Recently went down to Georgia, no I don’t know why… none the less I got to see some amazing things down there… First, I go to see the olympic rings celebrating the 1996 Olympic games.

The Olympic memorial, because otherwise I don't know what else you'd look at...

Yes yes… you had olympic games, but guess who passed all the motions that made this thing happen?  That’s right it wasnt this gymnast nutcase, it was lawyers… like me!

Finally CNN… Do I really need to say more than the fact that this network hasn’t reported news since before it was spun to them by the president’s office?  And by the way, Jeffrey Toobin, we all know you work here because you couldn’t cut it the real world.

Last week, I gave my thoughts on the things that change between your summer and start date.  That got me thinking, not everything changes, so what stays the same?  I’d love to hear your thoughts, but here’s my list of things that do not change:

10 ) Your false sense of accomplishment and entitlement.

 9 ) You still have to introduce yourself to partners 5-10 times before they figure out you work there.

8 ) The mailroom doesn’t know where your office is.

7 ) The really hot secretary who always seems to get assigned to the soon-to-be divorced partners still won’t talk to you.

6 ) Your quality of life…no, your life…means less than the per partner draw.

5 ) The support staff still loathes you for your paycheck compared to your abilities, but at least they try to hide it when you’re a summer associate.

4 ) You are still expected to attend firm functions (note: the definition of “firm function” changes to “work until 10 p.m.”)

3 ) You’re still performing narrow research projects and have no idea what the case for which you are doing it is about.

2 ) Your secretary will still treat you like a part-timer and avoid completing your work in any semblance of a timely manner.

1 )  Most partners still have no idea, and don’t care, who you are.

I was listening to some new associates complain about how different being an associate is than being a summer associate, and it got me thinking: what DOES change?  So without further ado, here are the Top Ten Things That Change Between Your Second Summer and Start Date:

10 ) The firm luxury box becomes a mythical place where really rich partners take other really rich people.

9 ) Paralegals jump WAY ahead of you in the chain of command.

8 ) Leaving before the sun sets is no longer considered “youthful exuberance,” it’s just plain lazy.

7 ) “Lunch” transforms from two hour feasts involving steak and lobster into whatever you can grab quickly and eat at your desk while working.

6 ) Freetime?  We’ll have none of that around here.  And daydreaming about freetime just cost you .1 billable hours.

5 ) Remember playing golf at the managing partner’s country club?  Good.  Hold onto that memory because it you will never see that place again.

4 ) The internet is only for Westlaw, investigating opposing parties, and posting status updates about Westlaw and opposing parties on Facebook.

3 ) You slept at the office because you were working late, not because you were too drunk to drive home from the summer associate happy hour.

2 ) You actually have to DO SOMETHING for your paycheck.

And the # 1 thing that changes between your second summer and your start date:

1 ) Your start date.

I love October because it is the last month of the billable year.  Not because I have any reason to stress…I locked up the highest possible bonus months ago (of course).  I love it because it brings out the best, and worst, of my fellow associates.  Over the years, I have noticed several different approaches to the month, and how to read the associates position with the firm as a result.

First, there are the associates who know exactly what they need and go out and get the 200-250 hours necessary to reach the bonus they want.  These associates may be so lazy that they need to sprint to the finish, but are threats because they can actually reach their goals and impress the partners.

Next, there are those who act like they don’t care and go out of their way to make sure everyone believes they don’t care.  These people will be gone after the next review.  Pay no attention to them.

Third, there are those who have never billed 250 hours in a month in their entire career, but now need 300 to meet the firm minimum.  Nobody told them the very poorly kept secret that the REAL minimum for litigators is 300 hours above what the firm tells gullible law students.  It’s fun to watch them work so hard to reach a goal that is really significantly below what they need to stick around.

A corrolary of this group are those who either bought a house, car, or went significantly into debt with a bookie to the point they NEED the bigger bonus.  This month, they realize that they need to bill 350 hours or else the house will be foreclosed on, the car will be repossessed, or kneecaps will be broken.  These ones are sweating profusely by 8 a.m., and will usually take the first week of November off to recover.  These are harmless short-timers.  They won’t be fired, but the stress will lead these weak souls to drop out of the serious law scene and to the “mid-sized” firms (read: group of big firm outcasts.)

Of course, the corporate associates will get bonuses even if they miss the firm’s minimum.  It must be nice to be richly rewarded for failing to meet the most simple of requirements.  That’s what happens when you incorporate the culture of your clients who failed so miserably, they needed billions from the government to richly reward their employees for playing such a vital role in their monumental failure.

As a follow up to my last post, I was called into the partner’s office on the case where I had to travel to Benin and bribe Greek government officials to find the law we needed for the expert testimony issue.  Apparently, when he said “spare no expense,” he meant “spare some expenses.”

The client got the bill, and apparently had issues with the fact that my research project cost twice as much as the rest of the five years of litigation.  The partner was livid that I went to such extremes to find the law he knew “had” to exist.  I showed him the e-mail in which he told me to “spare no expense,” and apparently, he didn’t mean it literally.  Doesn’t he know that tone and context are nearly impossible to detect in e-mail?  Well, hiring tribal interpreters and bribing government officials are apparently “against firm policies,” (I was unaware the firm HAD policies), so these were expense I apparently was not supposed to incur.  The fact that we got terrific law out of the expenses and absolutely preserved the issue for appeal is being completely overlooked by everyone but me.

The client and partner came to a resolution that works for everyone (except me).  I will provide 500 hours of unbilled legal work for them in each of the next two years.  The partner also informed me that the partnership expects me to still bill the same number of ours as in the past, and get these hours on evenings and weekends.  On the bright side, maybe they’ll finally grant my requests to get a couch in my office (instead of sleeping in the conference room), and coordinate dry cleaning delivery so I don’t have to leave work to put on clean clothes. 

I still just don’t understand some clients.  If you don’t want to pay what it costs to win the case, either at the trial court or on appeal, hire some crappy “litigation boutique” to handle your cases, not my great firm.  We don’t have time for losers who want the best, but are only willing to pay for lower-tier law school grads to do mediocre work.

Hi everyone.  I’ve been sparce here lately because I’ve been working on a huge project.  More on that in a minute.  First, based upon the comments, I have a big readership among the pharmaceutical online distribution community, especially in Russia and eastern Europe.  While I can’t approve all of your comments to be posted to the blog or visit each of the links you kindly shared with me, I do appreciate your readership.

Now - my summer project.  In March, a partner presented me with an expert exclusion issue for a case going to trial in state court on September.  He told me there HAD to be a case or statute upon which to base the exclusion of their expert, and to spare no expense in finding it.  So I set off looking at state statutes and cases.  The statute was not helpful, but since they are written by legislators, and judges hate legislators, so that’s not a problem.  Unfortuntely, many of the state cases refer to the statute.  So I had to check the federal cases in the state.  None of the Daubert/Frye rulings were particularly helpful, so I had to expand the search further.

I looked at neighboring states for statutes and cases that set out the position the partner knew HAD to be the law…nothing.  So I expanded to a national search for this obvious and undeniable proposition.  Nothing.  Where do you go when you have absolutely nothing and just need a citation to support your position?  That’s right - the FRD.  While a 1963 case from Guam came close, the FRD, much to my amazement, did not help.

So I figured, if the Supreme Court is going to use international norms on an issue as important as the death penalty, surely a little state court judge could be duped into applying international standards for the admission of expert testimony, right?!  Thus, I expanded my search.  In this hemisphere, I found Jamaican case that is close, but not one to cite as the leading authority, and a statute from Uraguay that was helpful, but did not express the very obvious maxim of law we were seeking.

Next, I figured since the Supreme Court looked to European nations for death penalty law, I should look there, too.  None of the Western European nations had helpful law.  However, the old Yugoslavia had GREAT caselaw (an expert is an expert if the party says they are), but the break up of this nation makes its laws moot.  Similarly, Greece had a great statute, but that was 15 years and three governments ago.  Sadly, it took me four interpreters and about $5000 in bribes to government officials to learn it is not longer good law.

If the birthplace of western thought, Greece, could not help me, maybe the birthplace of man could.  So I began contacting all of the African nations missions to the United Nations for whatever statutes and laws they could provide.  I finally heard about a good line of cases in Benin that expressed the very obvious maxim of law that we knew had to be the law.  Well, Benin has a law that translation of all law must be provided by a tribal elder, a government interpreter, a government transcriber, and a government photocopier.  Also, you must be present to obtain the transcription, and apply for a visa to enter the country to obtain the transcription.  (One oddity, the visa application had to be accompanied by American dollars - not a check - mailed directly to a certain government official.)

So I set off for Benin to obtain the coverted cases and statutes that state the very obvious maxim that HAS to be the law.  Apparently, you cannot get in and out of Cotonou in a day, so I got in the night before.  After a very intesting ritual in which the tribal elder set forth the law (a post for a later date), I was off with my rock solid support for our very obvious maxim of law.

When I returned, I spent three weeks drafting the 78 page motion to exclude, which included citations from all continents except Antarctica (and really, is that a continent?!), and highlighted the excellent law from the Cradle of Civilization.  The partner even asked me to attend the hearing to watch, so I got to go to court for the fourth time in my career (and the first two were to be sworn in).

The day came, and we had been working on our oral argument for a week.  There was no way this state-school lawyer could match us.  The partner spent 40 minutes tracking the development of man and, at the same time, the development of the law.  It was brilliant, eloquent, and should have been videotaped to show to both anthropology and law students.

After he concluded, the plaintiff’s attorney simply stated “there’s a statute on the issue.  The testimony is admissible under the statute.”  HA!  Clearly the judge would not fall for such an unsophisticated argument in light of the brilliant and nuanced arguments we presented.

“Yeah, it think the statute is pretty clear,” the judge said, ”I’m gonna let it in.”  What?!  I guess we can’t expect a state court judge, who also went to a second-tier state school) to understand complex legal theory.  But that’s why the Court of Appeals exists…to restore some sort of order, and ensure that the next time a partner says “there HAS to be a case,” there is.

I love business travel.  The room service at the hotels we stay on document reviews is so much better than the stuff the firm orders for all of the associates who work past 8 p.m.  And I can usually get it from five a.m. until midnight.  So I can get in a regular 6:30-11 work day, then come back and enjoy steak at a five-star hotel…all on the client’s tab!  Since we charge less than the New York and L.A. lawyers our clients also use, they think they’re getting a great deal and never question our expenses.  Although I have wondered why we stay at such nice hotels when we’re only there for about six hours a day.  Oh well, not my money, so what do I care?

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.)