Some firms bar the practice altogether. Others turn a blind eye. Putting aside firm policy, there is a possible moral conundrum. On the one hand, there is a power relationship at play, bringing the situation into the realm of sexual harassment. On the other, the extent of influence an associate holds over the future employment of a summer is roughly 0%, so why should anyone care? It’s a dilemma.
And then there’s the fallout to consider.
Enter these genius/creepy bros from the D.C. area. They have a plan to hook up with the summers and avoid all (or at least some) administrative and moral obstacles….
He’s smart, witty, compassionate, good-looking, nice. He’s a great lawyer. He was a great clerk. And he’s a great prosecutor.
– Federico Moreno, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, offering comments in praise of Mike Garofola, the handsome assistant U.S. attorney who will be seen as a contestant on the upcoming season of The Bachelorette.
I asked, and once again the readership delivered. I thought it would be interesting to hear from former Biglaw associates who had been passed over for partnership, and I was happy to receive some thoughtful responses.
As you will see below, and as I discussed in my columns relating to making partner, there are very powerful personal forces at work in these situations. As much as we can learn from our own disappointments, so can we learn from the experiences of others, especially those who have forged ahead despite a setback.
Biglaw can be a brutal business. We need to pause and reflect on the human toll that working in this environment can take….
I don’t want to alarm you, but this is going to be bad news for some of you — possibly even a lot of you. The last few days have been tough for all of us. Emotional. Controversial. Traumatic, even. News like this comes along once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. Obviously, I’m referring to the treatise that was recently released in Princeton University’s student newspaper, the Daily Princetonian, in the form of a letter to the editor addressed to “the young women of Princeton.”
The author of this editorial, noted socio-anthropological scholar divorced former housewife and Princeton alum, Susan A. Patton, caused quite a stir when she implored — nay, demanded — that the young women of Princeton “find a husband on campus before you graduate” because “for most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.” She then drove the point home by noting that she recently completed a “horrible” divorce, after 27 years of marriage, to a man whose “academic background was not as luxurious as mine, and that was a source of some stress.” Indeed.
Susan A. Patton, while I admire your grammar, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Because you failed to cite one obvious point: Even if a young lady has managed to escape the wilds of New Jersey without nailing down a trip to Zales, she still has one more shot: law school. Well, let’s be clear — a T14 law school….
My first crush was a girl in this class whose name was Theresa. She’s the one standing to the right of Mrs. Goins. She’s good-looking; I always had good taste.
No, not to each other. In the states covered by the Seventh Circuit, marriage is still between one man and one woman — at least for now.
(By the way, there is precedent for judges from the same circuit court marrying each other. Back in 2004, then-Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King and Judge Thomas M. Reavley, both of the Fifth Circuit, tied the knot.)
So yes, judges get married, just like us. But it’s noteworthy to have so many judicial nuptials in such a short span of time.
Two Seventh Circuit judges just got married, and a third — one who I never expected to get married — is engaged. Who are the jurists in question?
Please note the multiple UPDATES added after the jump.
When it comes to marriage proposals, some guys are completely clueless. Perhaps your girlfriend said she’d once dreamed of getting engaged in a castle. Your friends, if they’re any good, will quickly advise you that you’re a moron for thinking you can pop the question at the local White Castle. Usually your best bros, or your wingmen, will be able to help you to see the error of your ways, and get you back on the right track.
And that’s why it’s great to have a wingman like Mayor Cory Booker. Not only is he handsome, but he’s also incredibly intelligent — Stanford for college, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Yale for law school. Oh, and he’s a famous politician who’s social media savvy (and not in an Anthony Weiner kind of way), so that’s a good thing.
The dashing young mayor of Newark, New Jersey is pretty good at saving things, too. The list of things he’s saved is quite long, and ranges from freezing dogs to damsels in distress in burning buildings.
Law school is a ‘debt wizard’ — it’ll make your money disappear like magic!
* In the nick of time, lawyers for the Obama administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court urging the justices to strike down California’s ban on gay marriage. Let’s hope their views have evolved. [BuzzFeed]
* As the lawyers and administrative staff who just got laid off at Patton Boggs can attest to, it sucks to be on the wrong side of “rightsizing.” We’ll have more on this developing story later today. [Reuters]
* Lanny Breuer is leaving the DOJ today, and he’s doing it with a bit of “swagger.” He’s shrugging off rumors that he’ll retreat to Covington, insisting he’ll interview at many firms. [DealBook / New York Times]
* It’s time for the changing of the guard over at Milbank Tweed. Mel Immergut, the longest serving chair of any Am Law 100 firm in New York, is passing the reins to Scott Edelman. [New York Law Journal]
* Michigan Law has a new “Debt Wizard” program that’s extremely useful in that it will allow you to see what you’re getting yourself into. Or, in my case, how poor I’ll be for the rest of my life. Yay! [National Law Journal]
* All he wanted to do was “make the world a better place,” but that didn’t work out so well. In a plea deal, Bradley Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the charges against him in his WikiLeaks case. [Los Angeles Times]
* Of all of the words that are used to describe Cory Booker, one of them is now “matchmaker.” The Newark mayor assisted a young Seyfarth Shaw associate with his engagement proposal earlier this week. [TIME]
Marriage can be a tricky business, especially when it comes to an end. Just ask the former Skadden partner whose remarkable departure memo has everyone talking. Both his former and current marriage have attracted a lot of attention.
And at least his marriages were between one man and one woman. When same-sex unions fall apart, things can get especially complicated….
Yesterday, we brought you the story of Garrett Waltzer. The former Skadden partner sent around a thrilling departure memo explaining to his colleagues that he was leaving the firm to help the music career of his wife, R&B artist and near-reality show star TaQuita Thorns. If you missed yesterday’s story, I’ll wait here while you catch up.
Yeah, that happened.
So when I say former Skadden partner, boy do I mean “former.” Skadden has already removed his bio from their website. That firm doesn’t play.
But Waltzer is still talking. After yesterday’s story, he opened up a little bit about his personal life to Vivia Chen of The Careerist.
Oh, and I did I mention we’ve got a clip of TaQuita Thorns on her reality show?
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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Hooking up with summers…
