https://www.law360.com/articles/148424/ ... lise-bloom
Law360, New York (February 11, 2010, 6:20 PM EST) -- Collegiality being key to a prominent career, Gregory Rasin and Elise Bloom have excelled at working alongside other attorneys, but the labor and employment standouts have done much of their finest work together.
Happily married since 1997, Rasin and Bloom have found the marriage-practice nexus to be anything but problematic, enjoying distinguished, interwoven careers that led the duo to
proskauer rose llp in 2006.
“It’s always worked really well for us,” Bloom said. “We love what we do, and our work is one of our shared interests, so if anything, our relationship adds a level of enthusiasm for our work and vice versa.”
Having worked side by side in the labor and employment field for more than two decades, Bloom and Rasin make a formidable team, a fact not lost on Proskauer Rose when it brought the partners in roughly four years ago and planted them in neighboring offices.
Bloom and Rasin have developed a minute understanding of each other’s practice, and like any effective duo, their collaboration has benefited from a mutual respect and an easy rapport. They work well together because they click and, by clicking, the trickiest cases are unencumbered.
“Elise and I clicked professionally from the moment we met each other. We were completely compatible in the way we approached and found solutions to the issues we had to solve in our professional life,” Rasin said. “We often know what the other is thinking about a topic before we discuss it.”
Bloom, the first female co-chair of the firm’s labor and employment law department and co-head of the class and collective actions group, first met Rasin when she joined
Jackson Lewis LLP in 1984, where he managed the employment law and litigation practice.
Corporate flagships may seem an unlikely place for Cupid, but his arrows aren’t blunted by billable hours, litigation and client travel. If anything, the years spent working together gave Bloom and Rasin an intense appreciation for each other’s capability and intelligence, and eventually led them down the aisle in 1997.
Since then, it’s been coming up roses for the pair, whose clients have found that married counsel has its benefits.
“Certainly, we’ve always been very up front with clients and prospective clients about the fact that we’re married. It’s really never been an issue,” Rasin said. “In fact, clients appreciate having attorneys who work extraordinarily well together. Also, we’re able to give clients complete coverage as one of us can always be reached if something comes up.”
While their time together away from the office does not translate into billable hours, Rasin and Bloom do not police the domestic sphere to keep work separate. If anything, their relationship is enlivened by a shared ardor for their work.
“We bounce ideas off each other all the time,” Bloom said. “Greg is the greatest source of my strategic thinking.”
Rasin also found that being married to another lawyer brings a certain harmony, as there is a bedrock understanding about the rigors of the job, removing some of the issues that might be flashpoints in other relationships.
“We are extremely lucky and have ended up marrying just the right person,” Rasin said. “The fact that we can work together and intimately understand what we do and why we do it just enhances the relationship.”
While sharing a practice group with one's spouse can be intense, Rasin said that it beat being at separate firms, which would make the pair borderline competitors.
While Rasin and Bloom each have their own busy caseloads in the New York office, they do join forces about 10 percent of the time, when a particularly big case comes along. Then, with a coordination that borders on the telepathic, they swing into action, each spouse focusing on their own strong suits and exploiting the other's.
“When we’re both on a big case, each of us will take on a different aspect that leverages our individual strengths," Bloom said. “For instance, he many be responsible for handling witnesses while I will focus on the statistical part. We’re both very strategic in our approaches — he tends to look at the long-term view of where we’re going while I enjoy working out details and dealing with the tasks at hand.”
Rasin agreed, saying that while he’s tried his share of cases, he often develops the overall strategy and helms settlement discussions when he’s working with his wife, while she tends to lead discovery and try the cases, shining in court.
On one such occasion, stretching mathematical possibility, Bloom and Rasin found themselves on a case where the opposing counsel were also married. It being court, however, little time was afforded to marvel at the odds, and Bloom and Rasin instead continued doing what they do best — lawyering side by side.
Reflecting on the cinematic potential of the scenario, Bloom said with some relish that Harrison Ford would probably be cast in her husband’s role, while Rasin envisioned Demi Moore mastering "his boss'" part.
The silver screen, however, will be put off while Bloom and Rasin pursue a charmed life at the forefront of labor and employment law, and a Valentine's Day of fine wine and cookery.