Courtship Connection SF: 'Law School Has Ruined Her'

How did Kash's latest Courtship Connection pairing work out?

If I’ve learned one thing from Above the Law’s experiment in matchmaking, it’s that throwing two pretty people together is about as effective in generating something that sticks as a DOJ prosecution of [fill in the blank].

I recently matched an “open-minded” female law student with a lawyer on sabbatical in San Francisco, figuring that they would both have unstructured time for hanging out. She was looking for someone “ambitious, confident, and outgoing.” He self-described as “Impossible is Nothing.” So that seems like a perfect match.

I had them meet at Candybar. Superman made a good first impression: “I was hoping for a tall, dashing, Biglaw attorney. But really, as long as he was easy on the eyes and not shorter than me, I’d be happy,” writes our female law student, who given the chance to bed any lawyer, fictional or real, chose Harvey Specter of Suits. “And happy I was.”

Unfortunately, she was no Lois Lane. He says: “I think I’ll start with the tl;dr to hopefully save some of the otherwise wasted billables on my lame story: She is a cute, fun girl who I just unfortunately didn’t feel much of a connection with, probably because of the damage law school is doing to her.”

Hey, you knew you were signing up for a legal matchmaking service. Damaged goods expected….

Our earnest Superman, who says if he weren’t a lawyer, “would be building something to help chip away at this country’s K-12 education problems,” had high expectations for the date:

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As you know we were set to meet at Candybar in SF at 6pm; it sounded like a fun place and 6 is kind of early but I’m loving that I set my own hours now so nothing’s a problem. Kash told me to look for a girl in a plaid top, black skirt, and red sunglasses, all of which I liked. I was driving from Palo Alto and this asshole did *not* leave enough time for that nightmarish traffic so I emailed Kash to bump it back to 6:30.

I’d like to say I monitor my email closely during Courtship dates, but that would be a lie. I saw this late and passed along to Specter Bedder. Later, I found out that she amazingly doesn’t have a smartphone, so could not get that email. How do you live??? She says:

Since I don’t have email access on my phone, my bff logged into my email to send an email for me. TRUST. SO MUCH TRUST.

Meanwhile, dude who sets his own hours continued his casually late drive to meet his blind date.

I realized early that was probably more like 7:30 if I continued sitting in traffic and made the executive decision to pull off and catch the Caltrain from San Carlos. I’m proud of that call. I got there a little before 6:30 and was really hoping she didn’t just leave, I was looking forward to this and I unfortunately had no confirmation from Kash that she forwarded anything I sent.

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Dude. This isn’t a paid service. I eventually got an email from the stood-up law student’s friend with her phone number and a request for an update on why her date was 45 minutes late. I sent a text message of explanation.

Superjerk finally arrived:

I saw her standing outside, she went for the handshake I went for the hug. Just to overemphasize: I was a ridiculous 30 minutes late to this and she was completely cool about it, I felt really bad that she had to wait so long.

Oh, Stood Up, you’re way too accommodating. Show a little anger or at least mock anger to make clear you’re not a pushover. She says:

Anyways I was a little worried about the fact that I was meeting a man who identified himself with sperrys, since I had to Google it to find out what they were.

They are boat shoes. If she hung out with more douchebags, she would probably have known that.

I went for the handshake while he did the 1-armed hug. Oh yay, he’s friendly.

We shared a dessert sampler, and I let him pick most of the things since I’ll pretty much eat anything. I got a mango bellini, which my bff recommended, and was pretty much done in terms of alcohol after that. Good thing the dim lighting hid my Asian glow. He had two similarly girly drinks. Of course I teased him for it, even though everything on the menu was pretty…girly.

I found he graduated from a T10 school (impressive) but had decided to come out here to work on a startup that is supposed to improve the education system (aw, he has a good heart). We played Candyland, which lasted all of 5 minutes (longer than it took for us to decide on a game) and then left to go somewhere else.

Okay, I may have unintentionally sabotaged this date by sending them to an infantilizing bar. This date sounds more treacly than a swim through Molasses Swamp. King Kandy says:

We went in and got seated right away. She taught me what Soju was, which I dug, and we decided to share a bunch of different desserts. (As an aside for anyone looking to go here, I wholeheartedly recommend their lavender semi-freddo and the tiramisu. The 50/50 was also excellent, and I could see this being a fun place to go after dinner for a first or second date). Dessert was good, the board game selection was kind of lacking but she ended up destroying me at Candyland. There were no instructions and I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the die was for, but she didn’t mind just making up our own rules.

The only downside was that we talked about law school. A lot. Just a little bit is too much, but we seemed to keep ending up there despite my efforts to learn about what she likes to do, her taste in music and movies, interesting trips she took, etc. I totally understand that it’s your world when you’re a law student, but I just can’t really do that anymore. And I’m not even practicing right now so I’m probably the least receptive to that too, it was getting painful. It’s a shame because she seems like she could do something so much more interesting than become a lawyer, she said she was into graphic design for a while and I bet she’s really good at it.

So law school ruined her in that she talks a lot about law school? She says:

Since neither of us knew SF very well, we ended up at a cute bar where he had another drink, and I had a glass of water, since I was driving.

At the end of the night, we ended up exchanging numbers even though both of us knew that nothing would really come of this–he might return to the east coast, and I’m dead set on returning to Southern California. Still, I’d try to meet up in SF or Silicon Valley if I ever ended up back in the area.

He says:

We did text the next day. If she didn’t live a few hours away (thanks for that pairing Kash!) I’d like to go out again and see if we had more in common, but it’s probably not going to happen.

All in all it was decent, I probably would have hit it off more with someone out of law school but as far as completely blind dates go (this was my first blind date, and this was totally blind), especially one set up through a legal blog, I probably couldn’t ask for much more.

Just for someone who doesn’t want to talk about the law or law school. I recommend trying OkCupid.