When Bruce P. Jeffer started his law firm in 1981, it was to escape what he called the “flash and dash” of his previous firm, Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP. In the more than 30 years since, he has preached a deeply pragmatic and disciplined approach to running a law firm – minimizing debt and diversifying practice areas. The result of such conservative planning was huge growth and one of the major L.A. law firm success stories of the last 35 years. Few firms founded locally in that span have become larger, and today, the 125-attorney Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP is one of the most profitable firms in the city, with more than $1.5 million in profits per partner. He sat with the Business Journal in his Century City office to discuss the firm, his extensive wine collection and how much longer he plans to run the firm he founded.

Question: When I talk to people around town, I often hear that you rule your firm with an iron fist. Is that a fair characterization?

Answer: I’ve heard that, and I think largely because I am very direct. If that’s a fault, I understand the fault.

Would you describe yourself as confrontational?

No, but I’m sure there would be people who would tell you I’m confrontational.

Can you give an example of you being direct in a management situation?

Someone comes in as a partner and says, “I’m a hard worker, I’m going to do X, Y and Z.” And they come in and don’t want to, and they would like to coast. So you call them and say, “How do we get to where we’re supposed to be?”

What does that mean?

It could be a lot of things. If somebody’s in a field which is disappearing, you have to talk to them about what are you going to do to retrain. Or, “One of your partners asked you for help. He called me and said you didn’t take care of him. Why? Why’d that happen?”

Do you think that you’re the kind of person you would have wanted to work for starting out?

I may not be the perfect boss for everybody, but I think I’m a very good one for a certain group of people, and I think the key in life is to search out those people whom your personality and your goals and your style work with. If you can find enough people like that, then you can have a fulfilling career and life.

What kind of people do you like working with?

It’s the most important question you face in life. I like direct, open, very straightforward, not a lot of nuance.

Not a lot of nuance?

For me it just makes it a less gratifying work relationship.

What kind of firm are you running here?

We had a vision initially, which we were able to maintain, of an old-fashioned law firm with lots of disciplines, staying regional and not trying to either go national or be all things to all people.

Why didn’t you go national?

I’m not particularly enamored of pure institutional formats or growth.

What did appeal to you?

The relationships. You have to ask yourself: Is the business more important or the relationship more important? We’re probably not as effective in some cases as a law firm that has offices in multiple sites. But also we have been able to maintain a better set of personal relationships. And that has been the sustaining factor in my professional life.

Yet your firm is highly profitable. How do you compete?

You have to select carefully areas in which a few people can be important and which the big firms really don’t have much of an advantage or any at all, or frankly are too big and unwieldy to get into. But they have to be high-value areas so that you can command the price. So what we tend to do is find niches where our one or two lawyers are as good as anybody in the country.

What are some examples?

We’re probably one of the top couple of law firms in hotel work in the country. In other areas like government relations, we’re one of the top firms. Certain other areas are a little more expansive, but we have top performers. It may be a diva practice, but if you have a diva you can go compete with another diva.

Are ‘diva practices’ becoming more important?

The whole world is in a major sea change. The law business is being divided into tasks and problems which require the skill and substance that the client will pay full value for. So if you are in those areas, you are a legal rock star. But if there’s nobody involved with an area who’s particularly different, they commoditize it.

You did get hit in the real estate crunch, though.

Not much. We did OK. In 33 years, we’ve only had three years we didn’t do better than the year before.

What are your annual net profits now?

Probably $60 million.

You’ve got a book here on your table, “America’s Lost Treasure.” Is that related to travel or archeology?

Yeah, at one point in my life I actually thought of anthropology and archeology as something I might do. It turned out to be too academic.

What do you like about it?

Sifting through history. I’m fascinated by where we’ve been. I’m somebody who’s not interested in “A Clockwork Orange.” Where we’re going, it’s not as intriguing to me.

Why’s that?

Don’t know. There are people who, like myself, are rooted in the past and they look at history and where we’ve been and are excited to know. I have an older brother who could care less about that. He’s into science fiction. His mind goes to “Where could we be?” And that’s just not my bias.

What do you like to read?

Two categories: airplane garbage – Connelly, the spy stuff. And if you have time for the serious stuff, I like history and art, and I read a lot of biographies.

What do you like about Michael Connelly?

Straightforward, tells a great story. Doesn’t get sentimental. Doesn’t try to use a lot of words to bulk it up.

Read anything good lately?

I just read a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt I thought was spectacular.

What do you find interesting about Cornelius Vanderbilt?

Cornelius Vanderbilt started in a modest circumstance, with no great education, probably had social impediments, speech mannerisms, whatever. And through a business acumen was able to build probably the greatest fortune in the United States at that time and do some phenomenal things. It was really through common sense. It just shows you there are people who are not educated who have tremendous potential – in the old days you see this – who rise from where they are that really dominate the commerce of America. To me that’s incredibly impressive.

Do you have any other guilty pleasures besides airplane reading?

I drink a lot of wine.

I’ve heard about your wine collection. How much do you have?

Probably 16,000 or 18,000 bottles of wine.

Why do you like to collect it?

Collecting really is a disease. You’re afraid that something you want won’t be available. It’s not a smart thing to do.

Do you collect anything else?

I collect books; I collect art. I’m a collector.

What’s your favorite wine?

There’s an Italian wine called a Masseto. (Retails for between $185 and $435 on Wine-Searcher.com).

What do you like about that one?

Incredibly rich, full-bodied flavor. Even if you’re fairly knowledgeable, you wouldn’t realize it was a merlot unless someone told you. I like anything that’s different, which will surprise you. It’s also a taste that’s very unique. It tastes like tobacco.

Tobacco?

Doesn’t sound very good, but it is good.

What do you like about wine?

If you asked me the perfect evening, it’s to take a great bottle of wine or two, sit with a friend, and just drink and talk. The wine loosens you up. It’s something you can share, it’s something that changes. It’s an exciting taste if you get good wines. I find it’s the most social experience. I’d rather do that than go to a party.

Why so many bottles?

People want to have stuff. They never put two and two together that you can only drink so much. So if I told you at one point I had over 30,000 bottles, and I’ve been drinking them down, you’d laugh right?

Yeah.

You should laugh.

What’s the most you’ve spent on a bottle?

$4,000 or $5,000 at a restaurant. For personal collection, several hundred, maybe a thousand.

Are there things about these different aspects of your personality – the collector, the person who’s interested in history – that relate to your work in the firm?

There’s something called infantile completion disorder. Collectors are that. Infantile completionists. In other words, what they see is a page of stamps that have to be filled. A collection of books where every one of them has to be filled. A wine cellar that has to have every bottle. When I say it’s a sickness, of course I’m joking, but there’s an aspect to it that is automatic. So does that relate to the way I practice law or I do business? Yeah, I’m very auto. I basically fill every box. I do not go off half-cocked. If I don’t understand it, I don’t do it.

What do you mean fill every box?

There are people whom you would call gunslingers – they shoot from the hip. They can pivot to the right on a moment’s notice, getting a whim or a feeling for something better, and do it. That would not be my style. They wouldn’t collect. Because to collect you have to have enough focus to fill every box. People who need progression need to understand where it all fits, fill every box.

How do you spend your time now?

I take care of business, go home with my family. Drink wine, read. I’m 71. Everything changes. It’s just savoring the days. I have a lot of friends who died already. That changes your viewpoint.

How has it changed?

I’m trying to cut down on extraneous stuff. Do things that include the people that I want to have the most time with in the time you have. When you’re young, you really don’t think that way. You think you’re gonna live forever. You think it doesn’t matter, one day doesn’t matter. Waste a day if you will. Spend it doing something silly or completely off the wall. Later you realize you don’t do things like that, that’s truly a mistake.

How long do you plan on staying at your firm?

I’m not going to die at my desk. I’ve got a promise to people who worked with me for 30 years that I will leave everything in an orderly fashion. So I’m working toward that. How many more years? I don’t really know. But my guess is realistically three or four more years.

I remember several years ago there were stories about attorneys leaving this firm and people were blaming it on a lack of a succession plan.

There was a group of young people who left. Almost all of them were in the real estate area, and in an area which was not probably the highest value here in terms of our business model. So they were having a hard time with rates and hours because the model calls for higher rates in smaller areas. It was not a good mix.

Why would you say realistically three or four years?

I just had a partner here die, he was 77. I said to myself, “I don’t want to die that way.” He’d never gotten away from it.

Why don’t you want to die working?

It doesn’t seem appropriate. I think people should have a certain amount of time in the early part of their life to figure out who they are, what they want to do, and I think they should have a period of time at the end of their life to come to terms with what they have or haven’t done and reconcile it. And hiding behind work, which may be fun, is probably not a smart thing to do.

How do you feel now about what you’ve done?

Good about a lot of things. Sorry I couldn’t have done more, sorry I couldn’t have done better.

What do you feel good about?

Well, I feel good that I’ve been able to at least take a venture through to success and meet a lot of great people along the way. Had two good marriages, although both my wives probably wouldn’t tell you that.

What do you feel sorry about?

There are a lot of other things I wanted to do. I would have loved to have been a writer. I wrote on food and wine for years for a lot of publications. I would have loved to write on travel. I would have loved to be a writer on certain social aspects. But writing is very hard work. I found I couldn’t justify the amount time it took me to turn out the product I wanted.

What did you like about writing?

Loved the accomplishment of putting something together that you wanted to say. On a thousand-word restaurant review or travel review, I would do 10 drafts. One, you can’t make money, but two, you drive yourself crazy. I was a perfectionist. In writing you have to be intuitive. I gave it up. I realized I would never be a great writer. I was not intuitive enough. I was very thorough and I thought I had very good insights into what I was writing about, but it was hard.

Anything else you want to add?

No, this is the longest interview I’ve ever done. Just so you know, I don’t enjoy interviews for the most part.