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Legal Eagle Wedding Watch, April 15: The Love Bug

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As spring’s warm breezes waft away the winter chill, even stuffy legal-types are feeling the urge to merge. LEWW has been getting all kinds of STDs from lawyers lately (Save The Dates—sheesh, people!), and we’re exercising our clicking finger for the Great Place-Settings Mass Purchase of ’07.
Speaking of that, now that registration with Williams-Sonoma is a mandatory precondition for marriage in most states, this week we’re including links to our featured couples’ W-S registries. If you love them, buy them kitchen stuff!
There were lots of lawyers this week, but we’ve narrowed the field to our customary three couples:

1. Carey Alpert and Jared Spitalnick

2. Anne Robinson and Kevin Moriarty

3. Natalie Suhl and Colin Bernardino

More on our featured couples, after the jump.


(Ed. note: The pictures are thumbnails. Click on each image to enlarge.)
1. Carey Alpert and Jared Spitalnick
(Buy them a cocktail shaker.)
The Case:
– Carey is an assistant district attorney in Queens. Very Law & Order, and Carey even looks a bit like ADA Casey Novak! Jared will be bringing home the bacon as an associate at O’Melveny & Myers (perhaps only figuratively—they had a Jewish ceremony).
– They met at the prestigious New York Law School … wait, never mind. See below.
The Case Against:
– They both went to the University of Michigan for undergrad but only a tier-3 for law school (albeit one that bills itself as “immeasurably cooler“).
– This groom looks very fit, but sadly, we think “Jared” has become a “fat name.” Admittedly this doesn’t make a lot of sense, given that the parable of Jared is about losing troubling amounts of weight, but there you have it. (America agrees: The name’s popularity has plummeted nearly as fast as Jared’s BMI, from 51st in 1998 to 137th in 2005.)
2. Anne Robinson and Kevin Moriarty
(Buy them a stockpot.)
The Case:
– Anne is Duke/Harvard; Kevin is Princeton/NYU. No blemishes there!
– They’re cute. LEWW wants to pinch their cheeks. And their eyebrows are lined up perfectly, per the NYT’s instructions.
– Our sources tell us that Kevin recently clerked for judicial diva and SCOTUS also-ran Edith Brown Clement. Impressive!
– The following law firm names appear in this write-up: Latham, Watkins, Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman, Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale, & Dorr. We got a little choked-up just typing that.
The case against:
– These lovers’ names have some unfortunate associations. Anne Robinson is the name of that awful English woman from The Weakest Link (who had to apologize for being, of all things, anti-Welsh!). As for Kevin, we can only say, “You’ve a magnificent brain, Moriarty. I admire it. I’d like to present it pickled in alcohol to the London Medical Society.”
– Perhaps it’s unfair to pick on Anne and Kevin for this, but the Times’ weird conventions for referring to law firms are driving us crazy. The world needs to know: What distinguishes “a law firm” from “the law firm”? When it comes to New York, the Times seems to have a basic system down. Firms that interview at top-10 schools are crowned with that reverent “the,” while all other firms get the vague and dismissive “a.” Hence:

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison: “the New York law firm”
Cravath, Swaine & Moore: “the New York law firm”
Eaton & Van Winkle: “a New York law firm”
Liddle & Robinson: “a New York law firm”

But outside New York, all hell breaks loose:

Dow Lohnes: “the Washington law firm”
Arnold & Porter: “a Washington law firm”
Steptoe & Johnson: “the Washington law firm”
Hogan & Hartson: “a Washington law firm”
Bingham McCutchen: “a Boston law firm”
Goodwin Procter: “the Boston law firm”
Sidley Austin: “the Chicago law firm”
Jenner & Block: “a Chicago law firm”
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher: “a Los Angeles law firm”
O’Melveny & Myers: “the Los Angeles law firm”

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We’re all about the amplification of trivial distinctions into major status fetishes, but it spoils the fun if nobody can decipher the system. Please make your policy clearer, Times editors, and give O’Melveny associates the bliss of knowing exactly why they’re looking down on Gibson associates!
3. Natalie Suhl and Colin Bernardino
(Buy them a set of water goblets.)
The Case:
– Natalie and Colin get bonus points for their Article III officiant: They were married by Judge Wilbur D. Owens of the Middle District of Georgia (Colin clerked for him).
– These two are seriously attractive. And apparently if you’re very hot, you’re allowed to fudge a little on that lined-up-eyebrows rule.
– Colin went to Dartmouth College and Emory law school, a nice combo of Ivy-League and the #1 underrated law school in America (Natalie is Wesleyan/Fordham).
The Case Against:
– Their ceremony was Saturday at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Talk about a monsoon wedding—we hope they had a rain site! Brides always hear that rain is good luck (“Rain invokes feelings of intimacy and enchantment“), but we suspect that’s just something people say to make you feel better, like “The makeup totally covers it,” or “Lots of people don’t break the glass on the first try.”
The Verdict:
Latham Princeton Watkins Pillsbury Duke Winthrop Shaw Pittman NYU Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale Harvard & Dorr—omigod, it’s like a giant strawberry-chocolate trifle of elitism, and yes, we did save room for dessert! We’re in awe of you, Team Robinson-Moriarty!

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