Legal Eagle Wedding Watch: Vote for July's Couple of the Month!
Here it is: the breathlessly anticipated SCOTUS Smackdown! To be precise, we should note that not all of our July couples featured a Supreme Court clerk. But Gelman-Bash (Scalia), Ingber-Metlitsky (Roberts), and Bernstein-Foster (Kennedy) are all Elect-able pairings. We can't wait to see who gets to strut around One First Street with ATL's coveted Couple of the Month crown!
Vote for your favorite (or least un-favorite) Justice, vote for the best picture, or vote against the Elect by picking DeLeonardo-Frey or Goldfein-Holden -- just vote! Click on the link below for recaps on each couple.
When you're ready to make your choice, here's the poll:
1. Jennifer DeLeonardo and Adam Frey
(Buy them a cooling rack.)
The Case:
- Jennifer and Adam met at admitted students' weekend at UVA Law (read the story on their website). The bride was cum laude at Middlebury College; the groom was magna at Duke.
- They've found employment at prestigious law firms. Jennifer is in Sullivan & Cromwell's DC office; Adam is at Patton Boggs.
The Case Against:
- "Jennifer Marie DeLeonardo" doesn't sound like a Jewish name, but they were married by a cantor. Has another good Jewish boy fallen to a shiksa?
- The Patton Boggs attorney photos do a disservice to this proud genre. The firm went well beyond headshots or even torso shots; they've got every subject perched on a stool with most of the body showing, looming ominously over the camera, with awkward hand contortions all over the place. Adding to the full-frontal freakiness, the lighting isn't great, and some of the people -- particularly female associates -- have bizarre, pained, facial expressions (help me!). If Patton Boggs is trying to intimidate the crap out of us with the sausage fingers, crotch-grabbing, and young women in bondage, it's totally working.
2. Zina Gelman and John Bash III
(Buy them a bath towel.)
The Case:
- We'll start with a shot of the strong stuff. This groom is about to start the very plummiest of plummy legal jobs: a clerkship for Justice Antonin Scalia! John heads to One First Street from the chambers of DC Circuit Judge Brett M. Kavenaugh, but he left Judge Kavenaugh a little something to remember him by: his Bash-ful bride! Zina will begin clerking for the young judicial superstar later this month.
- With four Harvard degrees between them, John and Zina bleed a more prestigious shade of crimson than the rest of us. They met in Cambridge as undergrads (she graduated cum laude; he was summa) and continued their romance at HLS (she was cum laude; he was magna). A tipster e-mailed us with background:
Zina originally attended Columbia Law School, where she made the Columbia Law Review, but decided to transfer to Harvard when she also got onto Harvard Law Review (She took the competitions back-to-back; merely finishing both would be impressive, but getting onto both journals is amazing!).
Indeed. And we don't need any tipsters to alert us to Zina's extreme foxiness. What a beauty!
The Case Against:
- Typical overachievers, John and Zina didn't stop at planning their ceremony for 7/7/07 -- they also timed it to begin at 7 o'clock! All 777 guests then feasted on a seven-course dinner at which seven virgins were sacrificed, the Times did not report.
- LEWW has learned that John and Zina dabble in animal torture. If you're a sensitive soul, you may not want to click on this link. Tragic.
3. Rebecca Ingber and Anton Metlitsky
(Buy them a cake lifter.)
The Case:
- We're kicking things off the same way we began last week: with a SCOTUS-bound son of Harvard. Anton penciled in his wedding and honeymoon between a Garland clerkship and the real happiest day of his life -- when he'll report for work at One First Street as a clerk for Chief Justice Roberts!
- Anton met Bec, as she's called, when the two were 1Ls in the same section (read about it on their website). She now works for the State Department. He was summa at Penn for undergrad; she was cum laude at Yale.
The Case Against:
- That picture! It's a wee bit tawdry, and yet . . . [LEWW strokes chin] we pronounce it . . . delicious! The chest hair of the Elect is just the faintest bit silkier than that of the average man, no?
4. Deborah Bernstein and David Foster
(Buy them a reversible meat tenderizer.)
The Case:
- Yet another white, male, Harvardized, SCOTUS clerk takes a bride! David just finished a clerkship for Justice Anthony Kennedy (presumably David and Deborah received Kennedy's signature wedding gift: a waffle iron and some flip-flops).
- David is Harvard-Harvard (magna-magna!); Deborah was cum laude at Dartmouth and has a law degree from UVA (she's an associate at Bingham McCutchen in DC).
- Of the three Harvard-grad SCOTUS-clerk weddings we've featured in July (the others are here and here), this is our favorite picture, by a long shot -- and that's not just because Deborah looks like a typically fun, down-to-earth product of Dartmouth. (LEWW admits to having a prodigious school-crush on Dartmouth graduates. Point to almost any top-20 school, and we can name an ass or five in its stable of alumni. But we've never met a Dartmouth grad we didn't want to pour chocolate over and eat with a spoon.)
- Prompted by the seed-planting above, today LEWW announces a rule (but, like Justice Kennedy, we'll feel free to ignore it in later rulings): The less personal background divulged in a couple's public wedding website, the better. The Bernstein-Foster website is nice and restrained.
The Case Against:
- Intermarriage! Discuss. (Just to be clear: LEWW actually loves intermarriage, race-mixing, and a bunch of other things that are probably frowned upon at Maimonides High School. We only put this under The Case Against to fill the space.)
5. Briana Goldfein and Matthew Holden
(Buy them a brownie pan.)
The Case:
- The stunning bride went to Tufts and has a dual master's from Bank Street College. She's now a second-grade teacher in New York. The groom graduated with distinction (whatever that means -- speak Latin, please!) from Emory and went to law school at the University of Miami. Now he's an associate at Skadden.
- Briana and Matthew have a cute--if somewhat confusing--story involving JDate.com ("the undisputed leader in Jewish dating"), cancelled memberships, instant messages, and falling asleep with the computer on. Delve in if you dare. We also note that this is surely the most attractive couple in the history of online dating. JDate, get this picture on your site, stat!
The Case Against:
- Imagine that you're shoveling coal in a sweltering dungeon with a bunch of other drudges, and the schmuck next to you announces that he's moving to an upgraded dungeon: "I just married the slave-master's daughter, suckas!" That's how the associates on Matthew's hall at Skadden feel this week: Briana's dad is the head of Skadden's antitrust group.
Comments
John Bash, III has it on name alone.
(Where is Mr. FIRST! today?)
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 02:44 PM
STOP DOING THESE!!!
Posted by: tachyon | August 9, 2007 02:59 PM
Haven't we already seen all of these pretentious, uninteresting annoying motherfuckers?
Posted by: WTF??? | August 9, 2007 03:02 PM
Come on people. Can't believe Bash/Gelman is actually in the lead. Did you see what they did to that dog?!? (click the animal torture link). I couldn't possibly vote for someone that indulges in that stupid ass crap. They look like a total d-bag couple. More like Barf/Gelman.
I vote Bernstein/Foster.
Posted by: Where is your pride Bash? | August 9, 2007 03:12 PM
The Patton Boggs photos need their own thread. Seriously, they're the funniest things I've seen on this site in days. I think if I had showed up for a photo shoot and there was a stool, I'd find another firm. Seriously, these people look ridiculous.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 03:24 PM
My sincere apologies for using "seriously" twice.
3:24
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 03:25 PM
That Bash-Gelman wedding story is obnoxious. Which is worse: That they may have invited (and paid for) a bunch of irrelevant guests just to hit their magic number? Or that they may have arbitrarily withheld invitations from friends and family just to hit their magic number?
What social retards.
Posted by: Anon | August 9, 2007 03:41 PM
I think the 777 guests part was a joke. Still, that couple totally makes me want to barf.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 03:56 PM
It's the unusual-for-the-context hotness of Zina and the thought of dressing her up as, and calling her, "the Warrior Princess" that put them over the top.
Yes, I know it's not spelled the same. Don't ruin it for me. Hehe. Bash Xena!
Posted by: 10803 | August 9, 2007 04:00 PM
Lat - PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEEEEEEASE make the Patton Boggs site its own thread. It's pants-pissing funny. Plus, it feels OK to make fun of people's appearances when they've taken an extra step to try (unsuccessfully) to look better.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 04:04 PM
I think the point of these posts is to pick the couple that is likely the most pretentious, arrogant, self-loving, condescending, and out-of-touch-with-reality duo of them all, merely based on their pictures and bios. That epitomizes the ATL crowd. Therefore I pick couple 2, Gelman-Bash.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 04:19 PM
Someone needed to take the final step and nudge "contortions" guy, John Jonas, right off his stool from Patton Boggs. Looks a little tipsy - maybe from a few drinks?
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 04:32 PM
Someone needs to give "tachyon" (2:59pm) a tranquilizer pill.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 05:25 PM
3:02, like all the people who post a similar comment every time the monthly LEWW vote comes around, needs to learn to read. It's obvious from this post that we've seen all these couples before.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 05:28 PM
Bash is totally outkicking his coverage.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 05:51 PM
The Bash-Gelman week generated a lot of infighting with folks claiming that they were being bashed because they were conservative (for the record, I bashed because I don't like their photo not because I care at all about their politics). Nice to see UVa pulling in second place (but the Bash-Gelman contingent seems very loyal, so I expect this one to go to them in the end).
Posted by: Anonymous | August 9, 2007 09:56 PM
Holden looks like a douche
Posted by: douche | August 10, 2007 12:02 AM
Well, I have to say that I am not surprised that so many would vote for Foster even though Bernstein's credentials are so far below those of either Ingber or Gelman. After all, anyone who believes that abortion is a constitutionally protected right grounded in the "mysteries of human life" (sorry, still can't get over that one) is bound to earn quite a few votes in leftist circles.
That said, I still find it hard to believe that anyone out there would vote for #1 or #5. This cannot be explained by politics alone. #1 and #5 have qualifications that are so many orders of magnitude below their opponents that one wonders how they are featured here in the first place (am I the only one who finds something purely bizarre with a prestige contest that puts double-Harvard SCOTUS clerks against a Skadden associate from Emory and the University of Miami? LEWW has a sense of humor.) Sadly, it appears that roughly 30% of people vote not for the most impressive couple, but for the couple whose resume makes them feel better about themselves.
Posted by: Fed Soc | August 10, 2007 12:17 AM
Need the Patton Boggs photo thread.
I vote for #2--- Best combined pedigree. Definately a TBWCG.
Posted by: anon | August 10, 2007 08:52 AM
Fed Soc. I voted for couple 5. The guy who pulls himself up from Miami to the pinnacle of Biglaw by bagging the (admittedly hot) daughter of a Skadden department head can only be described as truly brilliant.
Quit taking yourself so seriously. I know that's hard for right-wing nut jobs.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 10, 2007 09:03 AM
Skadden is not "the pinnacle of Biglaw." In NYC, that would be Wachtell. Skadden is considered an unselective firm that attracts the students from the bottom of the class from truly top school like Harvard (whereas SCOTUS clerks are at or near the top 1% even at HLS).
Posted by: Fed Soc | August 10, 2007 09:39 AM
Hmm. Fed Soc = John Bash III? Discuss amongst yourselves.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 10, 2007 10:03 AM
If you think the Patton Boggs pictures are weird, check out this "stool pic" and the other attorney bios on this site: http://www.groom.com/_attorneys/hassel.html
Lat, how about a thread about weirdest firm websites?
Posted by: website bios | August 10, 2007 10:46 AM
The Groom photos are cool. They each look like action figures. The reason the PB phtos are so lame is that they are TRYING to look, I don't know - what's the adjective they were going for? Matronly? Judicial? The Groom photos succeed at acheiving their intended look - quirky, light-hearted, etc.
Ditto on firm websites. Let's bash on the non-lawyer marketing phonies!
Posted by: Anonymous | August 10, 2007 10:56 AM
The Groom photos are neat. Who'd have thought -- an ERISA firm with a personality!
Posted by: Anonymous | August 10, 2007 11:35 AM
11:35 -- I'm an ERISA attorney, and I can't believe it myself :)
Posted by: groom website | August 10, 2007 11:54 AM
Fed Soc, I wanted you to know that I voted for #5 just to piss you off.
I have a question that is somewhat serious, but mostly intended to make fun of Fed Soc. Is the purpose of the Couple of the Month contest to pick the most distinguished couple, or I dunno, for fun? If it is the latter -- which would definitely be insane for a legal blog, which should cater only to the elitist of the elites -- then who cares? I know that Laurie's commentaries always focus on the bios of the couple, but I had gotten the impression that most of those comments were sarcastic in nature.
Last comment, please don't stop including these posts on ATL. Although I'm a big fan of what ATL has accomplished in the area of associate salaries (thanks Lat, from a Texas associate), Wedding Watch and making fun of attorney bios is a nice break from the salary, perk, and recruiting posts, which mostly make me depressed about working in Biglaw.
Posted by: TGIF | August 10, 2007 12:02 PM