Dawn Schneider

Elizabeth Wurtzel Bids Bye-Bye to Boies Schiller

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Elizabeth Wurtzel

Last week, Elizabeth Wurtzel left Boies Schiller & Flexner. The bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Prozac Nation and other books, and a contributor to such publications as the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, Wurtzel started working at the formidable firm in 2008. She was personally hired by legendary litigator David Boies, after she graduated from Yale Law School.

We heard some interesting rumors about what led to La Wurtzel’s departure from BSF. On Friday afternoon, one tipster breathlessly told us the following: “Wurtzel was fired from Boies Schiller after she demanded a window office (she had been working in an internal office similar to what staff use). The partners looked at her hours — which are so minimal that it’s amazing she is still employed at all — and gave her the boot. She is also still not licensed. She passed the bar — but what about character and fitness?”

(The potential character and fitness issues arise out of Wurtzel’s wild pre-law life. As the New York Times put it, Wurtzel is someone “whose attempted suicide, drug use, self-mutilation and indiscriminate sex have made her famous” — thanks to her turning these experiences into the books Prozac Nation and More, Now, Again. To learn more, read her nomination blurb in our contest for Yale Law’s most disgraceful graduate.)

The notion of Wurtzel getting fired over a dispute about office space struck me as a little… well, like Office Space. Did she demand a red Swingline stapler too?

I reached out to Liz Wurtzel and Boies Schiller to find out what actually went down. Here’s what I learned….

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Nationwide Layoff Watch: Boies Schiller
(But query whether these were really ‘layoffs.’)

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This morning brought more lawyer layoff news. As reported by Peter Lattman over at DealBook, David Boies’s celebrated litigation firm, Boies Schiller, last week laid off three associates.

(The DealBook piece refers to the dismissals as “layoffs,” and we’ve used that terminology in the title of this post and the first paragraph. But whether these terminations should be considered true “layoffs” is open to question — please keep reading.)

As noted in Am Law Daily, the three associates “worked on the firm’s representation of British private equity firm Terra Firma in its unsuccessful civil suit against Citigroup.” Now that the three-week trial is over, presumably the firm felt it could let the women go — and perhaps make them the “fall guys” (or gals) for the adverse result.

Two of three associates used to work in the firm’s former office in Short Hills, New Jersey. After that office was spun off last year into what is now Stone & Magnanini, the two jumped across the Hudson to join the New York office of Boies. So perhaps they didn’t have powerful patrons at BSF – NYC to protect them from the ax.

There’s also a bit of backstory here, which didn’t make it into the reports of DealBook, Am Law Daily, and the ABA Journal….

double red triangle arrows Continue reading “Nationwide Layoff Watch: Boies Schiller
(But query whether these were really ‘layoffs.’)“

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