New York Times, Reader Polls, Weddings

Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: June and July Couples of the Month

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Ed. note: As previously mentioned, LEWW is on vacation this week. Regular weekly posting will resume with a double issue on Friday, August 28.
Today we ask readers to choose the most impressive lawyer newlyweds of the past two months. Early summer traditionally represents the height of the wedding season, and this year’s June and July couples have not disappointed. Below the fold, you’ll find two SCOTUS clerks, a Harvard JD/MD, the GC of a major corporation, a Google millionaire, and two managing editors of the Harvard Law Review, plus the typical amount of prestigious Biglaw employment.
Click on the link below to review our prior write-ups of the Couple of the Week winners and vote for your favorites. (And remember: The two lucky couples who are selected will be eligible for Couple of the Year consideration.)

JUNE


1. Stefanie Schneider and David Alpert
(Buy them a stock pot.)
The Case:
– This bride gets points for having a JD from Stanford, a credential we don’t see often enough in the NYT (she also graduated summa from Duke). Stefanie is an associate at Wilmer.
– David, a Harvard graduate, is the founder and editor of Greater Greater Washington, an interesting and valuable blog about making life better for people in DC’s “walkable cities and neighborhoods” (but not, apparently, for lame-o, unenlightened suburbanites).
The Case Against:
– This post hints that David is a Google millionaire. Which, we assume, is how he can afford to live in Dupont Circle and blog all day about how other people should bike to work.

2. Pamela Bookman and Jeffrey Perlman
(Buy them a placemat.)
The Case:
– This couple’s write-up includes a fairly detailed account of how they got together. Short version: They encountered each other on and off for roughly ten chemistry-free years before sparks finally flew. First they were undergrads together at Yale (she graduated magna); then they were housemates one summer while Pam was in law school at UVA. Romance did not blossom. “There was just nothing there,” Ms. Bookman recalled. “He had really, really long hair, and I just wasn’t into that.” A few years later, at a birthday party, he had shorter hair (or she was less picky), and they hit it off.
– Jeffrey is president and founder of an energy efficiency and renewable energy company in Manhattan. He also plays in “a Russian and Balkan Gypsy music band.”
– Pam recently left WilmerHale and will report to work in July in the chambers of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She previously clerked for Second Circuit Judge Robert D. Sack, who officiated at the wedding (which was “the best wedding of the century,” according to the couple’s own website).

3. Devon Quasha and Jeffrey Thorn
(Buy them a muffin pan.)
The Case:
– We’ll start with Jeff’s undergraduate degree, which is the Achilles heel of this couple’s resume: It’s from Yale. From that notorious TTT in New Haven, he ascended to Harvard Law School, where he met Devon. Devon was summa at Harvard College; now, having earned her JD from HLS, she’s completing a medical degree at Harvard Medical School.
– Jeff is a litigation associate in Shearman’s New York office (though his bio on the firm’s website is blank and doesn’t appear on the alphabetical list).
The Case Against:
– We sense something a little desperate and adrift about people who do the JD/MD thing. Seriously, did you truly feel a calling to both law and medicine, or do you just have a pathetic need to be the most-credentialed person in the room?

4. Kristin Campbell and Robert Samuelson
The Case:
– This highly accomplished bride graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University and has a JD from Cornell. A Goodwin Procter alumna, she’s currently general counsel for Staples.
– The groom graduated from Williams and has an MBA from Harvard. He’s the chief financial officer of Monitor, a management consulting firm. Although he’s not this Robert Samuelson, he does have a strong connection to the study of economics; his father is the Nobel laureate Paul A. Samuelson.
The Case Against:
– The Staples website informs us that Kristin’s favorite office product is the Staples® Ultra-Quiet Micro Cut Shredder. Is it really a good idea to project the image of the company’s top lawyer Ultra-Quietly Micro-Shredding things? Perhaps a sleek office phone would have been more appropriate — you know, for all those “I’m-holding-last-month’s-bill-and-marveling-at-your-chutzpah” calls to outside counsel.

JULY


1. Katherine Zeisel and Joshua Salzman
(Buy them an egg ring.)
The Case:
– Two-JD couple, solid credentials: Georgetown (cum laude) and NYU Law for her; Columbia and HLS (both magna) for him.
– The groom is an associate at WilmerHale, where he worked on an amicus brief filed in Kennedy v. Louisiana, 128 S.Ct. 2641 (2008), arguing that the death penalty for the rape of a child is unconstitutional (SCOTUS agreed).
– The bride is a staff lawyer at the Children’s Law Center in Washington and a chairwoman of the District Alliance for Safe Housing.
The Case Against:
– There’s a long and only moderately interesting account of how they played together as children, but she never considered him boyfriend material because he was younger. We get the sense that Joshua has a thing for older women.

2. Laura Hammond and Christopher Hemphill
(Buy them a hand towel.)
The Case:
– Yummy résumés. The bride, a cum laude graduate of Yale, is an analyst at Dune Capital Management. Her dad is a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed.
– The groom graduated from Harvard, received a master’s in economics from LSE as a Fulbright scholar, and has another master’s in economics from Stanford. He also has a JD from Stanford Law, where he was first in his class. (Don’t hyperventilate yet; we’re just getting warmed up.) Post-Stanford, he clerked for Seventh Circuit super-genius Richard Posner, after which he ascended to a clerkship with Justice Antonin Scalia. Now he’s an assistant professor of law at Columbia.
The Case Against:
– The picture is a little . . . chilly. We’ve seen more sincere smiles at a Nancy Pelosi press conference. Here’s hoping these two have more chemistry in person.

3. Courtney Dankworth and Russell Capone Jr.
(Buy them a salad bowl.)
The Case:
– This couple has lovely matching cum laude degrees from Harvard Law School. The bride’s undergraduate degree is from Harvard, cum laude, and the groom’s is from Tufts, summa. (Russell also attended Regis High School in New York City, the alma mater of ATL’s own David Lat.)
– Courtney, who clerked for Amalya Kearse of the Second Circuit, is an associate at Debevoise; Russell, who clerked for Sidney H. Stein of SDNY, is an associate at Davis Polk.
– They met while serving as successive managing editors of the Harvard Law Review, proving that the corridors of Gannett House are conducive to steamy hook-ups as well as presidential cabinet-formation and nerdy mini-scandals.
The Case Against:
– Their picture isn’t great. Their eyebrow alignment is terrible, and Russell’s face is all shadowy. But a tipster tells us that it was “a really lovely wedding.”

4. Dolores DiBella and David Schmid
(Buy them a garment bag.)
The Case:
– These two met as undergraduates at Georgetown, from which the bride graduated magna cum laude. That magna was enough to earn her a spot at Columbia Law — and wow, it’s really nice to see someone going from Georgetown undergrad to law school at a solid Ivy, rather than the other way around. The groom has a master’s in public administration from NYU.
– Dolores is an associate at Proskauer Rose. David works for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as an assistant commissioner for operations in community affairs.
The Case Against:
– “Dolores” is a name that peaked in popularity around 1920. We predict that — unlike other old-fashioned names like Rose and Sophia — this one is unlikely to bounce back any time soon.

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