University of Sydney |
In BIGLAW , the novel written by Lindsay Cameron, a corporate lawyer turned writer, Mackenzie
Corbett had been fixated with success ever since she saw her sister, Margaret,
draped in four first place medals at the regional swim competition when she was
ten years old.
‘ Mom had signed Margaret and me
up for the swim team at the community center that summer after reading an article on the importance of sports in building girls’ self –esteem. Margaret
had groaned, but I was excited – I loved swimming. When the season started, it
didn’t take a stopwatch to tell me that Margaret was easily the fastest swimmer
on the team, often finishing races a full length ahead of everyone else. And I
would know , being that I was usually the one bringing up the rear. “I think
you just need to practice more,” Mom would gently instruct when I complained to
her about being last. “ You can achieve anything with hard work.” So I spent
the summer in the pool, with Dad dropping off early on his way to work while
Margaret was still in bed, and stayed long past when Margaret skipped out to head
to the beach with her friends. I didn’t mind, though,because I couldn’t wait to
show my parents how good I’d become in the final match of the summer –the All
East swim competition. But things didn’t go exactly as my optimistic ten-year
old mind had planned. Margaret won
four first place medals, and all I walked away with was a cruddy participation
ribbon. Watching my sister draped around her neck, nodding humbly at the
rousing applause, somewhere deep inside I was filled with a burning, pulsing
need to be up there. But so long as I embodied the athletic ability of Charlie
Brown, it wasn’t going to happen.’
Mackenzie was
worried that Margaret was going to
be the only winner in the family until she found her niche. She learned that if
she studied hard enough and had a 4.0 GPA, she would earn awards, scholarships,
and if she steered clear of sports or sororities in college and instead filled
her time with lawyer-friendly extracurricular activities like the debate club
and civil liberties club, she could earn a spot at Georgetown Law School. And
then when she was in law school, the students were told by their career
resources counselor that a corporate associate position at a Biglaw firm was
the most difficult spot to obtain. Only a handful of summer associates would be
asked to join the corporate department so aiming to join the corporate
department in a Biglaw firm ‘was
the epitome of success for the eternal striver in her’.
After graduating
in law, Mackenzie secured her place as an associate at a premier law firm in
Manhattan and for two years she lived the fantasy of big salary, high profile
deals, cute boyfriend and designer bag on her arm. The overachiever in
Mackenzie drove Mackenzie to work her butt out hoping to secure a prestigious
secondment on the line. She was the able associate who was assigned by the top
partners to work on high profile deals
that deprived her of her sleep due to the timeline and high volumn of due diligence
work she had to carry out . She had little time for her boyfriend and had to
cancel out on outings with Kim, her good friend since college days at
Princeton.
Mackenzie was
driven to succeed so she put up with partners like Saul Sever who was described
to be sadistic and “actually derived real pleasure from the torture he
inflicted. Rumour had it that the only time Saul could be seen with a smile on
his face was after he yelled at someone. Particularly if he brought them to
tears. It was well -established firm lore that he once threw a stapler at the
cleaning lady for moving his beloved ficus plant while vacuuming. It hit her in
the back fo the head and drew blood. Apparently after the settlement the
partnership requested that he be put on medication . Whatever medication he was
taking didn’t seem to stifle his
ongoing atrocities against associates , though. “They can’t make a medication
strong enough to give that monster an empathy gene,” I remembered an associate
slurring after one too many margaritas at a Cinco-de Mayo party. Despite Saul’s
abusive behaviour and his “F” words,
the firm ignored all the ways in which he was severe liability because he had a
client list that rivaled those of the top partners in the city.'
Mackenzie seemed
to thrive in the corporate department where the partners all used intimidation
and public humiliation as teaching tools. Each of these partners was crazy and
appeared to be dysfunctional in his own way. There were a couple of cheery
characters in the firm, her secretary Rita and Alex a colleague who managed to
survive working for Saul as ‘everything rolls off his back.”
Mackenzie was
living a life where she was attached to her BlackBerry. Half way through
spending Christmas day with her
family, she received an email from her senior partner requesting her to Fedex
the latest agreement to him in Mexico ASAP. She had to contend with the poor
internet service at her parents’ home and her hope of getting the document
services department in her Biglaw firm to
Fedex was dashed as it was Christmas Day . She ended up having to print
the document on her dad’s old printer and had to drive to the nearest FedEx
office branch only to find that it was closed. Her phone buzzed again and she was told to fax the
document, all 234 pages. She missed the dessert and she could not tell her
parents what it was she was doing. She had a rude awakening when she had to
face investigation officers from the Securities and Exchange Enforcement
division questioning her on insider trading after a high profile sale of the
company deal that she worked on for Saul did not materialize as she was privy
to all the confidential information. She also realised that she had become an impatient and nasty person when she needed things done by her junior associates in her team.
BIGLAW may be
fictitious but it does give us an insight of life at a big law firm. I have a
small size legal practice where the three partners have to put up with our existing
banking clients who take their time to pay us and individual clients only care
about shopping for the best fees in town, so I can only conclude that unless
you love the law and believe in the good things that can come out of fighting
for justice, there are plenty of other vocations to go for.
I hope that BIGLAW will be made into a movie soon. click I can imagine Jennifer Lawrence acting as Mackenzie.
I hope that BIGLAW will be made into a movie soon. click I can imagine Jennifer Lawrence acting as Mackenzie.
No comments:
Post a Comment