Lawyerly Lairs: Lawyer Lives In RV Down By the River

Want to pay off your law school loans more quickly? Try living out of a glorified van.

Justice Clarence Thomas famously travels around the country over the summer in his 40-foot recreational vehicle (RV). Since 1999, Justice Thomas and his wife Ginni have visited some 27 states in their RV. According to Mrs. Thomas, “it’s a wonderful life.” The Thomases often park overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots. As Justice Thomas notes, “you can get a little shopping in, see part of real America. It’s fun!”

If spending night after night in an RV is good enough for an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, it should be good enough for a young lawyer, right? In the latest installment of Lawyerly Lairs, we visit with a Biglaw associate who lives in an RV down by the river….

Typically we cover lavish lawyerly lairs — a $12 million duplex in a building populated by celebrities, a $14 million mansion in the great state of Texas, a $30 million townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But occasionally we look at the homes of the 99 percent.

Today’s story definitely falls on the less luxurious side of the ledger. Here’s a report from Bedford + Bowery:

Liam Moriarty, a 29-year-old corporate lawyer at a large Manhattan firm, doesn’t exactly seem, on paper at least, like the type to give up his Greenpoint apartment and trade it in for an RV. But that’s exactly what he did, this past summer. Then again, Moriarty isn’t your typical lawyer. He’s also worked as an archaeologist, and has had what he describes as “a bunch of odd jobs” before that, including groundskeeper at a monastery and writer for an Irish American magazine.

It appears that Liam Moriarty works for Gibson Dunn in New York. This wedding page for a childhood friend of his refers to a “Liam Moriarty” who graduated from NYU and Columbia Law School and now works at Gibson Dunn in New York. This Gibson Dunn website bio describes a litigation associate named “William Moriarty” who graduated from NYU and Columbia Law School. The fellow in the firm bio looks like the fellow in the Bedford + Bowery story (except he’s clean-shaven in the firm bio, natch):

Sponsored

What led Moriarty to give up his apartment for a glorified van? I’m guessing a desire to pay off law school loans more quickly. But that’s not how Moriarty explains his decision….

Sponsored