Akin Gump: Lilliam Machado, Esq.

During the earliest period of my tenure at the D.C. law firm of Akin, Gump Strauss, Hauer & Feld -- from March 4, 1988 to the summer of 1988 -- I was supervised by a paralegal named Lilliam Machado.  Lilliam Machado left the firm to attend law school in the fall of 1988. She worked at the firm as a law clerk in the summer of 1990. She was exceptionally intelligent and mature; she stood out among the paralegals at the firm. I believe that when she first started working at the firm her office mate had been J.D. Neary, who later became the firm's legal assistant coordinator.

Lilliam Machado worked closely with John "Jack" Gallagher, Esq., the billing attorney for Eastern Airlines and David P. Callett, Esq., a senior attorney on Eastern; the respective offices of the three parties were adjacent to each other.

Lilliam Machado's husband was named Luis.

Lilliam Machado and I got on very well. I don't think it ever occurred to her that I might be potenially violent or homicidal.

She appeared to be in the loop regarding office gossip.  It was she who told me in about May 1988 that the then Litigation Support Administrator Nancy Shaffer had been terminated by the firm for insubordination.

I had an idea of reference during the summer of 1990, while Lilliam Machado worked at the firm as a law clerk and I was in psychotherapy with Stanley R. Palombo, M.D., an expert in the creative process. I was walking out of the firm's office building onto 19th Street. I could hear Lilliam Machado talking to someone, walking behind me. I heard Lilliam Machado say, "He's an artist." I really have no idea who she was talking about, but I had the feeling her comment was directed at me. That was almost twenty years ago, but I still remember that.