Top Law Firm Fires Summer Associate After Learning Of His Criminal Past

EXCERPTS FROM PHAIR OR PHOUL? BY JOHN DAVID ARGANBRIGHT

We’ve broken up the excerpts from Arganbright’s now-vanished blog, Phair or Phoul?, into separate slides. Click on each slide to enlarge. Brief commentary follows each slide.

SLIDE ONE

Getting a summer associate job at Cleary Gottlieb: phair. Getting fired for my sex-offender past: phoul.

---

SLIDE TWO

The continuation of Arganbright’s self-introduction, plus one sports-related post. It’s consistent with the Cleary Gottlieb “Daily Bulletin” entry — La Salle for college, Seton Hall for law school — and provides confirmation of Arganbright’s identity.

Considering that Arganbright played rugby and served as a fraternity president in college, perhaps his wild past shouldn’t come as a surprise. More surprising is his cheery, religious sign-off: “God Bless All.”

---

SLIDE THREE

We’re following Arganbright through law school. He wrote this post a few weeks into his 1L year. So far, so good; he’s “really enjoying law school.”

---

SLIDE FOUR

Congrats to Arganbright on the A+ on his Contracts midterm. He’s obviously a very smart guy.

---

SLIDE FIVE

Seton Hall is a reasonably well-ranked law school: #36 in the Above the Law rankings, and #64 in the U.S. News rankings. But it’s not a feeder school to a super-elite firm like Cleary. It makes sense, then, that John Arganbright earned “really good” grades.

This post was published on January 30, 2012, in the middle of Arganbright’s 1L year. He ultimately did find “a cool job for the Summer,” working for Judge C. Darnell Jones II of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, according to Arganbright’s old Linkedin profile (taken offline, but available via Google Cache):

(Now, flip ahead to the next page to see some of his Pennsylvania court records….)