Brett Kavanaugh, Diarmuid O'Scannlain, Jay Bybee, Jed Rubenfeld, New York Times, Weddings

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Spreading the Love

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We’ve decided to tweak the format of Legal Eagle Wedding Watch a bit. Beginning today, we’ll be bringing you all the lawyer weddings featured in the New York Times.

This, admittedly, is the kind of everyone’s-a-winner feel-goodism that we normally abhor. Alas, to be frank, we’re sick of the constant death threats from couples who don’t make our column. Don’t worry — we’ll keep the focus on our brilliant featured couples, as always. But starting with today’s installment, you’ll also be able to check out the honorable mentions (and others) at the end of each post.

Also, congratulations to Elena Lalli and Guillermo Coronado, who edged out Caroline Lopez and Nicholas Miranda in our last reader poll for Couple of the Week.

This week’s featured couples are:

1. Meredith Osborn and Christiaan Highsmith

2. Claire McCusker and Michael Murray

3. Emily Keifer and Jordan Barry

More about these couples — and a list of all the NYT’s recent legal eagle matings — after the jump.

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1. Meredith Osborn and Christiaan Highsmith
(Buy them a pitcher.)

The Case:
– These two high-achievers were both magna at Harvard. The bride also earned a law degree, magna, at HLS and has a master’s from the University of Edinburgh; the groom has a JD, cum laude, from Boston University.
– Both are associates at Boston law firms, she at Donnelly, Conroy & Gelhaar and he at Goodwin Procter.
– The bride’s father is John Jay Osborn, Jr., HLS grad and author of the celebrated law school novel The Paper Chase. Through her father, the bride is a descendant of both John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The Case Against:
– They’ve already broken up twice. And, as the bride says in the write-up, “The third time’s the charm.”

2. Claire McCusker and Michael Murray
(Buy them a ring holder.)

The Case:
– This couple makes a big status statement with dual degrees from Yale Law School, where they met. The bride was magna at Harvard and also has degrees from Cambridge and l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (É’s = prestigious). The groom was summa at Princeton.
– They have some yummy, yummy feeder clerkships (although, to our knowledge, nobody at SCOTUS has bitten): Kavanaugh (D.C. Circuit) for her, O’Scannlain (Ninth Circuit) for him.
– SCOTUS or not, their futures are shiny-bright: She’s headed to London to be a Temple Bar scholar, after which she’ll start in the appellate section of DoJ’s criminal division. He’ll start as an associate in Gibson Dunn’s DC office later this fall.

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The Case Against:
– This is not a flattering picture of the bride. We’ve met her, and she’s lovely in person. This is the Times, people (not to mention Above The Law) — spring for professional photography!

3. Emily Keifer and Jordan Barry
(Buy them a coffee table.)

The Case:
– This couple’s love blossomed at Stanford Law School, from which they both graduated. He did his undergrad at Cornell, she did hers at the University of North Carolina.
– She clerked for Judge Chester Straub (Second Circuit) and is set to be an assistant federal prosecutor for the Southern District of California. He clerked for controversial Ninth Circuit judge Jay Bybee; now he’s embarking on an academic career as an assistant professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.

The Case Against:
– Based on the photo above, we were all set to anoint Jordan the next Jed Rubenfeld (the brooding, histrionic Yale law professor, and best-selling smut peddler). But, er, never mind.

The Verdict:
– A close one. Team Osborn-Highsmith, although only a contender because of the bride’s father, can’t be counted out. We think they top Team Keifer-Barry, the Stanford grads. But in the end, we believe Team McCusker-Murray edges past both the other competitors to get the win. Congratulations to all the newlyweds!

Honorable Mention
Claire Pasternack and Brian Goldsmith (Stanford)
Kathleen McGlynn and William Brady (Duke, Cravath)
Amy Melville and Patrick Suehnholz (Harvard)
Kathleen Liu and Weili Shaw (2, BU, Harvard)

The Rest
Francine Vlantes and Brian O’Keeffe (Rutgers)
Yael Tuvia and Daniel Epstein (2, Emory, Georgetown)
Jasmin Farhangian and Benjamin Burger (2, Brooklyn, Cardozo)
Robyn Hoffman and Jacob Frumkin (2, Fordham, Brooklyn, Sidley)
Sara Edelman and Ephram Lustgarten (GW)
Lisa Rubin and Howard Neuthaler (Harvard)
Vanessa Nadal and Lin Miranda (Fordham, Vows column)
Neely Shah and Ronnie Chatterji (Duke)
Jennifer Fisher and Adeniyi Taiwo (2, Brooklyn)
Alexandra Harwin and Noah Fabricant (Yale)
Maren Messing and Adam Bernstein (2, Columbia, Paul Weiss)
Diana Eng and Jimmy Wang (Columbia, Weil Gotshal)

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