Kramer Levin, Romance and Dating, Supreme Court Clerks, Weddings

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 8.5.07: From Russia with Love

By  
on

Before we begin, a nod to one of the best wedding write-ups we’ve seen in a while, and for once (just once) we’re not being the least bit tongue-in-cheek. Joanne Handler and John Rau III didn’t make our final three this week, even though John has a law degree, but . . . wow. They are 50-year-olds (very attractive 50-year-olds) who dated for a year in college and then broke up when he transferred to another school. John married someone else, but Joanne stayed single, still pining for John:

“I never forgot about him, because he was the love of my life,” Ms. Handler said. “For 30 years, I was never in love with anyone else. I had long-term boyfriends, but I could never get married because I could never love anyone the way I loved John Rau.”

But this three-hanky chick flick has a happy ending. The spinster librarian (really!) received a call from the recently divorced John in 2005:

“I was shaking with joy when John called,” Ms. Handler said. “For 30 years, I knew that we were meant for each other, that he was the perfect man for me. I knew I was right.”
So did Mr. Rau.

Beautiful. [And now we’ll pause while everybody Googles their college crush — and their spouse’s.]
But back to what this column is really about: raw, choking prestige.
Here are our three finalist couples (all lawyer-lawyer pairings):

1. Nicole Lipman and Michael Ellis
2. Alison Sclater and Wells Dixon
3. Sofia Yakren and Boris Bershteyn

More about these couples, after the jump.

Sponsored

1. Nicole Lipman and Michael Ellis
(Buy them some napkin rings.)
The Case:
– The bride was cum laude at Pomona College and got a JD from Harvard. She works at a legal recruiting firm in San Francisco. Michael has undergraduate and law degrees from UVA and is an associate general counsel at Blue Shield of California.
– Nicole is very cute, with that flipped-up hair and the sweet-yet-faintly-naughty smile. Their eyebrows could be aligned better, but perhaps the NYT was confused by the groom’s being an inch thick.
The Case Against:
– Legal recruiters are the reason LEWW no longer answers our work phone if we don’t recognize the number. We can’t afford to spend half our day politely trying to hang up on fake-friendly robots who are “just checking to see how things are going” and desperately want the answer to be “badly.”
– Nicole and Michael were married by the bride’s uncle, Rabbi Shlomo Levin. Shlomo must be one of humanity’s all-time most hilarious names; the S-H-L combination seems inherently giggle-inducing. Perhaps that’s why the Baby Name Voyager informs us that “No names starting with SHL were in the top 1,000 names in any decade.”

2. Alison Sclater and Wells Dixon
(Buy them a muffin pan.)
The Case:
– Solid credentials, if not Ivy-level. Alison was magna at George Washington and has a law degree from NYU. Wells was cum laude at Hopkins and got his JD from the University of Colorado, where he was EIC of the law review.
– Alison and Wells met when they were associates at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, “the New York law firm.” Their first encounter was at lunch on Alison’s first day. Wells was “very welcoming” but presumably dialed it back to just short of creepy. Heavy flirtation in the copy room ensued (apparently the associates at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel do their own copying), but Alison didn’t want to date a co-worker:

That changed when they were both assigned to help represent seven Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslims from western China, who were being held at Guantánamo Bay. Their work on the case involved going to Cuba together twice. “That case made me realize that he was the person I wanted to spend my life with,” she said.

We hope they didn’t wear the whites. Because the Cubans see an officer wearing white, they think it’s someone they might wanna take a shot at.
– Both Alison and Wells have ditched the firm that brought them together and are focusing on do-gooding full-time. Alison is director of pro bono services at the New York Legal Assistance Group, while Wells is on the staff of the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he’s still challenging the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo.
The Case Against:
– Alison looks a bit like Allison Janney, which reminds us how little we miss The West Wing. That is all.
3. Sofia Yakren and Boris Bershteyn
(Buy them a meat fork.)
The Case:
-The Elect make a triumphant return to LEWW this week: Boris just finished a clerkship with Justice David Souter! LEWW and Mr. LEWW happen to be friends with this fabulous couple, and we can testify that Boris is every bit as brilliant as his recent boss (and considerably better-looking). It’s a shame the NYT didn’t run their picture, because these two are just off-the-scales cute, not to mention wildly accomplished, unfailingly nice, and — particularly shocking for YLS grads — exceptionally modest.
– As you’d expect from a member of the Elect and his bride, their academic credentials are immaculate. They met at Yale Law School; Sofia was an undergrad at Yale and Boris at Stanford.
– Boris and Sofia were both born in the former Soviet Union. This really greased the wheels on our headline-writing process this week, although now that we think about it, we have a bad feeling that “from Russia” is grossly inaccurate, as Sofia was born in Latvia and Boris in Ukraine. Too late — we’re not giving this one up.
The Case Against:
– Trust us — there is nothing not to like about Sofia and Boris! (Not that we would bust on our friends anyway.)
The Verdict:
What’s Russian for “blowout”? If this were a closer contest, we might think it prudent to recuse ourselves, but we think you’ll agree that this outcome isn’t in doubt. Congratulations, Team Yakren-Bershteyn!

Sponsored

Topics

, , ,