Nine days without a post. The longest drought since I started doing this.
In seven minutes I'll jump on my fourth conference call of the morning. I've already told a client I'd be happy to find them help elsewhere if they're unhappy with the level of service from this tired old ex-fighter pilot.
I spent all last week trying and losing a jury trial. I hate losing. Truly. And that's okay--as Vince Lombardi famously said a half-century ago, “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser”. But our Southern creation narrative is built around a crushing defeat, and the center of our hagiography is the very embodiment of the honorable loser, Robert E. Lee.
So I guess it's complicated.
But we tried a clean case, got all our evidence in front of the jury and kept our witnesses from inflicting irreparable harm. And one of my oldest friends in this business was on the other side, trying a squeaky clean case as he always does. It just sticks in my craw more than usual because this time around it felt like we were in the right, my clients had been done grievously wronged, and if we could just tell this story to a jury we'd come out on top.
Except we didn't. And frankly, I've reached an age when I don't really understand juries anymore, can't get in the heads of six adults living in the central panhandle. Maybe it's time to accept that, and move into something that leverages the dwindling skillset I have left. And I need to do a lot less of it. I'll finish August with right at 230 billable hours, the most I have ever billed in a single month. Too much work for 58, and too much for a time when P wants to start enjoying life a little more, but is stuck with me and my constant work commitments.
And work truly is piling up, even as I don't take any new stuff. I was in Tallahassee on Friday afternoon after the trial talking with my partners there about handing piles of new work to them, cases I'm ostensibly handling but don't have time even to review. And I don't get a cent for shoveling work to other lawyers. It just keeps me out of the doghouse with clients.
That call in seven minutes is now in progress. I called the lady at the appointed time and went mercifully to voicemail. Then she called me back. I told her I was too busy to talk, and she embarked on what will be an hour of worthless talk at my lowest hourly rate. Then I have a call with a client who directed me to send the mediator a summary he drafted because he disliked mine so much.
I hate all this. If I can figure out a way to live a little smaller, I'm going to do something different after the first of the year. I have friends who make a lot less money but seem fully 40% happier and more relaxed than I am at this professional apex of my life. Maybe I need to ponder that a little.
This lady hasn't noticed I'm not listening to anything she's saying, but it doesn't matter because the point is for her to babble while both of us bill. I'd start day drinking but I have depositions later in yet another case and have always thought that although it's possible in my job to arrive in one's cups and do just fine, it's also an ethics violation and I've assiduously avoided going there. So I'll just soberly brood like most other people in this life.
The call I had hoped to avoid finally ended after 34 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Next call in 25 minutes with a client I tried to fire as I was sitting down with my first cup of coffee, but he wouldn't take no for an answer and now wants to whine into the phone over us not treating his woo woo like the most special woo woo in the whole wide world, just as his momma told him it was.
Tomorrow morning I need to be in the air at dawn to make it to a mediation in Okaloosa County, sited there because opposing counsel thought it was unfair that the mediation take place somewhere convenient for us and less so for him. So probably no post again. It's no harder for him to come to our office, but that's not really the point. And of course it has to be in person because the mediator is older than Methuselah and doesn't believe in Zoom. He lives in Miami and charges for travel. Of course he doesn't believe in Zoom.
Wyldswood is lovely, despite all the suck right now I'm having trouble embracing.
[this is where I'd insert a photo, but for the fact that we don't have enough bandwidth at the farm for that. In 2022. Just use your imagination].
And P is right across the way in the house, cooking feverishly for our friend Mike's retirement party tonight. I don't have her around every day, and need to appreciate that.
Comments