Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Left Out
After a little hiatus, Legal Eagle Wedding Watch is back -- with a vengeance....
Usually, our survey of the most illustrious recent legal weddings is pretty balanced along the political spectrum. Prestige, after all, knows no ideology but itself. But purely by coincidence, today’s edition of LEWW tilts sharply to the left. From Blackmun to Reinhardt to Kagan, read on for much name-dropping of liberal legal lions — and nary a mention of Biglaw.
Our contestant couples:
Julia Mehlman and Joseph Goldstein-Breyer
Makky Pratayot and J. Paul Oetken
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Click below for our in-depth analysis of these lawyer newlyweds.
Julia Mehlman and Joseph Goldstein-Breyer
(Probably too liberal for a registry.)
The Case:
– Our first couple met while studying for JDs at Berkeley. She has an undergraduate degree from Cornell; he was summa at NYU.
– The bride recently finished a clerkship with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal district judge in DC, and she’ll be clerking again, this time for Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco. The groom is starting a job as an associate deputy public defender in Alameda County.
– The couple won’t be messing around with hyphens; they’re going to ditch the first half of the groom’s last name and both use Breyer as their surname. That move makes sense in light of the fact that the groom’s father is Senior District Judge Charles Breyer, which makes his uncle none other than Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
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The Case Against:
– The bride’s clerkships appear a bit random at first, but upon closer examination, both have links to the Breyer judicial empire: Judge Brown was once a SCOTUS clerk for her uncle-in-law, and Judge Corley was her father-in-law’s permanent clerk for over a decade.
Makky Pratayot and J. Paul Oetken
(Buy them a garlic press.)
The Case:
– That hottie on the right is actually a judicial hottie (the very best kind): Judge Oetken of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A graduate of the University of Iowa and Yale Law School, he clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun and served as Associate White House Counsel under Bill Clinton. He’s the first openly gay man to serve on the federal bench.
– The other groom is equally attractive, and he’s a makeup artist, which is nearly as glamorous as being a federal judge. He has a bachelor’s degree from the American College in London and a diploma from the London College of Fashion.
– ATL’s own David Lat attended the wedding and offers this report:
The Oetken-Pratayot nuptials, held at the super-hip Jane Hotel, combined downtown cool (Makky’s fashion-world friends) with law-nerd royalty (Judge Oetken’s friends). The legal and judicial celebrities in attendance included the officiant, Judge Alison Nathan (S.D.N.Y.), and her wife, Professor Meg Satterthwaite of NYU Law; Freedom To Marry founder Evan Wolfson, a major leader in the marriage equality movement; Jenner & Block’s appellate and Supreme Court practice leader, Paul Smith (who famously argued Lawrence v. Texas); and Professor Sarah Cleveland of Columbia Law, a leading international-law scholar (and owner of a pretty sweet Lawyerly Lair).
The Case Against:
– The NYT recently began putting big high-resolution versions of their wedding photos online (click on the one on this page). For most couples, thumbnail versions are [ahem] kinder, but these two look even better up-close, damn them. Stubble plus baldness plus life tenure is a delectable combination.
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Edwina Clarke and Thomas Gilliland Jr.
(Don’t buy them anything. Down with capitalism.)
The Case:
– Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale. There, that basically sums it up for this couple, who met there as undergraduates. She has a JD from the law school, and he’s a fourth-year medical student there.
– The bride recently completed a clerkship with Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the often-reversed liberal bad boy of the Ninth Circuit.
The Case Against:
– Speaking of incestuous clerkship webs, this bride is currently clerking for Judge Oetken, the SDNY judge from the couple above. This is a first for us; never before have a judge and his or her law clerk faced off in the same column for Legal Eagle Wedding Watch honors. We can only hope it will cause simmering tension and drama in chambers all year.
– There’s no enormous NYT photo, so we’re unable to comment on Edwina’s pore size relative to her boss’s.
Mitchell Reich and Patrick Pearsall
(Buy them an apron.)
The Case:
– Two lawyers, four Ivy League degrees, and a wedding officiated by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. Smack us before we hyperventilate! Patrick (the groom on the right) has an undergraduate degree (magna) and a JD from Columbia. He works in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department.
– His new husband graduated from Yale and Harvard Law, both magna. Mitchell was the first openly gay president of the Harvard Law Review and landed clerkships with Judge Garland on the DC Circuit and Justice Kagan at One First Street. Now he’s dispensing advice from DoJ’s super-prestigious Office of Legal Counsel.
The Case Against:
– They’re adorable, and this is another strong photo (zoom in on it here). But they lose points for having 93% less stubble and 100% less life tenure than Team Pratayot-Oetken.
The Verdict:
A strong field and a tough choice, but we think Team Reich-Pearsall have an ever-so-slight edge. Congratulations to them and to all the newlyweds. May your marriages be as rock-solid as your résumés!
Honorable Mention:
Jessica Johnston and Mark Taticchi (2, George Washington)
Lauren Sprott and David Leapheart (NYU, Skadden)
Jesse Ford and William Harbison II (2, Tennessee)
Rochelle Shoretz and Howard Past (Columbia)
Altaf Saadi and Sameer Ahmed (Yale)
Meredith Karp and Peter Franz (Harvard, Simpson Thacher)
Kirsten Boreen and Christopher Liedl (2, Penn, Harvard)
Rachel Lockwood and Sean Sherman (George Washington, Cravath)
Julie Siegel and Jordan Grossman (2, Harvard)
Gowri Ramachandran and Anshul Amar (Yale)
The Rest:
Hilary Sledge and Lateef Sarnor (Santa Clara)
Katherine Wheaton and Michael Warner (2, Michigan, Virginia, Kirkland)
Rachel Tofel and Cameron Ferrante (Northeastern)
Kaitlyn Collins and James Weingarten (Harvard, Williams & Connolly)
Eric Menkes and Sean Davis (Cardozo)
Danielle Sorken and Jacob Weisz (George Washington)
Dorna Moini and Troy Pospisil (USC)
Marlo Leach and Joseph Pecora (George Washington)
Tara Schoen and Erik Moss (Fordham)
Richard Costa and Guy Willey (Brooklyn)
Rebecca Shapiro and Dov Kogen (Harvard, Weil)
Rachel Hock and Paul Mysliwiec (Virginia)
Kendall Fox and Wilson Handler (Harvard, Wachtell)
Gregory Grasselena and Jeffrey Thornton (NYU)
Justine Goeke and Nicholas Connolly (Harvard, Quinn Emanuel)
Laura Peck and Robert Friedman (Georgetown)
Stefanie Lampf and Daniel Kennedy (Brooklyn)
Alison Goldberg and Gregory Kalikow (2, Hofstra, Florida Coastal)
Jennifer Sheldon-Sherman and Steven Munch (2, Stanford, Northwestern)
Katelyn Kiernan and Andrew Brooks Jr. (Fordham)
Neil Pirie and Michael Read (Brooklyn)
Megan Easley and Gregory Schmidt (Cornell)
Jaclyn Simon and Brian Whittaker (Penn)
Thea Cohen and David Yellin (2, Georgetown)
Jessica Prue and Kyle Rifkind (Stanford)
Shellie Weisfield and Matthew Freedman (NYU)
Andrea Leung and Shiva Goel (Virginia)
