Law School Chronicles

The goal of practically every law student is to eventually land a job. To that end, many of us begin interviewing for clerkship and internships after our very first semester. There is a detailed etiquette when it comes to how to handle oneself in interviews and afterwards, an etiquette that apparently escaped Dianna Abdala, a recent law school graduate who participated in the following e-mail exchange while turning down a job offer she found to be beneath her:

Abdala:

Dear Attorney Korman,

At this time, I am writing to inform you that I will not be accepting your offer.

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living in light of the work I would be doing for you. I have decided instead to work for myself, and reap 100% of the benefits that I sow.

Thank you for the interviews.

Korman:

Dianna –

Given that you had two interviews, were offered and accepted the job (indeed, you had a definite start date), I am surprised that you chose an e-mail and a 9:30 PM voicemail message to convey this information to me. It smacks of immaturity and is quite unprofessional. Indeed, I did rely upon your acceptance by ordering stationary [sic] and business cards with your name, reformatting a computer and setting up both internal and external e-mails for you here at the office. While I do not quarrel with your reasoning, I am extremely disappointed in the way this played out. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Abdala:

A real lawyer would have put the contract into writing and not exercised any such reliance until he did so.

Again, thank you.

Korman:

Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam question. You need to realize that this is a very small legal community, especially the criminal defense bar. Do you really want to start pissing off more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?

Abdala:

bla bla bla

So the moral of the story is to think twice before you press the “send” button. A little humility could save you a lot of humiliation.

That being said, in some cases flying off the handle may not be so bad after all. In the infamous “monkey scribe” voicemail, then-associate Ankur Gupta left an expletive-laced message for opposing counsel, a voicemail which quickly circulated and can be heard here (WARNING: Contains offensive matieral!). Mr. Gupta has since made partner at the firm, suggesting that there may in fact be a place in the legal community for certain contributors to this blog.