from his second job or from school—I never
saw my dad other than brief periods of
time on the weekends. But the fact that he
was prepared to do that in order to raise a
family was very powerful for me.”
As a teenager, Siegel embraced that
same work ethic, taking summer jobs and
working in the evenings after school. He
painted houses, worked as a summer camp
counselor, wrote copy for an advertising
firm and worked the floor as a sales clerk
at Macy’s. Although his father was proud of
his hardworking son, he didn’t want him to
punch a clock forever.
“Every generation wants to build on what
the last did,” Siegel says. “He wanted his
son to achieve a level beyond what he was
able to achieve. My dad ultimately became
a pretty senior corporate executive, but one
of the things that he said to me when I was
a kid was that he didn’t want any of his three
sons working at big corporations. He didn’t
like the politics, he didn’t like the dynamics,
didn’t like having a boss. So each of us had
to have a career that, worst case, you could
hang out your own shingle.”
Siegel’s plan was to become a doctor.
His father had always wanted to go to
medical school, but was unable to because
he was supporting his family. So when
Siegel headed off to college, he intended
to fulfill his father’s dream. “But organic
chemistry killed that,” he says. “At the end
of my freshman year, I said to my dad, ‘This
just isn’t for me.’ And he was fine with that.
He said, ‘At the end of the day, do what it is
you’re going to be great at.’”
What he was great at was writing,
planning and strategic thinking. Armed with
a degree in political science from Cornell
University, Siegel was accepted at New York
University School of Law and moved to the
city. “Frankly,” he says, “I had no idea what I
was getting into [as a lawyer]. … I assumed
everybody was a litigator. And it was only
in my first year of law school that I realized
that there were all these aspects of law that
were fundamentally different than just plain
litigation, and the one that I gravitated to
was corporate law. I liked the concept that, as
opposed to being a gladiator, you’re actually
involved in building something. An awful
lot of what corporate lawyers do is putting
things together to drive forward business.”
Siegel lived in a Greenwich Village
apartment during the beginning of New
York’s renaissance. “Law school for me was
a phenomenal awakening,” he says. “I loved
the way of thinking; I loved the intellectual
challenge and the overall dynamics of it. But
doing it in New York at the same time meant
that I had access to all its cultural resources,
that I could stay up all night and study and
know that at 2 o’clock in the morning I could
still find someplace to eat.” What impressed
him most about NYC were the illustrious law
firms stationed in towers throughout the city.
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