Freshman year of high school, I had this amazing biology teacher who liked to sprinkle homespun words of wisdom into lessons about how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of a cell. I can clearly recall one tidbit that stuck out from the rest due to the insistence with which he told our class not to make enemies of your neighbors. He said if you need to argue with someone, call up a long distance relative or something, but you never know when you’ll need a friendly face nearby, and good neighbors can be the difference between the home of your dreams and of nightmares.
That’s not a lesson that Goodwin tax partner Alex Apostolopoulos learned.
Above the Law has reviewed emails sent to the whole building at Apostolopoulos’s residence. And he does not come across as a good neighbor. The exchange begins as an announcement about some cleaning and accompanying noise in the building. But Apostolopoulos — using his Biglaw email address — changes the topic to a personal grievance: a fire alarm door was opened recently and he pins the blame on folks in a neighboring apartment.
He then, apropos of nothing, dropped a slur for developmentally disabled people.
“The [R slur] tenants of 6W opened the fire alarm door to my terrace.”
Yikes. And the property manager promptly chastised Apostolopoulos for “send[ing] out a building wide email with inappropriate language” and, here’s the kicker, providing photographic evidence that it was not the residents of 6W who set off the fire alarm. How embarrassing for Apostolopoulos. But he took an… interesting path after being proved wrong — he lobbed back MORE insults.
“Sorry I thought it was the insane people living in 6W. Tell them to be quiet with their stupid children.”
He must be real popular around the building.
Above the Law reached out to Apostolopoulos and Goodwin for comment, but did not hear back.
Listen, an aggressive, never-back-down attitude might be rewarded in Biglaw — but that’s not the mentality you need to bring to your home life. Otherwise someone in your building is likely to forward a problematic email where you use inappropriate language to a media source.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].