Gifts

You are buying for a lawyer.

And you are probably not one. That is a harder problem than it looks.

The profession runs on objects with specific jobs and specific names. Get it right and it sits on a desk for twenty years and gets explained to people who ask about it. Get it wrong and it goes in a drawer, kindly, and stays there.

The problem

A padfolio is not a portfolio.

The names are not interchangeable, and the difference is not pedantry. Most gifts that miss are bought under the wrong word — the right instinct, aimed at the wrong object. What each of these four actually is, and when it is the right thing to send.

A padfolio: The thing she sets on the table at a first deposition, open, while someone senior watches how she takes notes. Not a portfolio, which zips and carries paper home.
A card case: For the first time in their life they have a title worth handing to someone. Right the week they are admitted. Wrong two years earlier, when there are no cards to put in it.
The pen: It matters more than anyone outside the building would guess. It signs the appearance, the retainer, the settlement — and it is the one object a lawyer is handed early and still carries late.
The bag: Whatever carries the day's actual weight. What that means changes with the decade of the career, which is why we ask what the day looks like before recommending one.

Read the Field Guide

By the occasion

Four moments, and what we would send.

Starting law school
A Bend in the River — Women's Leather Backpack Sale price$345.00
Color Brown Black

Bags & briefcases
Graduation
The Brief — Leather Padfolio Sale price$245.00
Color Black Warm Brown

Portfolios & padfolios
Passing the bar
Esterbrook Estie Ballpoint — Ebony & Gold Sale price$125.00

Writing instruments
Admission & swearing-in
The Counsel — Leather Card Case Sale price$115.00
Color Black Warm Brown

Small leather goods

Before you buy

Four things we will tell you plainly.

There is no gift path through this checkout. A gift is bought the way anything else here is bought, and the parcel arrives the way every parcel arrives. What we can do instead is tell you the truth about all of it, including the parts a shop would usually rather you discovered later.

Have it shipped to you: Every parcel leaves with a packing slip that shows the price, and we cannot take it out. If the piece is being handed over in person — at a graduation or a swearing-in it almost always is — send it to your own address and carry it the last mile yourself.
We do not monogram: No initials, no engraving, nothing added to the leather. A monogram makes an object about the person who bought it. We would rather it be about the person carrying it.
We will say when it is wrong: Including when it is something we sell. A card case is a beautiful gift for someone who has business cards and the wrong gift for someone two years away from having any.
Where a piece arrives boxed: Time Resistance ships every piece in its own presentation box, good enough to hand over as it arrives. We cannot box or wrap anything here, so that is the nearest thing to gift packaging we offer. Other makers vary; the product page says what arrives.

Where to start

By what it costs, and what it does.

Under $150

The luggage tag, the card case, the desk pad. Small pieces with long lives — and the desk pad in particular is the gift nobody thinks to give a student who reads five hours a day.

Small leather goods

The pen

Ballpoints begin around $125, rollerballs and fountain pens above them. A ballpoint is the honest first pen — it gets carried and used. A rollerball is the middle course: the wet line of a fountain pen, none of the ritual, and the safer answer when you do not know how someone writes. The fountain pen is the one for an admission, a partnership, or a career long enough to deserve marking.

Writing instruments

The piece that carries the day

Padfolios and bags begin around $250, briefcases above that. The most-used object in a working life, and the one where the wrong choice is most obvious by October.

Bags & briefcases Portfolios & padfolios

House pieces carry the warranty. Curated pieces carry the Assurance for thirty days from delivery, then the maker's own — Korchmar five years, Time Resistance and Xikar lifetime.

Buying for several people

A firm gives at four moments.

Admission, election, a closing, and the end of a long career. If you are buying for a class or a partner group, write to us before you order rather than after — it is easier to work something out before the order exists.

The occasion is the thing. The object only has to be equal to it.
The mark worth having is the one another lawyer recognizes, and no one else does.
Nothing offered that we wouldn't carry ourselves.

For Firms