trans=demic

Without any help or advice, Sam revised all the documents on a sale and leaseback of a portfolio of
twelve office buildings valued at a billion dollars. Josh was incommunicado, in an ICU, without his cell
phone. Sam was stressed, downing Adderall with expressos all day, then boozing and popping Ambient
to get four hours of drunk, drugged sleep, awaking from one nightmare to live its sequel in real life the
next day.
Josh’s absence would be no excuse if K&K failed to close the deal; Sam would be blamed, and be vilified,
even though Sam had never blown a closing. Sam had to succeed, no matter what.
Not that any success, or the weekends and vacations Sam had cancelled to attain them, would advance
Sam’s standing at K&K. Christmas 2018 had brought Sam the professional equivalent of a lump of coal:
Sam was had been designated a “counsel”, the purgatory to which big law firms relegated senior
associates deemed too useful and profitable to terminate, but not worthy of promotion to partnership.
Sam had dreamed of becoming the first MtF Trans partner in big law. But K&K had rebuffed her, and
the headhunters who swarmed around disappointed counsel seeking outplacement had spurned her
too. Big Law wasn’t ready for am MTF transgender partner.
Josh probably knew that, and he had probably sabotaged her partnership run at K&K, secretly preferring
to keep Sam as his trusted subordinate. But the K&K’s managing partners had also spurned Sam,
unwilling to admit an androgyne like her into their inner circle.
So Sam had recalibrated. A career as a “counsel” would be less lucrative, and the billable hours
demands on counsel were closer to slave-like conditions of associates than to the seigneurial status of
partners. But a counsel was an employee, with all of the protections of Title VII against discrimination.
So she’d disclosed her intention to make a transsexual transition to HR. K&K’s antidiscrimination
policies would require the firm to cooperate the transition of Sam as an employee. She’d been on