Anton R. Valukas, Speed Reader

Anton Valukas is not only the Chairman of Jenner & Block and author of the recently released report on the failure of Lehman Brothers, but he may be the world's fastest reader.

According to the New York Times, in preparing his Lehman report, Mr. Valukas " ...reviewed by his own estimate about 34 million pages of email."

Since the the appointment of Mr. Valukas was mandated on January 16, 2009 and the report itself is dated March 11, 2010, it appears Mr. Valukas had exactly 419 days to prepare his report.

419 days

x 24 hours per day

x 60 minutes per hour

x 60 seconds per minute

= 36,201,600 seconds, or about 1.065 seconds per page.

I don't question Mr Valukas' stamina or work ethic, but I assume he must've taken some time to sleep and eat and run his law firm during the past year, so we're using the word "review" pretty liberally when we're discussing 34 million pages.

It's unlikely that Mr. Valukas had any time to chuckle at the occasional joke, admire a well-turned phrase or marvel at some prescient prediction that he uncovered in his reading.

Sadly, the Times article fails to reveal whether the 34 million pages were delivered to Mr. Valukas electronically or on paper. If it was on 20 pound paper, Mr. Valukas's pile of "evening reading" would've been 3,060 meters high, roughly seven times taller than the Sears Tower in Mr. Valukas's hometown of Chicago, and it would've weighed about 170 tons.

If he carried it home in equal parts each night, his briefcase would've weighed 800 pounds.

Addendum: The Lehman report is exceedingly well-researched and written. Give Mr. Valukas's team credit for reading the mountain of emails more thoroughly than a number of journalists read the final report. See my related post.

(The first version of this post missed a decimal point and claimed Mr. Valukas reading assignment would've been merely 306 meters high. The math is 9 cm per 1000 pages x 34,000 / 100 = 3,060 meters. And I know the Sears Tower has been renamed the Willis Tower, but call me old-fashioned. I still call the MetLife building in NYC the "Pan Am Building" and nobody is confused.)