Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

Aficionados of wedding-related WTF-ery should not miss this slide show of married-name train wrecks. The one shown at right is mild compared to some of the other exhibits!

And speaking of train wrecks, lawyers continue to marry at a depressing rate. Here’s our roundup of all the recent legal weddings, plus an in-depth look at the following outstanding newlyweds:

Heather Davis and John Jones II

Leah Raful and Seth Goldberg

Stephanie Adams and Patrick Ryan

Read on for the details on these couples — plus photos and links to their wedding registries.

Heather Davis and John Jones II
(Buy them a salt shaker.)

The Case:
– Glittering resumés for this two-JD couple: The bride is a graduate of Yale and Columbia Law School. The groom graduated from Creighton and has a law degree from Yale.
– Heather is a deputy city attorney for Los Angeles, which sounds like a trip to yawnsville. But the article mentions that she met John through her work on a wrongful-death suit against the city brought by the family of Notorious B.I.G.

The Case Against:
– John, 37, is preparing to ditch his legal career and pursue a medical degree. The write-up goes on at exhaustive length about how he agonized about changing careers and she agonized over whether she wanted to be with a late-30s med student and blah blah blah. Bottom line: He’ll spend the next ten years becoming a doctor, realize he hates patients, and end up in hospital administration.

Leah Raful and Seth Goldberg
(Buy them a tulip vase.)

The Case:
– The bride, a Jewish girl from New York, somehow attended the University of Kansas. Now she’s a recruiting consultant. Her father is the dean of Touro Law School.
– The groom graduated from Yale and has a JD from UPenn.

The Case Against:
– This pretty much captures the state of the legal employment market today: With two Ivy League degrees, Seth is working in sales at Raymour & Flanigan. (Okay, it’s better than it sounds. His father is the CEO. And Seth is director of sales. But still.)

Stephanie Adams and Patrick Ryan
(Buy them a gravy boat.)

The Case:
– This bride was summa at Cornell and has a JD from Northwestern. She’s an associate at Winston & Strawn in New York.
– Her groom, a partner in the San Francisco office of Morgan Lewis, was magna at the University of Arizona and received a JD from Notre Dame.

The Case Against:
– While Patrick isn’t quite as old as his appearance might suggest, there’s still a significant age difference here (she’s 29; he’s 44). And of course it’s his second marriage. We’d like to say that nubile associates marrying elderly divorced partners is also a sign of our troubled times, but sadly, this cliché will always be with us.

The Verdict:
Team Raymour & Flanigan wins the Cutest and Least Annoying award, hands-down. But let’s face it, being non-annoying doesn’t get you very far in the legal world. So we’ll call it a tie between the JD-JD-MD Team Davis-Jones and the Biglaw soap opera that is Team Adams-Ryan. Congratulations, newlyweds!

Honorable Mention:
Katherine Cyrul and Gregory Frischmann (UVA, Covington)
Claire James and Ethan Ravetch (NYU, Skadden)
Jennifer Wu and Andy Woo (NYU)
Yiyang Wu and Benjamin Cheng (2, Penn, Jones Day)
Allison Shepard and Zeke Roeser (Fordham)
Emily Meeker and Stephen Carey (2, Columbia, UPenn, Wilmer)