WTFriday #1: Lawyers – We’re Just Like You!

Ed. Note: So, other L&E bloggers I follow have special Friday things that they post, like roundups of what they read, I think for the express purpose of not giving readers anything too taxing right before the weekend. Not having to worry about “readers” per se, and not feeling any compelling need to post the rest of the week1, that part of the special Friday post is lost on me. Nonetheless, I am jealous of all of them for myriad reasons, so I’m stealing the idea. As I’ve said before, one of the influences for this blog was Gary Skoning‘s “Wackiest Employment Law Cases” series.  I figured the regular Friday post would be a great way to pay homage to that tradition, so from now on, every Friday I’m going to link to the most ridiculous L&E-related story I’ve read this week. I’m calling it WTFriday. Clever, right? Okay, here goes:

If you poll a few labor & employment attorneys about what industry has the most L&E sketchiness, one of them is bound to say themselves. Not themselves specifically, but lawyers, as a group. We are the worst.

Don’t believe me? I had a friend from law school that went on three interviews in a month, two small firms and a slightly bigger operation, and all three of them asked her if she was planning on having babies anytime soon2.

So, from the “Shouldn’t We Know Better” Desk comes this headline in the ABA Journal:

Lawyer Accused of Harassing Employee, Asking Her to Wear Swimsuit to the Office

Yeah. You read that right. Apparently the prominent Chicago class action attorney (whose name you cannot read here, but is certainly available in the article) is facing a couple of lawsuits for trying to “work out a deal” with some of his female employees, and other totally normal successful-attorney-type behavior like taking off his pants at work.

The attorney says that the employee is raising false allegations because she was recently asked to look for another job.

Happy WTFriday, everybody.

1. Or month, sometimes. [↩]
2. You cant do that, FYI. [↩]

Clerk Status #1: Guy Walks Into a Courtroom…

As my clerkship begins to wind down, I’m putting together a series of posts about what I’ve learned, as a way of helping young lawyers navigate court. Future posts will handle specific topics, including demeanor, motion practice, and dress (and will not be this long). In my first Clerk Status, though, I’m going to give some basic advice for anybody who’s going to a court call for the first time.

First, a caveat: I know my courtroom. There are a lot of different types of courts, and a lot of different places where court is held. Each one of them has its own nuances. I have tried to make the information here as universal as possible, and where my knowledge is limited to my experience, I’ll try to make that clear. Right off the bat, I will tell you that traffic court, criminal court and case-specific courts1 can be very different places than what I’m describing here.

So You’re Going to Court

Congratulations! Yes, you, peon. You, new graduate2 settling into life as a lawyer. You hungry, passionate young lawyer ready for action, ready for the thrill of adversarial contests in the vaunted halls of justice. You, the low-man-on-the-totem-pole. Your days and nights of researching, memo-ing, summarizing dep transcripts, have all paid off. You have just been handed a file folder from a more senior associate, who received said folder yesterday from a partner, who received it from his assistant.

You have been chosen to appear on behalf of a client. In court. Look out.

I’m glad you’re still excited – this will wear off around the 11th or 12th time you have to do this, probably. Or the first time you have to go to Macon County for a 9:00 a.m. status on discovery.

I can imagine you are a little anxious about the experience, and you should be. As a newly-minted attorney, going to court on a status call is not unlike being on stage as an understudy. You are expected to perform at equal level with experts, and afterward you’ll have to report to the guy who does this all the time. So here’s a couple of things to remember on your big day.

Continue reading »

1. e.g., foreclosure, probate & juvenile courts [↩]
2. or, alternatively, fourth-year biglaw asscoiate [↩]

James Peters, Success.

In internet terms, I disappeared for all of last week. No blawg, no Twitter, no Facebook. Full radio silence. It was not laziness. Or business.

On June 12, my 86-year-old grandfather died. We shared a birthday. He was one of the few living men I would call a hero. So last Monday, I set my office in order, giving the externs enough work to get them through the week and trying in vain to clear my desk. On Tuesday, I left with my brother, my wife and our 2-year-old son for Clinton, Mississippi, where my grandparents moved in 2005 following a suggestion from mother nature.

I wasn’t going to write about him. It’s obviously a personal thing, and I didn’t want to trivialize his life by making it a teaching tool or something. But the experience of the funeral and my family’s shared memory of him has been stuck in my mind ever since, so I feel compelled to share.

My Grandaddy James grew up in Mashulaville, Mississippi.1 He left college unfinished to serve in Patton’s Army in World War II, and came home to work as a mechanic. Not long thereafter, he went to work for the Postal Service as a letter carrier in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans.

He worked hard. At his funeral, someone said “Jim didn’t just know every street in Jefferson Parish, he knew how to pronounce them all…” (no small feat in the Nawlins suburbs). After some years working as a mailman, he moved into the mechanics department.2 He worked. By the time he retired, he’d been given a job working with architects to design the mechanics for future post office buildings.

When he wasn’t working, he worked. Someone else told a story that, when she was a kid, my mom bought a broken radio at a church fund raiser. When the seller pointed out the radio’s condition, my mom didn’t skip a beat. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “My daddy can fix anything.”

And he did.

My grandparents’ minister said that, when he first started at the church, my grandaddy was introduced to him as “the one who knows how the whole building works.” He knew the light switches, speaker controls, doorkeys, kitchen appliances. When the church bought a bus, he went to the DMV to get certified to drive it. When it was suggested that the Bible/Hymnal holders be replaced, my grandaddy designed new ones – down to the color and head-style of the screws – and then manufactured over 100 of them. By himself. In his backyard.

After the Hurricane, the minister spent a few harried weeks nearly alone at the church, trying to get utilities and services restored. There was damage. When my grandaddy came home, he went to the church to see what he could do. The minister started rattling off a laundry list of problems and broken things. Mid-rant, without a word, my grandaddy just walked out on the exasperated pastor.

“Two hours later,” the minister said, “James Peters walked back into my office and every one of those problems had been fixed.”

Why am I writing about this? Well, for one, my Grandaddy James was a man of the best sort – happy, genuinely, in a way that made you happy to be around him. Hardworking. Loved his family. Had convictions. And there aren’t enough places where men – real, everyday men – can be celebrated. So I’m celebrating.

But there’s something else. That thing that’s been gnawing at me the past week or two. For my entire life, I have been inundated with the notion that “no one reaches the end of their lives and wishes they’d spent more time at work.” I’ve heard it from public speakers, blogs, blawgs, classmates, teachers, pretty much everyone who ever wanted to make a point about “balance”.

Well, I don’t know what my Grandaddy James is thinking about right now. I doubt he wishes he’d spent more time at work. But I know he doesn’t wish he’d spent less time there, either.

To my grandfather, his skill with building things, fixing things, knowing how they worked, it touched every part of his life. He used it when he felt called to, by his country, his church or his family. It fed his children and fixed their radios. It led him from the army to a mail route, to the truck, and then to the attention of learned men with degrees and money. It afforded him the respect of his pastor and his friends.

His work was not his job. His job was not his life. They didn’t balance – it didn’t work that way.

Before this trip, I didn’t know what exactly my grandaddy did. When I got to Mississippi, I asked my mom and dad and my grandma. You should’ve seen them talk. They were so proud of his ascension at the P.O., his military service. About where he was able to get to from a little house in Mississippi with no running water.

My Grandaddy James – grunt, mailman, mechanic, father, husband, artisan, bus driver – was a smashing success.

And it occurs to me, thinking of my grandfather’s life, that whatever abilities I’ve been able to develop are not supposed to just make me a better lawyer, or a better writer or public speaker, or even to make me a lot of money. They exist to make me a better man. No matter where I am – home, office, anywhere – I hope I am using what I’ve got to use. I hope I am at work.

And when I am gone, I hope my family is as proud of my work – writ large – as I and my family are of my grandfather. It is an essential part of a life so greatly lived.

1. The town is so small my GPS refused to believe it existed. [↩]
2. I assume repairing mail trucks, but I’m a little fuzzy on this part, still. [↩]