The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games cauldron (Photo by STEFANO RELLANDINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Biglaw associates are known for being overachievers, but one attorney at Sidley Austin is taking it to a whole other level. Sidley associate Matt Simpson is busy packing his bags — he’s heading to the Paralympic games, starting on August 28th.
Paris will be Simpson’s third Paralympics — he went to Tokyo in 2021 and Rio in 2016 (and took home a team silver medal in those games). Simpson, born with a congenital retina disease, plays goalball — a team sport where all the competitors are blindfolded.
As Simpson told Law.com:
“Picking up the goalball for the first time and getting on the court for the first time meant so much to me. Because anything else I ever did in life whether it was running on a track or something in a pool or school or just playing on the playground, my vision was always a factor,” Simpson said. ”One the unique parts of goalball is that everyone is blindfolded so there’s no visual advantage at all. … It’s the first thing I’d ever really done where my vision didn’t matter at all, and the only things that mattered was how hard can I work at this?”
Speaking of hard work, elite athlete + attorney can be a real challenge.
Simpson said it requires a bit of a “juggling act” to fit in training with work and spending time with his wife and three children, oftentimes spending time in the weight room before or after work, practicing with local teams and flying on weekends to be with the national team.
“It’s a lot of throwing on my own, working on technique on my own, diving, just padding up and diving in my basement, kind of trying to get repetition in as close to a game like situation as possible, even if I can’t get hit by a ball. And then, of course, a lot of travel to train and compete with the team,” Simpson said.
The University of Virginia Law alum went to Sidley immediately after graduation, but just finished a clerkship with Western District of Kentucky Judge Benjamin Beaton. He returned to the firm last week — barely enough time to get re-acclimated to Biglaw life before he’s Paris bound.
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].
