Weil Gotshal IP Associate Takes On Much Tougher Job
As a third-year associate at Weil Gotshal & Manges, intellectual property attorney Okey Onyejekwe obviously isn’t afraid of hard work.
But he’s taking on a much tougher challenge for the next three months, when he will be serving in Iraq with his Air Force Reserve unit, reports the Am Law Daily. A doctor as well as a lawyer, Onyejekwe is the battle surgeon for his unit.
The firm has been extremely supportive of his reserve work, Onyejekwe says, and will continue to pay him his full salary while he is on leave, the legal publication notes. Meanwhile, despite the stresses of his military job, he is still going to keep an eye on his cases back in California, colleagues predict.
“Being Okey, he wants to keep getting updates on the cases and other matters, so even if he’s picking bodies up off the ground in Fallujah, he’ll be checking his e-mail to make sure the interrogatories get filed on time,” says Edward Reines, an IP litigation partner who works with Onyejekwe in the firm’s Silicon Valley office.
As the the Am Law blog post points out, “Even in the desert, you can’t dodge the billables.”
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “BigLaw Associate Moonlights as ER Doc”
