Hanging with Elie Mystal

It’s not often that someone gets to sit next to  Above the Law’s editor, Elie Mystal, twice in a week, provided your name isn’t Lat and you’re not on trial with him.  For those who read ATL, you know that he’s got a wicked sense of humor, fights contemporary spelling and grammar protocols and takes a ton of crap from the commenters.

I’m here to tell you that Elie is an extraordinary young man.  First, his bio:

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law.His first name is pronounced like Eliot without the “it,” and his last name is pronounced like Cristal (the champagne).Prior to winning the ATL Idol Contest, Elie wrote about politics and popular culture at City Hall News and the New York Press. Elie received a degree in Government from Harvard University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He still has a rash from all the poison ivy.He used to be a litigator at Debevoise & Plimpton but quit the legal profession in lieu of stripping naked and lighting himself on fire.Elie is a proud and basically competent husband. He is a contributor at True/Slant and enjoys the Mets, dogs, and arguing with strangers.

Not an unimpressive background, though he isn’t kidding about his experience at Debevoise driving him to the brink of nudity, something that no one wants to see.  Yet this fails to begin to capture either his intelligence or thoughtfulness.*

Sitting next to Elie on a panel at the Asian American Bar Association of New York conference held at the Skadden Arps offices in Manhattan, a terrific conference by the way, I had a chance to watch Elie play the room.  Gregarious, self-effacing, funny as can be, one would be hard-pressed to realize that he holds one of the most powerful positions in the blawgosphere,

Whether or not you read or like ATL, it would be foolish not to realize the impact it has within the Biglaw community.  It can make or break careers, and on a really good day, contribute to the demise of a law practice through its choice disclosures.  When I asked who in the room read ATL, every hand went up.  Every single one.  That’s clout.

While he assumes the persona of the comedian, and he’s got a funny anecdote for pretty much every situation, make no mistake about it. Elie is brutally smart and aware.  The nuance of his comments is easy to miss, but if you listen closely, process the ideas he tosses about at lightning speed, you immediately realize that Elie is one of those guys whose minds move seamlessly through a multitude of ideas so quickly that its a struggle to keep up.

Chatting with him after our talk yesterday, one thought struck me and prompted me to write about Elie.  The commenters at ATL write smack about him constantly.  On the one hand, this is a good thing, reflecting the fact that he is and remains relevant.  For contrast, when Jay Shepherd posted his  final small law column on ATL, comments were sparse (for ATL). Few read the column, and fewer still cared. He no longer mattered, and if you’ve ever had the misfortune of reading his column, you would understand why.

For all the incredibly nasty things said about Elie, which he tolerates with amazingly good nature and wears like a badge of honor, he is relevant.  The lost children who populate the comment section feel powerful having someone to beat up on, and it has to be someone more worthy than themselves to count.  That’s why they’ve chosen Elie.

Having had the opportunity to spend some quality time with him, I’m enormously impressed with this kid.  Sure, the infantile sex jokes and obsession with scatological references aren’t my thing, and hopefully he’ll outgrow them someday, and his strained use of ghetto-speak is contrived.  Harvard didn’t waste space on him.

If you get the chance to spend some time with Elie, do it.  If you want to leave a comment at ATL making fun of Elie, you can do that as well.  He can take it.  But know that this is quite an extraordinary intellect and person, and that whatever joke you make is merely an homage to the influence he rightly holds in the blawgosphere.  And know that this influence is in very good hands.


*That’s right, I’m writing something nice about someone.  Stercus accidit. Get over it.