I find it interesting when lawyers celebrate New Year’s on January 1.  Just like President’s Day, Labor Day, and the Fourth of July, this is nothing but a manufactured holiday designed to keep people from working another day.  I find it a great chance to jump ahead of my less than diligent cohorts and grab 12-14 hours.

My New Year’s is October 1, the first day of the next billable year.  No, I don’t take this day off or go to a long lunch like many people at the firm.  Instead, I try to get as many hours as possible so I can jump out to the head of the pack on day one.  It is good pressure to think that, as if the first day of the new billable year, I am in the billing lead.  Keeping this lead drives me to stay that extra two hours on Sunday or read those cases if I can’t sleep at night.  There is always someone gunning for the leader, so I need to roll up those hours whenever I can get them.  Luckily for me, there is no shortage of lower level procedural research work at my firm.  It’s good to have a specialty.

So to all you suckers who stayed up late last night and slept in today, I am now that much further ahead of you.  And don’t bother trying to come in this weekend to catch me…I’ll be here then, too.

Sorry I haven’t written in a while, but there has been a good reason.  My firm has been significantly monitoring web usage after what they describe as “improper messenging.”  At first, everyone though it was just too much IMing by the staff…then we found out the real reason.

Apparently, our class action division has been working on a mortgage fraud case against one of the biggest dirtballs in the city…and probably the country.  As you can imagine, when tens, or maybe hundreds, of millions are on the line, things are pretty heated.

Out of the dozen or so attorneys on the case at our firm, one is a second year female who is not too bad looking, even when compared to non-attorneys.  Apparently, she accepted a Facebook friend request from a senior associate who then looked at her Facebook pictures.  The associate noticed an a album labeled “Mexican Thanksgiving,” in which she appears in various stages of bikini-wearing happiness with…the plaintiff’s attorney.

This, of course, was reported to the head of the product liability division who then instructed the IT division to recover everything she has accessed, both internally and on the internet.  What they found was astounding.  Her romeo had gotten her to copy and paste extremely confidential memos into Facebook messages and send them to him.  He knew what was happening, and when it was going to happen.  Since it did not go through either the firm e-mail or web-based email like Hotmail or Yahoo, no alarms were raised at the firm.

When called before the court to account for his misdoings, the plaintiff’s attorney called the associate a “stalker” and said he deleted all messages from her without reading.  He claimed he was at the Mexican resort with his family when she showed up and wanted a bunch of pictures with him.  Absolute balls of steel to try that lie!  And probably because it was so ballsy, the judge bought it.

So this guy has who knows how much extremely confidential information that will be a huge asset in this case, and his prey is out on her keyster.  But at least she can look back on this time as “that year and a half I had a law license.”

I was in the office this past Friday and something was troubling me.  So I looked it up and sure enough, I was right (as usual): Thanksgiving is a one day holiday.  There have been four Presidential decrees regarding Thanksgiving.  First, George Washington asked that November 26, 1789 be set aside as a day of thanksgiving.  In 1863, Abraham Lincoln established the fourth Tuesday in November as Thanksgiving.  This was changed by FDR in 1939 to the third Thursday in November, and in 1941 to the fourth Thursday in November.  So there we have it, Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November.

So why weren’t people in the office on Friday?  In the many Presidential decrees addressing the holiday, none said “the fourth Thursday and Friday in November,” did they?  So why do people insist on skipping their obligations just because our bosses are nice enough to give us the previous day off, if we want it.  And people wonder why we’re in the economic condition we’re in…no productivity!  Here is a perfectly good work day ruined solely because of its proximity to a holiday.  I recall people being in the office July 5th…what’s the difference?!  What is better for the economy: American workers producing goods and services another day, or sleeping in and buying useless trinkets that they could just as easily buy the next day?

I’m not completely heartless, but I expect my support to be there on non-holidays.  I propose a compromise.  Support staff can either come in an hour late or leave an hour early (coordinating, of course, to make sure there is adequate coverage all day.)  That way, it is still a special day, and I get my memos dictated and copies made.  And, of course, I would be able to eat in the firm lunchroom instead of having to go across the street to a putrid sandwich shop, wasting .4 billable hours in the process.

So America, let’s get back to our roots of hard work and appropriate celebration.  Please join me as I call on our workforce to get off its collective rear and get to work the day after Thanksgiving!  Not only will the GDP thank you, but I will thank you as you bring me copies and a chicken salad sandwich.  (OK, I might not verbally thank you, but your paycheck is thanks enough.)

There is a lit clerk here, Ann, who has decided to create her own language with various “unique” grammer rules and punctuation decisions…we call it Annglish.  When drafting an e-mail that will be going to people who regularly have lunch with Senators and CEOs, phrases such as “out on Fri. k?” should probably be avoided.  You are not sending a text message to your little sister.  You are communicating in a professional environment with people who would happily toss your @$$ out if they got a bad oyster at lunch and not think twice about the havoc they just unleashed.

Additionally, there is absolutely no reason to use an exclamation point in any professional e-mail…ever.  But if you must use one, please use one correctly.  Out practice group received the following e-mail that still makes my head hurt:

“I will b-gin w/ boxes 342 and 343!  Do you need them by Tuesday!  Let me know?”

First, she had to type the same number of characters in “b-gin” as she would have in “begin.”  What on the good Lord’s green earth was accomplished by typing a “-” instead of an “e”, other than confirming that the public school system in her home town is amazingly subpar?  And was the fact that she was going to organize some boxes really cause for an excited utterance?  Finally, the inversion of the exclamation point and question mark is just further proof that sometimes the piece of paper on the wall DOES mean something.

And this e-mail, like every e-mail from her, was sent with “High Importance.”  Someone, and I fear I may be that someone very soon, needs to tell her that at no point can anything a lit clerk every have to say be of “High Importance.”  Finished catagorizing some boxes?  Great.  It’s your job, nobody is amazed.  Going to be out on Tuesday?  Odds are good nobody will notice…and since we really do not know what any of the lit clerks look like, we will probably just call a different lit clerk “Ann” if we have questions while you’re out.  Unavailable from 3-5 because you are attending a baby shower for someone in Word Processing?  Well, that should probably be sent with “Low Importance” because “High Importance” just makes us want to figure out who you are so we can make sure you clocked out before getting frosting all over your grubby little text-messaging hands.

The moral of the story is: unique is great if you happen to work at a coffee shop or ad agency.  But when you are on the absolute bottom rung of the corporate (or legal) ladder, it’s best to just supress your individuality and blend into the blandness.  Otherwise we’ll find out who you are and let you be an individual somewhere else.

One of my classmates (actually, she didn’t summer with us, so she’s considered last in our class), just took the last poppy seed bagel.  It is inexcusable.  Everyone knows to leave one, even all day, just in case the  litigation chairman wants it.  When he sees it’s gone, he is going to look for blood, even if he didn’t want it.  I can’t, and won’t, protect her.  I’m sure she’ll find a nice job with a “mid-sized” litigation “boutique” with “a great quality of life.”  Idiot.

Back in college and law school, I used to have thoughts and beliefs on issues that guided my conscience to vote a certain way. As soon as I became part of a larger operation, I quickly learned that the good of the firm outweighs whatever convictions I used to have. I’ll leave this type of voting for those who don’t stand to gain anything either way, but still fight tooth and nail for what they believe is “right.” I remember those days.

I didn’t have a chance to post an endorsement because I was up to my eyeballs in election law. One of the parties hired us to be ready just in case there was any need for Election Day filings. Of course, to prepare for this, we needed to attend a week’s worth of CLEs on the various subjects. (Side note: wouldn’t it have made more sense for them to retain cheaper attorneys who actually have a working knowledge of election law? Not that I’m complaining.) And of course, we were not needed. But waiting around just in case was the easiest twenty billable hours I have ever gotten in a long time.

So instead of an endorsement, I’ll take a minute to discuss how an Obama presidency will effect our firm. I think this guy is going to make the partners a lot of money!

First, litigation in general will be on the upswing. After eight years of Bush, the ATLA (excuse me, the American Association for Justice) is chomping at the bit to exert their muscle over everything from Office of Civil Rights regulations to inserting private rights of action wherever they can squeeze them in. There can be little doubt that an Obama administration realizes which side of the business/lawyer debate it needs to be on if it wants to have the same prodigious fundraising effort in four years.

Our class action department will get a nice boost in business as soon as it becomes easier to file in state courts. Everyone from drug manufacturers to mortgage lenders to the Girl Scouts will need to fight these class actions in due time. (OK, I don’t know of any current legal threats against the Girl Scouts, but give them time…plaintiff’s attorneys will come up with something.)

As you may recall, VP Biden’s son is a personal injury/asbestos plaintiff’s attorney. Thus, I think it is safe to say the EPA will have an epiphany and come out with new standards regarding the “acceptable” level of asbestos fibers, which will quickly make their way into court. And long standing protections from vaccine and drug manufacturers will be gone, leading to suits over everything from autism to too much constipation. Also in the product liability realm, legislation mandating national “market share liability” will make EVERYONE a proper defendant, even if the plaintiff has never heard of you!

Business litigation will be booming trying to keep up with the suits arising from the economic downturn. Specifically, it will have a flood of cases dealing with aspects of the foreclosure mess and the government’s response. They won’t have to worry about the actual foreclosures themselves, but rather litigation between all of the hands a mortgage passed through on its way towards the buckets of mung known as mortgage-backed securities will be intense (and very profitable.) Add to this almost certain government regulation, or the bestowing of “private attorney general” status on plaintiff’s attorneys, and the water will be full of even more blood.

I don’t even know where to begin with Labor and Employment. First, the removal of any privacy in union balloting will ensure a massive uptick in the number of unionization drives they need to fight. Next, what about the employees who will almost inevitably be laid off when their bosses’ tax bills go up? Winding down factories and companies is a nice shot of business. Finally, new government guidance on issues like sexual harassment and OSHA compliance will keep them busy.

On the corporate side, real estate and tax stand to make a fortune these next few years, but other departments should do just fine. First, real estate…housing…housing…real estate. See how this could be profitable? And all of the LLCs that were in the flipping business (or more likely, the financing flips business) are certainly going to need attorneys. The number of new developments will decrease, but the conflicts regarding the planned projects that will be cancelled will be good for them.

The tax lawyers also work with relatively simple logic: rich people don’t like taxes. If taxes go up, rich people are more than willing to pay a tax attorney to avoid paying more taxes (provided the attorney will charge less than the increase in taxes, which is debatable in some cases.)

Mergers and acquisitions may be in a slightly worse position than others, but there are still plenty of opportunities in an Obama administration. The mergers will not be because of the usual reasons (successful market, expansion of business, etc.), but rather because firms will fail and need to be folded into businesses that are failing slightly less.

Our banking department? Yeah, the head of that department already bought a foreclosed vacation home in Florida merely on the anticipation that the bailout regulations are going to keep his troop churning the hours for some time to come.

I could go on, but you get the picture. No matter who won, there would be opportunities for lawyers. But there is absolutely no denying, President Obama will be GREAT for the legal industry!

WOW! That was close! I thought everything was fine with filing of our memo in opposition to plaintiff’s motion to compel until I realized, at 11:00 p.m., that I didn’t have any of the partners’ electronic filing number! We are not allowed to file under our own number for fear the court will know we’re working on the case and think we can cover a scheduling conference, motion hearing or some other proceeding only partners can handle.

Just then, the #1 partner on the file strolled in to show off the view from his office to a nice lady he met at the bar at the Ritz. I asked him if he knew his filing number, and he just had a blank look on his face. I said it was probably e-mailed to him, and he looked even more confused. Luckily for me, he had his secretary’s home number on speed dial and she came in from wherever the hell she lives (she just kept whining about “crying baby,” and “half hour drive,” “no overtime,” blah, blah), pulled up the e-mail, and we were able to file it at 11:53. We can’t just give plaintiffs our client’s SEC filings…they have to go online and get it like everyone else.

We just had a close call. Our Memo in Opposition to a Motion to Compel had already come back from the printer and was almost filed when the case’s #2 partner, the partner who actually reads the pleadings that are filed, noticed that we have two exhibit number threes. Well, we can’t confuse the judge, so we needed to re-number everything.

It’s 7:15 and our printing division goes home at 7, and our secretaries leave at 5 (side note, who leaves work at 5? If they get there at 9, they only spend one-third of their time at work…that’s not a job, it’s a hobby.) Luckily, in our federal district, everything just needs to be electronically filed by midnight, so I have about four and a half hours to re-number exhibits 3 through 78 in our sixty-eight page memo, make new exhibit stickers (we’re a serious firm, we can’t have sloppy hand-written exhibit stickers), copy each exhibit, and make eleven copies of the motion and exhibits for the parties.

After I prepared all weekend, the #2 partner on the case called me the day before the deposition and said he would feel “more comfortable” if another partner did the corporate representative deposition. He said I just “wasn’t ready” for that kind of pressure and was concerned that plaintiff’s attorney might try “something funny.” Oh well, my time will come.

I get to take a deposition next week! We need to get some documents from a hospital a plaintiff was treated at after our product allegedly exploded and burned 93% of his body and none of the partners are available to take the depo of the hospital’s corporate representative. I’m excited, but nervous. What if I don’t ask enough questions? What if I ask too many? Good thing I’ve done 18 hours of in-house CLEs on deposition tactics to prepare for this moment.