Snap Shot: John Maclay

John Maclay, center, with some members of the Grace Church Choral Society. Clockwise from upper right: Faith Wu, of Weil, Gotshal & Manges L.L.P.; Charles Brody, of Kings County Surrogate Court; Stephen Foster, of Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler, Schwartz & Nahins P.C. ; Elizabeth Cawns, of Covington & Burling; Rob Murphy, of Morrison & Foerster L.L.P.; Darren Walker, of Dewey Ballantine L.L.P.; Dory Green, Law Journal Press; Douglas Remillard, White & Case L.L.P.; Stuart Heffer, Winston & Strawn; Marian Painter, Covington & Burling; Peter Julian, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom L.L.P.; Carole Linda Gonzalez, Sumitomo Corp. of America.

VITALS: Undergraduate: Haverford College (1990). Harvard Law School (1994).

A.K.A. (nickname): Like every transactional lawyer, I've been called lots of names.

CURRENT POST: Corporate associate at Covington & Burling, an international law firm, with more than 430 lawyers practicing in New York, Washington, San Francisco, London and Brussels. My primary focus is on private equity, mergers and acquisitions and structured finance transactions.

EXTRACURRICULARS: Conductor of the Grace Church Choral Society, a 100-member community chorus in Manhattan. On April 20 we will perform Mendelssohn's Elijah with full orchestra.

OFFICE TECHNOLOGY: Covington standard issue is a Compaq 433 Pentium II desktop (128 MB of RAM), shared Hewlett Packard laser printer, Windows NT OS, iManage document manage-ment software and Microsoft Office 2000 applications. We are implementing a computer network which will soon link together all five offices. The New York office is pioneering this effort. We have a C.I.O. (based in Washington) who is assisted by a great I.T. department.

FAVORITE GADGET: Koss "Beat Doctor." It's indispensable for any conductor.

LAPTOP: Macintosh G3 PowerBook. Great for storing vacation snapshots.

ISP: We have a DSL line but I have no idea where it goes to or comes from.

PAGER: I really want a Blackberry.

PDA: Palm V (issued to all associates) supple-mented by lots of yellow Post-Its.

Photos by Monica Bay. Location: Grace Church, New York City

COMPUTER GAME: Haven't played since the days of "Frogger" and "Space Invaders."

CAR: Volkswagen "New Beetle"-- Fun!

CELL PHONE: Nokia 6160.

FAVORITE MAGAZINE: The New Yorker.

TV: Will and Grace.

LETTERMAN OR LENO: If I'm up that late, it's usually because of a crisis at the office.

LAST BOOK READ: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, by Cristoph Wolff.

WATCH: Stainless steel diving watch.

WHERE WOULD WE FIND YOU ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON? Usually at home, studying scores.

APPOINTMENTS I NEVER MISS: Wednesday "lawyers' lunch. " Tuesday night choir practice.

IMPORTANT LEGAL TECH TREND: Lawyers are finally realizing that their office computers are somewhat more complicated than a toaster, and that computer literacy actually does matter in meeting client demands.

FAVORITE URL: The Vocal Area Network contains information about the 100-plus choirs in New York City area.

FAVORITE SEARCH ENGINE: Ask Jeeves.

LAST VACATION: Ski trip to Whistler/Blackcomb.

QUOTE: Anything ever uttered by Dorothy Parker or Samuel Clemens.

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