ATL Courtship Connection

Courtship Connections: A Dog of a Date

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Couple forgot to take a photo. Consolation shot of a friend's puppy.

Spring is usually thought of as the time when dating season goes into full swing, but we think summer is when it really heats up — perhaps because of the way that clothing disappears as temperatures skyrocket, as noted in this New York Times piece about half-naked people at a MIA concert on Governors Island. Shirtless women have also been spotted outside of the ATL offices in Nolita.

We hoped the summer heat would generate sparks for two legal types on a recent Courtship Connection date. We set up a litigation associate at a top firm with a government attorney, based on their shared admiration for Justice Brennan. And for cutting things up: If she weren’t in Biglaw, she’d be a pediatric cardiac surgeon, and if he weren’t working for the state, he’d be a chef.

We sent them to Las Ramblas, a tapas restaurant in the West Village, on a Saturday night. He said:

So leave it to Kash to set us up on perhaps the hottest day of a month-long heat wave, despite several alternatives that could’ve worked. I felt like I was melting for most of the night. Heat aside though, I had a good time overall. I thought my date was quite attractive, a couple inches shorter than me, petite, dark hair, wearing a burgundy sundress.

How hot was their date?

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ATL Courtship Connection: Should we have a singles mixer?

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It’s been a while since our last Courtship Connection report. We still have many, many single types in our database, though. We are thinking about having a singles mixer at a bar in New York in July. Is this a brilliant idea or a terrible idea? Please email Kash with your thoughts on this. The key question: Would you come to see the awkwardness if you have to buy your own drinks?

Back to our more exclusive pairings: We set up one Biglaw couple and one Midlaw-Biggov pair. Though Midlaw and Biggov both like tonic as their mixer, they did not mix well. They met at Ginger Man in midtown Manhattan on a Wednesday night. They both live in New Jersey and I hoped this might make going home together easier. Alas, no. She reported:

As promised, he had a copy of The Economist peeking outside of his messenger bag/briefcase. Although the bar was crowded, we were able to find a table in the back so we could sit down and chat without yelling over the dull roar at the bar. Turns out he went to law school with one of my co-workers and we both live in the same town. It was fun getting to know someone new over a beer and chatting about how our jobs are different (I work for a big firm and he works for the government) and favorite restaurants. There weren’t any awkward breaks in conversation and all in all, a fine blind date. But no real connection to speak of so at the end of the night, we were fine with going our own way.

The other couple had a more interesting start to their blind date relationship. I had to cancel their first date at the last minute when our Biglaw woman came down with a serious fever that sent her to the hospital. Did things heat up when the two did manage to meet up?

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ATL Courtship Connection: Blind Date FAIL

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It was bound to happen. New York is big, but it’s not that big.

I sent two law school students (from different institutions) out on a Courtship Connection date on Monday night, armed only with a descriptor of their date. She said she’d be in a black dress, and he said he’d be in a “light blue sweatshirt and blazer” (which struck me as an odd ensemble).

They both named copyright as their favorite law school class. They both want to practice entertainment law. If they weren’t on the track to become lawyers, she’d want to be a music producer, and he would want to be a musician. It seemed like the perfect match.

Alas, when they found one another outside of an (apparently closed) bar in Alphabet City, they recognized one another. Not only had they already met, they had already hooked up…

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ATL Courtship Connection: Date Crashers Edition

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One of the Courtship Connection couples included a Ryan Gosling look-a-like

We’re a month into ATL Courtship Connection. So far, I’ve sent nine couples out on blind dates and learned that it’s better to match people according to their favorite law school class than by their ideal number of hours to bill per year.

Women, if you voted for D.C. instead of NYC in our March Madness “best city to be a lawyer” Competition, you made the right choice. I’ve observed that men are more likely to find love (or committed lust) in New York than are women. Men have been withdrawing from the Connection due to new relationships at about double the rate that women have.

This week, I paired a Biglawyer with sterling credentials with a law student from a top school, and set up two attorneys from top firms who crashed the AmLaw 20 without Vault 20 diplomas. Both dates featured interlopers…

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ATL Courtship Connection: Kissing and Fizzling on a Rainy Night

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Rain can provide a romantic backdrop

New York readers can attest to the nasty weather on Monday night. Unfortunately, I had scheduled two blind dates for ATL Courtship Connections that evening. Everyone was wet and not in the good way.

Well, actually, there was some good wetness on one of the dates. One date ended with a make-out session in the rain. That would be the first official first-date kiss in the ATL Courtship Connection series.

I may be as excited as those involved. If this journalism thing doesn’t work out for me, I’m going into matchmaking as a career. Though, admittedly, the second date did not turn out as well as the wet t-shirt one…

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ATL Courtship Connection: Lawyers in Love with Lillie’s

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We set up three lawyerly blind dates last week. One got off to a rough start. One shut a restaurant down. And the third… well, our magic 8-ball of love says “reply hazy.”

I set these two up because they’re both over 30, like tonic as a mixer, and listed Ruth Bader Ginsburg as their favorite Supreme Court Justice. Of course, there’s a subtext to that last choice, as both our Courtship Connectors pointed out in their write-ups of the date.

He says he would be a “songwriter/novelist” if he weren’t an attorney, and she says, “if I knew the answer to that, I’d be doing it.” Per his suggestion, I sent them on Thursday night to Lillie’s, on 17th Street near Union Square. He tells me:

First, thanks so much for setting me up…it’s clear that part of your setting me up with [REDACTED] must have been matching two of the most jewish sounding names in the world. ;-)

Well, im happy to tell you that this ATL match went much better than Lat’s attempt.

We met up at the bar and she recognized me first, she’s really sweet (and cute) and we had a lot in common and similar backgrounds. We chatted for over 2 hours and agreed to go out again. i’ll keep you posted. Many thanks!!

Alright. What did she think? Well, for one, she was happy that a male reader of Above the Law didn’t turn out to be an “angry hobbit, d-bag, or socially awkward male legal type…”

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ATL Courtship Connection: Third Time’s the Charm?

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haWe know a lot about law here at ATL, and maybe we know a little about love too. We’ve sent a handful of New York legal types out on dates as part of ATL Courtship Connection, our amateur stab at matchmaking. We’ve gotten three reports back so far.

Elie’s matchmaking attempt fell flat. Lat’s set-up showed promise. Now I bring you the results of my handiwork with Cupid’s bow and arrow. Since a Covington colleague and Duke classmate that I introduced are now married (and about to give birth to their first child), I can claim some archery expertise.

I matched two 30+ attorneys because they both named My Cousin Vinny as their favorite legal character. If a shared appreciation of Joe Pesci’s courtroom tuxedo doesn’t lead to true love, I don’t know what will. I sent them to one of my favorite East Village bars, Scratcher, which I thought would have a relaxed, romantic vibe. I was wrong about that, but perhaps right about these two getting along.

Here’s the male take from a “mid-level associate, refugee from the NYC boutique firms, now working at a non-profit and developing an allergic reaction to dress pants”:

So you would think that finding someone you never met in a bar without so much as a first name might be a problem. Especially when that bar is packed with drunken college types on St. Patrick’s Day. As it turned out, it took me all of two seconds to spot the one lawyer in the place, BlackBerry in her one hand, Redweld in the other.

Our college years long behind us, we decided to find a place where we could have a conversation, and perhaps get some real beer instead of that green swill.

So how did it go from there?

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