According to an Above the Law report, the lawyer at the center of the story was turned down by every white-shoe firm he approached, with his Jewish identity being the reason for the exclusion. The rejection was total, leaving him outside the establishment's doors.
Instead of giving up, he found opportunity in work that the established firms would not touch. By cornering that neglected niche, he built a practice from the ground up.
His firm eventually grew to be larger than the very firms that had shut him out. The report does not draw a broader moral, but the outcome speaks for itself.