“I’m already there all day long studying for the bar anyway,” says Katie MacDonald, recent Vanderbilt graduate.  “I already know everyone, even some of the other customers.  And, frankly, I think they’d be lucky to have someone like me—someone who actually knows what crema is and why it’s important.”

MacDonald has a point—a point that even Marlbucks has acknowledged.  Earlier this year, Marlbucks famously shut down thousands of their stores for three hours to retrain their employees on, among other things, the importance of crema and the French inhale (the French inhale has been touted as the tobacco lobby’s answer to second hand smoke—just let the smokers suck it back up before it reaches the nostrils of the easily offended!).  And what could be more perfect for jump-starting this new initiative than hiring a bunch of privileged, over-educated kids from the suburbs who’ve just returned from their post-bar exam trek across Europe or South America?   There is no greater coffee and cigarette snob than a hipster law student just back from a spiritual journey.  

But Marlbucks CEO Samantha Bean is not impressed.  “Have these kids been reading the papers?  We’re closed—as in, we’re closing 600 stores.”

Katie MacDonald thinks Bean is making a big mistake.  “I’m a regular at all twelve of my neighborhood Marlbucks.  I know what kind of turnover they have.  They have one or two people that have been there since the beginning of time and all the others are just passing through the Marlbucks revolving door.  What’s wrong with taking advantage of the temporary unemployment of a bunch of smart people?”  

But Bean sees right through MacDonald. “We know what’s going on out there. These kids get strung out on caffeine from spending too many late nights cramming for an exam.  Next thing you know, they’re addicted.  With the tanking economy, gas at four bucks a gallon, and daddy out of a job since Bear Stearns and all his banker clients shut down, these kids are freaking out, wondering who’s going to serve up their next fix.  Well, we don’t need a bunch of arrogant law students mooching a bunch of free espresso and inviting all their friends to stop in for a free Frap.”

But MacDonald asserts that she’s entitled to more than that.  “If I’m addicted to Marlbucks, it’s only because of all the free Marlbucks gift cards Lexis Nexis sent me for racking up reward points on my law school Lexis account.  LexisNexis and Marlbucks prey upon impressionable and vulnerable law students while we are at our weakest–during exam time.  The two companies have conspired together to create a generation of caffeine-addicted attorneys, and I think Marlbucks owes it to us to help us out during this difficult and trying period.”

Bean remains unmoved.  “I got two words for her if she needs a cheap caffeine buzz to get her through her little economic crisis:  Tetley Tea.  She can buy it in bulk at Costco.”  

And so it goes for the ill-fated class of ’08.  No job, no paycheck, no free coffee.  And no crema.  

Barely a week old and already SquibSquab has to break its promise to you, dear reader, in providing the first installment of Lawve Letters.  Yesterday we introduced this new feature and got a few of you quite excited at the mere reference to Julian Sands.  Today we recall that we need to read through Circulars 62 and 62A before beginning our serial posting of what will amount to a novella, when all is said and done. For those of you who may be considering launching your own blog and are concerned about copyright issues, you may want to check out these circulars (along with Circular 66).  In the meantime, please accept the Marlbucks post as an apology.

We do not know the name of our–addiction is too ugly a word–for our predilection, let’s call it–for our predilection toward a certain aesthetic.  But, if we had to name it, it would be something like Merchantivoritis, or maybe Juliansandthrax, or perhaps Helenaium Bonham Cartusion.  Whatever it is, it hit us like a brick in 1985 when we saw A Room with a View for the first time. And the second. And the third.  We’ve probably seen the movie at least ten or more times over the years, but that first year, we saw it three times. 

Everyone warns of the ills of Hollywood, that it will turn young, impressionable minds toward a life of crime, violence, and/or debauchery.  No one ever warns that too much Hollywood–well, Merchant-Ivory flicks aren’t exactly Hollywood–but no one ever says, “Watch this and you’ll spend the rest of your life longing to be kissed in a field of violets in Fiesole.”  Your dear author went to Fiesole once–with her sister–and though it was indeed glorious and perfect, and the church bells rang while we dined outside on a crisp, early spring morning on fresh pastry and hot cappuccino, George Emerson was no where in sight.  Sigh.

But we digress.

What we are trying to say is that our life is not like and will never be like Lucy Honeychurch’s life.  And it’s not just Merchant-Ivory films. There are no buff, sexy, sweaty men riding in on horseback after a military victory while we women rush back to our quarters to carelessly shed our petticoats, freshen up a bit, and then squeeze into our corsets (tits up, ladies!), like in the opening scene of that other favorite of ours, Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing.  We have no other-worldly powers to transform chocolate from mere food of the gods to a spiritual elixir capable of healing body and soul–and enabling us to snag the hottest river rat around–like Vianne in Chocolat.  We are not mysterious, beautiful, and unattainable like the lovely Elena in Cinema Paradiso. And even though we are happily married, the thought of our marriage being refreshed by a six-week sojourn in Italy a la Enchanted April is about as ridiculous as believing that there is such a thing as a Way-Back Machine that would not only transport us to the early 20th century when the Brits actually had six-week vacations (and the average person could afford to stay in an Italian villa overlooking the Mediterranean) but would also include a change in citizenship from American to British to enable us to take advantage of that six-week vacation.

But what we can do here at SquibSquab is pretend that real life is much more romantic than it is. And so we are introducing a series called “Lawve Letters” in which we will tell the stories of very unhappy lawyers and how they found love at last.

But, unfortunately it is past our bedtime, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow for the first installment!  Oooh.  I bet you can’t wait.

(Oh, and as for that twelve step program, we’re still on step one: admitting that we are powerless over lush, eye-popping cinematography involving the Italian countryside, where hot men fall madly in love with gorgeous women, and where people are allowed to get old without getting Botox.)

Here’s how it works:  go to the New Yorker website and check out this week’s cartoon.  Then just post your entry in your comment–and, please, reference the contest number in your entry.  Unlike the New Yorker caption contest rules, there is no word limit here at SquibSquab.  Heck, if the cartoon inspired an entire short story or poem or even a novel, then by all means, post!

There will be no final judging, just a sharing of captions that are sure to be better than whatever the editors of the New Yorker choose.  

All this focus on fitness and health leaves us wondering…can a nation of Big Mac loving, Quik Trip Big Gulp guzzling, Hot Pocket munching, Gordita craving, Bud Lite slamming white people who are three slices of Dominos Ultimate Deep Dish away from a heart attack really relate to a healthy black man who still has all his teeth and who has never played pro sports or spent time in jail?  We think Obama may be alienating the very people he’s trying to win over.  He obviously doesn’t understand that while white America loves tight abs and firm asses, they actually HATE people who have them.  Obama–take some advice.  Chug a few six packs every night instead of working on your own six pack, and be sure to order extra cheese sauce–on everything.  We’ll be looking for you and Michelle at the Golden Corral hot buffet.

The way these policies usually work is an associate gets knocked up, has a baby, and her hours dramatically drop.  The firm then appeals to her fear of losing her job by telling her that she needs to pick up the pace.  When she breaks down in tears and confesses to using cocktails of No-Doz and diet pills just to make it through the day after yet another sleepless night tending to the needs of her tiny offspring, she is gently sent back to her office with a copy of the alternate track policy.  It is verboten to outright suggest that the associate take a haircut on her salary, but threatening to fire her if she can’t bill 200 hours in a month is generally all it takes to nudge the associate into surrendering 30 percent or more of her salary in exchange for allowing her to cut her hours by 10 or 15 percent.  

More and more firms are viewing these policies as being mandatory in order to appear “family friendly” to people who are foolish enough to believe that such values can be held by places as cutthroat as law firms.  

“Doing well in these rankings is important in our campaign to trick young associates into believing that working for our firm would be substantially different from working for any other big law firm,” a recruiter at a large law firm explained to us.

Great, we said, but has it really worked?  

“So far it has proven to be a fairly effective marketing tool for attracting female associates,” the recruiter offered.  “But in the end, these women just go off, get pregnant, cost the firm a lot of money in paid maternity leave, and then quit.  So I don’t really see the point.”

And, apparently, neither do the associates.  As Amy Kimberly, a mom of three who billed no more than 1700 hours per year before making partner at High & Gungous puts it, “Slacking off works just as well, and you don’t have to take the disproportionate salary reduction.  My peers that asked for alternate track billed 1700 and got paid a third less than I did.”

Indeed, ASBL reported that 88% of junior and mid-level associates who bill 10% or more below their firm’s target billable hours saw no reason to ask for alternate track since the firm gave them full pay anyway and a slap on the wrist at review time.  As one anonymous associate bluntly put it, “The firm views alternate track as being for weaklings.  You go on it, they won’t make you partner.  Great.  I don’t want to be partner.  I already know I’ll be leaving around my fifth or sixth year.  So why take the pay cut?”

But, as we reported yesterday, law firms are wising up and bearing down on slacker associates–even the pregnant ones.  Kimberly may have been one of the lucky ones, because now firms are determined to show pregnant associates the true meaning of the term “equal pay for equal work.”

“Show me the hours,” as Davis Diggity, a senior partner at H&G put it, which in law firm speak means show me the money. “These girls want to be treated equal?  Fine.  Bill 60 hours a week like I did, and add another 20 in nonbillable crap like schmoozing.  My wife and I had three kids before I made partner.  Do you think I’d ever qualify for alternate track?” 

Diggity has a point.  Alternate track does seem to be tailor-made for women only.  If everyone preferred to earn $100,000 for fifty hours a week rather than $150,000 for sixty or seventy hours, the entire law firm structure would cave in. 

So what’s the answer?

“Women need to just get a clue:  big law isn’t for mommies.  No one is ever gonna admit it, though,” says Diggity.

What about mommies who don’t care if their children grow up neglected and mildly abused by daycare workers and nannies?  Is big law for those women?

“Well, yeah.  Of course.  But where can we find that kind of talent, and how can we attract them to our firm?”

Diggity admits that the ideal employee is one who doesn’t have to unexpectedly race home at 2:00 in the afternoon if the daycare calls to say that her child is vomiting Chef Boyardee out his nose.  

“It’s not that we aren’t a woman-friendly, or even a family-friendly firm,” Diggity explains. “We just don’t want people’s personal lives interfering with client services.  We are trying to run a business here.”

And that’s what it boils down to, ladies.  Nothing against your ambition or you personally, but warm, loving, thoughtful, attentive parents who want to be present in the lives of their children just don’t make very good lawyers.  

Beautiful.  She dubbed her scheme “Plan P”. 

“The way it worked out on paper, I could get by on fifty hours a week for at least five years, maybe even six.  That’s fifty hours total—maybe only about 35 or 40 billable hours out of that,” Saskatoon told us.  And she even knew how to thwart any premature pressure to bill that might occur in the meantime.  

“I started talking about getting pregnant the minute I walked in the door, so there was always a rumor going around that I was already pregnant.  No one would try to fire me or overload me with work, or else I’d just throw the PDA in their face.”

No, Saskatoon was not going to sling her Blackberry at her boss.  “PDA” in the world of cunning female associates eager to game the system stands for the “Pregnancy Discrimination Act,” and it’s what law firms get for being bastions of liberal hypocritical whiners too scared to tell women that their implacable desire for pumping out babies is unworkable under the current big law model and too two-faced to actually retool that model so that it works for people who are narcissistic enough to want to become parents.  

But we’re not judging.  

Saskatoon did her homework, and her “Plan P” is reportedly modeled on the success of a friend a few years ahead of her.

“My friend Amy Kimberly followed her own Plan P, and she actually made partner this way.  I was like, ‘Amy, you will never make it,’ when she told me she was preggo with her third baby the year she was up for partner.  She’d never billed more than 1600 or 1700 hours, ever.  [ed. note: the norm for making partner at large law firms is around 2000-2200 at a minimum, with another 600 of nonbillable hours on top of that.] And she was always gone by 6:00 p.m. because she had to pick up her other kids from daycare.  But she was like, ‘Oh, they’ll make me partner alright.  It would make them look pretty bad if they denied partnership to a pregnant woman.’  And you know what?  They did make her partner.”

But that was way back in 2004 when H&G was vying for a spot on Fortune’s list of  “100 Best Places to Work in America”, which includes just a small handful of law firms.  In 2008, staying out of the red is trumping H&G’s lobbying efforts for a ranking on a list that, let’s face it, serves only to increase a firm’s volume of resumes from the laziest and least productive members of the bar.  Things aren’t going quite as swimmingly for Saskatoon as they went for her underperforming friend.  

“It’s Bush’s fault.  It’s the economy,” she laments. “I’m just a third year, and I’m pregnant, and they’re already like, ‘You’ll never make partner at this rate.  You need to be averaging 180 a month at your level.’  And I’m like, ‘180?  You want my kid to come out all retarded from excessive production of stress hormones?’” 

More bad news for Saskatoon came when three women who were up for partner last year at H&G—and each of whom had had a child in the years leading up to the year they were up for partner—were made counsel instead, spurring rumors that the firm’s “family friendly” policies were being set aside in favor of the bottom line.  

Imagine that.  It’s almost as if H&G were trying to run a business instead of a fantasy camp where mommies get to trot around all day in Christian Louboutin heels and get discounted express shipping on all their returns from lunchtime impulse purchases from Neiman-Marcus online.

“I just think it’s really unfair,” Saskatoon tells us.  “I mean, it’s hard being pregnant.  I’m tired all the time and I have to stop what I’m doing every ten minutes just to go pee.  It’s going to be even harder being a working mom.  Who came up with this billable hour thing, anyway?”

To be fair, the current model of snuffing the enthusiasm and pleasure out of living by demanding that associates dedicate 16-20 hours of their day to lining the pockets of balding, paunch-bellied, Viagra-popping, German car-driving philanderers grew up in the halcyon days of stay-at-home moms and Phil Donahue.  When the Ponzi scheme we now call “big law” was being developed, no one ever imagined that women would want a piece of the action.  Why kill yourself billing hours when you can stay at home all day in a Valium stupor in front of the TV and wait to collect that fat, law firm-funded life insurance benefit when your husband dies prematurely of a heart attack?  Yet women decided that they, too, wanted a lifestyle that would force them to neglect their children and become alcoholics.  

Problem is, women haven’t bought into the whole package yet.  Sure, they’re willing to become alcoholics, but big law hasn’t yet convinced them to neglect their children, too.  Linda Harschmann, a staunch advocate of working women, has no patience for women who aren’t thrilled with the idea of tossing their children in daycare 12 hours a day.  In response to Saskatoon’s question of who designed the billable hour structure, Harschmann replies, “Oh, boo-hoo, Saskatoon.  A better question might be: ‘Why the heck did you make your parents shell out a hundred grand for law school if you knew you just wanted to stay at home and wipe smelly brown paste off your kid’s butt?’”

But Saskatoon is determined.  “They haven’t fired me yet.  I just got a warning.  I’m going to see this thing through.”

Good for you, Saskatoon.  Given that we have a bit of an anarchic streak in us, we’re curious to see how you do.  We’ll be watching you and updating our readers.