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?
Ed. note: The following piece was authored by The Legal Tease, of Sweet Hot Justice fame. Check out her other musings from Sweet Hot Justice here.
Has your soul winced at all today? The kind of wince that feels like your junk has retreated deep into your abdomen in a way that makes you mostly nauseous… but also a little excited? No? Well, YOU’RE WELCOME, because here’s your chance. Actually, though, don’t thank me — thank a partner at one of Biglaw’s biggest and baddest firms, whose departure memo will leave track marks in your brain for at least the next three days.
Our partner, Garrett Waltzer, started off with the usual sentiments: After 24 years practicing at Skadden, in both Los Angeles and Palo Alto, he’s grateful for the professional opportunities, the terrific mentoring, the millions of dollars friendships he’s made, yada yada yada. Then he starts to tease us:
I have decided to start a new phase of my life. I do not plan to practice law.
Hm. OK. Well, Waltzer, what do you plan to do then? The answers await you after the jump, in what will likely heretofore be known as Chapter 1 of the Mid-Life Crisis Manual handed out to all new associates at Skadden and beyond….
Like many of today’s celebrities, Britney Spears has had her fair share of legal troubles — except hers are a little crazier than your average Lohan-esque criminal case. From child custody hearings to conservatorships, our favorite pop tart has seen it all. Given that she’s been in and out of court so many times, you knew that she’d eventually become romantically entangled with a lawyer.
As luck would have it, Brit-Brit was caught by the paparazzi last week while out on a romantic Valentine’s Day date with a mysterious suitor. This time, as opposed to being a back-up dancer or an agent, Ms. Spears’s new love interest is reportedly (gasp!) an average joe, who just so happens to work for a law firm.
So what does he do? Well, that’s actually up for debate….
So you want to go to law school, huh? Well, you better be going to get a JD instead of an MRS — unless you’re going to law school in the Deep South. If that’s the case, then perhaps you’re expecting your degree to be accompanied by an apron. For the guys, it looks like you don’t even have to be in Texas anymore to get your 3500 square-foot wife.
One Southern school seems to be using the possibility of finding romance as one of its marketing ploys. Perhaps if prospective students think they’ll be getting something out of law school other than a raw deal, a mountain of debt, and grim job prospects, they’ll be more likely to enroll.
Because apparently two miserable lawyers are better than one….
Everybody gets laid on Valentine’s Day. Or they get into a fight and have make-up sex over the weekend. Either way, it’s a time when even the humblest among us gets screwed, whether by our lovers, the diamond industry, or from whatever pathetic singles activity you did last night.
Of course, getting to yes is only the start of sexual negotiations. Once you get busy, you need to get to work.
But Vivia Chen, on her blog The Careerist, dug up a “sex therapist” who says that lawyers, male and female, are prone to all sorts of sexual problems and disappointments.
I don’t know, seems to me that those are the kind of problems that convertibles are supposed to cure….
Today is Valentine’s Day, and lawyers as Type-A creatures are wont to plan every aspect of their date in advance down to the very last detail. Mmm, what a mood killer. Some lawyers may take their planning to the extreme, and offer their dates the opportunity to become contractually obligated valentines.
And now there’s a solution for even the most uptight of legal eagles: you can go one step further and draft a memorandum of understanding as to each party’s obligations — before the date, during the date, and after the date, up to and including the shaving of “appropriate areas” (wink wink, nudge nudge).
If that’s not a total panty dropper, we don’t know what is….
* I suspect Professor Stephen Bainbridge is in the minority here. Most of my law professor friends enjoy all-expenses-paid trips to the Cayman Islands. [Professor Bainbridge]
Elie Mystal, or Somali pirate?
* Professor Glenn Reynolds: “As the GOP looks for issues it can win on, how about lowering the drinking age?” I’ll raise a glass to that. [Instapundit]
* Ahoy, mateys! Did the Supreme Court grant cert in that piracy case out of the Fourth Circuit? [FindLaw]
After the jump, the dashing and handsome Ryan Chenevert — Cosmo’s reigning Bachelor of the Year, and a Louisiana lawyer — offers his thoughts on dating….
It’s the last day of December, so it’s a good time to look back on the year that was. We’ll do what we’ve done for the past three years (wrap-up posts from 2009, 2010, and 2011 can be found here, here, and here) and identify the ten biggest stories of the past year as decided by you, our readers. With the help of Google Analytics, we’ve compiled a list of our top ten posts for 2012, based on traffic (as represented by pageviews).
By the way, for the third year in a row, the most popular category page on Above the Law was Law Schools. People have now been intensely focused on the declining value proposition of going to law school for as long as it takes to earn a Juris Doctor degree. Isn’t it time that we graduate from the current educational model?
The second and third most-popular categories on ATL in 2012 were Biglaw and Bonuses. Although this year brought us the largest law firm failure ever, nearly all other firms indiscriminately doled out offers to summer associates, and bonus season looked better for the first time in years. While the legal profession is still in transition, things are certainly looking up, and through the highs and the lows, we’ve been there to cover it all.
So what were the ten most popular individual posts at Above the Law in 2012? Let’s find out….
Congratulations to the newly minted Biglaw partners out there. Despite Biglaw’s current problems and murky future, it really is a signature professional achievement. So take a night, or a week, or even two to celebrate. And then get ready to start re-evaluating your entire life, top to bottom. You may not get a better chance, ever.
What am I talking about? Simple. In order to make partner in today’s Biglaw, you have made numerous sacrifices. Whether it be your student debt, your relationships, your waistline, or anything else, your sacrifice has now been validated. You now occupy a new professional status, and the nature of making partner is such that no matter how badly you screw up the rest of your life, you have accomplished something very rare. It is a life milestone, on par with getting married or winning the lottery in terms of its immediate alteration of your identity. A minute ago, you were single. Now, married. A minute ago, you were just another Biglaw associate. Now, you are a partner. Beautiful.
I am not discussing here the “professional” aspects about making partner, such as the need to start building a book of business, and how to handle yourself at the office. You will learn most of what you need to know on that front at your new partner orientation — a gloatfest galore, typically — and you will then spend a career figuring it all out.
Rather, I want to address some of the “personal” ramifications that hearing the good news of your “election” or “promotion” will lead to. Because it would be a shame to waste this golden opportunity to change the things about your life that you are less than perfectly satisfied with….
Watch to find out what some of our subscribers received in their May box!
The proper hair styling product might just be the only thing standing between you and your dream job. And the best way to find what works for you is to try the best stuff on the market. Join Birchbox Man for $20 a month and you’ll get customized shipments of the best grooming and lifestyle gear on the market every month—everything from haircare and shaving supplies to style accessories and tech gadgets.
As the leading discovery commerce platform, Birchbox is redefining the retail process by offering consumers a unique and personalized way to discover, learn about, and shop the best grooming and lifestyle products out there. It’s a full 360-degree process: try, learn, buy. Once you sign up and fill out your profile, head over to Birchbox Man’s online magazine to find article and video tutorials on how to get the most out your monthly box products. Pick up full-size versions of anything you like in the Birchbox Shop and earn points for every purchase.
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?
The traditional job application and interview process can be impersonal, and applicants often struggle to present themselves as more than just the sum of their GPAs, alma maters, and previous work history. ATL has partnered with ViewYou to help job seekers overcome this challenge. ViewYou NOW Profiles offer a unique way for job seekers to make a personal, memorable connection with prospective employers: introduction videos. These videos allow job candidates to display their personalities, interpersonal skills, and professional interests, creating an eDossier to brand themselves to potential employers all over the world. Check it out today!
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. 
