Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 11.7: Berkshires, Baby

Amidst all the depressing talk of layoffs and cold offers, here’s a little mergers and aquisitions news to brighten your Monday: Even in a bad economy, the wedding machine grinds on. In fact, we’ve noticed a slight uptick in the number of registries at Neiman Marcus. So how bad can things be, really?

Here are this week’s lucky featured couples:

1. Jordan Brudner and Daniel Gaspar

2. Randy Shapiro and Daniel Ripp

3. Rachel Turow and Benjamin Schiffrin

More about these newlyweds, after the jump.


1. Jordan Brudner and Daniel Gaspar

Sponsored

(Buy them a decanter.)

The Case:

– This couple is very “New York.” True, the groom spent four years at the University of Pennsylvania (which we understand is in State College, PA). But it’s possible that the bride may never have ventured out of what we coastal elites refer to as “The City.” She went to Columbia and has a JD from Fordham; he was undergrad at Penn and has an MBA from Columbia.

– Quintessential New York careers: She’s an associate at Morrison Cohen; he’s a VP at an investment firm.

– This is an attractive, tasteful photo. Crop Daniel out, and it could be an Oil of Olay ad. Bravo.

Sponsored

The Case Against:

– It must be said: Fordham is a major step down from Columbia. We’ll be charitable and assume that Jordan could have gone to GULC but preferred to stay in New York.

2. Randy Shapiro and Daniel Ripp

(Buy them a KitchenAid Mixer.)

The Case:

– Simmer down, haters. Randy’s a woman. She’s the deputy chief counsel for Newsweek; she has an undergraduate degree from Tufts and a JD from Boston University.

– Her groom, who graduated from Harvard and has an MBA from Columbia, is the president of Bradley Woods & Company, a firm you can hire to tell you stuff about the government if you’re too busy to read Newsweek.

The Case Against:

– “We found we had a great deal in common, including the Berkshires.” Also, they both enjoy laughter and breathing air. Soulmates!

3. Rachel Turow and Benjamin Schiffrin

(Buy them a pitcher.)

The Case:

– Excellent educational backgrounds for this two-JD couple. Rachel graduated from Stanford and has a JD from the University of Michigan; Ben was summa at Brandeis and has a JD from Harvard.

– Rachel is an associate counsel at United Therapeutics. Ben practices appellate law for the SEC.

– Rachel’s dad is none other than writer Scott Turow, author of the classic One L and legal thrillers like Presumed Innocent and Personal Injuries. TIME calls him the “Bard of the Litigious Age.”

The Case Against:

– We’d always assumed that all these lawyers-turned-novelists actually, you know, escaped the practice of law. Apparently not. Scott Turow is a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, which is either a way to pay the bills or a source of material — probably both.

The Verdict:

Team Turow-Schiffrin would win handily even without the celebrity FoB. Congratulations!