Casey Greenfield
Posted on 02/24/2012 5:59:55 AM PST by Second Amendment First
The story of the tangled relationship between Casey Greenfield, a rising star in New York legal circles, and Jeffrey Toobin, arguably the nation’s leading legal journalist, has gone mainstream. Over the long weekend, the New York Times wrote an 1,800-word story on their affair.
Actually, to be fair, the story was mainly about Casey Greenfield and her law partner, Scott Labby, launching their boutique law firm, Greenfield Labby (which has a beautifully designed website, by the way). The firm specializes in what the Times describes as “high-stakes family law,” which includes not just divorce and custody litigation, but “[c]risis management, strategic planning and contract resolution.”
The story of Greenfield and Labby launching a new small law firm is both interesting and inspiring. But, at the same time, it’s one that we’ve seen — and written — before. You can read our earlier write-up of Greenfield Labby’s launch over here.
The most interesting parts of the NYT piece concern Casey Greenfield’s affair with the then-married (and still-married) Jeff Toobin, a long-running relationship that produced a baby boy. The writer, Times reporter Robin Finn, unearthed several juicy, previously unreported details….
Finn’s article can be read in full here. I found it immensely enjoyable and elegantly written, but apparently not everyone shares my view — there are over 100 reader comments on the piece, and many of them are negative. Some of them go something like this: “Why is this in the pages of the New York Times? Why is this newsworthy? Don’t new law firms launch every week in New York City?”
Yes, they do. But how many new firms have this kind of backstory, and launch with this big a splash?
Empowerment is a major theme in Ms. Greenfield’s personal and professional lives, which have neatly dovetailed since she emerged from her own heavyweight and highly public bout of custody litigation — she shares an out-of-wedlock child with the married legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin — to form the boutique firm Greenfield Labby. On Wednesday, it will celebrate its [launch] with a party at the Modern, the Danny Meyer restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art. Nearly 200 people, many in the boldface category, have received invitations. It will not be a typical law firm fete.
(I’m planning to attend. Please come up and say hello if you see me there tomorrow night.)
The firm, which Ms. Greenfield formed with Scott Labby, 39, a Yale Law School classmate and a former boyfriend, has roughly two dozen well-heeled clients and employs five lawyers, in Manhattan and in Boston. It sees itself as an elite group of “country lawyers” for glittering urban professionals with lots to gain — or lose.
Considering that the firm launched just a few months ago, it’s impressive that Greenfield Labby already has this many clients and lawyers. In addition to the name partners, the firm has three other attorneys: of counsel Courtney Clark, a Yale Law School graduate who previously practiced at Goodwin Procter and Sherin and Lodgen; of counsel Kyle Pasewark, also a Yale Law grad, who joined the firm from Debevoise & Plimpton; and Shanna Giora-Gorfajn, a Columbia Law School graduate with extensive experience in family law.
Here’s another reason why the Greenfield Labby launch is newsworthy:
[Casey Greenfield is the] self-described “product of a modern splintered and re-glued family” — her father, the political pundit and television commentator Jeff Greenfield, is thrice-married, and after a privileged upbringing on the Upper West Side, Ms. Greenfield left for boarding school at Andover when her parents divorced. (Her mother, Carrie Carmichael, was Mr. Greenfield’s first wife.)
Yes, that’s right: another celebrity connection. Casey’s father, prominent political commentator Jeff Greenfield, is a familiar face to the well-read, well-heeled types who watch the Sunday shows and ride the Acela train between New York and D.C. They’re also the type of people who read articles in the New Yorker by Jeff Toobin (who is, awkwardly enough, a former CNN colleague of Jeff Greenfield).
Speaking of Toobin, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the Greenfield/Toobin relationship. The Times reports:
[In 2008,] as a first-year associate at Gibson Dunn, a strait-laced corporate law firm, [Greenfield] found herself single and pregnant at 35.
The presumptive father was Mr. Toobin, a senior political analyst for CNN, staff writer for The New Yorker, best-selling author, married father of two teenagers and a close friend of Justice Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court, a classmate of his from Harvard Law. Ms. Greenfield met Mr. Toobin in the Condé Nast cafeteria when, while taking a breather from law school in her mid-20s, she worked as a fact-checker for Glamour magazine. They fell into a secretive off-and-on relationship spanning nearly a decade.
Reading this, my reaction was, “Wow, I didn’t know the affair lasted for almost ten years!” And I didn’t know that they met in the famous Condé Nast cafeteria — the basis for this hilarious scene in The Devil Wears Prada.
(I also didn’t know that Glamour employs fact-checkers. How do you verify the veracity of 5 Kinky Things Men Are Craving? I sincerely hope that Jeffrey Toobin was not involved in any such “fact-checking” by Casey Greenfield.)
When Ms. Greenfield first informed him of her pregnancy, she said, Mr. Toobin questioned the paternity, balked at submitting to a test and vowed to take no responsibility for a baby he wasn’t sure was his. Both hired lawyers. Inevitably, the tabloids and gossip sites took notice of the scandal, dropping increasingly detailed hints about the behind-the-scenes drama.
Considering how long the affair allegedly lasted, I think Toobin’s reaction to the pregnancy news becomes more understandable. If this truly was an on-again, off-again relationship that spanned almost a decade, a time during which Greenfield presumably had other paramours as well, it’s not unreasonable for Toobin to question whether the baby was actually his.
“The one time you really don’t want to get pregnant is when you’re single and the other person is married and you’re working as a first-year junior associate at a law firm in a hard-core phase of trying to prove yourself to them,” Ms. Greenfield recalled last week. She said she ruled out an abortion. She did not delude herself that the emotional nadir of her life would qualify for much external sympathy. “I had a job at a prestigious firm,” she said, “a law degree from Yale that was paid for, a wonderful support group of friends.” But when she informed her parents that she was pregnant, she did not say by whom.
In March 2009, Ms. Greenfield had a baby boy and named him Roderick Henry Greenfield: Roderick is Mr. Labby’s middle name, and Henry is her father’s actual first name. She went on maternity leave for four months and then returned to Gibson Dunn until January 2011. She also sued Mr. Toobin for child support and custody of the baby, while being officially represented by Heidi Harris of Aronson, Mayefsky & Sloan, a preeminent matrimonial firm, and unofficially assisted by Mr. Labby, whom she calls her “fixer.”
Speaking for myself, I did find Greenfield sympathetic at the time of these events. Being a pregnant single mother, while working at a demanding law firm like Gibson Dunn and litigating child support issues on the side, couldn’t have been easy. As one of Greenfield’s friends told ATL at the time, “Casey has been through a lot, and is kind of a superhero. She’s been a full-time single mom while working at Biglaw, all while fighting a rather ugly battle with [Toobin], and so the last 20 months or so have been pretty hard on her. Casey’s an amazing person and an amazing mom, and she deserves better.”
Where do things stand now in the Greenfield v. Toobin litigation? And what does Toobin have to say about these matters?
Again, from the august pages of the Gray Lady:
Mr. Toobin ultimately acquiesced to a paternity test that confirmed he was the father of the boy, who is nicknamed Rory. He contested portions of her suit. The tabloids zeroed back in. In February 2010, the custody case was heard in Manhattan Family Court. It was not resolved until late last year, with Ms. Greenfield receiving full custody of Rory, including the right to make all pivotal decisions in his upbringing and schooling. She briefly represented herself in the remaining phase of litigation, a dispute over the amount of child support to which she was entitled; barring an 11th-hour settlement, the case is scheduled to return to Manhattan Family Court next month, this time with Mr. Labby litigating….
Rory spends every other weekend with Mr. Toobin and his family; he also visits in the summer and on some holidays. Ms. Greenfield and Mr. Toobin have not sparred over the time-sharing arrangement, but their parting of the ways, unlike Ms. Greenfield’s 2006 divorce from the Los Angeles-based screenwriter Matt Manfredi after less than two years of marriage, continues to be less than amicable.
I can understand why Toobin would harbor anger towards Greenfield. What’s more puzzling is why he’d quibble over child support. He probably makes six figures from his New Yorker gig, six figures from his television work, and who knows how much in residual royalties from his multiple bestselling books (including The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (affiliate link), which I recommend to you if you haven’t already read it). Why not avoid the bad publicity and pay Greenfield what she seeks?
As for Toobin’s take on the case, his lawyer, the high-powered Patricia Ann Grant of Grant & Appelbaum, commented to the Times:
“The law assumes that both parents will contribute to the financial support of the child. Mr. Toobin is providing liberal financial support. Ms. Greenfield’s demands are unreasonable and do not comport with the law.”
As to continuing news media coverage of the matter, Mr. Toobin “feels that it’s not in Rory’s interest for this matter to be publicized,” Ms. Grant wrote [in an email]. “He wishes Ms. Greenfield felt the same way.”
Casey Greenfield
That’s a fair point too. One could certainly argue — and, based on the NYT reader comments, some people appear to think — that it’s somehow inappropriate or exploitative for Casey Greenfield to be using her personal story to help build her legal practice. That’s not my personal view — in a highly competitive legal market, you need to press every advantage — but I can see how some might think that.
And Casey Greenfield, boasting brains and beauty, does have many advantages to press. Her former boss at Gibson Dunn — legendary litigator Orin Snyder, who recently smacked down shady Facebook claimant Paul Ceglia — characterizes Greenfield as “a natural-born litigator… smart, savvy and tough.” The Times amusingly describes her as “strategically toned in all the right places.”
Best of luck to Casey Greenfield and her colleagues at Greenfield Labby. Growing a new law firm can be difficult, but with her fearsome combination of a strategic mind and equally strategic toning, this luscious litigatrix should be up for the challenge.
P.S. Some folks, including commenters on the Times article, seem to view coverage of the Greenfield / Toobin affair as unseemly. I have several responses. First, this complaint seems a bit old-school to me; for better or worse, we live in an age where what used to be considered “private” is increasingly public. Second, both Greenfield and Toobin are public figures (Toobin in a general-purpose way, and Greenfield because she has invited the spotlight). Third, specifically with respect to ATL’s coverage, you should know that we have exercised great restraint in covering this matter. We have withheld certain materials (e.g., steamy Gchat messages during the affair) that we deem to be purely prurient and without news value. So please don’t accuse us of not exercising news judgment or editorial discretion; you should see the kinds of tips we receive and don’t print in these pages, about this story and many others.
Casey Greenfield v. the World [New York Times]
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Casey Greenfield
Prior ATL coverage of Jeffrey Toobin
Size Matters: From Tragedy to Triumph Isn’t Just a Theme in Lifetime Movies (Just Ask Casey Greenfield)
The Jeffrey Toobin / Casey Greenfield Drama Rolls On
So brainy she practiced birth control like a high school sophomore.
A journalist and a lawyer fighting.....it’s gonna be a good day.
I want 3 minutes of my life back for reading that waiting for some type of point to be made.
The author writes like a high school sophomore, but maybe he is just excessively gay. As for the “boutique law firm,” what the heck is a ‘an elite group of “country lawyers” for glittering urban professionals’?
This poor little boy is about 3 1/2, by my reckoning. He is no more than a pawn. Typical leftists.
It’s bad enough that this tramp dumps him into the care of others as she pursues her career, but then he is also sent to be with the insufferable Toobin every other weekend and for the summer?
I suppose he is cared for there by other paid strangers, as well. One can only hope that his regular nanny accompanies him so that he has at least a modicum of consistency in his life.
Leni
We are just not cool enough to understand all of this stuff, okay. C’mon, sit with me at the nerd table when at lunchtime.
delete “when”
So I read this after I read about the Santorum post and how he was a loser because of his social issues stands.
These people (Toobin, NYT and Greenfield) are the elite that run the media and decide who is acceptable as a candidate?
Toobin is a legal SCOTUS authority and he manages his own decisions this way?
If Santorum handles the major issues well, ordinary people will vote for him, rather than listen to these people.
I think more voters mirror the moral principles of Rick than those of Toobin or Greenfield....or Clinton and JFK.
So I read this after I read about the Santorum post and how he was a loser because of his social issues stands.
These people (Toobin, NYT and Greenfield) are the elite that run the media and decide who is acceptable as a candidate?
BINGO.
Lat is excessively gay; no maybe about it.
Often, women like affairs deliberately get pregnant in order to pressure the man to commit (or perhaps in this case to leave his wife and then commit to her). They are often disappointed and then get an abortion.
But you are 100% correct because I personally know a woman who did the exact same thing and , hold on to your hat, the man didn't leave his wife. And she had the baby anyway. Still delusional she showed up at his business with the baby every week for a year.
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