Where I practice, the procedural rules require that opposition to motions for summary judgment be filed and served within 10 days of the motion's return date. Therefore, when I get a summary judgment motion in from an opposing party, I count backwards to the 10th day before the return date and put a post-it on the file with that date.
Today, I learned that this system has a fatal flaw: The mail is not delivered the same day you send it. In fact, more often than not, the mail is delivered three or four days after you send it. Therefore, when I put a post-it on a file two months ago that said "Nov. 9," and proceeded to ignore that file until LAST NIGHT, at which point I said "hmm, Nov. 9 is tomorrow, I should look at this," I effectively insured I would have a heinous, frantic twenty-four hours. Which, in my usual mature way, I have since dealt with by: a) drinking three Red Stripes while freaking out on the phone to my little sister, currently a 1L, so she would understand what she was getting into, 2) drinking another Red Stripe on the phone to my friend whose wedding I have to be in this weekend, 3) watching "Gilmore Girls," 4) going to bed early "so I could get up early and start work when I feel fresh," 5) getting up at 8:30am, 6) getting to work at 9:30am after a fight with my shrinking wardrobe (note to self: sitting in office chair all freaking day long is NOT a good way to keep that girlish figure!), 7) reading updates on favorite blawgs, 8) posting on own blog, 9) engaging SSP in nonsensical conversation purely to avoid writing Damn Brief and causing him to wonder, once again, why it is that I haven't been "let go" yet, and 10) making hourly trips to Starbucks.
And now it's 2:20. And I have one hour and forty minutes until Damn Brief has to be faxed. And I STILL cannot think of any legal basis on which to oppose the motion. And my instinct is that it's not permitted to write a brief in which you say "Defendant X opposes Plaintiff Y's motion on the grounds that my senior partner told me to." Yeah, no.
God help me.
No, REALLY, HELP ME!!
I have a theory - we who procrastinate just work best under pressure. The fact that you have even approaching doing an opposition to an msj in one day is very impressive.
Posted by: LAlawyer | November 14, 2005 at 04:50 PM