Mayer Brown Chicago partner Richard Ben-Veniste has recently published a memoir of his remarkable legal career in The Emperor’s New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11. One of Richard Ben-Veniste’s most notable achievements is making President Richard Nixon finally turn over tapes that exposed the president’s involvement in the Watergate scandal. In this riveting recollection, Richard Ben-Veniste takes his readers on a tour through some of the most highly-charged legal situations that country has faced.

Throughout his memoir, Richard Ben-Veniste shows a keen eye for detail, even noting the clothes of his fellow attorneys during crucial episodes. Nixon’s lawyer was “unaccountably got-up in a lime-green shirt with a brown suit.” Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who Nixon later fired, was wearing a wide paisley necktie. Richard Ben-Veniste eye for fashion comes from the fact his father worked at a salesman in Manhattan’s Garment District.

Richard Ben-Veniste often found himself in the maelstrom of political controversy. In 1968, he landed a job as an assistant US attorney for Robert Morgenthau’s office. He eventually began working a case of influence peddling on the parts of associates of House Speaker John W. McCormack. After Nixon forced Morgenthau to resign, many of the senior assistant US attorneys quit as well, leaving a 26-year-old Ben-Veniste the only attorney left on the important case investigatine McCormack’s chief aide, Martin Sweig.

Richard Ben-Veniste was latter summoned by Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to in the effort to force Nixon to hand over incriminating tapes. He later served as the Counsel to U.S. Senate Democrats during the Whitewater hearings and also was a member of the 9/11 Commission.

Richard Ben-Veniste credits his legal success with Mayer Brown from holding jobs that taught him how to relate to all kinds of people. He bussed tables, parked cars, pushed a hand truck in the Garment District, delivered beer and laundry, and worked in many offices. “I’ve had all kinds of experiences and come into contact with working people, which informed my ability to relate to them when they reappeared in a courtroom on a jury as 12 strangers,” says the Mayer Brown Chicago partner. “The action, the focus, the ability to think on your feet, ask questions and listen, were consistent with whatever natural talent I had.”