Watching Lawyers Freeze To Death For Fun And Cash

A gaggle of young lawyers slept outside in the snow last week. Want to know why?

Lawyers are obviously the worst. Just peruse the pages of this fine publication and you’ll see eight years worth of callous, self-absorbed douchenozzles. Sometimes it’s threatening to fire your staff over the holidays, sometimes it’s hypnotizing clients into performing sex acts… and billing them for the time. In any event, there are a lot of rotten apples in this profession. And I don’t necessarily excuse the lawyers sitting in the ATL editorial office. David Lat even sold the rest of us out the other day by explaining that the rest of us lack basic human sensitivity (or something like that).

But there are also some decent lawyers out there trying to be good people. They make us feel bad about ourselves, so screw them.

Like these lawyers who slept outside in the snow to raise money for homeless kids in an event organized by Covenant House. I assume the prospect of watching a lawyer die of hypothermia would entice more than a few Americans to open their wallets.

A gaggle of Biglaw associates from the likes of Skadden and Cadwalader joined with other young professionals in New York and agreed to sleep outside without pillows on the first night of spring. That’s selfless in the best of conditions.

Unfortunately, New York got a frigging snow storm on the first night of spring. But since homeless kids don’t get the opportunity to call an audible just because the weather sucks, the gathered professionals didn’t punk out — they went ahead and slept on the street in the snow.

The first day of Spring brought snow to New York City and hope to homeless youth as hundreds of young professionals slept on the streets to raise over $458,000 for the life-affirming programs offered by Covenant House.

“Tonight you will sleep on the streets as a community of 300 young professionals who have decided to make an amazing impact in the lives of our kids,” Covenant House Executive Director Creighton Drury told the participants before they went out into the cold. “While you are trying to sleep in the snow outside our shelter tonight, know that there will be 350 formerly homeless young people who will be sleeping safely inside. Tomorrow they will wake up knowing that you care about them, and that will fill them with hope. You will fill them with that hope.

The event was a resounding success despite the weather. Covenant House hoped to raise $310,000 and beat that by over $140,000. Not bad.

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If you want to cross over to the “being a good person” side of the fence, this is an annual event for young professionals and Covenant House also sponsors a number of sleep outs, including a “Mother’s Edition” in May and a sleep out last summer for Broadway performers. Fully grasp the anonymity of homelessness by watching actors you’ve never heard of!

Maybe next year the first day of spring will feature some warmer weather.

But where’s the fun in that?

300 Young Professionals To Sleep On Street For Covenant House [CBS New York]

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