Lloyd Cutler

Lloyd N. Cutler, the Washington legal mandarin who shuttled between a lucrative private practice and the White House, where he was counselor to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, died in 2005 at his home in Washington. He was 87. His death was reported by his wife, Polly Kraft. At the firm he helped found in 1962, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, Mr. Cutler helped direct 500 lawyers representing or lobbying for the world's most powerful corporations and industrial groups. Mr. Cutler also crossed into the public sphere. He became Mr. Carter's counsel in 1979, working on issues arising from the Iranian hostage crisis, the SALT II treaty negotiations and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan turned to Mr. Cutler, a lifelong Democrat, naming him chairman of a commission on salaries that ultimately recommended pay increases of more than 50 percent for senior government officials. In 1994, Mr. Cutler was again called upon by the White House as Mr. Clinton contended with the legal and political turmoil set off by the Whitewater investigation. Lloyd Norton Cutler was born on Nov. 10, 1917, in New York City. The original family name, Koslow, was Americanized when his paternal grandfather arrived at Ellis Island from Europe. Mr. Cutler's father was a trial lawyer in New York and a partner of Fiorello H. La Guardia. He completed his undergraduate and law studies at Yale, intent on becoming a Wall Street lawyer. He joined Cravath, Swaine & Moore, the corporate law firm founded in 1819. Mr. Cutler's first wife, the former Louise M. Howe, whom he married in 1941, died in 1989. The next year, he married Rhoda Kraft, known as Polly, who was a painter and the widow of the syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Norton, of Denver; three daughters, Beverly Cutler of Palmer, Alaska; Deborah Notman of Chestnut Hill, Mass.; and Louisiana Cutler of Anchorage; two stepsons, David W. Stevens of Denver and Mark W. Stevens of New York City; and eight grandchildren.