Many who admired the legendary Charlie Munger, who died this week just shy of his 100th birthday, as the investment genius partnership he comprised with Warren Buffett. But law partnership was also on the cards for the bright and talented investment legend.
Charlie Munger has a storied career that began in law.
Born law in Omaha, Nebraska, Munger’s early life was steeped in legal influence; his father, Alfred Case Munger, was a lawyer, and his grandfather, Thomas Charles Munger, served as a U.S. district court judge.
Munger’s academic journey took him to the University of Michigan, where he initially pursued mathematics and he joined the Sigma Phi Society fraternity.
His studies were interrupted when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps at 19. Demonstrating early signs of his intellectual prowess, Munger was assigned to study meteorology at Caltech after scoring high on the Army General Classification Test.
Post-World War II, Munger utilized the GI Bill to undertake advanced courses across various universities. Despite lacking an undergraduate degree, a critical intervention by family friend and former Harvard Law dean Roscoe Pound led to Munger’s admission into Harvard Law School where his academic abilities saw him excel, graduating magna cum laude with a J.D. in 1948 and participating in the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.
Beyond academia, Munger honed his strategic thinking through card playing, a skill he later applied to his business and investment strategies. He emphasized the importance of recognizing and seizing opportunities, a philosophy that would underpin his future successes with Warren Buffett, but not before his legal career was also pursued.
His legal career began in California at the law firm Wright & Garrett, which later became Musick, Peeler & Garrett. He practised in real estate and served as a real estate attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.
But his passion for investment could not be suppressed and it soon led him to leave the practice as a real estate lawyer to focus on his burgeoning investment career.
In partnership with Otis Booth, he ventured into real estate development and also co-founded Wheeler, Munger, and Company, an investment firm with a seat on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.
Despite the firm’s eventual dissolution following significant losses in the mid-1970s, Munger’s investment career was far from over.
The Buffett Partnership
Running his investment partnership from 1962 to 1975, Munger achieved remarkable success. As highlighted in Buffett’s essay “The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville,” Munger’s partnership generated compound annual returns of 19.8% during this period, significantly outperforming the Dow’s 5.0 percent annual appreciation rate.
Charlie Munger’s transition from a promising legal career to a legendary investor illustrates the depth of his unquestioned abilities and acumen.
His overall net worth was about $2.6 billion, according to Forbes. Munger was a philanthropist who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to top schools, including the University of Michigan, Stanford University and Harvard Law School, often requiring them to accept his building designs, although he was not formally trained as an architect.
