Epic Fail

Remember how Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel was singing the praises of practicing big firm law at Boies Schiller recently? Talking about how much she was getting done now that she's a lawyer and how much better it felt than sitting around in her pajamas trying to write? Well, perhaps Wurtzel is not quite the model of productivity and efficiency she would have us believe, since she apparently failed the NY bar exam. When asked about it, Wurtzel kind of made it sound like a) she didn't really study that hard, b) it's all Yale's fault anyhow for not preparing her adequately, and c) the test is stupid anyhow.

(Very mature, that response.)

In truth, the bar exam IS stupid. Despite many attempts to make it relate more to real-world practical legal skill sets and the sorts of things we actually need to remember to practice every day, much of what is tested is knowledge we will immediately forget as soon as we're sworn in. I have no idea as I sit here today what the rule is in Georgia for easments that run with the land, or the elements of robbery vs. burglary, or what the fuck a "holder in due course" actually is. But I knew all that for approximately eighteen hours back in 2006, and it was enough.

But it's also true that every law student and would-be lawyer knows they will have to take a bar exam at some point if they want to actually practice. Law schools beat it into you, you are encouraged as a student to take a well-rounded curriculum to give you a good head start on the concepts that will be tested, BarBri starts selling you bar exam preparation packages at a discount the minute you hit the door, and eveyrone hears the horror stories of the guy who was at the top of his class and had his dream job all lined up...if only he could pass the bar. So, it's something that most of us know to dedicate an appropriate amount of time, energy, stress and fear towards in order to make sure we pass.

The NY bar exam is very difficult, and plenty of other well-known and intelligent people have failed it before Wurtzel. (We all remember JFK, Jr. failed it 4 times.) But fair or not, the stigma of failing the bar exam stays with you, and leaves colleagues and fellow attorneys with the impression that you are either not that smart or not that focused if you couldn't pass it when they could. Wurtzel might think that the whole hullabaloo is stupid, but she is being paid a salary well in the six figures premised upon the assumption that she would be admitted to the NY bar by January. Now instead she is going to have to spend the next three months studying harder than last time, working less, and giving the folks who hired her an excuse to wonder if they made a mistake. The consequences here are big enough that she really shouldn't opt for flippance when asked by reporters about the failure, and should instead recognize that in this economy, everyone's expendable. Including the non-lawyer bar exam failer who used to be a famous author.

The other way around

It seems like everywhere I go, I find frustrated lawyers who wish they could leave the practice of law and write for their living. It's certainly a favorite dream of people stuck in a life that often feels devoid of true creativity. (Just today, I had to tell a partner that I have "no pride of ownership" in the brief I spent the last week working on, after he told me that he felt bad making some major changes. Given that I'd cribbed much of it from other briefs on the same topic, it was most definitely not my creative baby and he could slaughter it all he wanted to!) We are always looking to the past, looking to precedent and templates and trying to make sure we are everso consistent with what has gone before. Great writers concoct beautiful words out of thin air, and it is about as far opposite as possible from the experience of your average BigLaw lawyer. Thus, it's pretty easy to see why the big firms are filled with people dreaming of becoming then next Kerouac, or maybe just Grisham or Turow.

So it was very interesting today to read an interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, who you may remember as the author of such 90's mainstays as Prozac Nation and Bitch: In Defense of Difficult Women. (A book I still wish I'd gotten around to reading simply for the title alone. Maybe someday.) Wurtzel has been seldom heard from in the last 5 years or so, and for good reason: she has been attending Yale Law School. Last week, she began working for Boies Schiller and did some work on the Wachovia/Wells Fargo deal. The WSJ law blog interviewed Wurtzel about why she'd decided on this reverse escape career path. Basically, her reasoning can be summed up here:

I used to feel that I spent too much of my time in my pajamas doing nothing, and I’d think ‘in the time that I don’t spend writing, I could raise a family of five.’ In a lot of ways, being a writer is lonely and alienating. You hear about the work ethic of people like Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike and you think ‘well, God bless them, but I don’t know how they do it.’ Most of the rest of us just wind up watching Oprah. I was roaming the neighborhood every day, lingering at the dog run with my dog. It was really bad. I just wasn’t doing enough, and I feel like law school sort of gave me my voice back. When you have a lot to do, you get a lot done. At least that’s how it’s been for me.

It was quite fascinating to see someone complaining about feeling useless for sitting around in her pajamas writing for a living, when I and virtually every other lawyer I know pretty much consider that our idea of heaven. But it is also nice to hear someone excited about practicing law like we all were once upon a time. I could not help to think, however that we'll have to see how she feels a year from now about the daily grind. Much like I suspect I would last about six months in her former life before I'd either collapse into a pit of laziness or crave structure so much I'd go racing back to the first firm that hired me. The grass is always greener...

Poetic Interlude

Via Andrew Sullivan I came across this fascinating Constantine Cavafy poem:

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are to arrive today.

Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.

Why did our emperor wake up so early,
and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
And the emperor waits to receive
their chief. Indeed he has prepared
to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
many titles and names of honor.

Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
today in their red, embroidered togas;
why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they carrying costly canes today,
wonderfully carved with silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
and such things dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't the worthy orators come as always
to make their speeches, to have their say?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
and they get bored with eloquence and orations.

Why all of a sudden this unrest
and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?

Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.

And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.

The Awakening

If you were an English major or a literature buff like me, you almost certainly read Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" sometime in high school or college. For those of you who never read it, the story centers upon Edna Pontellier, a bored aristocratic wife and mother who suddenly beigns contemplating a life on her own without family obligations, a life filled with art and poetry and a young lover, but suddenly realizes her conscience won't let her leave certain obligations to those she loves behind. As she discovers that she cannot escape her old life she opts instead to drown--literally--in the Gulf of Mexico.

It has long been one of my favorites, and I remember being so caught up in the self-discovery of the heroine that I was absolutely devastated when she realizes she cannot get away, and heartbroken but understanding at her final decision. On every trip to New Orleans that I've taken, I've thought about driving down to Grand Isle, where much of the story takes place. It is one of those stories that spoke to me in a way that few do and left an indelible mark forever.

Strangely, this post is really about politics. I think I and many others like me have been so disillusioned with politics for so long that we simply did not believe it possible that we could be hopeful about anything ever again. We did not believe we could be inspired, and we certainly did not believe we could be caught up in a movement that could change the world. And yet, many of us experienced all of those things for the first time in ages if ever, when we embraced the possibility that Obama's candidacy presented to us. Our hopeful nature, the part of us that desperately wants to change our country for the better, was let out of its cold cynical cage and allowed to at least dream wildly about the possibilities of a transformative presidency. Yes, to those who weren't part of the movement, who didn't have the epiphany, who didn't drink the Kool-Aid, we looked like members of a cult. There were worries we were putting too much credit onto someone who had done little to deserve the projection of all our hopes and dreams and inspirations. But once we gave in to that part of our hearts that wanted something to believe in so desperately, we didn't care what the naysayers said.

Today the question asked is what will happen to us if we find out, much like Edna did, that our awakening is short-lived. Are we too emotionally invested in our candidate to shift grears if they don't win and support someone else instead? Will we be angry at the other candidate if they prevail in the primary? Will we lose our resolve to put a Democrat in the White House if it's not our Democrat?

I can only speak for myself. Much like Edna, if I had this wonderful new hope dashed on the rocks by an ugly primary that I think has featured some really awful tactics from his opponent, I have no doubt that a part of me would be crushed. I wouldn't want to go back to being cynical and depressed and to assuming that dreaming about change is useless because it can't happen. I've lived that life, and it sucks. But I don't see myself suddenly voting for a Republican because of that depression. Would I still vote for the other candidate as nominee? Probably. Would I be inspired to canvass, raise and give, money, phone bank, etc.? Maybe not, or at least not as much as I would be if Obama wins the nomination. It isn't that I will have lingering ill will towards Hillary Clinton, but rather that I'll just have lost the will to fight that hard for something I simply don't believe in as much.

I suspect that for most people, the answer would be the same. Now do I think that means trouble in the general? No. The beauty of such a close split among Democrats is that we know at least half of the voters in the party will be thrilled with their candidate, energized, and ready to kick ass in the general. If half of the electorate is less thrilled but still willing to turn out and vote, my guess is that's probably enough. There are, however, 3 areas in which I think a Clinton victory in particular could lead to potential problems in the general election:

1. Turnout of young voters--they're coming out in droves for Obama but are notoriously finicky about turnout in nearly every other election. If their chosen candidate doesn't win, my hunch is they go back to playing Wii or getting high and don't have such an incentive to be part of the process.

2. Turnout of African American voters--I think there is still some lingering ill will about this primary contest within this community, and while I hope that Clinton could consolidate them behind her if she had to, I think we might see lower turnout in this group as well if they don't have the motivating factor of potentially putting the first black President in the White House.

3. Independents--I do believe that if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, many of the independents who supported Obama will potentially vote for McCain instead. This is probably the most critical problem that a Clinton candidacy would create--while Obama and McCain would divvy up independents pretty evenly, I think Clinton would take a far smaller portion were she the Democratic nominee. In a country where independents are the biggest voting bloc, that's a big issue.

I think we should be focused on those three issues much more so than this talk about breathless culty Obama worshippers not supporting Clinton in the general, or Clinton fans being so angry about how Obama won that they just don't vote. The rank and file Democrats will still vote, even if their hearts are broken about not having their candidate on the ballot.

The battle of future paradigms

Margaret Atwood writes a brilliant and wonderful re-review of "Brave New World" that asks the question have we become the future envisioned by Aldous Huxley or are we more akin to Orwell's "1984"? A snippet:

Which template would win, we wondered. During the cold war, Nineteen Eighty-Four seemed to have the edge. But when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, pundits proclaimed the end of history, shopping reigned triumphant, and there was already lots of quasi-soma percolating through society. True, promiscuity had taken a hit from AIDS, but on balance we seemed to be in for a trivial, giggly, drug-enhanced spend-o-rama: Brave New World was winning the race.

That picture changed, too, with the attack on New York's twin towers in 2001. Thoughtcrime and the boot grinding into the human face could not be got rid of so easily, after all. The Ministry of Love is back with us, it appears, though it's no longer limited to the lands behind the former iron curtain: the west has its own versions now.

The entire review is excellent and has me wanting to read Brave New World all over again. Perhaps I'll pick up a copy on the way out of town for the holiday.

Yay!...I mean Ugh.

I was just extremely excited to find out that a conference solicited us to present next year on the same topic as the article I had published recently. Apparently in preparing a presentation on a particular topic they came across the article and thought it was good, so invited us to present. I was proud for about 90 seconds...until I realized the presentation is at a conference that's at the same time as my one firm trial date on my calendar for next year. So unless the case settles at some point, no conference for me.

The glory for those 90 seconds was quite lovely, though.

Beauty and terror

I have a ton going on today and won't really have time to blog, but here's a quick and dirty rundown:

* Our annual reviews for the associates in our group are today. Yes, on a Saturday. I'm more than a little nervous about them for reasons I can't go into here. Hoping I can keep my cool.

* I'm getting my hair cut today, but when the salon called to confirm yesterday they said I'm having it cut by Ross. Because I'm a moron I can't really remember the name of the guy who cuts my hair...but I'm 99% sure it's not Ross. So this should be interesting. At least if it's not the usual guy, it also hopefully won't be ninety freaking dollars--before tip.

* After that I need a pedicure in a bad way, and to run some errands. Then I have a birthday party tonight. Might squeeze some beer in there somewhere beforehand.

* Sincere and heartfelt congratulations to Griftdrift, who I have been pushing for years now to start playing in major poker tournaments, and who finally listened to me last year and has now played in satellites or table events at three different World Series of Poker circuit events. And last night he came in third in one such tournament, out of 157 players. He made himself enough to pay not only for his trip, but also for probably the two other trips as well. I am so thrilled for him and proud of him. And I hope now he's got the bug and will want to do it more often.

* Where'd the title come from? (Other than being an apt way to mention both getting my hair done and annual reviews?) Well, Rainier Maria Rilke once wrote:

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,

which we are still just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

I think of this quote every time I find something in my life that I suddenly become transfixed with and want incredibly badly, but also become instantly afraid that it will be taken away from me. Lately I've been thinking how depressing it is not to have something to obsess and be excited about, but now that I found a new one it's absolutely terrifying to think of all the ways that this could fall apart. Not knowing how things will turn out is so deliciously awful that I can hardly stand it. But I'd take it over having nothing worth obsessing over, any day of the week.

Aujourd'hui nous parlons seulement en francais

I'm talking via IM with someone right now in French, or rather he is writing in French and I am following along but not wanting to reveal just how much of the written language I have forgotten since college so therefore responding in English. But strangely it reminded me that I still have rattling around in my brain every word of a poem I memorized my junior year of high school for a competition, "Barbara" by Jacques Prevert. (Why my brain has held onto this usless tidbit of knowledge for 15 years I do not know. But I could recite it start to finish for you right now if you asked.)

As you would expect with a name like that, Prevert had some very...interesting...poems in his body of work but Barbara may be his masterpiece. I'm not sure that the beauty and power of it translate well, but here it is in both the original French and in the accepted translation from English done by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who I also adore):


Barbara

Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante
Epanouie, ravie, ruisselante
Sous la pluie
Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest
Et je t'ai croisée rue de Siam
Tu souriais
Et moi je souriais de même
Rappelle-toi Barbara
Toi que je ne connaissais pas
Toi qui ne me connaissais pas
Rappelle-toi
Rappelle-toi quand même ce jour-là
N'oublie pas
Un homme sous un porche s'abritait
Et il a crié ton nom
Barbara
Et tu as couru vers lui sous la pluie
Ruisselante ravie épanouie
Et tu t'es jetée dans ses bras
Rappelle-toi celà Barbara
Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
Même si je ne les ai vus qu'une seule fois
Je dis tu à tous ceux qui s'aiment
Même si je ne les connais pas
Rappelle-toi Barbara
N'oublie pas
Cette pluie sage et heureuse
Sur ton visage heureux
Sur cette ville heureuse
Cette pluie sur la mer
Sur l'arsenal
Sur le bateau d'Ouessant
Oh Barbara
Quelle connerie la guerre
Qu'es-tu devenue maintenant
Sous cette pluie de fer
De feu d'acier de sang
Et celui qui te serrait dans ses bras
Amoureusement
Est-il mort disparu ou bien encore vivant
Oh Barbara
Il pleut sans cesse sur Brest
Comme il pleuvait avant
Mais ce n'est plus pareil et tout est abîmé
C'est une pluie de deuil terrible et désolée
Ce n'est même plus l'orage
De fer d'acier de sang
Tout simplement des nuages
Qui crèvent comme des chiens
Des chiens qui disparaissent
Au fil de l'eau sur Brest
Et vont pourrir au loin
Au loin très loin de Brest
Dont il ne reste rien.



Barbara

Remember Barbara
It rained all day on Brest that day
And you walked smiling
Flushed enraptured streaming-wet
In the rain
Remember Barbara
It rained all day on Brest that day
And I ran into you in Siam Street
You were smiling
And I smiled too
Remember Barbara
You whom I didn't know
You who didn't know me
Remember
Remember that day still
Don't forget
A man was taking cover on a porch
And he cried your name
Barbara
And you ran to him in the rain
Streaming-wet enraptured flushed
And you threw yourself in his arms
Remember that Barbara
And don't be mad if I speak familiarly
I speak familiarly to everyone I love
Even if I've seen them only once
I speak familiarly to all who are in love
Even if I don't know them
Remember Barbara
Don't forget
That good and happy rain
On your happy face
On that happy town
That rain upon the sea
Upon the arsenal
Upon the Ushant boat
Oh Barbara
What shit stupidity the war
Now what's become of you
Under this iron rain
Of fire and steel and blood
And he who held you in his arms
Amorously
Is he dead and gone or still so much alive
Oh Barbara
It's rained all day on Brest today
As it was raining before
But it isn't the same anymore
And everything is wrecked
It's a rain of mourning terrible and desolate
Nor is it still a storm
Of iron and steel and blood
But simply clouds
That die like dogs
Dogs that disappear
In the downpour drowning Brest
And float away to rot
A long way off
A long long way from Brest
Of which there's nothing left.