David Glover and Joella MacIntyre were the stars of their class. David was ranked first. He was the intellectual one and had already made widely known his intention to pursue an academic career after law school. He would continue his studies in a top-ranked Ph.D. program with the goal of becoming a legal scholar and law professor. Joella was more of the dazzler. She was only a tiny bit behind David in GPA, but her reputation was as “Ms. Do-it-all.” She was the editor-in-chief of the law journal and was widely seen as the top litigator in her class. Her dream was to be a high-profile criminal attorney.
David had not intended to ask Joella to marry him on New Year’s Eve. He hadn’t meant to propose at all. He loved her dearly—he was smart enough to recognize that—but their incompatible career aspirations seemed to doom them to, at best, a long-distance relationship. They had turned down a couple of tempting New Year’s parties and settled on a quiet dinner at a fancy bistro downtown. Maybe it was the second bottle of Champagne. Perhaps it was Joella’s stunning evening dress. More likely, it was simply David being true to his heart. Before dessert arrived, he simply blurted out, “Jo, will you marry me?”
Joella didn’t hesitate. “God, yes. I was afraid you would never ask.”
“But we’ve discussed this a thousand times,” he half stammered and half laughed. “One of us—probably both of us—are going to have to make some tough compromises.”
“Maybe, yes,” she agreed, “but maybe no. You go find a good graduate program. I can go be Perry Mason anywhere.”
# # #
The newlyweds couldn’t have scripted the beginning any better. Although he had been accepted at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and other more prestigious philosophy programs, David chose U.C. Irvine. The dean of their new law school had a joint appointment as the Roger H. Hampshire Distinguished Professor of Legal Studies. Stuart Greene was David’s first choice across the entire country as a future mentor, so this was something of a no-brainer. Just as she had predicted, Joella landed an excellent position at a small Laguna Beach firm. They both continued their professional ascents. David had three of his early seminar papers accepted for publication—one in a good law journal and the other two in respected philosophy journals. By the end of David’s third year, Joella was gaining notice as one of Orange County’s most promising young defense attorneys.
# # #
By David’s last year, he had enough professional publications to warrant tenure in the UCI department, had he only been on the faculty and not simply one of their graduate students. But his crowning glory was his dissertation. Although it did not yet have final approval from his committee, the manuscript had been accepted by Harvard University Press. There was no doubt about it: he would enter the job market as one of the strongest candidates in the nation—not only for top law schools, but also for excellent philosophy departments. Likely, he would be a solid contender for a joint appointment in both programs, if only the right kind of university had the desired openings. Success is a beautiful thing, but it does have its downsides. As his vita blossomed, his professional aspirations escalated even faster. He no longer dreamed of just being a law professor, but one at a top-twenty law school. The problem, of course, was the inverse relationship between the range of geographical opportunities and the number of appropriate positions in any given year. And geography was beginning to look more and more like an overriding consideration.
Joella’s career path was as meteoric as her husband’s. By the time they were celebrating David’s book, she had been approached by headhunters all up and down the Southern California coast. She was offered the sweetest deal by one of the most distinguished firms in San Diego. She wasn’t sure what excited her the most about this possibility—the nature of the cases she would now be litigating, the high six-figure starting salary, or the promise of being considered for a partnership within the next five years. Clearly, her professional future was tied to where they currently were.
# # #
Joella insisted on a brutally candid assessment of their options. “As I see it,” she began, “there are four possible scenarios. We could simply take all of this as one gigantic sign and call it quits. You go off and be the next Ronald Dworkin, and I’ll stay here and see if I can catch up to Ann Bremner.”
David swallowed hard. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No, Babe,” she replied gently. “There’s no hidden agenda. It’s just, if we’re going to be totally honest here, it is an elegant solution. You’ve earned a great career, and so have I. This way we both get to have them.”
“Well,” her husband chose his words carefully, “pardon my French, but fuck that. I didn’t work this hard only to lose my soulmate.”
“Okay,” she smiled. “Good comeback. We can scratch that one off. Suppose we still both keep our careers but try the commuter marriage thing. I did the quick and dirty math. You’ll have summers off. And Christmas and Spring break. If I use my vacation time judiciously, I’m guessing we’d only be apart about half the year.”
“A half-time soulmate,” he sighed, “is better than none at all, I guess. But I still hate it. Come on, Jo, how many two-career couples do you know that have made such an arrangement work?”
“Honest answer?” she sighed as well. “Only two or three. And since we’re being up-front, I think those marriages were already in the shitter.”
“Exactly,” David sadly concurred. “Separation, loneliness, temptation—it’s a recipe for disaster. And let’s not forget who we are. We’re both already obsessively driven workaholics. I’m not sure we’d recognize each other after a few years. I think we need each other full-time just to stay sane.”
“Points taken, Counselor,” Joella nodded. “That leaves us with my last two scenarios. One of us is going to have to make a huge compromise. I’ll tell you what. Since this whole idea of laying it all out in the open was mine in the first place, I’ll go first. I’ll make the strongest case I can for me being the sacrificial lamb. But then you have to present the strongest argument you can for you being the one to scale back his expectations. You’re a good lawyer too, not just an academic. You know how to present a case that you hate. Sound like a deal?”
“Deal,” and rather than kissing his lovely wife, he extended his right hand and solemnly shook hers.
“It really goes back,” Joella imagined herself facing the jury, “to what I said when you first asked me to marry you. I can be Perry Mason anywhere. I’m a damn good lawyer. I’ve got a record now that substantiates that immodest assessment. It wasn’t an accident that I received all those feelers from Santa Barbara to San Diego. I won’t find a job as perfect as what Marten and Fischer is offering, but I’ll find something that will satisfy my most important goals. We don’t care if we’re rich or if I’m immediately a junior partner. I can be Perry Mason in New Haven, Cambridge, or wherever. That’s what I truly want. That, and you, of course.”
“Mr. Glover,” David began his rebuttal, “is guilty of not just being selfish but of letting his ego cloud his reason. His wife claims that location is not the overriding consideration for her career goals. But that’s true in spades for Mr. Glover. Does it actually matter at all how high the law school is ranked? What he needs to do, what he’s driven to do, is write books and articles. That, and teach smart and engaging students. He can write those works anywhere. And he can find those students in countless universities, not just Harvard or Columbia. As opposing counsel so elegantly put it, that’s what he truly desires. That, and her, of course.”
# # #
The best lawyers believe in the cases they make in court. Joella and David were good lawyers. To their mutual astonishment, they each discovered they had convinced themselves. They were still at loggerheads, but now in opposite directions. It didn’t appear that reason was going to settle the dilemma. Maybe they would just have to flip a coin.
There was a wildcard, however. Each harbored a secret. “Secret” is probably too harsh a term. Each had had a nagging thought that they were not quite ready to share with the other. Joella was considering a slight career change. And so was David. She wondered if she wasn’t better suited to playing for the other team. More and more, the idea of being a prosecuting attorney appealed to her. David wanted to be a scholar and teacher. He wondered if he hadn’t mapped out his future so clearly just because he was in law school. Almost a third of his publications had nothing whatsoever to do with the law. Why not be a philosophy professor whose specialty just happened to be philosophical jurisprudence? Perhaps the young lawyers were fated to engage in this exercise one more time—only now considering job offers of a different kind. They’d probably have to resort to flipping a coin anyway.