Marriage

Valerie Katz profiles a San Francisco family lawyer whose firm has become a highly regarded boutique that specializes in “Family Building,” “Divorce and Dissolution,” and “Asset Protection.” What's so special about him? This guy is a marriage counselor, too. Would you take marriage advice from someone who specializes in divorce?

* I’m not alone in arguing for apprenticeships in the world of legal education. On the other side of the pond, Chris Ashford likes the idea too. [The Lawyer] * Speaking of legal education, “Some Things Are Funny in Law School.” [Only in Law School] * Congratulations to Mike Sacks — founder of First One […]

Apparently the French aren't such great lovers anymore. A 2010 poll found that 76% of people surveyed were having relationship problems due to a poor sex life. And it seems that a poor sex life was what brought about a divorce between Jean-Louis B. and Monique, a middle-aged French couple. But after enduring 21 years of a near sexless marriage, a divorce was simply not enough. Mrs. B. wanted to be compensated for the lack of sexual rendezvous with her ex-husband, so she sued him for it....

In a Chicago lawsuit, a lovely young lawyer, Lauren Serafin, sued her handsome ex-fiancé, Sidley Austin associate Robert Leighton, for "breach of promise" to marry. Serafin alleged that Leighton cheated on her during his Las Vegas bachelor party, with a woman named "Danielle," and then broke off the engagement -- saddling Serafin with almost $63,000 in wedding- and honeymoon-related expenses. We now bring you an update on this saga....

Everyone loves a wedding, but everyone loves a lawyer wedding even more -- especially when Columbia Law has apparently taken over.This is a summer mega-LEWW, with five finalists and a loooooong list of also-rans at the end. Read on for a virtual nuptial feast....

* Professor Laurence Tribe on “the constitutional inevitability of same-sex marriage.” [SCOTUSblog] * You can sleep when you’re dead — and you can prevail against the IRS in litigation, too (as the late Ken Lay just did). [TaxProf Blog] * Speaking of the dead, just because someone is burglarizing your business doesn’t mean you can […]

We are in July -- peek wedding season. Take a look at these three newlywed couples and marvel at their credentials and overall fabulous qualities.

Folks, it looks like New York State might pass gay marriage legislation. The New York State Assembly has long since passed legislation authorizing gay marriage. But the hold up has been in the much more conservative New York State Senate. This morning, reports surfaced that gay marriage was just one vote shy in the Senate. […]

Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories about black women. Things can be tough. African-American women get all of the sexism white women have to deal with, and all of the racism black men have to deal with. Successful black men tend to fulfill their own self-loathing destiny by running away from […]

* An associate in the New York office of Gibson Dunn, Moshe Gerstein, has been hit with child pornography charges. (More coverage to come; if you know him personally and have info to share, please email us.) [New York County District Attorney’s Office] * Motion to vacate the Proposition 8 decision, on the grounds that […]

Sometimes LEWW scans a wedding announcement with bated breath, praying that we’ll find a law degree so we can write about a couple. We were crushing on Peanut Wong and David Hattaway before we even clicked on their link. But alas, she’s a dental student (of course she is), and he’s an electrical engineer. So […]

LEWW is still coming off our royal wedding high. We’re not going to lie, people: As much as we love the legal wedding scene, we’ve never gotten out of bed at 5:30 to read about SCOTUS clerks tying the knot. But Will and Kate have flown off to happily ever after in their helicopter, so […]

Plus, you always surrender in an argument with your wife, right? Isn’t that the formula for marital happiness? — Judge Richard Posner, quoted recently in the New York Times in an article about “sell by” or “use by” dates for food.

Associates in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin seem to be doing a lot of walking these days. Last week, for example, bankruptcy associate Tyler Coulson announced that he was leaving the firm in order to walk across the country with his dog. Today we bring you the tale of Sidley IP associate Robert Leighton, […]

LEWW is back, plus one more adorable kid and minus a lot of sleep. Prime wedding season is nearly upon us, but today our task is to get you caught up on some of the nuptial fabulosity that occurred in our absence. (And by the way, if you missed the NYT’s December feature on the […]

My client is in the horns of an uncomfortable dilemma. Here’s the scenario: He and his wife are both in law, and both want out. Resources exist to permit one to escape. The other must remain behind to pay loans. Who makes it to freedom? Who gets left behind? Arriving at that decision can wreak […]

[T]he supposed legal benefits of marriage are often illusory, and in any event they are probably more than offset by legally created burdens. Marriage confers fewer rights now, but still many obligations. The question for any mature couple then is simple: Why do it? — Stanford law professor Ralph Richard Banks, in a Room for […]

Michigan law firm partner Ryan Hill has a very candid biography on his non-firm website: I am a self-proclaimed family man. My wife and I have open communication about everything, whether it is small things such as who is going to take out the trash, to bigger things such as communicating our sexual desires. We’re […]

Back in February, we broke the news of the engagement of Monica Goodling — the high-powered former Justice Department lawyer, who admitted to “cross[ing] the line” into politics with respect to DOJ hiring — to Michael Krempasky, the Edelman exec and prominent conservative blogger. We are now pleased to announce that Goodling and Krempasky got […]

Back in May, we broke the news of the engagement of celebrity professors Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power. Both are Harvard-trained lawyers and high-profile advisers — current in Sunstein’s case, and former in Power’s case (see Monstergate) — to fellow HLS grad Barack Obama. In the fall, Professor Sunstein will be teaching law at Harvard, […]