Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 7.1.07: Lawyers, Literally

The NYT has served up a relatively weak batch of candidates this week. That’s okay with us; we needed to be brought down to earth after the heights of last week’s eminence-fest.
Still, a warning: There’s not an Ivy League degree to be found in this column, so those of you who are nauseated by the couplings of mere Duke-UVA grads may want to avert your eyes and ponder what a cesspool the Times has become.
Here are the finalists:

1. Jill Isaacs and Kurt Perhach
2. Jennifer DeLeonardo and Adam Frey
3. Liza Burnett and Stephen Fefferman

Read more about these couples, after the jump.

1. Jill Isaacs and Kurt Perhach
(Buy them some pasta bowls.)
The Case:
– Kurt is admirably public-spirited; he’s currently in the Army JAG Corps at Fort Bragg, and he served some time in Teach for America. And Jill, the devoted wife, is keeping the home fires burning in Raleigh while practicing at the Horsley Law Firm.
– Jill’s father works in China for an exporter of lingerie. Let’s hear it for cheap Asian panties! (And… here come the Google hits.) Jill’s mother is executive director of Table to Table, which sounds like a very worthy nonprofit.
The Case Against:
– The couple met at Hofstra Law (read about it here). The bride was cum laude from the University of Maryland; the groom did his undergrad at William & Mary and has a master’s from St. Peter’s College. There’s no way to sugar-coat this: These are not typical LEWW academic credentials. Hofstra is tier-3, Maryland is the armpit of the ACC, we’ve never heard of St. Peter’s, and our impression of William & Mary is that it’s crawling with biology majors and hoop-skirt fetishists. In short, while this couple is cute and patriotic, It’s LEWW’s duty to be cold-hearted and send them down to the minors until they can score a prestigious fellowship or get somebody off death row.

2. Jennifer DeLeonardo and Adam Frey
(Buy them a cooling rack.)
The Case:
– Jennifer and Adam met at admitted students’ weekend at UVA Law (read the story on their website). The bride was cum laude at Middlebury College; the groom was magna at Duke.
– They’ve found employment at prestigious law firms. Jennifer is in Sullivan & Cromwell‘s DC office; Adam is at Patton Boggs.
The Case Against:
– “Jennifer Marie DeLeonardo” doesn’t sound like a Jewish name, but they were married by a cantor. Has another good Jewish boy fallen to a shiksa?
– The Patton Boggs attorney photos do a disservice to this proud genre. The firm went well beyond headshots or even torso shots; they’ve got every subject perched on a stool with most of the body showing, looming ominously over the camera, with awkward hand contortions all over the place. Adding to the full-frontal freakiness, the lighting isn’t great, and some of the people — particularly female associates — have bizarre, pained, facial expressions (help me!). If Patton Boggs is trying to intimidate the crap out of us with the sausage fingers, crotch-grabbing, and young women in bondage, it’s totally working.

3. Liza Burnett and Stephen Fefferman
(Buy them a pizza wheel.)
The Case:
– The legal eagle in this pairing is the groom, who went to the University of Michigan and got his JD at Fordham. (The bride graduated from Union College and is in public relations.)
– Very cute meeting story in their write-up, which gets the semi-long treatment from the NYT. They met at a bar, where both were attending separate parties “for people they barely knew” (wonder if those “friends” got invites to the wedding). The night ended with Liza proposing and Andrew giving her an ersatz engagement ring crafted, MacGyver-like, from a dollar bill.
The Case Against:
– Stephen is an associate at Meister Seelig & Fein, which emphatically gets the indefinite article treatment (“a New York law firm”) from the NYT.
– The partners at Meister Seelig have probably noticed that love has affected Stephen’s communication skills. His first impression upon seeing Liza: “I was taken aback by her.” Seriously? When we’re taken aback by someone, we usually just nervously fiddle with our BlackBerry until help arrives; we’ve never thought of hastily fashioning an engagement ring from whatever’s in our pocket and proposing. And it gets worse: Later that night, he says, he was “literally floating.” Literally? Stephen, we suspect you were figuratively floating — floating down Corny River toward Schmaltzy Falls. (Note: If you actually were slyly referring to your world-saving superpowers, we trust you’ll be merciful.)
The Verdict:
– Away from the blinding glare of the NYT’s usual “power schools,” Virginia Law is looking bodaciously sparkly, and Sullivan & Cromwell and Patton Boggs are just icing on the wedding cake. Congratulations, Team DeLeonardo-Frey!

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