Sweet Hot Justice

Life, Death, and Halter Tops

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[Ed. Note: The following piece was authored by “The Legal Tease” of Sweet Hot Justice fame. You can check out all of Legal Tease’s other musings from Sweet Hot Justice here.]

There have only been a handful of moments in my legal career–nay, in my life–when I’ve felt there was a decent possibility that all the people surrounding me in a particular space were about to collectively crouch down, bare fangs, and storm forward in a sweeping, feral frenzy of rage, ripping out the throat of whichever poor bastard happened to be in charge. Typically, this feeling has only kicked in while, say, waiting on the tarmac at O’Hare during a blizzard, or sitting in my 1L Property Law class on the day my professor announced that she didn’t believe in teaching black letter law. But last Thursday, it happened in a 6th floor conference room in my tense, hungry little corner of BigLaw.

You see, the powers that be at my firm had called a meeting that day. Not just a meeting, but the meeting–the one to address the recent, escalating fear crippling the associate ranks. True, BigLaw can hardly be described as an oasis of calm in any economy, but the paranoia around my firm lately has been palpable. In the past few weeks, each time I’ve heard a knock on my office door before 9 a.m., or received a call from an extension I didn’t recognize, or opened an email addressed to “All Associates-USA,” I’ve felt my body click into a fleeting state of stomach-sinking paralysis, wondering whether I’m about to be told that I’m officially being relieved of my obligation to show up for work on a daily basis. Call me neurotic, but the massive stealth layoffs ripping through my firm lately–paired nicely with radio silence from the firm’s management–can make a girl a little jumpy.

Turns out, though, my fears were totally unfounded. Because, you see, last Thursday, the firm finally stepped up and started talking. They held the meeting–a self-styled Q&A forum for all associates where the firm’s associate management committee promised to address several “topics of interest.” And oh, how they did. They cut through the typical administrative nonsense and dove right into the big topic. The topic that’s undoubtedly been clouding their minds in the past few weeks. The topic that apparently dwarfs any and all other possible topics that might be of interest to any associate. Anywhere. The topic so relevant, so timely, that it merited a good 25-minute discussion. That’s right, friends, my firm finally opened up and addressed this, the Most Important Topic Facing BigLaw Today: whether the firm should adopt a Casual Fridays dress code.

Things get worse after the jump.


At first, we thought it was a joke, but when the office managing partner squared his jaw and started explaining with a straight face that the firm was considering a Casual Fridays policy whereby associates would be “allowed” to wear jeans one Friday per month, on the condition that they make a small donation to a charity of the firm’s choosing, we realized that this was pathetically real. I looked around the room at the hundred or so associates gathered and saw a throng of slack jaws and mild scowls that no doubt mirrored my own. We all sat there like frozen idiots while management flunky after flunky weighed in on the pros and cons of the dress code situation. But when Astrid, a junior partner on the associate management committee, suddenly stood up and launched into a nasal diatribe about how a Casual Fridays dress code might be “distracting” because–well, she won’t speak for anyone else, but at least as far as she’s noticed–associates are already pretty liberal in interpreting the firm’s business casual dress code and, would you believe it, she even saw one wearing what appeared to be a halter top last quarter–well, it was at this point that a few people actually got up and left.

Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that, Friday or no Friday, the general sight-having population would be done a collective solid if Astrid no longer saw fit to burden them with the vision of all five feet, two inches of her 175 pounds crammed into an apparently limitless collection of undersized, synthetic, dickey-based ensembles fished out of the local Ann Taylor Loft Outlet. Let’s instead focus on the fact that…WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS CRAP WHEN PEOPLE ARE GETTING FIRED WITHOUT EXPLANATION AND THE FIRM APPEARS TO BE PLUMMETING HEADFIRST INTO DISSOLUTION?! Does the firm really think we give any kind of rat’s ass about the dress code–and more troublingly, do they?! Is this persistent refusal to address issues like layoffs in favor of issues like errant halter top sightings some brilliant Machiavellian ploy on the firm’s part to keep its associates in line, or is it just…delusional?

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Because here’s the thing: If you’re going to insult us by laying off hordes of our colleagues under some limp performance-based pretense and then leave us in the dark about the state of our own employment, fine, but don’t then humiliate us by calling a meeting where you do nothing but vomit your managerial incompetence all over us by ignoring the elephant in the room. Just…don’t hold any meetings for us. Ever. If you’re going to keep us ignorant and paranoid, at least let us retain some dignity in our ignorance. And at the very least, please just let us get laid off in whatever kind of goddamn pants we want.

Find out how the meeting ended over at Sweet Hot Justice.

Life, Death, and Halter Tops [Sweet Hot Justice]

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