是優(yōu)秀的院校就讀。
They don't have to have been the smartest in their class, only smart enough.
他或她不必成為班里最聰明的孩子，足夠聰明就好。
In fact, we can be even more precise.
實際上，我們可以描述的更精確。
Just as there is a perfect birth date for a nineteenth-century Robert Barren and a perfect birth date for a software tycoon,
那時剛好是個適合19世紀商業(yè)大亨出生的年代，也是適合軟件天才出生的年代，
there is a perfect birth date for a New York Jewish lawyer as well.
同樣也是適合紐約的猶太裔律師出生的年代。
It's 1930 or thereabouts, because that would give the lawyer the benefit of a blessedly small generation.
在1930年，也正因為如此，才使得律師有機會得到這一代幸運兒的眷顧，獲得很多利潤。
It would also make him forty years of age in 1970, when the revolution in the legal world first began,
這個階段持續(xù)了40年，直到1970年，法律格局發(fā)生重大的變革，
which translates to a healthy fifteen-year Hamburg period in the takeover business while the white-shoe lawyers lingered, obliviously, over their two-martini lunches at the Princeton Club.
律師進入了十五年富裕的漢堡時期，律師們在外面忙個不停，幾乎一個午餐時間要見兩個客戶，
If you want to be a great New York lawyer, it is an advantage to be an outsider,
如果你想成為紐約最出色的律師，你就要在外跑個不停，這是你的優(yōu)勢；
and it is an advantage to have parents who did meaningful work, and, better still, to have been born in the early 1930s.
如果你的父母曾教導你工作的意義何在，你就又多了一個優(yōu)勢；如果你是出生在30年代，那么就更具優(yōu)勢了。
But if you have all three advantages, on top of a good dose of ingenuity and drive, then that's an unstoppable combination.
如果這三個優(yōu)勢，你都具備了，那么再加上出色的獨創(chuàng)性與動機。這將會是一個絕妙的組合。
That's like being a hocky player being born on January 1.
這就好像是出生在1月1日的冰球手。
