Legal Eagle Wedding Watch 6.21: The Thorn-Nerds


Gentleman, how emasculated would you feel if your future father-in-law shuttled your bride down the aisle, and then, instead of pecking her on the cheek and handing her over, actually turned around and performed the wedding ceremony? Talk about control issues. That’s exactly what this groom endured last Sunday, as he was married by his father-in-law, United States Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
The Rakoff wedding didn’t make our final three. Neither did a couple of lesbian unions, a WGWAG, and several other worthy contenders. Here are the three who made the finals:

1. Devon Quasha and Jeffrey Thorn
2. Saralisa Brau and William Van Horne
3. Linda Cho and James Brennan

More about these impressive legal-eagle newlyweds, after the jump.



1. Devon Quasha and Jeffrey Thorn
(Buy them a muffin pan.)
The Case:
– We’ll start with Jeff’s undergraduate degree, which is the Achilles heel of this couple’s resume: It’s from Yale. From that notorious TTT in New Haven, he ascended to Harvard Law School, where he met Devon. Devon was summa at Harvard College; now, having earned her JD from HLS, she’s completing a medical degree at Harvard Medical School.
– Jeff is a litigation associate in Shearman’s New York office (though his bio on the firm’s website is blank and doesn’t appear on the alphabetical list).
The Case Against:
– We sense something a little desperate and adrift about people who do the JD/MD thing. Seriously, did you truly feel a calling to both law and medicine, or do you just have a pathetic need to be the most-credentialed person in the room?

2. Saralisa Brau and William Van Horne
(Buy them a sugar bowl.)
The Case:
– This bride, a graduate of Duke and UVA Law, is a deputy assistant director at the FTC, where she works in the division charged with investigating and litigating antitrust cases in the health care industry. We’re all counting on Saralisa personally to contribute several bajillion dollars to the bending-down of the health care cost curve.
– Bill, who has an undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins and a JD from the University of Maryland, is chief counsel to Maryland Senator Benjamin L. Cardin. He’s also the staff director of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security.
The Case Against:
– Bill’s dad was once “manager of petroleum loss control” at Mobil. You’d think this would be a simple matter of, “Take care of the petroleum. Don’t spill it.” But it’s complicated. You have to take classes.

3. Linda Cho and James Brennan
(Buy them a mattress pad.)
The Case:
– This bride graduated magna from NYU and has a law degree from UPenn. She’s an associate in Sidley’s New York office.
– The groom is a graduate of Trinity College and Northwestern Law. He’s an associate in the New York office of Paul Weiss.
– Linda and Jim, who met as law clerks in Scranton, were married by Jim’s judge, Thomas I. Vanaskie. But there’s another Article III angle that blows that one out of the water: Jim’s late grandfather was none other than William Joseph Brennan Jr., associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990.
The Case Against:
– They evidently refer to themselves as “JIMDA.” Also, their engagement story makes Linda seem a bit high-maintenance.
The Verdict:
– We confess: The Yale-Harvard-Harvard-Harvard-Harvard couple strikes us as a soulless degree-accumulation machine. Still, the universe would implode if we awarded the crown to either of the other two. So — reluctantly, with a sense of duty — congratulations, Team Quasha-Thorn.

Sponsored