Ennui

"This ennui, for which we Saxons had no name,--this word of France, has got a terrific significance. It shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's a print in my office at Wyldswood that my mother gave me when I graduated from law school. Mom was a lot more insightful than I'll ever be, and at the time I didn't see everything the print conveyed about the profession to which I've since devoted most of my adult life.

I get it now. The aging barrister, hands thrust in his pockets, stooped from years spent hunched at a desk over a pile of paper, looking tired and bored and probably wishing he were somewhere, anywhere else than standing up in court for the umpteenth time participating in this due process theater we indulgently call our system of "justice". That fellow under the powdered wig is beaten, worn out, a shadow of whatever he was when he first joined the bar. If he'd seen himself like this when he started practicing law, seen what was coming, would he have done it anyway? Maybe. The pay can be pretty good, and you work inside. There's that.

The only reason I'm writing now is that a client ghosted me on a call he himself set to go over a purchase agreement, the second such ghosting I've experienced in two days. Overnight a senile confidant of another client filled my email in-basket with rantings in a case I'd effectively won by settlement rather than courtroom pugilism, the best way to resolve a dispute but unsatisfactory to someone who goes to court to inflict mental and emotional pain on the other person. I announced my intention to withdraw by email as soon as I sat down at the desk this morning.

Another overnight email greeted me with a lengthy motion for rehearing of a motion on which we prevailed only yesterday, suggesting the author began working through the afternoon and evening to create this thing I now have to read and rebut. Other lawyers have less cases, it seems, and plenty of time for things like rehearing motions on short notice.

I rarely ask for rehearing. It annoys the judge and soaks up judicial resources in a system that's already straining under a massive caseload.

In a few minutes I'll talk with a poor guy who has a judgment against him in another state because a shady lawyer sent notices of courtroom proceedings to the wrong address and handed the judge a proposed money judgment when no one showed up for the hearing. Untangling this mess will cost as much as the judgment. I plan to suggest Chapter 13 bankruptcy, another lengthy and expensive proceeding made necessary by a gross failure of our judicial system.

This afternoon I'm talking with another client and his administrative team about a case that should be a simple business dispute but has turned as nasty and personal as anything I've ever seen. Lots of emails between the two parties with expletives sprinkled among all caps, often at two a.m. If a keyboard could slur, this is what it would look like. And the lawyer on the other side has taken on the advocate's role with the saliva slinging vigor clients love to see. How nice for me.

I've known lawyers who maintained a courtroom practice (I almost said "trial practice", but actual trials are rare as hen's teeth these days) well into their 70s, and seem to relish in the conflict and nastiness of it all. If I'm still doing this at that point in my life, something has gone badly wrong or I've bought too much junk on credit. Or both.

Now I'm being told my legal assistant never got around to filing notices of appearance in the cases in which I just mentioned filing withdrawal motions. It's inconceivable that my office screwed up something so basic, but now I'm trying to figure out how to withdraw in a case in which I haven't formally appeared. Another opportunity to look foolish in front of judges I've known for years, which seems to happen more and more these days. I need to just be my own legal assistant.

I would say maybe it's time to retire, that my work is crap and this has returned to being a joyless trudge after I was starting to feel things getting better as the world changed during the pandemic. But alas, I need the money, just like everyone else I guess, and so I'll don my powdered wig and barrister's robe, shove my hands into my pockets, and turn another beautiful spring day into a few dollars to hand to other people.