LLVL: Fresh Blood

Rumours abound regarding the new boy in town.

There’s a new lawyer in the firm this week. Which means that there have been loads of stories flying around about who he is, where he’s from, and the dos and donts of being around him.

Although I’m on the firm’s recruitment committee, this guy was hired independently, as he’s come in direct from a foreign law firm.

One rumour is that he had carved out a fairly successful practice overseas in the past 5 years, but left because he had a massive bust-up with one of the partners there. Some say he was forced to leave because he was caught having an affair with one of the accounts staff; spotted by some lawyers on a night out. Even worse, that accounts staff was engaged to be married to one of the partners! Another version is that he spurned the advances of the wife of the senior partner, who apparently was used to getting her way with the more junior lawyers.

Some of the partners shared that he was joining for professional reasons to bring in some major clients and expand a new practice group, which was the most boring reason of them all, and was therefore largely ignored.

One consistent theme that runs throughout the stories about this guy is that he’s rude, loud-mouthed, and sexist — which means that he must be bloody good at his job to be able to get away with all of that.

According to rumours from the HR department, he asked for a change of secretary on his first day, as the one assigned to him was wearing a tudung, and was single. “I don’t want her. There’s a high risk of her being sexually-repressed, which would affect her performance.”

Rumours aside, I take one thing as fact — he should be a very interesting character.

Alter Ego has been a corporate lawyer in Kuala Lumpur for many years. Livin’ La Vida Loyar is a weekly semi-fictional account of her experiences in the legal industry, explained here. Get in touch with comments, questions, or your own stories at [email protected]. Confidentiality is guaranteed. She’s not writing about you. Jangan perasan. And you don’t know her. Jangan kay-poh.