Legal Mystenigmary

You Want a TITLE, too??! Greedy... you're all greedy!

Well, by some miracle, I survived. Two marathon shopping days, one day jam-packed with family "bonding," and five minutes of time to myself. I managed to avoid any truly explosive fights with my mother, and escaped nearly unscathed from the annual Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Conservative-Liberal Throwdown, otherwise known as "Christmas dinner with all the relatives." Amazing. I did, of course, get noticeably (apparently) "tipsy" at the Firm's christmas party -- oops. Although I didn't start dancing on tables or making out with inappropriate boys, so, really, far better than Best Friend's wedding last month... and actually, it was really fun to see everyone be relaxed and tell funny stories and be, like, real people and stuff...! Also, under the softening influence of several bottles of good wine, the managing partner *finally* said I could have the much-larger-than-my-own-broom-closet office that used to belong to an associate who was out on indeterminate sick leave but is apparently not really coming back -- which rocks, as currently, around about 4 pm, I can actually feel my ten by twelve box start to collapse in on me like a sci-fi movie and it's creepy. I do, of course, have to clean out the entire office first, which is proving to be a much larger project than I had initially anticipated -- ah well... it's worth it to finally be able to have my reading corner -- which I've wanted ever since I read Sherry's post about her office (and if I was less lazy, I'd go find the post itself and link to it for you, but it's somewhere in her really old archives, and I feel as if the time I'd spend looking for it would be much better used in looking for a cheap alternative to this for the corner itself). Which -- I think I'll go do now. I feel I had more things to say, but I'm so deliriously tired from the weekend that I can't begin to think.  (I think this girl I overheard in the mall put it best when she said: "Divorced kids don't get Christmas, they just have to race around like a ping-pong ball placating parents." I may be embellishing. But that was the gist.)

Hangovers, Broken Glass and Trashed Kitchens: It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Really, life should be lived backwards -- that way, I'd already have done the horrible adult-at-Christmastime thing and would have the carefree-kid-on-the-happiest-day-of-the-year thing ahead of me, so I would actaully have something to live for. As it is, Christmas is still three days away and I can't BEAR the thought of it -- I'm not holly and jolly, I'm cranky and feeling guilty and broke -- ugh. But I don't really hate Christmas -- I love it dearly. It's just that I love it so much that I want to do all these special things, and so I try, and then I get stymied because I don't have the time or the money or the resources to do everything I want to do, so I end up on Christmas Eve with eight different unfinished gift/decorating/wrapping projects, no actual presents to put under the tree, and so I race out to the mall and end up spending three times as much money as I make in a year to get last-minute gifts that aren't even that good. UUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

And I just ate a Christmas cookie that tasted HORRIBLE. There better be a whole lot of wine at this holiday thing I have to go to later, because I think I'm finally ready to accomplish that lifelong goal of turning all the water in my body to wine -- fitting, for Christmas, don't you think?

A Peter Gabriel-lian Post

What does it mean if, when you look at someone, you are completely drawn in by their eyes? And it makes you feel instantly like absolutely everything is just fine, like you've just been wrapped in the softest, warmest cashmere blanket and you're just... content. More than content -- really, thoroughly happy? Can that happen and be only a unilateral attachment? Or is that "windows to the soul" crap true? If it is, what does it mean if someone's soul makes you feel like that? And - WHY is life so complicated? then again, it wouldn't be any fun if it wasn't, right?

Manifesto, Continued

Sparked by one of Sherry's intelligent-and-thoughtful-as-always posts, for once, I'm going to write about something that actually has a little bit of substance to it. (Shocking, I know. I promise I'll try not to do it too often. Honestly, I don't have the energy to do it more often!)

The beginning of the thought is at the comments to the post, and because I've already used up a perfectly good .4 that should have been spent writing a deposition summary in reading the post and then responding to it, I'm just pasting in my comment as posted plus the other paragraph I cut out on the actual comment post, and I'll edit later. At home. With wine (which, when I moments ago returned to my office from a silly dep, I found a bottle of waiting for me on my desk, as a Christmas present from one of the court reporters we use -- so fun! [yeah, untangle those prepositional clauses -- good luck!]).

I think your Yale undergrad and honors law degrees *absolutely* have something to do with your fitness to select a book for first-year students. Those credentials speak directly to your intellectual ability, the caliber of your mind and your comfort level with the written word.

I do completely agree that those degrees/experiences should not affect the level of respect accorded you as a person by these professors, but I think it's dangerous to assume that just because a lesser person would use those credentials in a "look at me, I'm better than you" sort of way, you can't use them at all where they could also be highly relevant.

Really, I guess, I think that when you're aware of the assumptions people operate under, it's your duty to address them so that the assumption can be challenged and corrected. You're never going to change someone's predisposition to assume a lack of intellectual curiousity on the part of, say, an athletic coach, if you don't challenge that assumption by telling them what the other facets of that coach are. I don't see anything that is to be gained by failing to challenge those assumptions by showing them your credentials -- they persist in feeling their unchallenged assumption is correct, and you (likely) walk away frustrated and feeling unhappy about the experience.

Whereas, if you come forward and say "While you may think someone in my position wouldn't have the raw qualifications to judge literature, I have proved I do by {x, y and z}," those assumers (so what if it's not a word??!) walk away knowing that not all athletic people are intellectually challenged, or not all intellectually people are athletically challenged, or what have you. And maybe next time, they won't make that assumption. And more important, your contributions will be taken seriously, because you've shown you have the qualifications. Which, when you're not talking about "respect for a human being qua a human being," but "respect for being a human being having certain unique abilities more or less relevant to the situation," is important. And I think that only makes sense -- it's common sense to pay more heed to an opinion from one with experience in the field than to one without it. And, although I'm more liberal than not in my political leanings, I don't think that the notion of equality should be extended so far that no differing degrees of respect are accorded to the opinion of someone with a proven history of intellectual sucess and someone with no such history, insofar as that opinion concerns the merit of a particular academic choice.

No more questions, damnit!

May I just say: I HATE talking to clients. Hate it. I'd rather have to answer all the interrogatory demands that came into this office rather than ever talk to a client again. Not necessarily because the clients themselves are so objectionable, but because of the damn questions they ask. They look up at you, all helpless and flaccid-sea-whelk-like, and ask you these questions that they expect you to know the answer to, like "will my house get taken away?", "what will this do to my tax return?", "should I consult another lawyer re: {x issue}?" OH GOOD GOD! do not rely on me, people -- I have NO idea if you could lose your house. I don't KNOW what kind of impact this has on your taxes, and I really COULD NOT tell you what kinds of verdicts are generally awarded for {y claims}. And please please please do not ask me if you should consult another lawyer, and if so, can I recommend one. Even if I had paid attention in the lawyer-ethics class they made us take in law school, I bet I couldn't remember anything I'd learned in it, and that CLE crap is even worse as far as "useful information" goes. So I have no answer for that. none.

I just hate how they get all dependent and trusting -- and yes, I know that's what they're supposed to do, and I know it's the lawyer's job to shepherd these poor lost souls through the terrors of the legal system. And I completely understand that. God, whenever I see yet another pro se plaintiff running around a courthouse, wide-eyed and terrified because he just lost his case because he doesn't know the rules of evidence, my heart breaks for them. You really can't effectively navigate the legal system without a lawyer. I just don't ever want to be that lawyer. I don't want to have to take care of someone. I can barely take care of myself. Please just let me be locked in a room where I can research and write to my heart's content and I never have to see anyone who knows less about the law than me. PLEASE!

Holidays + Offices = A Passel of Etiquette Issues

So, with the season of glad tidings and great joy, or whatnot, upon us, I have discovered yet another way in which law school has failed me -- there was not one single course offered called "Who to Gift, What to Gift and When to Gift It: The Legal Edition", and OH MY GOD, is that a difficult conundrum. Originally, I was thinking that it might be nice just to remember to get my secretary something fun, because she's been awesome with the whole crutching-the-newbie thing. Then I thought that several of the other secretaries have also really been helpful and so I added them. Then I realized it's like siblings -- fair treatment is totally necessary unless you want your files to start mysteriously vanishing into the place behind the stairs that no one can get to and your motions to stay forever unfiled... So, OK, all the support staff. Then, I started worrying about whether I was expected to do something for the other attorneys as well, and that sparked ever more widespread panic (hee!), because what on earth am I supposed to get these people? 

Last night, after pacing around my apartment for an hour trying to think of what to get and how to pay for it (where does the money GO???), I had an epiphany. And burned the list. No gifts for anyone. So there.

Yeah, that's probably not the right solution, is it?

Waaaah!

I cried. at work. The first alone is bad enough -- I never cry. Well, rarely -- i don't like to. It's all pink and girly (ok, fine, yes, I generally like pink and girly but that's besides the point right now.) and I generally just don't see the point. But crying, at work? good god. Time to start thinking self-admit to the local nuthouse. The only upside is that I waited to turn on the full-fledged waterworks until everyone had left the office for the day -- but, in all honesty, I was pretty teary-sniffly for about an hour before then... And no, I didn't break up with my boyfriend or get a hangnail or something -- I simply had too much work to do.

That sounds so pathetic, doesn't it? But see, first you must understand -- I was in the office for five hours Saturday and three on Sunday because by Friday afternoon, I was totally overloaded for this week. And THEN, this afternoon, a partner asked me to cover a hearing tomorrow morning in X county, since I'd be there anyway for another hearing. Far be it from me to be able to turn anything down, especially since it would really be rather unreasonable to do that -- it's sort of standard practice to do covering-everything-in-x-county that day if you have to be there anyway. So, fine. But, see, the file was actually coming from Client's in-house counsel, and they hadn't written the mandatory submission. So, I have to write it. That's fine, these hearings are pretty run-of-the-mill, I can do that in .9 flat. (Yeah, I think in decimal-time, so what?!)

Except. When the file finally arrived late this afternoon, I discovered the claim is a type that, while my firm routinely handles that type, I have never done, never want to do and do my best to run in the completely opposite direction the minute someone twists their mouth to get me to work on. Mainly because I feel like that type of claim is not really "law," it's really "accounting," and I hate hate hate accounting. I start trying to go through it, realize that I'm going to have to spend at least an hour organizing the haphazard disaster that is the "file," another hour figuring out what this type of claim is and what it's all about in general, and likely another two writing the submission. Which would be fine, except it's 5pm, and I had already planned to spend the evening doing the four hours of research needed to write an appellate brief due to SSP on Wednesday. And I would have just gone to SSP and told him that I needed more time or at least let him know I was drowning, but I think he's not so much loving the Baby Lawyer right now -- not sure, but unpleasant vibes seemed to be radiating from him at a rare (but really, actually fun -- more later) lunch out with the partners on Friday... weird. And, really, the work he assigns me is the only work I really like doing and want to continue doing -- so I don't want to give him any reasons to not give it to me. And none of the other things I have to write, attend, argue, etc. this week can be moved or shunted onto anyone else.

So instead, I cried. Just too much pressure. Too many expectations -- granted, a lot of them I make on myself. But still. They're there. And, yes, it's always better to have too much work than to have too little. It's just that -- there's "too much" and then there's "avalanche-of-paper-and-proceedings too much" -- guess which one's going on now? I really really REALLY wish I still smoked.... maybe if I began drinking heavily in the mornings ... hmmm... I'm totally getting why all bar associations have those hush-hush-no-sanction rehab groups.... (wow. I just joked about alcoholism and mental disabilities in the same post -- right, like I wasn't going to hell anyway...!)

If Not For Societal Norms...

I could say all the following things I really, truly, very much, deeply want to say to the following persons who are taking up rent-free headspace because I can't say these things:

To Boy #1 (who may or may not, but most likely is): I don't see this going anywhere serious, but I have fun with you, you make me laugh and, let's face it, it's always flattering to have someone be visibly into you, even when you're not entirely sure that that someone is being entirely truthful about his, ahem, preferences. So, let's hang out with a certain level of physical comfort, but let's not pretend we're the great romance of the century just because you're tired of your mother asking you when you're getting married.

To Boy #2 (aka, He-Who-Irks): Good God, boy! Not all women are succubi. At the moment, I'm very into both your body and your mind, and for some reason this makes you think that I'm secretly going home at night and knitting booties for our ten children. Yeah, no. If you would just let your guard down and give into the attractive attraction (edited at 5:26p.m. -- so, yeah, as much as one can be attracted to one who can't spell), I guarantee I would get bored of at least your body in about three months and you'd be free as a bird to date all those other girls standing in a big long line. Nothing personal, but I don't think that an acted-upon attraction, for me, has continued in any sort of measurable force past 3-4 months. So, chill, relax, enjoy, and we can still be friends later.

To Boy #3: I'm not into the whole vixen thing -- but you've got me thinking about it. What exactly are you thinking about?

Whew. Better. Now there's some brain-space free to actually attempt to write some of the umpty-hundred client letters waiting for me (I hate writing to clients who are actual people -- they are usually so insulated from and afraid of the legal system that you have to break everything down really really really simply so they understand you, and then I get worried about that whole ethical duty to communicate clearly but to still tell the client what's going on and then my head hurts and it's bad).

-- originally posted on 12.5.05 at 4:37p.m. --