A lawyer's office is the last place most people would expect to find anything hip-hop related. But at least one firm has taken Biggie's famous lyric about needing "lawyers watching lawyers so I won't go broke" to heart. The Dallas, TX firm of Caldwell, Cassady, and Curry has taken hip-hop into every level of their firm. From the music they listen to on the way to court to the design and naming of their brand-new office, rap is everywhere in the lives and business of the three partners.
Despite being based in Dallas, the trio of Brad Caldwell, Jason Cassady, and Austin Curry are huge fans particularly of West Coast rap. They used to jokingly refer to themselves as "214," a nod to both their Dallas area code and, more importantly, the Snoop Dogg/Warren G/Nate Dogg trio 213. Warren G's classic 1994 debut Regulate...G Funk Era is a particular touchstone for the partners, and an album they still listen to in order to get through long nights of trial preparation. "There’s a whole bunch of good stuff off that album," said Caldwell. "I used to have the entire 38 minutes memorized."
Curry is, he readily admits, the "biggest Tupac fan" of the trio. "If I have control over the music, I’ll probably put on [Pac's 1996 album] All Eyez On Me," he told us. "The ringtone in my office is 'Picture Me Rollin'.'" For Caldwell, another Pac tune is key. "'All Eyez On Me' is pretty representative of being at the podium at trial," he explained.
The partners' love of rap is expressed in their brand-new office, designed by IA Interior Architects. While they weren't able to include the shark tank they originally wanted for the lobby (scrapped, according to Caldwell, "due to the ridiculous weekly maintenance costs for having a shark"), they did manage, in true rap fashion, to include their names everywhere. They have what the partners call "these symbolic wood things" to represent the "C" in all of their last names.
Photo of C,C,&C office by Thomas McConnell.
In another nod to the music they love, all of the office's conference rooms are named after famous rappers. The Wallace (named after Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.), the Carter (after Shawn Carter, a.k.a. Jay Z), and the Broadus (Calvin Broadus, better known as Snoop Dogg) not only are named after rap greats, but the rooms also include artist-appropriate ringtones and screen savers. Caldwell doesn't mind that most visitors don't get the references.
"The really awesome part is bringing in some potential client, and they’re just looking at the names -- they’re very subtly named, obviously," he said. "No one has ever made the connection to Christopher Wallace, no one has ever figured out Shawn Carter. I always think when they see the Snoop [room], they’ll figure out what 'Broadus' is, because that one’s pretty unique. But maybe one out of 20 people have ever figured it out, which is kind of funny. We’re not turning away conservative people who don’t like hip-hop. They’re just oblivious to it. They just assume it’s some judge we tried a case in front of or something."
Cassady's private office contains another nod to hip-hop. He has a "money-green leather sofa," just like the one Biggie bragged of sitting on in his hit "Juicy," and a giant TV that is, the partners sheepishly admit, even a little bigger than the "50-inch screen" the rapper boasted of in the same lyric.
Caldwell, Cassady, and Curry don't have much to do with hip-hop on the business side -- they deal with patent law. They did, however, recently try a big case against
