This week, Legal Eagle Wedding Watch salutes… a divorce lawyer. This one dutifully dissolved her client’s marriage, seeing him through a contentious custody battle. But then she went the extra mile and set him up with his next wife. Attention, divorce bar: We smell a new business model.
But let’s not let talk of divorce spoil our ooh-ing and ahh-ing over some tender new lawyer marriages. Here are this week’s finalists:
The story of the tangled relationship between Casey Greenfield, a rising star in New York legal circles, and Jeffrey Toobin, arguably the nation’s leading legal journalist, has gone mainstream. Over the long weekend, the New York Times wrote an 1,800-word story on their affair.
Actually, to be fair, the story was mainly about Casey Greenfield and her law partner, Scott Labby, launching their boutique law firm, Greenfield Labby (which has a beautifully designed website, by the way). The firm specializes in what the Times describes as “high-stakes family law,” which includes not just divorce and custody litigation, but “[c]risis management, strategic planning and contract resolution.”
The story of Greenfield and Labby launching a new small law firm is both interesting and inspiring. But, at the same time, it’s one that we’ve seen — and written — before. You can read our earlier write-up of Greenfield Labby’s launch over here.
The most interesting parts of the NYT piece concern Casey Greenfield’s affair with the then-married (and still-married) Jeff Toobin, a long-running relationship that produced a baby boy. The writer, Times reporter Robin Finn, unearthed several juicy, previously unreported details….
To help me get in the holiday spirit, I’ve been catching up on my favorite movies. Some might prefer It’s A Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street, but I can’t get enough of It’s a Wonderful Lifetime and ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas. Give me a movie where a D-list celebrity overcomes the holiday blues to discover the meaning of Christmas, the joy of love, and the warmth of family, and I am a happy girl.
After 22 days of non-stop Christmas movie watching, I began to think that only in a movie staring Melissa Joan Hart would someone devote her professional career to tackling an issue she had to overcome. Not so.
Earlier this month, Casey Greenfield, known for her personal battle with child support issues, and Scott Labby, a fellow graduate of Yale Law School, formed the firm Greenfield Labby LLP. The firm’s mission is to serve individual clients “with a focus on family and matrimonial practice, strategic planning and crisis management”….
I don't think anybody needed to hear testimony from this guy.
As you might have heard, United States special forces killed Osama Bin Laden. Let’s take a moment to be happy about that, but also to remember Bin Laden’s many, many victims.
Thank God he was killed, not “captured.” If he had been captured, there would have been some kind of trial. Some kind of fake, orchestrated, television show of a trial. Lawyers, judges, and others would have danced around trying to give Osama bin Laden the appearance of a fair hearing before his inevitable execution. It would have been a farce — a farce that our military and/or civilian courts are not equipped to handle.
Better for Bin Laden to meet his end as he did: via a double tap from a Navy Seal….
When asked about the decision in Bush v. Gore, Justice Antonin Scalia — one of the best legal minds in modern American history — tells questioners to “get over it.” That’s right, the Supreme Court decided the winner of a popular presidential election, and one of the architects of that decision wants people to not care about it anymore. Is he serious? I wish Scalia could just “get over” the fact that privacy is a right now, but nobody begrudges him the right to ask questions about it.
It’s the ten-year anniversary of the Bush v. Gore decision, and everybody is talking about it, in part because the Court does not talk about it. Writing in the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin tells us that in the decade since the five “conservative” justices stopped Florida’s recount, the Supreme Court has cited Bush v. Gore exactly zero times. Think about that: it’s been ten years since the Supreme Court picked the president, and the Court is kind of hoping everybody forgets about it. Bush v. Gore is like a stripper the Court killed in Vegas when it was there for a bachelor’s party. “She’s got no friends or family, strippers die all the time in Vegas, let’s get back to the hotel and NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN.”
But this isn’t some drunk broad you can drive into the Atlantic Ocean and hope everybody covers for you. This is a presidential election! And whether or not they talk about it, the effect of Bush v. Gore is very evident today — and not just because of the five SCOTUS votes that were more important than everybody else’s….
* Judge Phillips (C.D. Cal.) has suspended enforcement of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Or: “Virginia Phillips has made her decision; now let her enforce it.” [Metro Weekly]
* A new law review article, by Michael Macchiarola (my fellow Regian) and Arun Abraham, looks at the higher education bubble — and proposes “a derivatives-based approach to stemming the runaway educational costs and improving the value proposition for American students.” Who says derivatives are always evil? [SSRN]
* Jeffrey Toobin interviews Columbia law professor Tim Wu, author of the forthcoming and buzz-generating book The Master Switch, about the tendency of communication industries to move from chaos to consolidation / monopoly. [Currents / New Yorker]
* The attorneys in a class action against Classmates.com are asking for what amounts to an 895% contingency fee. George Mason law professor Michael Krauss, represented by Ted Frank, is objecting to the proposed settlement. [Center for Class Action Fairness via Overlawyered]
Over on the website of the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin has a nice post on how Elena Kagan deftly finessed the “gays in the military” / Solomon Amendment issue while serving as dean of Harvard Law School. It’s an interesting read; check it out here (via Dahlia Lithwick’s Twitter feed).
Alas, these days Toobin is apparently busy with pursuits other than journalism. Over the weekend, the New York Daily News provided a rather salacious update on his alleged affair and resulting love child with Casey Greenfield — the Gibson Dunn litigator, daughter of well-known political pundit Jeff Greenfield, and a media figure in her own right….
Over the weekend, Casey Greenfield — Yale Law School graduate, Gibson Dunn litigatrix, and daughter of political pundit Jeff Greenfield — made a foray into film criticism. Greenfield published a review of the new Jennifer Lopez movie, The Back-Up Plan, in the Daily Beast.
The mother of CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin’s purported love child has written an essay about being a single mom….
It has long been thought that married Jeffrey Toobin—CNN analyst and New Yorker contributor—impregnated Casey Greenfield…. Neither Toobin nor Greenfield has ever confirmed this, which probably means it’s true. This weekend, The Daily Beast published an essay Greenfield about raising the-baby-which-probably-belongs-to-Jeffrey-Toobin. (His name is Rory.)
If litigating for Gibson Dunn (and against Jeffrey Toobin) doesn’t work out for Casey Greenfield, perhaps her “back-up plan” is a journalism career. As noted in her firm bio, “[p]rior to obtaining her law degree, Ms. Greenfield worked for magazines and newspapers in New York and Los Angeles.”
(Maybe she could even land a book deal for a memoir about her affair and subsequent experience as a single mom? That’s one book we’d definitely buy.)
We recently wondered: Is Jeffrey Toobin the Tiger Woods of legal journalism? Like Tiger, he’s phenomenally talented and successful, the biggest name in the game. And, if news reports are correct, Toobin — a legal writer for the New Yorker, a political analyst for CNN, and the author of several bestselling books — may share Tiger’s weakness for women and wandering eye.
The big Jeff Toobin story is his alleged affair with Casey Greenfield, the daughter of political pundit Jeff Greenfield and an associate at Gibson Dunn. This romance resulted in a child that Toobin is allegedly refusing to support, according to Casey Greenfield — who just took Toobin to court over it.
Last weekend, the New York Daily News wrote about Toobin’s purported advances towards “a well-known media figure.” According to Rush and Molloy, Toobin made a proposition to this woman that was so crude as to be unprintable, even by the Daily News — and that’s saying something. (The folks at Gawker were less inhibited.)
So, who was the mystery media figure Toobin found so alluring?
Leading legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin — this year’s commencement speaker at Penn Law and Golden Gate Law, by the way — has been making headlines rather than writing them as of late. Last week we covered his family court showdown with Casey Greenfield, an associate at Gibson Dunn and the daughter of television pundit Jeff Greenfield (Toobin’s former CNN colleague).
Over the weekend, the New York Daily News alleged that Toobin — who has been married to fellow journalist and Harvard alum Amy McIntosh, for almost 25 years — has long had a wandering eye. According to Rush & Molloy:
[Toobin] is said to have made a play for a well-known media figure. The woman, who met Toobin about 15 years ago, contends he hit on her repeatedly, using some shockingly sexual come-on lines.
“I was at a party in Washington,” the woman tells us. “He came up behind me and whispered in my ear …”
This being a family newspaper, we can’t repeat what Toobin allegedly told the woman he’d like to do to her. But the woman recalls, “I didn’t even know who he was. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was so disgusting. At the time, I never even knew people did that.”
So what did Toobin want to do to this “well-known media figure”?
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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This week, Legal Eagle Wedding Watch salutes… a divorce lawyer. This one dutifully dissolved her client’s marriage, seeing him through a contentious custody battle. But then she went the extra mile and set him up with his next wife. Attention, divorce bar: We smell a new business model.
