Robert Kindler is one of few M&A advisers to have excelled as both a lawyer and a banker, a career he discussed on this week’s Drinks With The Deal podcast. After 20 years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, he moved to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2000 and six years later jumped to Morgan Stanley, where he was global chair of M&A and helped the bank do a series of significant deals before joining Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in 2023.

“The way to succeed in this world is to have lifelong connectivity,” Kindler said on the podcast. “Whoever I dealt with from associates to paralegals, I tried to keep that connectivity going. A lot of the business I’ve gotten over the years has come from young investment bankers whom I worked with back in the 1980s and 1990s.”

Kindler also talked about one of his key mentors at Cravath, Samuel Butler, who counted Warren Buffett among his clients. “Who would have thought he would have taken me under his wing?” Kindler said of Butler, who died earlier this year. “I’m from Queens. I went to Bayside High School and graduated with 1,300 kids. I went to college because I was a classical musician. I was completely off spec for anyone you would think would go to Cravath. He wanted to be a mentor to people.”

Listen to the podcast with Robert Kindler below:

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