Gates and the States

摘要

The attorneys meeting in the Washington offices of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson last week were running on empty. Lawyers from Microsoft and state attorneys general had been toiling through a long weekend that stretched until Tuesday, finessing an agreement that would finally end their epic three-year legal battle. As negotiators went through the 20-page document line by line, one of the lawyers fell asleep amid the piled-up pizza boxes and coffee cups; his snoring could be heard on speak-erphones in state offices thousands of miles away. "It was like one of those games where the last person standing wins," says Betty Montgomery, Ohio's attorney general.