Beautiful Lawyers (Seriously.)

Lawyers: they’re boring, stuffy, buttoned-up.

At least that’s what people have always thought. But on Jan. 1, these same people just might change their minds. That’s when walls all over Massachusetts will be adorned with the first-ever “Beautiful Lawyers Calendar.”

The brainchild of law-firm marketing director Howard A. Altholtz, a portion of proceeds from the 2009 calendar will help fund legal-services organizations and various other charities.

“I thought about the way people do these calendars as fund-raisers, and I thought this would be great,” Altholtz says. “We would do something that was
really unique and professional that would feature lawyers at work and at play; that would take the edge off the perception of lawyers as stiff and humanize the people behind the power suits.”

A team of judges selected the calendar’s final picks from a pool of 100 applicants.
“I had people nominating their colleagues, spouses nominating their partners - it was all over the board,” Altholtz says. “And all of them were interesting candidates.”

Four of the finalists make their debut here. To see the other eight, you have to purchase a calendar for $19.95 at www.beautifullawyers.com.

ELAINE M. ROGERS

Job: Partner, Fish & Richardson, Boston

Age: “Mid-40s”

Personal status: Married with “four-legged children”

Elaine M. Rogers complements her work as a transactional entertainment lawyer with her devotion to her two rescue horses, a pair of greyhounds and a coonhound named Snickers.

Though Rogers calls her work packaging movies from script to screen as “challenging and fun,” she says her heart belongs to animals.

“I’ve been riding ever since I was a child,” she says, crediting her equestrian background with her interest in animal rights. After saving a horse, Sting, that was headed for the slaughterhouse 13 years ago, she adopted his “buddy,” Jac, as well. That led to rescuing Rocky, a greyhound from Florida, and later Morgy, a Massachusetts greyhound. This fall, she hopes to convince voters to pass a ballot resolution that bans greyhound racing in the commonwealth.

“These are animals that are abused and injured. I know firsthand
because I rescued two,” she says of her beloved greyhounds.

INGRID C. SCHROFFNER

Job: Assistant general counsel, Estate Recovery Unit of Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Boston

Age: 37

Personal status: Married with one child

“Being a musician-lawyer - it’s kind of like living a dual life,” says Ingrid C. Schroffner, a Hawaiian singer-songwriter who owns five guitars and has her own album, “Living on Two Coasts.”

For Schroffner, “Beautiful Lawyers” was an opportunity to bring the two halves of her life together as one.

“Showcasing people who have diverse backgrounds, who have diverse interests, might broaden the thinking on what lawyers are,” she says. “The profession takes itself seriously enough already; people need to lighten up a little. I want to support creativity in the legal profession.”

STEVEN R. LONG

Job: Sole practitioner, Cambridge

Age: 33

Personal status: Single

“I like being able to get to the top of a mountain and being out in nature,” says Steven R. Long, a self-described “quiet guy” and avid hiker who trained in the Army’s 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C.

“My knees, they’re just shot,” he says of his stint in the military. “I was a parachutist, and hitting the ground so hard quite a few times just really takes a toll. We used to have to run 12 miles in three hours with 80 pounds on our backs. We had to run 18 miles before we could run home for Christmas.”

Long says he always wanted to be a lawyer and even has aspirations to become a judge one day. “It’s the noble ideal, I think, that I really wanted.”

The Cambridge lawyer hopes the calendar proves that, despite what people might think, attorneys aren’t uptight workaholics. “I’d like to dispel that myth,” he says.

WENDY SAVAGE

Job: In-house lawyer, Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., Boston

Age: 28

Personal status: “My fiancé proposed to me and took me to Paris as a surprise.”

Before she became a lawyer, Wendy Savage dreamed of a career in modeling. But when she was told that, at 5-foot-7, she was too short to make it big, she went to law school instead.

Today, the in-house lawyer at Liberty Mutual plans to develop a specialty in entertainment law.

While Savage has done some modeling on the side over the years, her calendar cover shot is her highest-profile work to date. “It’s a group of diverse lawyers where I don’t think the focus is on physical attractiveness, but rather the person as a whole,” Savage says of her decision to participate in the project.