At the Bar - About a life in maritime law

Nick Healy talks to Chris Hewer about a life in maritime law in New York

INDIA House has always been a favourite of mine. I like the location, too - Hanover Square, Manhattan. Inside the old building, not too much has changed since my last visit two years ago.

I am having lunch with Nick Healy, truly the grand old man of maritime law in New York. It is hard to believe that, earlier this year, there were 89 candles on Nick's birthday cake. The world may have lost Tolstoy and Florence Nightingale in 1910, but it gained Nick Healy. And he is still going strong.

Nick was born in New York City. "I'm an aborigine," he says, as we enjoy a glass of chardonnay with our meal. Nick has lived in or near New York all his life, these days in Garden City out on Long Island. He says he got into shipping law purely by happenstance.

Nick graduated from Harvard Law School in 1934, right at the bottom of the depression. He took the first job he could find, a $1,500 a year post with an English firm, Royal Indemnity Co, in New York. Two years later he joined a new admiralty firm, Crawford & Sprague, even though it meant taking a $14-a-week pay cut. Later, he was given a raise to $25 a week, after he let it be known that he had been approached by another firm.

Nick remembers that these were not easy times to get a job. "One of my law school classmates took one as a soda jerker," he says, "and another was a postal clerk and took to drink." Nick stayed at Crawford & Sprague for over four years, doing admiralty work. Allan Baillie - who was to become Nick's partner in the law firm that still bears the name of both men today - was already there as managing clerk.

In 1940, Nick went to work as an attorney for the UK and West of England P&I clubs, sharing offices with John Monroe, predecessor of Lamorte Burns, with a retainer signed by Dawson Miller. In 1942 he obtained a commission in the US Naval reserve, where he served until 1945 up to Lieutenant (Senior Grade).

This involved taking another pay cut, although Nick remembers with a smile that there were compensations. "To buy a white Arrow shirt at the haberdashers cost $2 in those days," he remembers, "but only $1.50 at ship's stores."

Nick spent most of the war working on collision cases for the admiralty section of the Department of Justice in the old Hamburg-America Line building at 45 Broadway. In 1945, he was asked to stay on and help clean up the accumulation of wartime cases. Meanwhile, Allan Baillie, who had spent the war as a naval officer in the Pacific, obtained a position in the same firm as Nick. After a while the two decided to form an admiralty firm with Taft Nelson, a Staten Islander born of Norwegian parents, who was a law school classmate of Allan's. Taft was already in private practice. Allan joined him in November 1947, and Nick joined them both on St Patrick's Day, 1948, when the firm became Nelson, Healy & Baillie. The rest is history.

There have been a lot of changes since. Nelson's name is long gone from the firm's letterhead, and Allan Baillie is sadly no longer with us. But Nick Healy is and, what's more, Healy & Baillie still seems to be growing. Today, it has about forty lawyers at its headquarters on Broadway, and at offices in Hong Kong and Connecticut.

Nick himself is down to three days a week in the office now. Until recently it was four days, with Fridays spent at home writing and editing, two things which Nick really enjoys. Roughly three summer months of each year are spent at his summer home in Glengarriff, Co Cork, right on Bantry Bay, where Nick reckons he has "a pretty good admiralty law library including American Maritime Cases from 1947 to date, a full set of Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, fifteen years of Lloyd's Law Reports, and a full set of Aspinal." Now, space is at such a premium that Nick has had to promise his wife Margaret that there will be no more books brought into the Glengarriff home.

Nick still enjoys coming to the office. He gets the train from Garden City three days each week, and then the subway. He shows no signs of tiring, or retiring. He'll go on doing it, he says, "as long as I am able to walk." These days, he doesn't try cases, and he hasn't arbitrated in a while. Sometimes, he assists on briefs, and he enjoys being something of a father confessor to the young lawyers in the firm. "They come by and say, 'Have you ever seen anything like this case before?' Chances are I have."

Nick still does a lot of writing and editing, much of it for CMI and the MLA. He is a past-president of the MLA, and a former vice-president - now honorary vice-president - of CMI.

Writing has been a big part of Nick's life and, when asked what qualities you need to be a good maritime lawyer, he is in no doubt. "To be able to write well is the most important thing," he says. "Of course you need a more or less logical type of mind, as well. But some lawyers are brilliant at the law, and find it very difficult to put it down on paper."

There is more to Nick's life than the law. He and Margaret have six children, twenty-one grandchildren and ten great grandchildren, and he regards admiralty lawyers more than a few years his junior as young turks. But don't expect any invitations to his retirement party just yet.