"NOT A SINGLE callback," Fenno IMed his friend, Michael, morosely. The latter was stuck in class, fearing the Socratic Sword of Damocles.
"What!?!?" responded Michael, in apparent disbelief. "My firms are already outbidding one another's housing offers…amazing how the market solves for everything. But listen, maybe it's time to look somewhere else."
"You mean, in securities or IP?" inquired Fenno, innocently.
"No, you idiot," Michael reproached. "I meant Omaha or Indianapolis or something." At this, Fenno started shuddering. Like any rational HLS student, he had been concerned about whether he would ever find work and make it in this world. But deep down, Fenno had always known he was destined for a coastal metropolis filled with the sort of cultural attractions that his billing regimen would never give him time to enjoy. Sensing this, Michael tacked in different direction. "Or Europe?" he proposed.
"Do I look like some surrender-monkey!?" quipped Fenno, patriotically. Bailout or not, there was nothing in America to compare to the nightmare of negotiating with socialist Eurocrats. That was what LLMs were for.
"Or London," Michael offered. "London's not really Europe. You know, their teeth are rotting, but they don't smell as long as they keep their mouths shut. But hey, the prof is Socraticizing my ass. What happened in Macon v. Minnetonka?"
"Held, reversed," Fenno offered. There was a momentary pause during which Fenno imagined Michael was delivering this answer with full faith and credit in his legal expertise. Two hundred 2Ls would, at that very moment, be perched behind their screens, relieved they were spared the roving inspection of the professorial panopticon. Silently, they waited, cursors at the ready, to record the holding that they, too, had never bothered to read.
"FU," came the response, and Fenno hooted with laughter. In the back of his mind, however, Michael had planted a seed. Maybe London was where Fenno wanted to begin his career, after all.
* * *
One week later, Fenno's browser history was full of URLs ending in .co.uk, and he felt properly boned up on London's legal landscape. The firms he should be aiming for, he learned, were part of the so-called "Magic Circle," which sounded appropriately mysterious for the country that inspired the Lord of the Rings and harbored Stonehenge. Donning in his best bowler, he skipped off in the direction of Brattle Street's Tory Row.
About halfway down, the Stars and Stripes grew sparser, and gardens grew far more meticulously. He even caught sight of Jonah Tweedman's chauffeur speeding the professor home in an old Aston Martin. Occasionally, the car halted, and Fenno could hear a frustrated Tweedman muttering "no! When I said 'full stop', I certainly did not mean the automobile." Fenno stepped up his pace. Finally, he reached his destination, a menacing Gothic edifice.
"The Castle Lawgwarts," a nearby vagrant solemnly intoned.
A shriek came from the other direction: "begone to the workhouse, tramp!" A haggard old she-goblin of a woman approached, bearing a lantern. Fenno started away, but she had him by the arm. "Come here, precious," she exhorted. "Meetin' m'Lawrds for a firm interview?" Fenno managed a barely perceptible nod. Fog was beginning to conceal the manse, leaving only a lighted turret visible.
The goblin woman led Fenno inside a hall lit only by a heavy oak chandelier. Suits of armor surrounded them. Heaving her lantern toward a thin slice of spiral stairs curving off into a distance of inky darkness, she breathed only one word. "Proceed."
Proceed Fenno did, but he was confused. Was the room with the armor the hospitality suite? Had the hunchbacked woman with the cockney accent been a summer associate - at least, sometime in the distant past? He could see that they did things very differently on the other side of the pond.
The staircase curled its way up the house's turret. Fenno felt his way along its walls, having long run out of light. Finally, he approached the end of his quest - a lone door, guarded by a flickering torch. According to the sign on the entry, this was "Room 33½". Fortunately for Fenno, there was at least some biographical information:
"Cornelius Tumbletort LL.B. (Oxon.) has a specialism in Dark Arts Copyright Protection and Writs of Expeliamus Corpus. He is also head of the firm's Pro Bono Division."
Pro Bono, Fenno thought. This guy can't be too bad. Taking the knocker in his hand, he rapt at the portal - only to realize that his palm was covering a knob in the shape of a skull. "One minute!" thundered a voice from inside, followed by what sounded like several echoes - or several others: Fenno realized he was going to face a panel.
Eventually, the door opened, and out hopped a rather wart-ridden frog. "Good luck," Fenno thought he heard it croak, and looked at it quizzically. The man standing over him seemed to have sensed his thoughts. "It just said 'ribbut'," he announced, impatiently. "Now come, one mustn't be unpunctual."
* * *
The interview actually went swimmingly well, considering the myriad distractions of the room, which looked like a sort of imperialist Applebee's. On the wall were the heads of a tiger, an elephant, and a gazelle, plus a map of someplace called "Rhodesia". Haggard servants scurried in and out, feeding a roaring fire. Taking tea, the interviewers spoke of childhoods "in Eton and the Punjab," using vocab that Fenno hadn't exactly evinced from LRW: "knicker," "wicket," "Boer".
Fenno nodded politely, affirmed that he was, in fact, taking con law (but thought the constitution a scurrilous waste of time when a country could get on splendidly well without one) and agreed it would probably be a good idea to take some medieval torts as well. "You know," said one panelist, "Old Bailey loves it when you pull out the old 1348 Plague Laws. If you really want in on London, you should think about doing your third year tripos on that." Another serving of crumpets, and well over 20 minutes had passed. He was out the door and on his way back to campus - what had started out one of his creepiest interviews had become, surprisingly, one of his best. Maybe, Fenno thought, I do believe in magic.
* * *
As soon as Fenno strode into the Hark, however, he sensed the mood was grim. A group of LLMs had purloined the big screen TV from the daytime sports fans and were grim-facedly engaged with the BBC. The news was devastating.
"Brown's seizing the banks!" "It's nationalization! Our liquidations - our bankruptcies - gone!" "Our clients!" screamed one particularly devastated specimen, clutching his phone in the throes of a callback gone awry. "Our dear, fetid clients!" All around, prospective London-bound summers were agape in horror, stumbling around the room, seeking some explanation. "Gather 'round, lads!" exhorted a jubilantly pipe smoking, cardigan-clad Duncan Kennedy, "I will tell you a tale of a forgotten time in Britain - the 1970s - and a pox on firm-bound law students who dared venture there: the Curse of the Magic Circle. It appears it has returned…"
None of this really bothered Fenno: true, he would never work for the Magic Circle, but it seemed real capitalism didn't really run in British veins, anyway. The Dow was soaring once again, and he was sure that, somewhere in New York, there was a job with his name on it. Thank god, Fenno thought, that no one here was calling it nationalization for his government to directly infuse of capital into the banking system in return for a controlling stake. The law and economics faculty hadn't had time to build curses into their models yet.
