Legal Tease Blog

The Myth of the Cool Partner

June 25, 2009 · by Legal Tease

It’s happened—after a few years and a few thousand billable hours, I’ve finally found him.  Sure, there have been loads of false starts along the way, but I think this time it’s for real: I’ve finally met the worst partner in the entire firm.  At first, I thought the winner might be Russ, the firm’s resident stone-faced robot and reigning Big Firm Savant.  But no.  Then, for obvious reasons involving hidden harnesses and coconut-flavored lube, I thought it could possibly be Ian, our favorite slave-driving Pervert, Esq.  Wrong again.  No, in the past few weeks, the true winner has revealed himself to be a creature far more insidious, more vile: the Cool Partner.  And I’m here to warn you—he’s a type more dangerous than you’ve ever imagined. [Read more]

Respect the Ring?

June 5, 2009 · by Legal Tease

Quick question: When you think of the average married, middle-aged guy slogging his way up the Big Law partner track, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?  A pasty, bloated puppet?  A bald head?  An over-worked, under-stimulated robot, bunking in at the office while the wife lies safely, if not securely, back at home?  Well, if the state of affairs in and around my firm is any indication, you’d be off the mark—way off the mark.  Because as far as I can tell lately, when it comes to  Big Law romance, a wedding ring is the new corporate aphrodisiac. [Read more]

Bring On That Client Contact

May 1, 2009 · by Legal Tease

I’ll admit, this is probably a bad idea.  But I’m sorry, I can’t help it any longer. I’ve had one in every other job I’ve ever had and it’s about time I had one at the firm.  I’m not going to be particularly picky about it.  I just want one—I need one.  Because it occurred to me last week, sitting in my giant bed in the middle of the night, alone, watching an old Law & Order marathon, if I don’t get the juices flowing soon, I’m going to dry up, die of boredom, and go the way of every leading lady lawyer the Dick Wolf gang has ever offered up—which is to say nowhere at best and crumpled in the trunk of a car at worst.  In other words, it’s time: I need a work crush.  Stat. [Read more]

They Can’t All Be Happy Endings

April 9, 2009 · by Legal Tease

I’m not completely delusional.  I popped my Big Law cherry long enough ago to realize that this job—this life—isn’t for the faint of heart.  I’ve come to expect that on any given day, the Big Law grind will leave me ravaged with exhaustion. It’ll leave me straining to remember the faces of my family and friends.  It’ll leave me ranting at inanimate objects in the middle of the night and craving even just the tiniest hit of sleep, sex, style, sanity.  What I didn’t quite expect, though, was that it would leave me lying naked on a table in the middle of a hotel with some guy’s latex-covered hand crammed halfway down my throat. [Read more]

The Deadliest Sin?

March 19, 2009 · by Legal Tease

A few things are bound to happen when you spend 76 straight hours closing a bond offering in a windowless office the size of a handicap toilet stall, eating nothing but stale candy corn from a nearby vending machine and fantasizing about unconsciousness.  First, you make peace with the fact that showers are for people far luckier than you.  Second, you start obsessively calculating what your hourly salary might be compared to, say, a teenage babysitter or a shoe-shine guy.  Maybe you start to hallucinate a bit.   Or wonder if it’s possible to slit your wrists with a stack of post-its.  And then, finally, you catch sight of your pale, desperate reflection in the desktop monitor and you realize the pathetic, obvious, predictable truth: You’re wildly jealous of the people your firm recently laid off. [Read more]

Life, Death, and Halter Tops

February 26, 2009 · by Legal Tease

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. [Read more]