I knew something was amiss when I flopped down yesterday in a chair in Connor's office, tired from a long flight down from New York but recharged to be back in the office and able to speak directly to the troops. Connor's always fairly reticent, a typical young lawyer finding his sea legs in a profession that by its nature can cut those legs out from under you. This time was different.
Connor's leaving, going back to Miami at the end of the month to start with a new firm there. He explained the trip back home to Panama City wasn't all he hoped it would be, that he enjoyed working for us and appreciated all the mentoring and the chance to test his mettle in a real courtroom with a real witness (a rarity for guys my age, much less someone a couple months out of school), but his significant other lives down there and apparently is a South American of some sort with no desire to experience the charms of panhandle living. He also finds himself isolated, without much of a social network in a town that's light on young professionals.
So that's it. I am sad at so many levels, although it's not about me, it's about him. I've known Connor since he was in elementary school, known his family. I was never really close to them, but he's a Holy Nativity School kid, all the way through eighth grade, and I was in the congregation when we shared his school milestones and graduated from HNES, from Bay High, and later from UF. As long as I've practiced here, we've always looked for law grads like Connor, who had ties to the panhandle and would want to live here with all its quirks and limited amusements for young, single professionals. He was of this place, but that wasn't enough.
On a personal level, this is pretty devastating for the most selfish of reasons. I have never worked harder, unless I was in trial, than I have these last couple months. Caseloads are surging, and files that have been dormant during the pandemic are suddenly thawing and demanding discovery, motion practice, and trial. Having a second chair made all that almost manageable because Connor had reached the point where he not only did most of my legal research, but also handled simple hearings, client intake, and drafting documents. I also was beginning to derive a little joy in mentoring a promising young lawyer, sitting over lunch or in the office talking about cases, telling stories to give him some sense of the culture for which he'd soon carry the torch, passing along a little of what I've learned over the last quarter century of this.
Now that fun is gone just as the sheer volume of work probably increases by a third. How to handle this? Well, there won't be any more pleasure trips after this vacation in a few days, not for a long, long while. If I'm away from P, it'll be for work, and it'll be a lot more frequent than it's been. We've had staffing bumps in the road at D&S, and I can't leave the two ladies in the PC office entirely to their own devices without me around to catch mistakes, which are daily and significant at times.
I'm too old for all this, simply too old. And P and I don't have forever to experience the good stuff we've worked for our whole lives. I pretty much lived in my office or on the road for work when I was forty. Now is not the time. But what to do about it?
That's the question vexing me this morning. The legal talent larder of the central panhandle is not stocked with Connors. I suddenly find myself, on twelve days' notice, a sole practitioner with nearly seventy open files and no help. I feel weary whenever I ponder the implications of all that.
This morning I am in Tallahassee, about to clean up for a full day of depositions over at Holland & Knight, this time defending a client and old acquaintance whose charter school was wrecked in the storm then ripped off by a parade of carpetbagger contractors who cleaned out the school's insurance then handed them a bill for millions more dollars for "extra" work. It's a story most businesses and families in Bay County know by heart.
The hotel's nice, however, a new Marriott property in what was a sort of run down corner of town near Florida A&M. Here's the view from the rooftop bar yesterday evening, just before I called P for the evening chat.
This morning I awoke and promptly ran my shin for the fourth time this trip into the corner of this ridiculous hipster platform bed.
But for the rounded edge, I'm pretty sure there would be chunks of hairy shin skin and sinew hanging from it. Running one's shin into it still hurts, more so after the same bruised spot makes contact for the fourth or fifth time.
Speaking of time, I need to pull myself together for this lucrative but stressful day, starting with finding directions online for parking at the law office.
Onward.
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