Diary of Anonymous Lawyer
6:25 AM -- Alarm rings, to begin another week substantially similar to most of the past six hundred or so. In twelve years I've taken six actual vacations lasting more than a 4-day weekend. I'm getting better. Five of them have been in the past four years. Think about what that means for the first eight.
6:29 AM -- Checking my Blackberry. One of my associates is already in the office and needs me to read over a document for approval to send to the East Coast-based client, already in the office and probably almost ready for lunch by now. I read it on the screen and send back some comments. My eyes are still adjusting to the light.
6:38 AM -- I stumble out of bed, tripping over my briefcase, which was in the bedroom because I fell asleep last night reading a disclosure statement.
6:41 AM -- Go to the bathroom, shave, brush teeth, trim nose hair, take heart medication.
6:45 AM -- Get in the shower.
6:47 AM -- Cell phone rings. Get out of the shower. "Hello? I meant you should cut that line. Yes, I'm sorry, I was hardly awake. Yes, I'll be there soon. No, I don't need you to send me another draft. Yes, I had a good weekend. Oh, happy birthday. See you in less than an hour."
6:49 AM -- Back in the shower.
6:56 AM -- Out of the shower. Gray pants or blue pants? I'll pick the gray pants. And the blue shirt. The medium blue. No, not the one with the pinstripes. Well, maybe. I like the pinstripes. Pinstripes it is.
7:02 AM -- Grab a Nutri-Grain bar... I hate Nutri-Grain bars... sneak out of the house and try not to wake up Anonymous Kids by slamming the door.
7:04 AM -- James Taylor is good on Monday mornings. "My Traveling Star" on the October Road album, about a guy who can never go home. I go home every night. I just never stay.
7:11 AM -- Cell phone rings. "No, I'm not in the office yet. Yes, I can meet at 8:30. No, I don't have plans tonight. Yes, I know the deadline is coming up. No, I haven't looked at it. I'll look at it. Before the meeting."
7:16 AM -- Red light; check the Blackberry; 7 new e-mails since I left home. Garbage, garbage, garbage, client wants me to bend over for him, garbage, garbage, secretary will be late.
7:32 AM -- Someone's in my usual spot. A Chevy Malibu. American cars. Ridiculous. I'll park in the next one. No big deal.
7:34 AM -- Starbucks. Tea. I gave up coffee. Tea is more civilized anyway.
7:37 AM -- Elevator. A messenger got on at one floor, and got off at the next. Take the stairs!
7:39 AM -- In my office. 3 more e-mails since I checked in the car. Yes, I'm in the office. Yes, golf on Wednesday sounds good. Yes, I know those papers are expected by noon. Eastern.
7:56 AM -- Finished reading the document for the 8:30 meeting, marked it up with some thoughts, set it aside.
7:58 AM -- Bathroom. Run into a summer associate. "Why so early?" "Left a project for the last minute." "You don't need to be so diligent. You're only a summer associate. It's not like anyone cares." "I wish you were the partner I was working for." "No you don't. Don't forget to wash your hands."
8:01 AM -- Rottentomatoes.com thinks Stepford Wives is terrible. That's what I told my wife.
8:06 AM -- Phone rings. "No, I've been here for hours. Yes, I can look at that draft right now, send it over."
8:19 AM -- Finished looking at draft of purchase agreement. A few notes. Sent it back to the associate. "Make the changes and send it."
8:28 AM -- Called the summer associate I saw in the bathroom. "You want to work for me? Come sit in on a meeting, in two minutes, in the conference room. Free orange juice."
8:29 AM -- Conference room. Meeting. I am ALWAYS early. That is not the culture here.
8:32 AM -- Finally everyone is here. I hate waiting. Everyone is always late. Why can't 8:30 mean 8:30 and not 8:32? Painful. Client is on the phone; me, 2 associates, and the summer I invited are in the conference room. We discuss a meeting from last week with some other parties; we discuss next steps in our case; we discuss the weather.
8:58 AM -- "Yes, we'll get a copy of that to you by lunchtime here." Summer associate, I need some research on that legal issue that just came up. Get me something in an hour? Great.
9:02 AM -- Partner down the hall stops in with his morning coffee. He does this sometimes. We chat for a couple of minutes. He tells me he heard that one of the secretaries on another floor is leaving. She left two weeks ago. "You're behind on the gossip." "Yeah, well, I didn't like her anyway."
9:14 AM -- Phone rings. It's an associate. "No, that memo [I haven't read yet] needed some work. Stop by in twenty minutes and I'll go through it with you, ok?
9:34 AM -- Call associate. "I was on the phone with a client [no, not really, I just haven't finished reading your memo yet]. Give me 10 more minutes."
9:43 AM -- Finished. This memo's actually pretty good. I need to make some stuff up. Associate stops by. "Yeah, I want you to go through and get more specific on how this stuff impacts the client, ok? Just another couple of sentences in each section. Thanks."
9:58 AM -- I pick up the phone to the summer associate. "Done with the research yet? It's been an hour. OK, 10 more minutes. E-mail it to me."
10:07 AM -- I get his e-mail. It's useless. "Thanks for the research. Feel free to take an assignment from someone else -- I won't need anything else from you." Call an associate -- "A summer just wasted an hour and did crap. Can you do this research for me before lunch? Thanks."
10:23 AM -- The summer associate I've actually been getting decent work from swings by the office to see if I need anything. "Yeah, got any gossip about the summer associates?" "Actually, on Friday Dan hooked up with Susan, but then they both went out to an associate's party on Saturday and Susan hooked up with [associate] Bob and went home with him. And Dan hooked up with [associate] Pete. They were both pretty drunk though." "Thanks." "Any more work for me to do?" "No, but if you want a free lunch today, I could probably swing that." "Perfect. Should I invite any other summers?" "Yeah, invite one more. Not Dan or Susan though. Or Sam. I hate Sam. He's a jackass." "Oh. I'm pretty good friends with Sam." "You have bad judgment. Come by my office at 12:30. I'll e-mail you if I have to cancel."
10:53 AM -- 30 minutes reading through some stuff. Boring papers. You don't want details.
11:15 AM -- Call from client from this morning. "No, I meant lunchtime our time. Yeah, I'll get that to you soon."
11:17 AM -- Call associate -- "Got the research yet? 5 minutes, great. Send it over."
11:48 AM -- We don't have a good case, at least not according to what the associate found and my quick reading of it. Call client, advise him to settle. Tell him we'll touch base later in the day.
12:00 PM -- Conference call with client on vacation in Bermuda. "Wish I was there." "Wish you were here too." "Really?" "No. You're a lawyer. No one likes lawyers." So funny, these clients, so funny.
12:30 PM -- Summer swings by with his friend for lunch. We go for Italian. It's pretty good. I had pasta; so they had pasta. They copy. Whatever partners do, summers try to do. If I were to eat with my hands, so would they. If I were to urinate at the table, so would they. If I were to leave a big tip... well, they would just nod and smile.
2:12 PM -- Back in the office. Missed 14 e-mails. No, I don't think we should cancel the summer associate picnic despite the wind. Wind gets people worried here. No rain, no snow, no ice -- so we worry about wind.
2:18 PM -- My brand new stapler is out of staples already. And my secretary has no idea where to find them.
2:24 PM -- ESPN.com has nothing worth reading.
2:32 PM -- No one e-mailed me anything so far today to my weblog Yahoo account.
2:38 PM -- Call from client. Can we push back the 3:00 conference call to 3:30? Sure.
3:00 PM -- E-mail from associate -- was the document draft for internal use or for the client? Internal use, don't worry about the citations or anything. Cool, she says.
3:06 PM -- I get the document. I read the document. It's a very boring document.
3:27 PM -- I fill out my timesheet for what I've done today and give it to my secretary. She trades it for staples. She found them.
3:30 PM -- Conference call. They want to pursue a settlement.
4:23 PM -- Call wife. It'll be an early night probably. Home by 7:30. Save dinner for me.
4:56 PM -- CNN.com has nothing for me.
5:00 PM -- Meeting of a bunch of us to brainstorm an outline for presentation to summer associates about our practice group. "Because we're the smartest people in the firm." Rejected. "Because we work the shortest hours." Well, we don't work the longest.... "Because you've got to choose something." I like that one.
5:45 PM -- E-mail from an associate with a new draft. Read and mark up.
6:17 PM -- Quick turnaround from the associate.
6:38 PM -- Quick turnaround from me.
6:57 PM -- Quick turnaround from the associate.
7:04 PM -- "I'm heading home. Just have a new draft for me in the morning."
7:14 PM -- Elevator. Messenger gets on one floor, gets off the next. Take the stairs!
7:16 PM -- In my car. James Taylor again. "Mean Old Man." Good song. Fits.
7:58 PM -- Pull into the driveway. Another 12 hour day. And I'll do it again tomorrow.
6:25 AM -- Alarm rings, to begin another week substantially similar to most of the past six hundred or so. In twelve years I've taken six actual vacations lasting more than a 4-day weekend. I'm getting better. Five of them have been in the past four years. Think about what that means for the first eight.
6:29 AM -- Checking my Blackberry. One of my associates is already in the office and needs me to read over a document for approval to send to the East Coast-based client, already in the office and probably almost ready for lunch by now. I read it on the screen and send back some comments. My eyes are still adjusting to the light.
6:38 AM -- I stumble out of bed, tripping over my briefcase, which was in the bedroom because I fell asleep last night reading a disclosure statement.
6:41 AM -- Go to the bathroom, shave, brush teeth, trim nose hair, take heart medication.
6:45 AM -- Get in the shower.
6:47 AM -- Cell phone rings. Get out of the shower. "Hello? I meant you should cut that line. Yes, I'm sorry, I was hardly awake. Yes, I'll be there soon. No, I don't need you to send me another draft. Yes, I had a good weekend. Oh, happy birthday. See you in less than an hour."
6:49 AM -- Back in the shower.
6:56 AM -- Out of the shower. Gray pants or blue pants? I'll pick the gray pants. And the blue shirt. The medium blue. No, not the one with the pinstripes. Well, maybe. I like the pinstripes. Pinstripes it is.
7:02 AM -- Grab a Nutri-Grain bar... I hate Nutri-Grain bars... sneak out of the house and try not to wake up Anonymous Kids by slamming the door.
7:04 AM -- James Taylor is good on Monday mornings. "My Traveling Star" on the October Road album, about a guy who can never go home. I go home every night. I just never stay.
7:11 AM -- Cell phone rings. "No, I'm not in the office yet. Yes, I can meet at 8:30. No, I don't have plans tonight. Yes, I know the deadline is coming up. No, I haven't looked at it. I'll look at it. Before the meeting."
7:16 AM -- Red light; check the Blackberry; 7 new e-mails since I left home. Garbage, garbage, garbage, client wants me to bend over for him, garbage, garbage, secretary will be late.
7:32 AM -- Someone's in my usual spot. A Chevy Malibu. American cars. Ridiculous. I'll park in the next one. No big deal.
7:34 AM -- Starbucks. Tea. I gave up coffee. Tea is more civilized anyway.
7:37 AM -- Elevator. A messenger got on at one floor, and got off at the next. Take the stairs!
7:39 AM -- In my office. 3 more e-mails since I checked in the car. Yes, I'm in the office. Yes, golf on Wednesday sounds good. Yes, I know those papers are expected by noon. Eastern.
7:56 AM -- Finished reading the document for the 8:30 meeting, marked it up with some thoughts, set it aside.
7:58 AM -- Bathroom. Run into a summer associate. "Why so early?" "Left a project for the last minute." "You don't need to be so diligent. You're only a summer associate. It's not like anyone cares." "I wish you were the partner I was working for." "No you don't. Don't forget to wash your hands."
8:01 AM -- Rottentomatoes.com thinks Stepford Wives is terrible. That's what I told my wife.
8:06 AM -- Phone rings. "No, I've been here for hours. Yes, I can look at that draft right now, send it over."
8:19 AM -- Finished looking at draft of purchase agreement. A few notes. Sent it back to the associate. "Make the changes and send it."
8:28 AM -- Called the summer associate I saw in the bathroom. "You want to work for me? Come sit in on a meeting, in two minutes, in the conference room. Free orange juice."
8:29 AM -- Conference room. Meeting. I am ALWAYS early. That is not the culture here.
8:32 AM -- Finally everyone is here. I hate waiting. Everyone is always late. Why can't 8:30 mean 8:30 and not 8:32? Painful. Client is on the phone; me, 2 associates, and the summer I invited are in the conference room. We discuss a meeting from last week with some other parties; we discuss next steps in our case; we discuss the weather.
8:58 AM -- "Yes, we'll get a copy of that to you by lunchtime here." Summer associate, I need some research on that legal issue that just came up. Get me something in an hour? Great.
9:02 AM -- Partner down the hall stops in with his morning coffee. He does this sometimes. We chat for a couple of minutes. He tells me he heard that one of the secretaries on another floor is leaving. She left two weeks ago. "You're behind on the gossip." "Yeah, well, I didn't like her anyway."
9:14 AM -- Phone rings. It's an associate. "No, that memo [I haven't read yet] needed some work. Stop by in twenty minutes and I'll go through it with you, ok?
9:34 AM -- Call associate. "I was on the phone with a client [no, not really, I just haven't finished reading your memo yet]. Give me 10 more minutes."
9:43 AM -- Finished. This memo's actually pretty good. I need to make some stuff up. Associate stops by. "Yeah, I want you to go through and get more specific on how this stuff impacts the client, ok? Just another couple of sentences in each section. Thanks."
9:58 AM -- I pick up the phone to the summer associate. "Done with the research yet? It's been an hour. OK, 10 more minutes. E-mail it to me."
10:07 AM -- I get his e-mail. It's useless. "Thanks for the research. Feel free to take an assignment from someone else -- I won't need anything else from you." Call an associate -- "A summer just wasted an hour and did crap. Can you do this research for me before lunch? Thanks."
10:23 AM -- The summer associate I've actually been getting decent work from swings by the office to see if I need anything. "Yeah, got any gossip about the summer associates?" "Actually, on Friday Dan hooked up with Susan, but then they both went out to an associate's party on Saturday and Susan hooked up with [associate] Bob and went home with him. And Dan hooked up with [associate] Pete. They were both pretty drunk though." "Thanks." "Any more work for me to do?" "No, but if you want a free lunch today, I could probably swing that." "Perfect. Should I invite any other summers?" "Yeah, invite one more. Not Dan or Susan though. Or Sam. I hate Sam. He's a jackass." "Oh. I'm pretty good friends with Sam." "You have bad judgment. Come by my office at 12:30. I'll e-mail you if I have to cancel."
10:53 AM -- 30 minutes reading through some stuff. Boring papers. You don't want details.
11:15 AM -- Call from client from this morning. "No, I meant lunchtime our time. Yeah, I'll get that to you soon."
11:17 AM -- Call associate -- "Got the research yet? 5 minutes, great. Send it over."
11:48 AM -- We don't have a good case, at least not according to what the associate found and my quick reading of it. Call client, advise him to settle. Tell him we'll touch base later in the day.
12:00 PM -- Conference call with client on vacation in Bermuda. "Wish I was there." "Wish you were here too." "Really?" "No. You're a lawyer. No one likes lawyers." So funny, these clients, so funny.
12:30 PM -- Summer swings by with his friend for lunch. We go for Italian. It's pretty good. I had pasta; so they had pasta. They copy. Whatever partners do, summers try to do. If I were to eat with my hands, so would they. If I were to urinate at the table, so would they. If I were to leave a big tip... well, they would just nod and smile.
2:12 PM -- Back in the office. Missed 14 e-mails. No, I don't think we should cancel the summer associate picnic despite the wind. Wind gets people worried here. No rain, no snow, no ice -- so we worry about wind.
2:18 PM -- My brand new stapler is out of staples already. And my secretary has no idea where to find them.
2:24 PM -- ESPN.com has nothing worth reading.
2:32 PM -- No one e-mailed me anything so far today to my weblog Yahoo account.
2:38 PM -- Call from client. Can we push back the 3:00 conference call to 3:30? Sure.
3:00 PM -- E-mail from associate -- was the document draft for internal use or for the client? Internal use, don't worry about the citations or anything. Cool, she says.
3:06 PM -- I get the document. I read the document. It's a very boring document.
3:27 PM -- I fill out my timesheet for what I've done today and give it to my secretary. She trades it for staples. She found them.
3:30 PM -- Conference call. They want to pursue a settlement.
4:23 PM -- Call wife. It'll be an early night probably. Home by 7:30. Save dinner for me.
4:56 PM -- CNN.com has nothing for me.
5:00 PM -- Meeting of a bunch of us to brainstorm an outline for presentation to summer associates about our practice group. "Because we're the smartest people in the firm." Rejected. "Because we work the shortest hours." Well, we don't work the longest.... "Because you've got to choose something." I like that one.
5:45 PM -- E-mail from an associate with a new draft. Read and mark up.
6:17 PM -- Quick turnaround from the associate.
6:38 PM -- Quick turnaround from me.
6:57 PM -- Quick turnaround from the associate.
7:04 PM -- "I'm heading home. Just have a new draft for me in the morning."
7:14 PM -- Elevator. Messenger gets on one floor, gets off the next. Take the stairs!
7:16 PM -- In my car. James Taylor again. "Mean Old Man." Good song. Fits.
7:58 PM -- Pull into the driveway. Another 12 hour day. And I'll do it again tomorrow.
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