Because the Firm is a fairly "medium-small" close-knit place, we often get visits from past employees who have since become mommies and want to bring their offspring by to show off (I'm not being bigoted; we've never gotten a visit from a new daddy). Typically, the offspring in question are infants and they're carried from office to office while mommy reminsces with partners and the support staff about the days when she had actual adult conversations and the most important question of her morning was not "why hasn't Junior-Cutie-Pants pooped today?" but was "What is the effect of Brand-New Precedent on my case in State Supreme Court?" (so, can anyone tell I have no interest in the procreation side of things anytime soon??!)
However. Today we had an ex-support-staffer visit with her twin 2-year-old sons. And their trucks. And their dinosaurs. And their ridiculously overdeveloped lungs. There was yelling and screaming and crowing and crying galore for an HOUR. And of course, mommy made no effort to stop them.
Twenty minutes in, I was furious. This is a law firm for chrissakes, not a nursery -- shouldn't we have rules about this sort of thing? In defiance, I refused to continue working on Brief-That-Is-A-Pain-In-My-Ass and began blog-reading. I came upon poor Opinionistas' post from today. and even though moments earlier I had been incredibly irritated by the Firm's relaxed atmosphere (and often, am a little sad about the financial compensation, nice as they have been and "never" as I have brought it up to them), I'm so grateful to be here. I've never gotten reamed by a partner for something so inane. And granted, while SSP's redlines and corrections are sometimes a little on the persnickety side, he's aware of the persnicketyness and never berates for my failure to live up to it. My opinions matter; every so often I get the lovely compliment about my written work. It's very much the alternative "training method" suggested by Opinionista -- the praise (while occasionally freaking me out by the setting of the bar higher than the last time) makes me want to make them happier and it also helps me feel that I can do this job, that I have a valuable skill or two.
I'm gushing, aren't I? I guess it's the surprise of it -- during school, what with GPA and law review, my career services people always set me up for OCI interviews with the larger regional and national firms. In second and third year, I must have gone for at least one, and sometimes two, interviews with about thirty of the "top" OCI firms, the ones where your starting salary is $125,000 and you get a brand-new BMW (ick - more on why I'm not a BMW-lover later) as a signing bonus -- and I tanked every. single. one. don't really know why -- I think it had something to do with the fact that I'd never really had proper "interviews" for anything before, and I usually relied on a combination of sweetness, the odd $5-word and the occasional silly comment to charm those in positions of power -- NOT techniques that work particularly well in firm interviews. Therefore, on graduation, I was the only person I know (other than He-Who-Is-Irksome) with the "golden" resume but no golden handcuffs. Woe was me. For months, I beat myself up for being a failure, for getting so close to what I was "supposed" to do but then not actually grabbing the ring when it really counted (and it certainly didn't help that Ex-Boyfriend, with whom I had a shaky friendship at the time, was in total agreement that I'd screwed up).
But, now, I think it was just my guardian angel -- because, while I'm certainly not set to retire at 40 (and, if i don't stop blogging sometime today, I won't be set to retire EVER), I'm happy, I'm surrounded by bright people who I really respect, who aren't sketchy or slimy, who seem to care that I'm happy and who have given me great opportunities to learn and actually practice law. (Granted, it would be nice if I could pick the whole place up and move it to The City, instead of The Sticks, but with the new adorable apartment in the charming town, it's not so bad here.) So, thanks, whoever is up there -- and to those of you making too much money and spending it all on therapy -- look around -- there are certainly places to practice law without sacrificing your humanity, your soul or your sanity.
Hmm, are they hiring?
Posted by: LAlawyer | October 13, 2005 at 05:21 PM