Elizabeth Elmore is a 2004 Northwestern
graduate. All law firm hiring
partners joke about hiring “rock stars.”
Elizabeth is one. She ran a
rock band called Sarge as she worked her way through college and law
school -
you can buy their albums on Amazon and listen to them on You Tube. It’s
funny -
running a band involves talent, a product, managing people, getting
clients,
making money, and moving on.
Sounds kind of like a law firm to me.
When
I met Elizabeth I noticed an inestimable
quality in her personality that convinced me in about 3 minutes that she
could
thrive in the best and toughest environment the profession could offer.
The problem: no lateral hiring in
litigation to speak of - and because she was in the hollow between law
school
and practice she wasn’t a student and not really a lateral. Did
that stop us? Heck no.
She’s
now a star associate at one of Chicago’s
most selective litigation boutiques - Grippo & Elden. All
their hiring partner asked for in
return was guitar lessons. Don’t
know if he’s gotten them yet. But
what I do know is that her artistic talent, a great law school record,
and her
business acumen combined to make her relentless in her quest to land the
best
job and has served her extraordinarily well in practice.
We
had lunch a few months ago - this lawyer is going places. How
does she connect with people? She
works hard but makes it look easy.
She’ll do the mundane and the fascinating. She gets along with
partners clients,
adversaries,
and staff. Sure she’s
brilliant. That’s a given. But is
the other traits that will take her wherever she wants to go. I’m
glad this comet passed through my
solar system.
Julie
Liu
- A 2007 graduate of Northwestern, Julie joined one of Chicago’s
largest firms and was caught in the vortex of departures this Winter.
A woman who has more energy in her
thumb than most people will have in their head in their lifetime she was
disappointed but not downtrodden. She was frustrated but not despondent.
She was determined to make the best of
a bad situation and wasn’t going to “settle.”
A
few months later Julie and her sister turned
their life long dream into a reality and opened Scion Restaurant in
Washington,
D.C. Located a few blocks off DuPont Circle at 2100 P Street, it’s
already
received media praise from the Washington Times and most of the on line
review
sites such as Trip Advisor, Yelp, Urbanspoon and others. Take a peek at www.scionrestaurant.com
I met Julie when she was a 1st
year student at the
Northwestern. It was clear then
that she would take the world by storm but I didn’t expect the storm
would
cause a downpour in Dupont Circle.
A catastrophic recession? Law firm
lay offs? Just a speed bump on Julie Liu’s high way to success
(and
happiness).