Legal Mystenigmary

Things That Are Making Me Smile Today

1. I just answered a knock on my office door to find our receptionist lugging a big ol' vase of flowers that had been delivered for me -- yay! my happiness is, probably, a little odd for me because I'm really not a Valentine's kind of girl -- coupled or not, the holiday makes me fairly ill, what with all the generic grand "romantic" gestures that boys often feel pressured to make that, for me anyway, are so bland and over the top that they actually lose points in my estimation -- but all that aside, it's always really lovely to get flowers. they brighten up my whole office -- so pretty!

2. We have a new client whose name is just about the funniest lost-in-translation mistake I've ever heard -- I really wish I could tell you what it is, but there's that whole silly ethics thing in the way. Suffice it to say -- it's a food store whose name in the owner's native language was perfectly normal, but when they translated it, it came out as something more like the title of a food-focused porn movie. It's great.

3. The recently-noticed cuteness of a certain boy and corresponding increase in fun flirting -- a good antidote to The-Ass-Formerly-Known-As-Irksome!

Everything dies, baby, that's a fact

I know I haven't written about him in quite some time, but it's time for Irksome to make a brief reappearance before I sent him off to the Isle of Lost Assholes -- um, Men. I think I mentioned this briefly before, but some months ago, we began the beguine again (what the hell is the beguine anyway?) -- for me, it was a "last chance saloon" sort of thing -- either it worked this time or we were finito for keeps. (I think I shared this perspective with him, but perhaps not -- either way, the one thing that was explicitly said was that we'd "spend, like, more time together" - which is a relationship-retarded person's way of saying dating). So for a time all was hunky with some dory on top -- regular chatting/e-mailing/texting (yes, I know I hate the art of the "txt," but -- hey, cute boys make irritating things seem lovely), visiting, etc. Then, as suddenly as if January 1 was a heavy steel door, it stopped and became -- a lone phone call after a week of silence -- an email after ten days of same -- etc. Given my extreme patience skills (um, what/who?), it took about two weeks for me to have it up to HERE, and send him the direct little note: "Seriously, let's just be done." In response, I got a whole hailstorm of "oh no no, absolutely not, I really like you, I want to do this." Um, okay, buddy, fine -- you get one last LAST chance. He swore up and down he would be in touch and stop sucking. That was ten days ago. And while I'm totally not a big fan of kicking anyone out of my life, just because I do believe in forgiveness and changing and all that Oprah-esque stuff (but if you tell anyone I'm a big ol' soft-hearted girl-girl, I'll deny it with my dying breath), I honestly cannot imagine that even if he called right this second, I'd be capable of having any kind of polite, pleasant conversation with him -- it's like, as much as I really liked him in a "wow, other people think that too?" kind of thrilling way, his indifference and general shittiness have killed it -- which is weird for me. Usually, once I've made my snap decision to like someone, I'll pretty much always like them in one way or another. But at the moment, I just can't pull up any of those shiny happy "I like you" feelings. So, I've decided that, after umpty-hundred years of "will-they-won't-they" back and forth crap, I have to put a decisive end to the nonsense and tell him I'm out. Or maybe I won't tell him and just never get in touch again. I can't decide -- either way, let's all have ten seconds of silence to mourn the passing of Irksome, wonderful as he once was.

Oh my god, you're a *law student*? WOW.

Let me tell you, as a first-round interviewer, there is nothing I love more than that particular brand of law student who is overly impressed with himself (or herself, but in my experience it's more often guys than girls who behave like this), merely for BEING A LAW STUDENT with a gpa OVER 3.0 who's ON LAW REVIEW. Not that everyone with those credentials is like that, but for the ones who are, it's hysterical. It's like they think that that not only entitles them to cherry-pick which of my questions they'll deign to answer, they also do fun things like use the word "parlay" in a sentence, stop themselves with a falsely embarrassed little giggle, and go back and define it for me as if lesser mortals such as myself wouldn't be expected to have the full breath of knowledge packed into their super-capacity shiny new LAW STUDENT brains.

First of all, it apparently has never occurred to these LAW STUDENT geniuses that not only was I, and pretty much everyone else they're going to interview with in their bids for summer-associate-hood, also a law student who was on the review and had a gpa not just over, but well over 3.0, but that we then took those special law student brains and became --- wait for it -- REAL LAWYERS! who passed the bar! and who, like, practice! at the very firm that genius LAW STUDENT wishes to become employed! So perhaps he should stop condescending to us -- or at least, to me. Seriously -- how non-clever do you have to be to realize that, regardless of how great your credentials are (and honestly, if you're a 3.1 or a 3.2 at a second-tier school, it's not that great. God, I'm a bitch. But, sadly, having gone my own hundred rounds with legal hiring, it's also true), no one will hire you when you act like a egotistic, condescending pig. Hmph.

(yes, i'm this pleasant all the time. it's really quite delightful for those around me.)

One hundred and WHAT thousand?

Because I am generally highly lax about reading anything that requires I click on a link in a thing I am already reading (it's like endnotes -- i have never in my life read an endnote. Except for a recent foray into an insanely large work of fiction which had them and then I only read them because they were so highly entertaining it was worth the irritation of double-bookmarking, and also because if I didn't read them, I'd be a halfway liar when I walked around boasting about having read the WHOLE THING, and generally when I lie I like to be a completely intentional, full-on liar. hm, that may be the longest parethentical of 2007), I have only now discovered that NY BigLaw has collectively taken leave of its senses and starting paying first-year associates $160,000. The most appalling/potentially awesome thing: this raise may also yank up starting salaries in the "lesser" cities (i.e., every where the hell else except NYC, which I believe is totally right and proper) to right around there. This is awesome because if I do ever make the leap to BigLaw,* it sure as hell wouldn't be to NYC, so at least the money would be so totally beyond definitely worth it. And actually, the only appalling part about it is thinking that that much money is going to someone that young and with that little experience in law -- and if my first year associatehood was anything to go by, a little experience gets you not very far at all.

*Not that I have any actual plans to do such a thing, loving my LittleLaw as I do -- but it appears change may be afoot in the personnel department, causing me to love it somewhat less -- and I did just get a call from a recruiter re: "exciting opportunities in my area." hm. if only they weren't in "my area," maybe I'd think about calling him back.

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be...

this girl. In the interest of not sounding totally sycophantic, I will just say that she is the wittest, most entertaining person on the internet today. (No, I said not sycophantic, damn it! oh well). Seriously -- she will make you laugh so hard you snort your coffee out your nose (yeah, didn't know that was possible, did'ja? it's not too pleasant either), and stay up until midnight the night before an important argument just so you can finish reading the incredibly well-stocked archives (I always get really excited when I find a new writer I really like and they already have like six books out -- four years' worth of archives is pretty much the same thing). So, go, read, laugh, get misty-eyed over her evocative descriptions of loves, past and present. Unless I'm the very last person on the internets to discover her, in which case, I'm not too surprise -- I was never so much on the "cutting edge." mmm, D.B. Sweeney. yum.