The Other Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name

In the late 1980s, Gordon Gekko told us that "greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works." Those of us who aspired to the practice of law thought, "Well, duh." We did, however, have the sense to leave that unsaid for the sake of propriety. Unfortunately, a toxic mixture of e-mail honesty and difficult-to-spell Dutch surnames has now come together to let the cat out of the bag:

Even for his fellow lawyers, a Dutch law school graduate may have a gone a bit too far in expressing a desire to strike it rich.

Reinder Eekhof, a freshly minted lawyer, recently wrote in an e-mail that he had "finally finished this stupid education," and was "now looking for someone crazy enough to dump a suitcase full of money in my lap every month."

The e-mail was meant for a friend at the Houthoff Buruma law firm. But Eekhof mistyped the address and his missive landed in the inbox of someone in the communications department instead.

That person forwarded it, and soon the e-mail was being read at law firms across the Netherlands.

"Good luck with your career," wrote one lawyer who saw the e-mail. Another noted that "the advantage is that now everyone in the legal profession in Holland knows your name."