But…it’s not working out so well for most of you so far.  The disposable ladies aren’t lining up on their knees like you thought they might.  One of you even reached out recently to Above the Law to ask—nay demand—some guidance as to how a BigLaw dudebro could cut through all the nonsense and just “find pretty, young, not-too-intelligent slam pieces on the reg.” Elie, bless his heart, advised that all you need to do is to basically target cutters with daddy issues.  Decent advice, especially if you happen to live near your local mental ward—but I think Elie missed the mark.  He neglected to mention the crucial, the obvious, the only way the average BigLaw Bro will ever have a real shot at slamming his way through the prettiest, not-too-intelligent-est “slam pieces” on the market:

Be an investment banker.

Or a hedge-fund guy.  Or a TV producer.  Or a cowboy.  Pretty much anything besides a lawyer.  Because, I hate to break it to you boys, but a young, hot, genuine grade-A “slam piece” (i.e. one trained in NY or LA) views a male lawyer with about as much interest as she views the Barneys Warehouse Sale: It beats shopping at Target, but it’s still mostly hideous, mildly shameful and a far cry from the real thing.

And this, guys, is why you have more in common with lady lawyers than you thought. For years, women lawyers have been presumptively dismissed—mostly by you—as hideous beast-looking mole people, unloveably argumentative shrews, or emasculating wage-toppers. But that sword that you’re so quick to whip out to shred us to pieces cuts both ways, boys.  The existence of a penis doesn’t change the fact that you’re still a lawyer.  You still work until midnight every night.  You still live your life in billable six-minute increments.  You still spend your days doing the work no one else wants to do.  Yes, you may occasionally be invited to sit at the big table, but it’s only to make sure that the guy who owns the big table doesn’t accidentally set it on fire.  You’re not the Masters of the Universe; you just work for them.

And this, of course, is the real reason why premium slam pieces don’t want BigLaw Bros: Slam pieces don’t date the staff.  They date the boss.  And even if you’re a partner at Cravath, you’re still just a glorified butt boy for some 31-year-old managing director or CEO.  Sure, you might be making a million bucks a year (maybe two!), but when it comes to the top slam pieces, that’s the floor, not the ceiling.  As a very wise man once never said: “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?  A billion dollars.”  And why would you expect a top slam piece to settle for anything less?

Think about it:  You’re a 22-year-old girl.  You’re stunning.  You have a body like a photoshopped Greek statue and a brain to match.  You’ve decided, because you have either so little or so much self-worth, that your best shot at “success” is to dig some gold and become an occasional accessory-cum-trampoline for the highest roller you can find.  You know that the clock’s working against you on this one.  So, why would you give up your most valuable, most precious, pre-Botox years for some bloated billable hour jockey who barely pulls in six figures working 20 hours a day looking for typos in some boring contract that’s going to make his i-banker clients more money in 30 seconds than he’ll ever see in his lifetime? I mean, sweet Christ, my last whirlwind romance involved a guy who drank wine out of a box and even I don’t want to hit that.

So, what’s a BigLaw Bro who still wants a decent slam piece to do?  Is all hope really lost?

Well, that depends.  What do you actually want here, guys?  Are you looking for regular but emotionally noncommittal sex with a pretty woman who will act like she adores you?  Try an escort service.  You can afford it and you don’t even have to pay for bottle service.

Or are you looking for a woman who will throw herself at you and might actually adore you just because you’re a lawyer—a so-called lawyer groupie?  Well, let me know when you find one.  Because “lawyer groupie” is nothing more than a myth made up by male lawyers to give them hope that any collection of civilian “groupies” would find them sexually appealing.  Famous lawyers may indeed have groupies but that’s because…they’re famous, not because they have that super-sexy J.D. tucked into their pocket. Now, there is a legitimate group of people who tend to find lawyers (and yes, sometimes, their salaries) fascinating: law students.  So, sure, go troll the law schools for action if you must, but just don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re some sort of ersatz rockstar.

Or are you, as I suspect most of us are, just a little tired, a little lonely and looking for someone cute and cool to have a little fun with at the end of the day—and maybe more?   Well, keep on looking, honey—she’s out there for you.  Really.  She might not look like a model, she may be—gasp!—as smart as or—gasp! again!—smarter than you, but I’m sure you’ll be able to tolerate these flaws.  And more importantly, she’ll tolerate yours.  She may even love you for them.

But if you’re still holding out for the BigLaw dudebros’ self-proclaimed Holy Grail of female companionship—the grade-A slam piece—well, all I can say is good luck and godspeed, kiddo.  Because remember, if you’re going to unapologetically catalogue certain women as nothing more than “pieces” for you to “slam,” don’t be surprised when they whip out a catalogue of their own—and you’re not in it.

Happy hunting, boys.

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Excerpts of this essay were also published today on Above the Law and Jezebel.  Check them out here and here!

[The excerpt below is part of an article that was written by yours truly and originally published on

The end of the year is right around the corner, folks. And if you’re an associate working in biglaw, you know what that brings: partner drunkscapades at the firm’s holiday party, reluctant realizations that you’ve spent yet another year trading whatever straggling shards of youth you have left for a bucketful of billable hours, and … year-end associate reviews!

Yes, it’s once again report card time for biglaw associates, that time of year when your supervisors weigh in on your progress —or lack thereof— on the path to partnership. But what do these reviews really mean? What hidden messages lurk within your supervisors’ vague appraisals? Are you on the way up or out?

Below you’ll find translations of five common strains of associate review-speak to help you figure out if you should pat yourself on the back —or watch your back— as this year wraps up.

Start translating over at this post’s original home on TechnoLawyer’s BigLaw newsletter.

(A)  Get up; brush your teeth; spend 10-15 minutes prepping your face, hair and bod; get dressed in the dry-clean-only version of the same basic outfit and shoes that you would wear if you were going to the park for a weekend stroll; and leave for work.

or

(B)  Get up; brush your teeth; spend 45-75 minutes prepping your face, hair and bod; get dressed in the diametrical opposite of the outfit and shoes that you would wear if you were going to the park for a weekend stroll; and leave for work.

In other words, you’re either (A) a man or (B) already screwed before you get out the door.  Because if you have two X chromosomes and work at a law firm, you’re always going to be inherently less productive than your XY counterparts by sheer virtue of the fact that you have to get ready for work every morning.   Even if you couldn’t care less about your appearance.

Unconvinced?  Let’s take a look at how the actual numbers shake out.

First, let’s assume that we’re talking about the average female and male lawyers here.  Yes, I acknowledge that some ladies—lawyers and otherwise—treat every day like it’s just another day on the pageant circuit, complete with a daily three hours’ worth of self-tanner, hair extensions and HD leg makeup.  I am not talking about these women.  I’m also not talking about that rare breed of male lawyer types who tend to live exclusively in Los Angeles spend more time, money and product on their daily grooming than the typical drag queen on a two-show day.  I’m talking about the average law firm drone, getting ready for work on the average weekday.

So, let’s break it down: If you’re a guy, whether you consider yourself appearance-conscious or not, you pretty much run through the following routine every morning before you head out the door:

• splash some water on your face
• shave, maybe slap on some aftershave
• comb your fingers through your hair with some water or a bit of product to tamp down any strays
• run a deodorant stick under your arms
• get dressed in some basic iteration of non-denim pants, button-down shirt and flat black or brown shoes (maybe you add a jacket, maybe a sweater; either way, not much to think about)

If you’re a woman, you pretty much run through the following routine every morning:

• splash some water on your face, followed by gentle exfoliating cleanser, toner and preventative spot treatment
• apply some combo of undereye serum, facial moisturizer, sunscreen, foundation primer, foundation, undereye concealer and a light dusting of powder
• curl your eyelashes with a cold metal squeegee prod, avoid puncturing eyelid in process, fail 40% of the time, attend to punctured eyelid
• apply basic eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara and blush (remembering to blend, blend, blend)
• brush, highlight, tweeze, trim and fill in any spare patches in your eyebrows
• spritz your hair with volumizing root spray while using a round brush and blow dryer to remove stray kinks, bumps and frizz caused by sleeping
• heat up curling iron and/or flat iron and apply to one-inch sections of hair until entire head covered and apply anti-frizz shine serum to ends of hair (or, in the alternative: style hair into twist, ponytail or other simple updo)
• locate earrings in overnight jewelry-cleaner soak and place on ears, along with matching necklace, rings, bracelets or other trinkets
• apply perfume on pulse points
• run a deodorant stick under your arms
• get dressed in a work-appropriate business casual ensemble, making sure to avoid cleavage, hemlines, fabrics styles, cuts, colors or trends that could be inappropriately distracting, whorey, casual or generally offensive to anyone working in a 2-block radius of your office building

Even if you kill a couple items above, the average female lawyer is still talking about 30 minutes minimum to look presentable enough for a day at the firm. And that time between “unconscious” and “presentable” is where the ladies take the productivity hit.  That extra hour or so has to come from somewhere.  If you get to work one hour later than your male coworkers, you’ll lose an hour of billable-hours productivity, not to mention the reputational loss.  But if you make it up on the front end and just wake up one hour earlier, you’ll lose productivity on the sleep-and-recharge-your-brain front—and your better-rested male coworkers will have that much of an advantage over you. Either way, you’re losing literally hundreds of (potentially) billable and/or sleepable hours a year just to get out of the door in the morning in the most minimally presentable way required of your gender.

And that’s the key:  If you’re a woman working in a big law firm, you are indeed required (officially or unofficially) to put in a minimum amount of not-so-minimal grooming.  Not all women lawyers necessarily want to arrive for work decked out (most of us would show up wearing no makeup and yoga clothes if we could), but if we don’t, we stand out—in the wrong way.  Our male counterparts just don’t have to worry about this—it takes them the same amount of time to get ready for work as it does to get ready for a date or a yoga class.  In fact, they would actually have to work hard to not look put together in the morning.  And that’s where the ladies lose out.  To quote the inestimable Elie Mystal, “ (X) getting dressed pretty to go to work minus (Y) getting dressed to go to yoga = productive time women lose because they are women.  Or X – Y = XXs getting screwed.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking (I always do!):  This is idiotic. Women go through this daily grooming crap to satisfy their own warped egos.  They just want to impress men at the firm, or each other.  Being a successful lawyer has nothing to do with how much time you spend doing your damn hair.  Hell, a woman lawyer could roll out of bed, run through the “guy” morning routine from above and be just as good of a lawyer as anyone else. And you know what?  Yes, she absolutely could.  She could be a great lawyer.  Too bad no one would ever know, though, because she wouldn’t last long at a firm—assuming she’d even be hired in the first place, which she probably wouldn’t be.

Don’t believe me?  Let’s run through a quick little scenario—and this is for the ladies out there who would never, ever, EVER spend (or admit to spending) more than six minutes getting ready in the morning, because, first of all, they’re not that superficial, thank you very much, and second of all, they know that they’re damn good lawyers, so it doesn’t matter what they look like.  In other words, this is for you, Ugly Deluded Liars.

You’re a woman who’s been working at a big firm for three years. When you first started at the firm, you liked to put yourself together in a way that made you feel cute, but now, a few years later, you wear nothing but four shapeless grey outfits you keep in rotation in your closet and you stopped playing with new hair and makeup looks long ago.  You barely leave your office and resent having to spend any time doing hair or makeup in the morning, but you feel that you have to, because there’s that other third-year in your department, the one who’s not particularly attractive but always seems to look so polished and well-groomed…and gets staffed on the bigger deals. You feel that you have to keep up.  So, you still spend a good half hour every morning trying to look presentable, but the effort is half-assed and you just wind up losing time that you could’ve spent working or sleeping and you still look like a frumpy shell of your former self.

And really, that’s all that matters here.  The effort. Whether or not you’re naturally attractive, if you look like a frumpy, ill-groomed schlub, your co-workers and clients will think less of you for it—and, conversely, will respect you more if you can pull off looking polished, no matter how overworked and underslept (and unattractive) you may be.  And if you’re a woman, pulling it off is just harder—and yes, means you’re going to lose some productivity somewhere, probably when it comes to sleeping.

So, the next time a woman lawyer admits to you that she spends an hour getting ready for work every morning, or the next time you notice how fresh and polished that young associate down the hall always looks, even after she’s been on an all-nighter, instead of dismissing her as a vapid, narcissistic lunatic, maybe cut her some slack.  Or better yet, fire up that curling iron.  You could probably use it.

An excerpt of this essay is also being published on everyone’s favorite legal tabloid, Above the Law.  Make sure to check it out here!

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In the past six days alone, I’ve heard not one, not two, but three anecdotes from or about lady lawyers and their brushes with cougardom.  The ages of the women in question ranged from 41 to—wait for it—25.  Not one is married.  Not one is dating.  Not one is what you might consider on the prowl or overtly sexy.  All have law degrees.  And they’re certainly not the only single female lawyers on the unwitting receiving end the “cougar” treatment.   Everyone from yours truly to, yes, the newest ladies of the SCOTUS bench, that notorious hotbed of sexy-time shenanigans, have been slapped with the cougar card lately—whether earned or not.

Which raises the question: Does having a law degree automatically make you a cougar—regardless of your age or personality?   Well, if the guys keeping score in and around Big Law are any indication, it looks like the answer, like it or not, is hell yes. 

Let’s take, for example, the conversation I had last Monday night at a downtown dive bar with my writer friend, Linus, a distractingly hot, single, 28-year-old Texas transplant.  Linus was telling me about his recent night out with a mutual acquaintance, a white collar litigation lawyer also in her late twenties.  Apparently, the sparks were flying from both sides all night but when I asked Linus if he wanted to see her again, he demurred.  Why?  And I quote:

“I just don’t think I’m up for the cougar thing.” 

Cougar thing?  Huh?  “But didn’t you guys graduate in the same year?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I mean, she seems older.”  He rolled his eyes. “Like, she has a secretary. And knows all this shit about trials and shit.”

“That’s probably because she’s a trial lawyer.”

Now he pointed his finger at me—he had just remembered the clincher, apparently.  “And she was wearing a really tight suit!  Or, like, the bottom part of a suit.”

“A skirt?”

“Yeah.”  He leaned back and folded his arms.  Case closed.  Cougar.

So, there you have it:  According to this enlightening discourse, if you have a legal secretary and wear skirts, you might as well be 78 years old and are probably going to be played by Kim Cattrall in the movie of your life.  Assuming Courteney Cox has already thrown herself off the side of a mountain.

Now, this conversation with Linus was obviously, completely absurd—mostly because it actually happened.  I would’ve chalked it up to Hot Guy Moron Syndrome if only two iterations of the same conversation hadn’t played themselves out within a week of that one.  In the second one, the cougar in question was a 25-year-old IP associate at my firm whose roommate’s waiter-actor boyfriend had generously offered to set her up the night before with a couple of early-twenties-type actors from his restaurant who were “down with bagging cougars.” And the third involved a confession from a hugely successful 41-year old in-house lawyer friend of mine that her latest eHarmony date—with an unemployed guy in his late 40s—ended with the smiling reassurance from the guy “not to worry” because he’s “actually really into cougars.” 

Shockingly, neither woman found the guys’ professed cougar tolerances particularly galvanizing.  Probably because neither of them considered themselves to be cougars.  Perhaps it’s because they, like me, always assumed that “cougar” was nothing but a relative age categorization.  A woman was in cougar territory if she was dating, or looking to date, a guy at least, say, 7 or so years younger than she was. And she probably had to be at least 35 to even be considered for cougardom in the first place. It didn’t matter if she was a lawyer, or an actress or a homeless person.  “Cougar” just meant “older”—or, more to the point, “old.”

But now, all bets seem to be off when it comes to categorizing cougars.  If Linus and his ilk are any indication, the cougar brand isn’t just about age anymore.  It comes with a little more baggage this time.  Could it be that “cougar” is the new code for “successful woman”?  Or is “cougar” really just a euphemism for “sugar mama”?  Or maybe it just means “a sexy woman who knows what she wants”—which is to say, a sexy woman?  At the very least, if being a cougar is more about being assertive or “together” than being merely “older,” well, then, sorry lady JDs out there, but you’ve already got one foot in the cougar pit, even if you’re only in your early twenties. 

After all, would my hot friend Linus have dismissed the lit associate who is the exact same age as he is as a cougar if she, say, worked at the Gap and didn’t have a secretary?  Or, if the 25-year-old IP associate was a waitress instead of a lawyer, would her fellow twenty-something waiters still consider her a cougar—a bagging-worthy one, much less?  The law degree has to be the tipping point here.  How else, for the love of God, could a woman go from “single twenty-something” to “cougar” in the eyes of someone who’s basically the same age as she is?   So there you go, ladies: It looks like your law degrees weren’t worn out enough from making your asses look fat; now they’re working overtime to make you honorary old, desperate predators to boot.

If you’re harboring any doubts about the JD-cougar connection, consider my own horrifying indoctrination into the world of accused cougardom—which, like most things that end badly, starts with some ill-advised naked time on the floor of my office with a certifiable lunatic.  And only goes downhill from there.

If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you’ve run across my dear old Big Law buddy Ben, who made his indelible mark on my life by co-starring in the liquor-soaked debauchery that played out on the floor of my office a while back, followed by his dispatch of a prize-worthy bouquet of whore flowers to my office, a profession of (semi-) love, and…an offer to be his mistress that ended, as one might expect, with a series of drunken, hysterical voicemails left from his now-wife’s coat closet during a pumpkin-carving party she was throwing with her girlfriends.  You know, the usual.

One wrinkle of this charming story that you haven’t heard yet is that during Ben’s final mistress proposal/ breakdown, when I asked him why he thought it better to try to engage me as a mistress rather than, say, end the relationship with the girlfriend whom he clearly couldn’t stand to pursue one with me, this happened:

“It’s just that, it’s just that…I can’t.  You…you…you have a different background,” he slurred, closet-bound.

“Yeah, how’s that, Ben?”

“It’s just that I’ve only been with [the girlfriend] and, like, one other person.  And and and I mean that’s okay, right??”  Borderline sobbing now.

“Sure Ben.  It’s great.”

“But you come along and you’re like this big cougar from I don’t know where and you have this amazing apartment and it’s— it’s— it’s not REAL, you know?  I can’t.  I don’t know.”  By now he was fully sobbing.  Or maybe his phone just got tangled in a parka in the closet.  I couldn’t tell.   

I would relay the rest of the conversation, but it just gets stupider from there—if that’s even possible.  I only bring it up now because, of the (many) (disturbing) things that stuck with me from that whole Capra-esque slice of my romantic history, Ben’s calling me a cougar stung the most at the time—especially since he wasn’t saying it to be mean; he was just stating a (perceived) fact.  But still—a cougar—no, wait, a “big” cougar??  WTF?? I was 27.  Ben was 25.  How could I be a cougar with those specs?  Because I’d “been with” more people than Ben in my lifetime?  Because I had a “nice apartment”?   It was a slap in the face. I’d dated guys who were a year or two younger than me before; no one had ever accused me of being a “big cougar” then.  But then again, I didn’t have a law degree back then.

Of course now, long after the days of the Ben drama, I’ve been called a lot of things that you wouldn’t want to send home in a card to mom—and cougar doesn’t even scratch the top 10.  At least I can say that I’m in good company, though.  Because if you’re a lady with a law degree, you’re going to be slapped with a lot of labels over the course of your career.  Nerd. Bitch. Workaholic. Snob. Prude. Bore. Whore. Downer. Classist.  Purist.  Narcissist.  Some will be mostly false; most will be partly true.  And yes, it looks like you can now also add “cougar” to that list, even if you’re barely old enough to drink.  Sure, you can try to ignore it, you can try to embrace it, but there’s no use fighting it. At the very least, given the latest crop of connotations attached to it, you might as well consider it a compliment.

An excerpt of this essay is also being published on everyone’s favorite legal tabloid, Above the Law.  Make sure to check it out here!

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[The excerpt below is part of an article that was written by yours truly and originally published on TechnoLawyer's BigLaw newsletter on October 12, 2010]

If you work in a large law firm, you’ve probably felt it lately — that ineffable shiver in the air, that growing sense of anticipation. It’s that time of year again — the first-year associates are arriving. Any minute now, hordes of fresh, hungry first-years will flood the halls of your firm, armed with nothing but hope and a closet full of new dress pants. Some of them will be married or otherwise attached — for now, at least. Most won’t be. And that’s where things get complicated — and interesting!

See, if you’re a single biglaw lawyer, you’re well aware that your options for finding a date, much less a mate, are pretty much limited to people working within a 11-foot radius of your office building. But even if you find yourself face to face with a live target, it’s tough to make a connection. Part of the problem is that for every six minutes of billable time you get under your belt, you lose a proportional percentage of what the kids call “game.” By the time you’re, say, a sixth-year associate, you’ve lost absolutely all ability to flirt. Every last bit. At best, your efforts scream “Avoid Me”; at worst, they scream “Unabomber.” Either way, you need some help. So, if you want to improve your flirting skills, and score a date among the junior ranks at your firm without getting yourself rejected, or worse, in trouble, study these six rules.

Read up on the rules at this post’s original home on TechnoLawyer’s BigLaw newsletter.

Now, arguments over appropriate sartorial choices for the workplace, breast-related or otherwise, are nothing new.  Panels have been convened over them.  Entire websites have been launched about them.  Lawsuits have been waged because of them.  But when the argument focuses on the degree of exposure—or lack thereof—of female breasts in the workplace, especially in a legal workplace, that’s when tempers really start to get out of control.

I can tell you’re already starting to get a little hot under the collar, aren’t you?  OK, look, let’s all just calm down, take a deep breath, and take a tour of some photographic evidence.

First, let’s start with my law school friend, Ray—or more specifically, Ray’s Facebook page.  Ray, a married, good-natured father of three, works in Big Law out in the Midwest and tends to limit his personal Facebook “updates” to a picture of his kids or an occasional comment about football.  So, I admit that I was a little taken aback when Ray posted a link to Fox News’ recent interview with Ines Sainz, the curvaceous Mexican news anchor who has been embroiled in an NFL locker room sexual harassment scandal in the past couple of weeks.  The link included a picture of Ines in a low-cut, revealing blouse and Ray had noted above it, “Maybe if you looked down at your chest you’d see why you’re in this situation.  Dress professionally and people will treat you that way.”  In other words, “You were asking for it, slut.”

Within a matter of hours, after a slew of vehement comments on his post—some agreeing with him, most disagreeing—and no doubt a phone call from his wife, Ray deleted the entire post and has been silent ever since.  But even though his original comment is gone, its impact is still there.   And his opinion is hardly unique.  Like Ray—an intelligent, thoughtful Big Law attorney—men across America looked at images of the same gorgeous woman wearing a low-cut blouse to her job and agreed that her neckline was so wildly, hideously, horrifyingly inappropriate, that she basically deserved to be treated anything other than “professionally.”

Incidentally, the picture that started it all:

So, do you agree with Ray?  Is Ines’s neckline so absurdly inappropriate for her job that it fully, necessarily precludes anyone from treating her “professionally”?  And what if she was an attorney rather than a TV anchor?  Would that make her neckline choice even more inappropriate—and to what end?  To being harassed?  Being fired?   Bottom line: Where’s the line?  At what point do you cross the (neck)line from “working woman” to “working girl”?

And does the analysis change if you’re a lawyer?  Does it matter if you’re working at a firm?  It’s not uncommon for defenders of business-formal law firm dress codes to cite the argument that if a client is paying a lawyer $1000 an hour, they want that person to “dress like a lawyer.”  But if you’re a lawyer with breasts, especially large ones, what does “dressing like a lawyer” actually mean?  Cover ’em up at all costs?  Don nothing but high-button blouses and crew neck sweaters?  And if you insist on clinging to this argument, let me ask you:  When was the last time you had any face-to-face contact with your clients, regardless of what you were wearing?  (I’m talking to you, $1000-an-hour Big Law types.)  As any Big Law drone knows, there aren’t exactly roving hordes of clients storming the halls on any given day.   So, if you’re sitting in a 10×10 office for 20 hours a day with little to no other human, much less client, contact, why should it matter how plunging your neckline is?   Hell, why shouldn’t you sit in your office topless if you’re alone and it makes you feel comfortable?  As long as you’re hitting your billables, who cares?

Well, quite a few people, apparently.   I’d like to dismiss the obsession with workplace cleavage as the harmless infatuation of a few lonely, terrified, insecure men, but that couldn’t be further from reality.  Remember our Facebook friend, Ray?  Most of the she-was-asking-for-it comments were actually left by women, most of them lawyers. In other words, if only two things are crystal clear from Ray’s comment war and the latest breast-focused media circus that inspired it, it’s that everyone has an opinion about how your breasts should look at work—but no one has an actual answer.

So, what’s a female lawyer with breasts and a closet full of plunging necklines to do?  Well, let’s take this to the next level and start figuring out which of our lady lawyer peers—or more specifically, which of their necklines—cross the line from seemly to scandalous.  Yes, it’s time for a poll.

Below are a few (safe for work) images of actual or fictional lady lawyers (one of whom may or may not be writing this right now) in flagrante décolletage at work or at work-related events.   Clearly, they all thought that they looked appropriate enough—but what do you think?  Take the poll under each image to see how your opinion stacks up against your fellow cleavage police readers.

(And if anonymous decapitated boob shots leave you deeply unsatisfied, click on the link after the poll to find out who’s lurking above each of these necklines.)

Judge away.

View This Poll

View This Poll

View This Poll

View This Poll

View This Poll

View This Poll

Want to know who’s hiding above these necklines?  Click here for the reveal.  (And don’t worry, all images are safe for work.  For better or worse…)

I kept pressing her—what was it about this job offer that was making her so torn?  The (awesome, non-billable) hours?  The (cooler) people?  The (less mind-numbing) work?  Finally, after four Belvedere-tonics, she leaned across the table and lowered her voice.

“It’s just…I’m just afraid…”  She darted her eyes around and leaned in closer, lowering her eyes.

“I’m just afraid of what it’ll be like to feel…”  she whispered, “…poor.”

The offered salary of the new in-house gig?  $120,000 a year.

And now, a couple of weeks later, I’m still not sure what’s more disturbing: the fact that this friend—a worldly, educated, smart, able person—truly thinks that a single lawyer living in New York City on $120,000 could feel “poor” — or that fact that she’s absolutely right.

Now, if you’ve been spending much time in and around the legal interwebs lately, you’ve heard the controversial argument that earning $250K a year in this country makes you a lot of things—except “rich.” You either agree (Greetings to you, JD/MBA types living in Manhattan, Los Angeles and San Francisco!) or you vehemently, vehemently disagree and think that Elie anyone who thinks otherwise is a naïve, classist prick (Greetings to you…people living everywhere else.)

But the Caitlin question–the $120,000 Question—has nothing to do with the plush, glittering bar that you have to hit on your W-2 to feel rich; it has to do with the scabby, feces-strewn line that you have to stumble across in your mind to feel poor.  And, if you’re a young, professional type living in New York City today making $120,000 or less, you’ve probably got some scab residue on those scuffed shoes, my friend.

Think about it: What does feeling “poor” mean to you?  No, really, before you lunge for my throat, just step back for a second and ask yourself:  What would actually make you feel “poor”?  Worrying about how you’re going to pay your rent?  Living in a small, crappy apartment?  Being a perpetual renter instead of a buyer?  Feeling that you can’t afford to have kids?  Not being able to eat the kind of food you want on a regular basis?  Never taking vacations…at least not ones that involve planes?  Or, to step back even further, would it just be feeling that you can’t keep pace with your friends and neighbors?  Feeling that 90% of the people you come across on a daily basis, no matter what you may have in the bank, are way out of your financial league?

Well, if you’re a single lawyer living in New York City on $120,000 a year, there’s a good chance this describes you to a tee, for better or worse.

Now, fine, let’s clarify a couple of things:  I’m not saying that a person making $120,000 a year in New York is living on the so-called poverty line, collecting food stamps and selling blood and semen to pay for heat.  Living in poverty and feeling poor are not the same thing.  I’m also not saying that if someone who’s now making, say, $12,000 a year, suddenly made ten times that, that they would consider themselves poor.  I’m saying that feeling poor is on par with feeling, say, ugly or untalented: it’s relative.  And egalitarian posturing be damned, the feeling can be justified even when you’re making six figures—especially when you’re living in New York City.

Not convinced?  Let’s look at some actual numbers.

Again, we’re dealing with a single lawyer living in New York City making $120,000.  Let’s get taxes and other payroll-type fun out of the way and you’re bringing home around $5,100 a month in salary.  Now take out about $550 a month for fixed-cost utility-type expenses ($160 a month for cable/internet, $120 for phone(s), $180 for heat/electricity, $90 for a monthly Metrocard).  Now, student loans—because remember, we’re talking about a lawyer here.  Law school ain’t cheap, kids. Let’s use Caitlin as an example: After about three years of Big Law paychecks and paying down as much debt as she could swing every month, she still has about $80,000 of her original $180,000 in loans left to pay off.  Let’s have her keep on paying, say, $1000 a month on that (which, by the way, means she’ll still be on the hook for about the next decade or so).  Now we’ve got about $3,550 a month left to spend on rent, food and…everything else.  And here’s where the “poor” part comes in.

See, being not-homeless in New York City is expensive. Like, $2700 if you want to live by yourself in a semi-decent studio in a semi-decent building in a semi-decent neighborhood expensive—$3200, easy, if you want a small 1-bedroom with the same specs.  Now, please hold your commentary, Guy Who Lives In a Walk-Up Studio In Outer Brooklyn For $750 a Month.  When I say “New York City,” yes, I mean Manhattan.  Why?  Because, even if you won’t admit it to your friends back home in western Ohio, you know it as well as I do:  It’s just better.  It’s the heart of the city, it’s the heart of the action.  It’s why you move to New York.  It’s the fantasy.  And just like no one fantasizes about driving a 1983 Camry when they grow up, no one aspires to live in a tenement in an outer borough.  Now, sure, is the premium you pay to live in the same apartment in Manhattan that you could get in the Bronx for 1/4 the price soul-strangling and ridiculous?  Of course.  Would you still pay it if you could?  Hell, yes.  And that’s the point.  If you could.  Which, unless you have a fabled rent-controlled illegal sublet or  $30–$50 grand a year ready to spend on rent alone, you can’t.  And this “can’t” group includes our girl, Caitlin—who, based on the math in our example, now has the choice between (1) eating every day and living in an overpriced dump in a crappy part of town or (2) not eating every day and living in an overpriced dump in a slightly-less-crappy part of town.  Oh, and in our little hypo, she still hasn’t bought anything yet this month.

And just to drive it home, we have to remember that Caitlin, a finance lawyer, works with Big Law lawyers, bankers and hedge-fund types all day.  Almost all of her friends are Big Law lawyers or bankers or hedge-fund types.  Now, calm down, they’re not the famed super-rich of New York, the Gossip Girls or Bloombergs or anything even near it; but, even the ones who’ve only been working for a few years tend to make $120,000 in a matter of months, if not weeks.  And with the non-existent discretionary income that Caitlin will have left every month in our example so far, she won’t be able to eat at the same restaurants that they do, shop at the same stores, drink at the same bars, share the same social experiences.  After a while, she might even stop hanging out with them, because she’ll be tired of begging off before dinner, tired of being embarrassed that she can’t afford to keep up with them, even once in a while.  Even though she fully knows that she’s a smart, accomplished, self-sufficient person, she might to start to feel like she’s coming up short, financially, compared to 90% of the people she comes into contact with in her life—again, in her life.  At the very least, she might start to feel like she’s in a different financial league than almost everyone she knows.  In other words, she’ll start to feel poor.

Now, is she poor?  Well, not by any national standard, no.  But again, we’re not talking about national standards.  We’re not talking about objective metrics.   We’re not even talking about plain old vanilla envy—of just wishing that you have more than you have because you’ve seen someone else who does (because if we were, I challenge you to find literally one sane person in New York City—hell, in any city—who doesn’t fit that bill).  No, we’re talking about comparing yourself to your peers.  And when you’re a former Big Law lawyer in New York City making $120,000, most of those people will have more money than you do, plain and simple.   That doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, or a loser, or better or worse than them—or even that you’re unhappy.  It just means that you have less money to play with than they do right now.  And sooner or later, unless you’re the least self-aware person on the planet, you’re going to notice it.

So, if you’re reading this and making scads less than Caitlin’s $120,000 but you feel genuinely happy, satisfied and successful with your financial relationship to the world, good for you.  Truly.  You’re luckier than you may realize.  But don’t tear down Caitlin—or anyone else—for having the nerve to confess to feeling “poor,” even if she makes more money than you, or most Americans, will make this year.  That doesn’t make her a horrible person.  Or an idiot.  Or a classist.  That just makes her honest—and hardly alone.

An excerpt of this essay is also being published on everyone’s favorite legal tabloid, Above the Law.  Make sure to check it out here!

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And the advice doesn’t stop there.  You can’t even find a good glass ceiling to smack your head up against anymore without tripping over a stack of advice for women lawyers on everything from how to dress for success (Avoid nudity!), to how to toughen up (Sass those boys right back when they act rapey at the office!), to how not to look like a drowned clown corpse at work (Forget it, lost cause!).

At this point, I’m so bored with the heaps of so-called advice from other lawyers and professional counsel-givers that I had to turn to the one person I could think of whose advice never fails.  The one person who knows what it’s like to carve out a niche for yourself in an often cruel, mystifying profession overwrought with over-educated lunatics: My friend, Alanna.  I think you could learn a lot from her. Why?  Because she’s never wrong.

And she’s a hooker.

First, let’s be clear, Alanna’s not your dime-store variety street whore.  She’s a licensed prostitute working out of the Nevada brothels.  In the slower seasons, she skips around the country, dancing in strip clubs and yes, performing in a porn or two.  She’s not a drunk or a junkie and, whether or not you believe her, she claims to like the work—at least as much as any of you like your jobs, i.e. there are good days and bad days.  (Granted, your bad days involve getting slammed with back-to-back closings, whereas hers involved getting slammed with…well, use your imagination.)  Bottom line: Like it or not, she has a marketable set of skills, she’s proud of them, and she exploits them every chance she gets.  In other words, she’s a businesswoman.  A good one.

So, when I was telling her recently over Pinkberry about the latest litany of nonsense at my firm and how I—and every other associate I know, especially the female ones—feel trapped by our jobs, she shook her head and waved me off.

“Look, here’s how it is,” she said, “The hookers in Nevada are the business women, you know?”

“Sure.”  No idea where she was going.

“Dancers, they’ve got a lifestyle,” she continued. “And porn stars, they’re just stupid.”

“Um.  OK.”

“Don’t you get it?” She looked at me like I’d just arrived on the short bus.

“Jeeesus,” she laughed, throwing down her Pinkberry spoon.  “I’m saying don’t be a porn star, right? Or don’t be just a porn star, you know?” She picked her spoon back up and pointed it at me, grinning.  ”Horizontal integration is the best.”

As usual, Alanna nailed it.  Horizontal integration indeed.  If you take the hooker’s advice at face value—and you should—when you boil it down to basics, whether you’re selling sex or legal advice, the key to pervasive success is the same: Diversify—though not in the way you probably think.

I’m not talking about the usual prattle rattled off by your firm’s development committee or your assigned partner-mentor or the county bar association—you know: Network with other lawyers!  Learn about your clients’ interests!  Take a CLE class!  Ask a partner you never met about his practice!

I’m talking about summoning some balls (and yes, ladies, you’ve got ’em) and branching out beyond not just your own office, but beyond your firm, your job, beyond the traditional legal profession itself.  What are your real skills?  Sure, you’re smart and you know the ins and outs of certain legal fields, but so do a lot of people.  What are you truly better at than most lawyers?  Than most people?  Discovering and expanding that set of skills is what’s going to set you on the path to career bliss—and most likely out of a law firm.  See, despite what the well-meaning folks in your firm’s various associate development committees might think, the main thing that women lawyers—hell, any lawyers—do to sabotage their careers while working in big law firms is…working in big law firms.  For any great stretch, at least.

Not convinced?  Think for a minute about the most admired, most successful lawyer you know.  I don’t mean at your firm; I mean period.  I’d bet you a two-girl party with Alanna that the lawyer you’re picturing not only hasn’t worked at a law firm for the past 30 years, but probably never worked in a law firm for more than a few years, if at all.  Big Law pedigree or not, the best lawyers think like entrepreneurs, not like law firm partners—even if they are law firm partners. They are, indeed, more than just porn stars.  Male or female, they figured out how to “horizontally integrate;” they figured out how to mine their true, innate skills and exploit them to their advantage.   (And while I hate to break it to your local bar association’s women’s committee or your company’s H.R. department, it has nothing to do with what color shoes they wore or whether they smiled too much during group presentations.)

So, while I certainly hope that you won’t take any of what you’ve read here as “advice”—you’ve got enough of that unsolicited nonsense to deal with already—I do hope that you’ll take it as a wake-up call.  And at the very least, the next time you find yourself fantasizing about quitting the firm during your latest 3 a.m. bond deal marathon, or fuming in your office after being passed over for first chair on a plum case, or wondering why the hell you went to law school in the first place, take a deep breath, think of Alanna the horizontally integrated hooker and remember the basics: If you really want to get ahead in Big Law and beyond, you can’t be just a porn star.

Now, that’s one you might stick on a card and laminate.  Hell, you might even want to frame it.

An excerpt of this essay is also being published on everyone’s favorite legal tabloid, Above the Law.  Make sure to check it out here!

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Choice A: A real-world-hot 28-year-old receptionist on her fourth job in three years, who lives with two roommates in a fifth-floor walkup in some outer borough, aspires to someday have a job that gives her either free shoes or health insurance, and only sounds like an idiot when she speaks out loud.

Choice B: A real-world-hot 28-year-old BigLaw lawyer (I know, just go with me here) who paid off her school debt by herself in three years, lives alone in a doorman building in Manhattan, is funny and down-to-earth, and runs a small, successful side business selling artisanal cupcakes that she bakes in her spare time.

Clearly, you choose Choice A.   Why?  Because, if the status quo in my firm…and in my life…and in my friends’ lives…and in any bar from New York to L.A. is any indication, a law degree confers about as much romantic value to a single woman as a meth habit and a hidden penis.

Don’t believe me?   

Let’s replay a quick conversation I had a couple of Thursdays ago with my friend Stein, a graphic designer in his late twenties who I’d set up with a third-year finance associate at my firm who’s so pretty and fun that I still half-suspect that she’s not actually an associate, but really an actress posing as a lawyer for some kind of (horrifyingly sad) new reality show.   As soon as I asked Stein what he thought of her, he scrunched up his face in consideration.

“I mean, she’s cute,” he said, still scrunching. “Hot, even.”

“I know.”

“She was actually really funny and cool.”

“Told you.”

“It’s just that…”  He cocked his head to the side and started grimacing.  “It’s just that she seems…really together, you know?  I just…I don’t know.  I think we’re maybe in different places.”

And there it is.

Different places, indeed.  See, it used to be that lady lawyers took a hit in the dating world because the J.D. badge meant that you were probably too nerdy or “argumentative” or just a puffy, hideous troll.  But this new strain of rejection dispenses with such frivolity.  This time, the hotter you are, the less appealing you become.  This time, ladies, you got it wrong.  Again.  You’re sexy, funny and charming and worked like an animal to get into the best law schools and nab the highest paying jobs in the world’s most elite lawyer factories so you could be financially independent and could pursue a guy for love, not for his ability to support you, but…no dice.  Turns out, they like you better when you’re more of a disaster.  (But not to worry, according to the latest reports, if you can’t provide that full disaster experience for them, they’ll cheat on you with someone who will—so, you’re covered either way.)

Sure, a few guys—the smart, if not more Darwinian, types—realize that at its core, dating an ambitious, fun woman who can pay her bills (and theirs!) and who isn’t, say, a crack-whore, isn’t a bad thing.  They realize that maybe, just maybe, one of the upsides of dating a woman who’s more successful than they are is that, at the very least, they know that the only thing she wants from them is…them.

For the rest of you guys, though, what are you so afraid of?   That you won’t be able to take care of us?  That you’ll be emasculated? That we’ll think you’re a loser?   Tell you what, here’s when we’ll think you’re a loser:  when you’re a loser.   And if we’re interested in dating you, then you’re probably not a loser—at least not to us.  I mean, really, is it so impossible to believe that a cute, successful woman would be interested in a cute, not-as-successful man?  Are you really that insecure?

Apparently, yes.  So, for you guys out there, the ones who think that a lady J.D. isn’t worth your time because she’s just too successful, too intimidating, too together, let me clue you in on a little secret on behalf of the together-est of together women lawyers everywhere—though, be warned, it may titillate and/or confuse you.

We’re not really that together.

I hope you were sitting down for that one.  See, like most folks perceived as having tidy, charmed lives, we’re the same unhinged wrecks that you are; we just hide it more efficiently and have better accessories.   True, we have enough sense and ability to manage to get out of bed every morning and do something productive—or at least lucrative—with our time, but that doesn’t mean that we’re winning any gold medals in the Race to a Perfect Life.

If you still don’t believe me, you’re clearly not too familiar with the parade of horribles that is this blog.  If you were to meet me, your Legal Tease, at a party, you might think that I’m just the epitome of lawyerly togetherness.  What you wouldn’t see is that most of my non-existent spare time is spent rocking back and forth in a ball under my desk at work, praying for a time-machine.  Nor would you see that my most promising recent relationship basically amounted to rolling around on the floor of my office with a certified lunatic whose idea of courtship involved offering me a position as his mistress via drunk 11 a.m. voicemails made from the inside of his girlfriend’s coat closet.  And that’s just the low-hanging fruit.  Intimidated yet?

And I’m not alone—an unofficial survey of the hottest, most together-seeming women lawyers I know yields: a recent hush-hush hospitalization for a nervous breakdown, a second abortion, a serial mistress, bulimia, boob job number three, a foreclosed mortgage and a broken engagement.  Oh, and bedbugs.

So, take heed:  The next time you meet a graceful, shapely, six-figure-siren who has a white shoe pedigree and lights up a room with her sparkly, charming wit, instead of running in the other direction to your man-cave of insecurities (or more likely, to your unemployed hook-up buddy in Astoria), take a deep breath and realize that this untouchable legal goddess probably has IBS, cries herself to sleep at least once a week and wonders how much of this year’s bonus she should use to freeze her eggs.   In other words, go get her champ!   Trust me, you have nothing to lose.

An excerpt of this essay is also being published today on everyone’s favorite legal tabloid, Above the Law.  Make sure to check it out here!

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Now, before you start judging, hear me out.  Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the parade of psychopaths populating my romantic life knows that I’ve had no luck in finding The One.  The whole law-degree thing just hasn’t reeled them in like I thought it would.  At this point in my life, I just want to meet a professional, well-educated man and I realized a few months ago that I needed to take more drastic action to make it happen.  And I figured that inflating my boobs to the point where I resemble a pair of engorged cantaloupes resting on a blanched pretzel rod seemed like a good— oh crap, wait, that’s not right.  I was getting myself confused with our favorite litigious ex-Citi siren, Debrahlee Lorenzana, there for a minute.  Sorry.  I’ve just actually been at the office this whole time.

Oh Miss Debrahlee, ardent supporter of workplace fairness, champion of the tight turtleneck set, who is your publicist? Because, honey, that’s who you should be suing.  Did no one advise you?  Did no one sit you down and tell you how to navigate these blog-infested waters—waters where a little Google stalking can take you from being the Norma Rae of the Hot Harassed to Tits on a Stick in 36 hours flat?  Clearly not.  Please, then, for the sake of your lawsuit, for the sake of the 9–13 minutes you have left, take a seat, kick off your Vuitton platform wedges and take heed of the following:

“An Open Letter to Debrahlee Lorenzana,” or “Professional, Well-Educated Men Do Not Marry Tits On a Stick”

Miss Debrahlee, when I first saw the headlines that a lady banker had been fired from Citi for being “too hot,” my first thought was “A hot lady banker?  Is that possible?”  And then it quickly became clear that no, it’s not—unless by “banker,” you mean “person who works in a bank.”  OK, fine, I thought, so you aren’t exactly a rising managing director at Citi—but that doesn’t make what you claimed happen to you any less infuriating.  You’re a working mom in a respectable job who is also naturally full-breasted.  What were you supposed to do?  Tape down your boobs?  Lop ’em off?  As a naturally curvy lady myself, I empathize with the what-to-do-with-the-boobs problem plaguing any victim of a business-casual culture.  If we wear clothes that fit, we look like strippers; if we wear clothes that hide our boobs, we look like fat strippers.  Either way, we’re screwed.  So, yeah, I was on your side, Debrahlee.

And then I saw the video.

Don’t play dumb, Debrahlee—you know which one I mean.  Yes, that one.  The one where you don a tube top and shill for a plastic surgery factory on Strong Island by scooting around the local grocery store holding giant melons up to your chest.  The one where you admit that you want a second boob job so you can achieve your goal of looking like a cross between “Carmen Electra and Pamela Anderson.” The one where you shriek that you just want to look like “tits on a stick” so you can “meet a professional, well-educated man.”

Oh, Lee-Lee, this is where you went tragically wrong.  But not for the reasons most folks think.

I could care less that you’ve had two or three or twelve boob jobs—or any “jobs” for that matter.  I’m all for cosmetic surgery.  If you hate your nose or your flat chest or your weird flap ears, change them.  Hell, if you want to make yourself look like a human blow-up doll or a tiger or a melting wax statue of a horse dressed like a drag queen, have at it.  Do it because you feel ugly, or because you hate the way you look in clothes, or because, yes, you’ve always wanted to look like a tiger. Just please, for the love of God, don’t admit that you’re doing it to meet a guy—much less a “professional, well-educated one.”  Because that’s where you lost the ladies, Debrahlee.

See, when you were just a working mom with a gorgeous body who got fired for getting your sad, old sex-starved bosses all hot and bothered by virtue of your sheer existence, we were on your side.  Even when we found out that the gorgeous body was a product of surgical wizardry, we were still there for you.  After all, who is Citi—or anyone—to punish you for having a hot body lurking under work-appropriate, fashionable clothes, regardless of where that body came from?  You were able to play the victim-of-circumstance card and it was working.  But then you tried to have it both ways.

And you can’t, Debrahlee.

You can either play the female empowerment card, embrace your right to alter your own body and rail against the conservative powers-that-be for subjugating your tasteful expression of your female sexuality…or you can play the just-lookin-for-a-sugar-daddy card, cross your fingers and hope for a spot on the next season of Millionaire Matchmaker.  At this point in your media arc, we don’t know if you’re truly looking for justice or just looking for a guest spot on the Real Housewives of Queens Plaza.  Are you the Madonna or the Whore?  Huh?  HUH?  Because lord knows we can’t have it both ways.  That would just be confusing to us.  And if we’re confused, we can’t root for you—and if we can’t root for you, what’s the point?

I mean, honestly, what kind of background music would the Today Show producers know how to play on your on-air segment?  (A gentle yet inspiring strings section, or something with a sexy beat, maybe some reggaeton?)  Should the Times deign to pick up your story, or are you merely Post-worthy?  And how would we know what side we should take on your tale when we’re out to drinks with the girls?  Or, more importantly, the boys? STOP CONFUSING US!

So that’s where you failed us, Debrahlee.  Or maybe your publicist did.  Either way, you blew it.  Next time, just pick one: Madonna or Whore.  Just whatever you do, don’t blur them.  Because then you might actually be a woman who admits that it’s okay to want to look like tits on a stick and have a decent, white-collar job and get the guy in the end.  The professional, well-educated one.

God forbid.

An excerpt of this essay is also being published today on everyone’s favorite legal tabloid, Above the Law.  Make sure to check it out here!