Wannabe lawyer splurged firm’s cash on first-class travel and took a call girl to formal work dinner — quality performance!
A “mature” summer vac schemer at arguably the world’s richest law firm has allegedly gone on a Wolf of Wall Street-style binge involving drugs and prostitutes — much of it on the partners’ shilling.
Ribald stories emerged this morning from California of a 35-year-old-plus wannabe lawyer at Los Angeles-based Latham & Watkins.
According to a report in our US fellow traveller website, Above the Law, the “Big Law” candidate was booked to fly to the west coast for a three-day intensive vacation scheme, known in Latham circles as the “summer academy”.
However, the late entrant to the law — who is rumoured to come from a wealthy family — missed several arranged flights before upgrading the seat he eventually bagged to first class — at the firm’s expense.
On arrival at the booked hotel, the cheeky vac-schemer — dubbed Bottle Service by Above the Law for his alleged generosity with colleagues in pubs and night clubs throughout his brief stint at the firm — upgraded to a penthouse suite, but this time broke out his own plastic.
Unfortunately for this role model to all wannabe lawyers, the suite was reported to be bang next door to another that was held for Latham partners visiting from other parts of the firm’s 33-office global empire.
That meant that Rolf — as we shall we call our fictitious partner from Germany, who had just flown 14 hours from the Dusseldorf outpost and simply wanted to get some Zs as soon as possible — was kept awake as Bottle Service allegedly engaged in a cocaine-fuelled all-nighter with a bevy of prostitutes.
BS then allegedly took a leaf from Richard Gere’s oeuvre and adopted a Pretty Woman theme by bringing one of the working girls – kitted out in tasteful spandex, according to sources — to a formal Latham dinner.
Even in Hollywood this sort of behaviour doesn’t go down that well in the eyes of global law firm top dogs. Bottle Service is understood to have been given his cards.
Above the Law “reached out” — which Legal Cheek thinks means contacted — the firm’s LA HQ, with a spokesperson of unidentified gender reported to have said:
We do not comment on personnel matters, but we are unaware of any evidence to support that the alleged illegal activities occurred.
So perhaps this story has been through a process of Chinese whispers. Indeed, a spokeswoman for the London office said she had nothing to add to HQ’s reported line.
However, it almost goes without saying — but clearly we’re going to say it in any event — that Legal Cheek has fingers crossed that Bottle Service blags his way into qualification at another global firm and somehow soon ends up posted to the City of London.
We’re happy to send him a copy of our recent drugs and lawyers survey to whet the appetite.