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The winner of a proxy contest was determined in the snake pit. (Officially, it was called the counting room.)
理权竞争人的赢家一般在“龙潭虎穴”中（正式的称呼是财务室）投票决定。
Lawyers for each side met with inspectors of elections, whose job it was approve or eliminate questionable proxies.
双方的律师会与选举监察员一起会面。监察员的工作是批准或否决有疑问的投票权。
The event was often informal, contentious and unruly.
人们在那样的场合经常不拘小节，常争吵不休。
Adversaries were sometimes in T-shirts, eating watermelon or sharing a bottle of scotch.
互为对手的人们有时穿着T恤衫，吃着西瓜或者共享一瓶苏格兰酒，
In rare cases, the results of the snake pit could swing the outcome of a contest and turn on the single ballot.
在“龙潭虎穴”中争论的结果，常常很难达成共识。
Lawyers occasionally tried to fix an election by engineering the appointment of inspectors who were beholden to them; inspectors commonly smoked cigars provided by each side.
律师们偶尔会试着通过任命一个对他们心存谢意的监察员来决定一次选举。通常，监察员抽着双方提供的雪茄。
Management's lawyer would contest the proxies of the insurgents ("I challenge this!") and vice versa....
管理层的律师要从叛变者的手中争夺投票权（“我抗议！”）及不道德的……
Lawyers who prevailed in the snake pid excelled at winging it.
处于“龙潭虎穴”中的律师长于此道。
There were lawyers who knew more about the rules of proxy contests, but no one was better in a fight than Joe Flom.
很多律师知道关于投票权的竞争规则，但没有人能比弗洛姆更擅长此道。
Caplan goes on. Flom was fat (a hundred pounds overweight then, one lawyer said...), physically unattractive (to a partner, he resembled a frog), and indifferent to social niceties (he would fart in public or jab a cigar close to the face of someone he was talking to, without apology).
弗洛姆很胖（那时他至少超重100磅，一位律师回忆说……），体形上一点也不具有吸引力（对于合伙人来说他就像一只青蛙），不注意社交礼节（他会当众放屁，或者把手上的雪茄戳到那个跟他谈话的人的脸上，而不表示一丝歉意）。
But in the judgement of colleagues and of some adversaries, his will to win was unsurpassed and he was often mastful.
但在与同道者或者竞争者进行法庭辩护时，他的气势总咄咄逼人，结果总是他占上风。
The white-shoe law firms would call in Flom as well when some corporate raider make a run at one of their establishment clients.
那些“白鞋”层次的法律公司一旦发现有人合伙攻击他们固有的客户时，他们就会来找弗洛姆，
They wouldn't touch the case, but they were happy to outsource it to Skadden, Arps.
这些“白鞋”法律公司不喜欢这种案子，但他们很高兴把这些业务转让给世达律师事务所。
"Flom's early specialty was proxy fights, and that was not what we did, just like we don't do matrimonial work," said Robert Rifkind, a longtime partner at Cravath, Swaine and Moore.
“弗洛姆最初擅长的是代理人竞争的案子，而那不是我们做的领域，就像我们不做婚姻方面的一样。”罗伯特·瑞弗凯德（RobertRifkind），美国凯威律师事务所的一个长期合伙人这样说。
"And therefore we purported not to know about it.
“我们因此就对外宣称不了解这方面的情况，
I remember once we had an issue involving a proxy fight, and one of my senor corporate partners said, Well, let's get Joe in.
我记得我们曾经有一件案子牵涉到代理劝斗争，我的一位高级合伙人说，干脆就让乔·弗洛姆来做吧。
And he came to a conference room, and we all sat around and described the problem and he told us what to do and he left.
他来到我们的一个会议室，我们围成一团坐着，向他解释这个案子，他听完后，告诉我们应该怎样去做，然后便离开了。
And I said, 'We can do that too, you know.'
我说，‘大家知道，我们也可以这样做。’
And the partner said, 'No, no, no, you can't. We're not going to do that.'
但我的合伙人对我说，‘不，不，不，你不能这样做，我们不想做那些事。’
It was just that we didn't do it."
就这样，我们没有做成这些业务。”
