Absolutely Insane Law Firm Recruiting Pamphlet

You have to feel bad for these lawyers.

SkaddenRFThe early 2000s were a magical time in the legal industry. Biglaw was booming and jobs were so plentiful you could, say, jump half-naked into the Hudson River at a firm event and still get an offer. Lawyers were as gods back then.

The flipside of the plentiful job market was the intense competition among Biglaw firms to land law students positively stacked with options. Summer program events became more and more outlandish, every day brought another five-star meal, and partners promised the moon to anyone willing to join up. Every callback was like a new Tinder hookup, except you knew when it all settled down and you found your perfect match, you’d have something far worse than gonorrhea to deal with for the next eight years or so.

It also brought us some particularly ridiculous recruiting materials. For example, this cheesetastic Skadden pamphlet distributed to law students in, by our best guess, around the summer of 2000. If you judge how “cool” your potential employer is based on how many ridiculous costumes and what kind of dumb wordplay they can shove in your face, then Skadden was your place back then.

For example:

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That’s Thomas Pak, a counsel in the Antitrust and Competition Group. And he’s the “Leader of the Pak.” Get it? That’s why he’s on a motorcycle, like in that song from 60s that wasn’t more cool back in 2000 than it is today. Except he’s on a moped, transforming an already campy joke — probably featuring Pak dressed up like Brando, another woefully out-of-touch cultural reference to that audience — and making it a nonsensical one as well.

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Not since Larry David played Frank Costanza’s divorce attorney has there been less need to put a lawyer in a cape. That’s Eric Manne, now Deputy General Counsel at AIG, but back then he was at the mercy of the Skadden public relations folks who forced him to play “Super-Manne,” and holy hell, where was anyone with a groan detector when this thing was still in proofs?

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This is Elizabeth Devine, then an associate in Skadden’s Chicago office, and it appears that she made Counsel at some point before leaving the firm altogether. Perhaps someday we’ll find her in the mountains of Tibet training a new generation of lawyers and/or Kung Fu monks.

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I can’t quite make out Ms. Payne’s first name, but apparently smiling and lifting a five-pound weight is Skadden’s interpretation of “No Pain, No Gain,” which seems to miss the mark even worse than putting the leader of a rebel biker gang on a moped.

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A hearty round of applause to all the lawyers who got conned into making this amazing artifact of life before the recession.

Perhaps next year, the good people of BakerHostetler can put together something similar for their own prospective attorneys?

Rosie

Earlier: BakerHostetler Hires A.I. Lawyer, Ushers In The Legal Apocalypse


Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.