I'm wondering if my office is benefitting this summer from the economic downslide our country's been in the past few years, especially as it affects the market for hiring new lawyers. Because this summer we seem to have lucked into hiring some really, truly awesome law clerks, who probably could've gotten jobs in big, high-paying firms for the summer if only those firms were hiring, and I am just loving them.
The work product has been very, very good so far. I almost hadn't even realized just how much work I've got on my shoulders these days, until I was able to hand off some assignments and then get back very helpful research/analysis/memos/end results. Saves me time. And damn, on top of just saving time, these kids do research above and beyond what I would have done in trying to just make deadlines and address what has to be addressed and shit. It's not always right on point, but there's so much of it that there's bound to be helpful stuff there that I wouldn't have taken the time to find myself. Awesome for me, right? I mean especially since I'm currently dealing not just with my new promotion, but also doing the jobs of two attorneys, since we still haven't hired someone to take my old position yet. It's a fuckload of work, I tell you.
Best of all, it's just so damn nice to have fresh new people, personalities, in the office. I love it. They're so nice, and it's fun to watch them interact with each other too.
Tomorrow I have to leave town at 7:45 am to drive two hours to another town for a hearing, the kind of thing I have to do often but usually do by myself, but this time I'll have a very personable, talkative female clerk going with me, who I already like a lot. It's going to be soooo much better spending 4 hours in the car round-trip with company - - that is, company who is very easy and fun to talk to. It's going to make a day that I would normally dread having to go through the motions on much easier to stand, and probably enjoyable in the end.
And tonight I'm still going on my damn workday, at 10 o'clock at night, just at home now instead of the office, working on an appellate brief that is due Friday. (Shit, Friday? As in day after tomorrow? Fuck. Fuck!) I'm tired, I'm annoyed, and I'm stressed. But I was just reading over a memo that one of the other new clerks prepared for me, analyzing the cases cited by the appellants in their brief, and offering his own opinion on the appellant's arguments. And about halfway through his memo, he starts off a new paragraph by stating that the appellant's assertion that blah-da-blah-da-blah does not hold water.
Maybe I'm letting the late hour and long day get to me, maybe I'm starting to get a little giddy and silly or something, but all I can think about right now is this image I now have in my head of this law clerk's words - the words of this very nice, very unassuming, very polite, I mean super super polite, (he calls me ma'am constantly, automatically and deferentially and almost shyly, and I've teased him about it and tried to break him of calling me that but he can't seem to help it), young law clerk - coming out of Vinny Gambini's mouth. And I'm just imaging this scene in my head, this back and forth between an imaginary attorney arguing this brief and an imaginary judge up on the appellate bench, that goes something like this:
Attorney: Does the appellant's case hold water? Does it? PLEASE! ANSWER THE QUESTION! DOES IT HOLD WATER!?!?!?
Appellate Judge: NO!!! It DOESN'T!!! It DOES NOT HOLD WATER!!!!!!
I know I took the long way around in getting there, but I just love any chance to bring up that movie. So after reading that memo tonight, and having that exact imaginary scene run through my head, I just had to take a few minutes to write this post, mostly just so that I could then post a clip of Vinny Gambini and Mona Lisa Vito:
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