First Setback
Here's an email first daughter Emily Pataki sent out today to her colleagues at White and Case:
From: Pataki, Emily R.-- Azi PaybarahSent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:05 AM
To: NY All Subject:
There are many things I have been blessed and graced with in this life.
I am blessed to work at a brilliant place like White and Case. Although failing the Bar Exam is not something I would wish on my worst enemy, it is something I have to accept at this point in time.
I do not know all of you personally, and I may not ever get to know you all, but for those of you I've had the pleasure of working with and getting to know, I hope you know I did my very best, and have come to a crossroads where my best just was not good enough, the first time around.
I'll try and keep my chin up and will work even harder to earn the respect of you all, please know already that you have mine.
Sincerely,
Emily Pataki
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Party politics aside - tough break. Even tougher having to e-mail out your notice the same day you get your results
I guess that's because Daddy couldn't pull any strings this time... funny... can get into Yale (right on her own grades) but can't pass the bar.
The bar exam is somewhat silly -- Azi, neither you nor Ms. Pataki should feel too terrible about it. I remember when JFK Jr. failed it and everyone chortled. Recently Kathleen Sullivan, a preeminent lawyer with multiple Supreme Court arguments, former dean of Stanford, often considered a potential appointee to the Supreme Court, failed the California bar. (She is already admitted in other states.) It's just not a very good predictor of good lawyers.
Kudos to Emily Pataki for writing such a mature note about it.
I have heard from very good lawyer acquaintances that not only is the Bar Exam not a good predictor of good lawyers it is not evidence of a really great legal education either. I understand that the premier law schools, Harvard and Yale mostly teach the students about Law and that they leave them on their own to fight it out with the Bar. And, that many somewhat inferior law schools teach the students how to pass the bar. I don't know if that is true in Ms. Pataki's and Mr. Kennedy's case or if it is true at all.
On the other hand, high stakes testing is a bitch. I feel sorrier for the poor kid in East New York who tried to get into one of the decent Junior Highs and failed to make the cut. I'm sure there wasn't much Kaplan around for him. And he had the entire ruling class demanding he pass the high stakes test or go work for McDonalds and WalMart.
this is a little personal to be posting on a blog don't you think?
Awwww ... poor little Daddy's girl must be heartbroken!
right on, 4:49 - most uncool. Unlike Mark Green's daughter's email which was too delicious NOT to post, this one was not meant for public consumption.
Azi, this is low. Should be kept private.
Give her a break. Everyone has a skid now and again.
- NY Leftist
Too personal? This woman (with whom I sympathize tremendously) sent this e-mail out to the entire NY office of White & Case -- which is probably five or six hundred people. Far from private, don't you think? Failing the bar happens all the time and (as mentioned) doesn't mean squat. But announcing it in a firm-wide e-mail, that's bizarre. Definitely not bar failure protocol.
Please lock and erase this thread. Emily is a civilian and not in the political arena. Unless the grades Spitzer's daughters get at Horace Mann are now fair game?
I feel bad for her. Not something you want to go through twice, and not something you want to deal with in public. But then she did write a nice note to the firm. What jerk at the firm passed it on for public scrutiny?
Just glad I don't have to take it again!
Just becuase you're not from YALEHARVARDCOLUMBIAPENNetc doesn't mean you went to an inferior law school, or that schools that prepare you for the bar are inferior. After 31 years out from a state school (SUNYAB) I don't find the supposedly big league schools produced better (perhaps richer) lawyers.
On Emily, let her take it a 2nd time, and focus your bile on her father, a fatuous poseur pol who has done nothing in 12 years in NYS, and is going to run for president. What a joke.
Just becuase you're not from YALEHARVARDCOLUMBIAPENNetc doesn't mean you went to an inferior law school, or that schools that prepare you for the bar are inferior. After 31 years out from a state school (SUNYAB) I don't find the supposedly big league schools produced better (perhaps richer) lawyers.
On Emily, let her take it a 2nd time, and focus your bile on her father, a fatuous poseur pol who has done nothing in 12 years in NYS, and is going to run for president. What a joke.
I agree with Lawyer, NY - it is definitely not bar exam protocol to announce to the entire firm you failed. Wonder why she felt the need to do that...
She's absolutely fair game. She stumped for Daddy constantly, took a bigger role in the campaign than Libby and has granted interviews with national publications on her politics. This isn't a case of going after Grandma Pataki, this is a person who has political ambitions of her own and who has thrust herself into the political spotlight in a big way. And I don't feel bad for the little rich girl, whose Daddy got her into Yale and couldn't get his staff to take the bar for her. Boo Hoo.
She's fair game for what, Elmer? I passed the bar my first time out and I'm very happy I won't have to go through with it again. Maybe she genuinely enjoys being there, maybe it IS her being politic. The point is, neither you nor I know that for sure - unusual as the behavior is after failing the exam.
But why dump on the kid when you should be focusing more on her father? More to the point, why even waste time thinking about George Pataki or any relatives of his when his presidential campaign will be lucky to make it through Iowa and New Hampshire in one piece?
A good start for her would be to learn about independent clauses and semi-colons and how the two are related.
A bright ninth-grader could pass the New York Bar. The only skill involved is memorization. The pass rates from schools like Yale, Harvard and Columbia are around 95% (and a lot of the failures are people who are going into non-law jobs like investment banking and don't bother studying).
The bar has nothing to do with what you learn in a good law school or what you actually do as a lawyer at a good law firm. Lawyers are valued for their specialist knowledge in very narrow fields, while the bar tests a superficial knowledge of 20-30 different fields - maybe applicable if you're one of three lawyers in a small upstate town, but totally irrelevant to someone at a top international law firm like White & Case.
We should set her up with Jonas Blank.
"Lawyer, NY" & "Sean" - why don't you enlighten us all as to what exam failure protocol is? Is that like the "Erie" Test? Regardless, I'll pass it along to BarBri.
I sent out a similar note yesterday to friends for two purposes: (1) to let friends who failed know they weren't alone; and (2) to identify who I was going to "celebrate" with last night.
I also sent it to my would-be employer, a small bankruptcy & commercial litigation firm, who conditioned my offer on passing the exam. I thought it was the mature and responsible thing to do. How many politicians - past, present or future - do that?
Ms. Pataki, who had the expectations of many more than I (and apparently countless outside her firm), probably thought the same.
She shouldn't have sent it to the ENTIRE office. That was her mistake. Maybe send it to some people she worked with or the members of her class.
She quickly recalled her email, but not before someone forwarded. Why don't you post the entire email, with all the forwards?
I never feel sorry for privileged young individuals that don't pass the bar exam. I had to work two jobs while going to law school, got crappy grades as a result, and had to work full time while preparing to take the bar exam. I passed the bar exam the first time.
I have also had to work 100 times as hard to get a fantastic job (because of grades) even though as far as I am concerned I had already paid my dues. Privileged students usually get good grades (and better jobs) because they have nothing else to worry about. No sympathy from the peanut gallery. A little taste of reality is good for everyone, especially silver spooners.
First of all, she made her bed--sending an apologetic email to an entire NY law firm like White & Case is unheard of for any 1st year associate, let alone one who is in the public eye. What was she thinking?
Secondly, the NY bar exam should not be that difficult for Ms. Pataki. The top 10 law schools have passage rates upwards of 95%--top NY firms have similar passage rates. This separates her from her peers, putting her in a very small minority of attorneys at top NY firms who failed the bar exam on their first attempt (and an even smaller minority of Yale students).
I feel bad for her. The Bar is an unforgiving exam. And I think it was horribly unprofessional and borderline cruel to post/forward her email to someone outside of the firm.
Nicolo Macchiavelli gets it.
She is an idiot for posting that email and deserves to be smacked around for it. But don't cry to hard for her, because her daddy will find another job for her soon, one which law graduates without famous but incompetent fathers could never get for their daughters, and one which she could never get on her own. Maybe Ron Lauder, who has paid her mommy hundreds of thousands of dollars for a no show job, can hire her to water his plants.
As someone who at least contemplated how I would inform my superiors at a big firm if I failed the bar, I can confidently say that sending an e-mail to the entire office, even including the non-lawyers, was not an option I ever considered. I therefore actually believe that Emily Pataki, whose political ambitions are far more apparent than, say, Chelsea's, decided that news of her failure would inevitably reach the public, and therefore she should get ahead of the curve with her e-mail, which provides some excellent spin. Now the story is, what a nice letter and why are they trying to hurt her feelings by sending it all around town. Otherwise it might have been, didn't her dad go to Columbia Law School, too?
One extra tidbit: The version of the email forwarded to me concluded with "Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld." If that's true, then it suggests to me that the email was sent hastily, perhaps in a state of shock at this news. This is supported by the existence of a grammatical error and by the mention in a previous comment that the email was quickly recalled.
Can we agree that a Yale graduate working at a top international law firm should be charged with knowing how to write?
Pataki's email is appallingly bad. Maybe the NY Bar Examiners failed her because they cringed too many times at her awkward and gramatically incorrect prose.
The NY Bar results were made available to individuals via a PIN yesterday (Tuesday) morning, but they will not be made public until tomorrow (Thursday). Pataki was under no rush to dash off an email to the entire NY office, and she has no excuse for its poor quality.
Maybe her email was so poorly written because she couldn't see the keyboard through all her bar failure tears.