Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 7.27 and 8.3: Steamy August Edition


This installment of the wedding watch is a bit of a hodge-podge. We’ve got old people, Communism, Skadden, HLS, organized crime, a SCOTUS connection, and a midriff-baring bride. But the common thread, as always, is lawyers in love (though not necessarily with other lawyers; there’s just one dual-JD pair in this group).
Here are this week’s nominees:

1. Deborah Ellis and Hal Strelnick

2. Rachel Hershfang and Wesley Williams

3. Katherine Wagner-McCoy and Jacob Goldstein

4. Andrea Connor and Evan Hudson

More about these envy-inducing newlyweds, after the jump.



1. Deborah Ellis and Hal Strelnick
The Case:
– Deborah should be familiar to some of you NYU law graduates; she’s the assistant dean for public interest law at the school. She holds a JD from NYU herself, along with an undergraduate degree from Yale.
– The groom is an attending physician at Montefiore Medical Center and a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He has an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a medical degree from Yale.
– Deborah has SCOTUS experience, but not of the type we usually write about here. She once worked for NOW, and in 1992 she argued a case before the Court on behalf of abortion clinics that were seeking to use the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act against anti-abortion protesters. Arguing for the other side: Deputy Solicitor General John G. Roberts.
The Case Against:
– The majority opinion in the case, Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, 506 U.S. 263 (1993), was penned by Justice Antonin Scalia. So you can guess how Deborah’s clients fared.

2. Rachel Hershfang and Wesley Williams
(Buy them a set of steak knives.)
The Case:
– We adore this bad-ass bride. Until recently, she was an AUSA and deputy chief of the organized crime drug enforcement task force for the district of Massachusetts. Now she works in the enforcement division at the SEC. The weapons in her crime-fighting kit include a YLS JD, a master’s in English from the University of Chicago, and an undergrad degree from Northwestern.
– Wesley, a Duke grad, also has a master’s in English (from BU). He’s about to become an English teacher at Milton Academy.
The Case Against:
– Is it just us, or do they have a “met on eHarmony” feel about them?

3. Katherine Wagner-McCoy and Jacob Goldstein
(Buy them a splatter screen.)
The Case:
– Both halves of this pairing were Harvard undergraduates, but they met in law school at Columbia. Jake also has a master’s in classics from Oxford.
– Kate is a staff lawyer at the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit providing free legal representation to people who probably belong behind bars. (Just kidding — soldier on, Bronx Defenders!). Jake’s clerking for Judge Chester J. Straub of the Second Circuit.
– This photo is from the couple’s website, not the NYT — which explains why Kate is showing a bit of skin. Nice abs, and we love this sneaky, underhanded way to earn an edge over the other legal-eagle competitors!
The Case Against:
– The groom is a stepson of the late Murray B. Levin, who was a member of the Communist Party and an “unreconstructed radical” who died believing that “[c]lass consciousness would be obtained ultimately when the masses finally revolted against the oligarchy.” We wonder what Professor Levin would have thought of his stepson appearing in the haute-bourgeois wading pool that is the NYT weddings section.

4. Andrea Connor and Evan Hudson
(Buy them a tea cup.)
The Case:
– Evan, an associate at Skadden, was magna at Harvard and went to HLS. Andrea, an artist, is an honors graduate of the Pratt Institute and is studying for a MFA in drawing at the New York Academy of Art.
– Andrea’s dad is the owner of a car dealership in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Her great-grandfather founded the company in 1917, selling Stanley steam-powered cars.
The Case Against:
– Evan’s mom, Cynthia Nixon Hudson, is a painter whose work is displayed in the Smithsonian. But what we love about her is the way the article gives her name a hyperlink to a bunch of articles about Sex and the City.
The Verdict:
We at LEWW, of course, are sycophantic toadies of the oligarchy, which means that the pinko stepdad leaves us colder than cold. But it also means that we have no choice but to bow before the awesome prestige of Team Wagner-McCoy-Goldstein’s four Ivy League degrees. Congratulations!

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