The full title of the news article? “A Law Unto Herself: The criminal defense attorney is star-struck, young and unorthodox. But don’t be fooled. She’s also Ivy League, savvy and successful.”
Here’s an excerpt:
Her husband said she used to believe whatever her clients told her, accepting preposterous explanations for crimes. There was the woman who didn’t mean to stab her boyfriend. She just threw a basket that happened to contain a knife.
And there was the time Margolin burst into tears after a prosecutor told her she had only minutes to decide whether to take a deal that would put a client in prison for 17 years. The prosecutor relented and extended the deadline.
A lawyer for 3 1/2 years, Margolin has gained notoriety for unorthodox ads that proclaim her “L.A.’s dopest attorney.” She even has a video publicizing her practice on the Internet site http://www.youtube.com.
Here is another:
At Columbia she pulled seven-hour study stretches on Saturdays and Sundays, was an editor on the college newspaper and taught a political science class.
That helped when she applied to Harvard Law School, although her application essay was risky. She argued that drugs should be legalized, a position her father warned would doom her chance of admission.
She was admitted anyway.
Once there, “I was like the most eccentric person,” she said. She remembered feeling like a neon sign in a bright yellow vest and tinted glasses in the classrooms.
“I studied a lot, and I didn’t lie about it, and people would make fun of me for it,” she said. “People at Harvard pretended they didn’t have to work because they were geniuses. ”
She pursed her lips sideways and fiddled with a strand of hair. “They called me the Dirty Librarian because I swore and wore glasses.”
She said she was not intimidated by some of the bullying law professors because her mother’s boyfriends over the years had made her used to nasty lawyers.
The title of her law school thesis was “The Right to Get High.”
She passed the bar on the first try: “It was like a miracle,” she said.
And one more:
“Your daughter is a beauty,” a lawyer in the courtroom whispered to her father.
“Thank you,” the elder Margolin replied.
“And a damn good lawyer.”
“Thank you.”
Outside, Allison Margolin was jubilant. “This was like amazing. They don’t usually say no objection” to returning the plants.
Then she noticed her father’s Cole Haan shoes, which she had bought him. “Dad, you’re wearing your Father’s Day shoes!”
While one can readily admire Margolin’s rugged individualism and determination to succeed on her own terms, it’s also hard not to notice that the article rather pointedly makes her sound like a doof.
Via Orin Kerr.
–Ann Bartow
The article has a link to her blog, on which she mentions that she’d like to pose in Playboy. Her explanation (which I just skimmed) wasn’t quite anti-feminist yet wasn’t quite feminist; frankly, it — and the whole rest of her persona — sounded just plain narcisist.
She should feel free to do whatever makes her happy, but dang, she has set herself up to be easily dismissed and disregarded.