A riff on the difference between narratives and alibis, and a bit of juvenile delinquency, cut from Happy Hour is for Amateurs:
You can’t succeed in law without lying. It’s just a simple fact. But you also can’t make things up. How do you thread the needle? With something we know as the “narrative.”

One of my earliest experiences with narratives was in high school, senior year. After I’d already been accepted to college, and there was little, if any, point in even showing up for classes. I was drinking 40s of malt liquor with buddies in the parking lot and walked into a morning assembly late. The vice principal at the time, a strange, disturbing man, grabbed me at the conclusion and dragged me to his office. All I could think the whole way down the corridor was Where the hell are my breath mints? Did I leave them in the fucking locker? And Whatever the defense is this time, it had better be damned solid. The V.P. was a king crawling creep, and our previous run-ins had been rough. I didn’t like the guy – couldn’t, and wouldn’t, respect him. I’d seen him hanging around gym classes, fawning over a couple wrestlers. Nothing overtly untoward, but his appearances seemed more than coincidence. The timing was near impeccable. That and the look on his face – the way he’d pat kids on the shoulders and stare while we were playing basketball. The guy had these huge black pupils, as if his eyes were permanently dilated. Never showed an expression. Just stood there with his arms across his chest, his thin, flimsy torso hunched inward, planted on a set fat old woman’s hips.

I didn’t know much at that age, but I was certain of this on instinct: A man isn’t supposed to look like that.

He’d nailed me just a few weeks before, on the silliest of minor offenses. I’d shown up late for school, with an explanation that my computer hadn’t been working. Had to stop at my mother’s office to print out a history paper due that day. He wouldn’t accept the excuse, signed by my mother or not. I’d reminded him who paid his salary, that in any logical estimation of the hierarchy at hand, the customer was always right. This didn’t go over well.

I’ll bet if I offered to take off my shirt for you in the boy’s locker room this negotiation would go differently.

Now here I was again. And worse, getting busted for drinking at school, zero tolerance shit. They’d call my folks in for a meeting, make me do charity work for some rehab facility – royal fucking annoyances.
Can’t you just leave me alone? I’ve already been accepted to two colleges better than eighty percent of the kids in this place. You don’t like me, I don’t like you, but who really gives a shit? You go back to your office; I’ll behave through my classes. In a few months’ time, we’ll never see each other again. There’s nothing at all to be gained by laying on the Billy Budd treatment.
Sometimes that pitch has a chance… but not with a man like this. A childlike reverence for “duty,” a mechanized approach to procedure – these things eclipsed his common sense. Or provided a pretext for vindictiveness. I’ll teach you a lesson, you little shit.

I’d been in this spot before – had an odd problem with authority through most of my young adult life. Never bucked it for spite, never went looking for trouble. When it found me, though, and it would, I’d treat it like an irritation. Take their punishment in stride. Chalk it up as a lesson. But they always wanted more – deference, remorse… a concession that they knew best, that my apologies were more than lip service. More than a survival response you offer when you’re under the stick.

All I could offer was attention, and that only because I’d been caught. Who was I to affirm them, and who were they to demand it? And why the fuck even ask? What on Earth is the value of an 18 year old’s validation? An offer of false contrition from the mouth of an adolescent male? “Yes, sir. For a second there, five minutes ago, sandwiched between thinking about where I’m next going to fuck my girlfriend and who’ll be throwing a keg party this weekend, it struck me – just how majestic and infallible your rule book is. Thank you for showing me the light.” How do you “kiss the ring” of someone ridiculous enough to demand that kind of vacant tribute?

The V.P. got behind his desk, adjusted his collar and started the Fifth Degree:

“You came into assembly late.”

“I had car trouble. It’s an old truck.”

“You came in late and went to the men’s room twice. And your eyes are glazed.”

“I have a personal issue. A family matter.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really.”

“What exactly.”

“I’ve been upset.”

“About what?”

“We’ve had a death in the family.” Which was true. An aunt I saw maybe once every two or three years had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a few days before, killed in an accident. I hadn’t known the woman very well, but she was hooking me up huge right here.

“A death in the family?”

“An aunt.”

“I’m–well, uh…” He couldn’t bring himself to “sorry,” even sarcastically.

“It’s just… you know… So shocking. How a person is gone like that.”

This is where I tell you I felt guilty about using that bit. And I guess if I were writing the kind of book that was aimed at the kind of reader who needs that sort of apology, that’s exactly the one I’d be making. But this isn’t that book, you’re not that reader, and if there’d ever been any remorse, these words wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be snickering as I type them. No, the situation here was serious, beyond those provincial concerns. There wouldn’t be mercy for truth, and there was nothing to gain from hedging. The only solution was a call-out. Test the son of a bitch.

He’d have had me dead to rights if he were the kind of man who’d push things. I smelled like a wino and all he had to do was lean in and sniff my breath. That and get beyond the mutually exclusive options – rather than assuming one story true and the other false, considering both might be fact. That yes, there’d been a death in the family, and also, yes, I’d been drinking. He didn’t take either tack. Just sat there looking at his phone, the gears turning in his head. Do I call the kid’s cards? Ring his folks to verify the story? How awkward could this get?

Very.

In the context of an either/or scenario, I was holding an ace, and he was as slow and predictable as any other lifelong rule custodian, but hardly an outright fool. It didn’t take a trainload of brains to gauge how this thing would cut. Door Number One? I’m crazy. Crazy and drunk and the mere suggestion of a call to my family breaks me – gets me whiny and apologetic. But he was holding his hand near the phone, trying to goad me into cracking and I wasn’t saying a word. Not because that was my “play.” Just because I didn’t want to speak. I wasn’t sure how bad I smelled, but I knew Olde English 800. Its scent stuck on your breath like garlic. Sweet, with a hint of rotting fruit, like the stink of Thunderbird on the drunks who bought us the stuff.*
Door Number Two? I’m serious. He calls my folks and confirms the story and then he’s stuck looking weak – stuttering like the principal apologizing to “George Peterson” in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I sit there across the desk, watching his hand get called, and trumped. Then I joke about the incident with friends, and in addition to dearth of respect the guy already has among students – being a slope shouldered, middle-aged virgin in a thankless, payless position – he’s got to sit in his office knowing a pack of rotten shits is laughing as they imagine him blubbering. “Oh, well… I’m sorry for your loss then. It’s just that your son– He seemed… Well, nevermi– Please accept my condolences.”

In either case, he wasn’t going to win. I had a bulletproof “narrative” – the only thing better in the dock than a detailed alibi. Some people don’t see the difference, and that’s strange because they’re nothing alike. An alibi’s a set of facts, tactile and easy to test. You can prove one or two didn’t happen, or at least put their veracity in question. And from there, true or not, the rest of the story is suspect. Narrative’s lying via spin – sticking to the actual events, fabricating their impact. And in a situation like mine, where the only witness to the crime was the accused, all that can ever matter is what comes from the advocate’s mouth.

And so we sat for a moment or two, him looking at me, me looking at him, both of us knowing what had happened, and why it’d never be admitted. Prove what I’m saying’s untrue. That these glassy eyes are from booze, and not from the pain of loss.

“Get back to class and understand… I’m watching you.” He waved me out of his office.
Of course you are.
______________________________
* The 8 Ball gets you every time.

This is an outtake from the initial draft of Happy Hour is for Amateurs addressing a subject with which most of us who work in offices for any length of time are quite familiar – daydreaming through your job. Most think it’s a simple reaction to boredom. I agree, but I also think it’s a defense mechanism, a healthy sign you’re normal.
I’ve worked in an office most of my adult life, but never really, fully been there. Anything I see or hear can take me from the moment, set me thinking about something entirely disconnected from everything I’m doing. Any image or sound I come across – the slightest stimulus providing a hint of a basis to start my imagination racing away from Where I’m Stuck. An advertisement for cheap plane tickets on a passing city bus will have me running a reel on what it might be like in Prague that time of year through the balance of most of the morning. A disc jockey’s joke about George Bush crackling out of a radio in the bodega where I pick up the newspaper leaves me musing on what the administration’s plan was – what the end game might have been in that seemingly mindless war, and why we can’t seem to get the oil spigots flowing. Perhaps a conspiracy’s afoot – some nasty plan between the administration and oil companies. But how would the delay help? What would their aim be?

Sometimes it’s just that random image or sound repeating over and over like some warped form of meditation – focusing the mind on an odd, innocuous distraction. And once it’s locked in my head, it’ll often stay for hours, jammed on a rerun loop. I’ll find myself humming and half-singing “Panama” under my breath in the line at the Starbucks on Market Street, unaware as to why – forgetting I’d just heard the song blasting from a car at a stoplight. And the playback’s always vivid. I’ll be standing there, salivating over the first caffeine fix of the day, moving in sync with the line, pulling the dollars out of my pocket and readying myself to pay, in every outward manifestation totally enveloped in the act of preparing for a day at the office. But in my head it’s a different story. The spoken word “solo” near the end of the song is rolling.
I reach down, between my legs… and ease the seat back… The video of the song plays in the background, as immediate and electric as it was when I was thirteen on my parents’ couch, watching it on MTV. She’s blinding, I’m flying… Right behind the rear-view mirror now… David Lee Roth’s sailing over the stage on a suspension pulley above Eddie Van Halen and Michael Anthony, and for a second I’m wondering what it was like in the dressing room after one of their shows – just how many groupies were involved in the orgies. Piston’s popping… Ain’t no stopping now…

“Sir, what size?”
“What?”
“What size?”
“Oh… Venti.”

(more…)

Dinner or masturbation?
At the time I’d been dabbling in the young professional dating scene, even trying a couple traditional dates. In fact, I had one set up for the following night, with an associate from some satellite office of a firm just outside the city. She was attractive and I wanted to see what was under her business suit. The problem was the “dinner ritual.” A dreadful exercise – so formal and detached, with that ocean of tablecloth between you and all that protocol… It feels like you’re on a job interview, volleying vacant filler dialogue back and forth.
“What’s your practice like?”
“You know – standard litigation.”
“I’m thinking of switching firms. Maybe shifting to the finance side.”
“Really?”
“The partner track at my firm is too long, and it seems even longer for women. And I don’t see them investing in the regulatory law area.”
“Regulatory law seems nice. There’s always a need for it.”
“Are there other areas you’re interested in besides litigation?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to pick some specialty. It’s all about being a specialist these days.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see. You want another pinot grigo?”
“I think I’m just going to do a decaf cappuccino. I have yoga in the morning. Hot yoga. Have you ever tried hot yoga?”
“Uh… I don’t think s–”
“You want to split some tempura-fried ice cream? The green tea flavor is soooo tasty.”
“Sure… sure. Sounds delicious.” ^{It’s during these moments you start thinking, masturbation is really underrated. So this was “growing up? Chichi restaurants, shop talk and intentionally “hip” urban hobbies? All this cheap signaling just to broadcast “highly educated, stable, financially secure mate?” It seems for a lot of people facing thirty in a few years, the dating lingo shifts. “Great fuck” or “in love” make space for phrases like “compatibility” and “similar ambitions” angling into the lexicon. Between twenty-two and twenty-seven the scene changes from a world of lust and hook-ups to what a corporate strategist would probably call a “relationship plan.” You walk away from dates feeling as though you’d just pitched a bank for a business loan.
———-
1} In fairness, it is. I like green tea, and green tea ice cream. I just don’t like hearing it ordered.
A Flaw in the Uniform
It wasn’t until the end, when we stood up to leave, shook hands and offered each other the obligatory “I’ll be in touch” and “I hope we can get this thing done” comments people give each other at the conclusion of every meeting that I realized what had creeped me out about Marcus from the moment I first saw him. It was mean and unfair, I knew that. The problem was native and permanent; not much he could do to fix it. Well, at least the part of it he hadn’t created (the gaudy ornamentation that only served to draw attention to the malady). Still, as I stood there staring at it, I couldn’t help thinking, Shit, those chicks were on to something…

(more…)

Editor’s Note: Philalawyer is “on assignment” through Wednesday. Part III of “The Farther We Go The Rounder We Get” will be up when he gets back. In the interim, here’s a little piece on some amusing manifestations of status anxiety in the legal field. And “The A Team.” Well, part of it… .
“Not both of them.” I snapped into the phone. “You’re wrong. I’m positive.” I was half paying attention to the conversation, barking into the receiver as I sat in the lobby, leafing through the firm’s brochures on the coffee table.

Fistlewait, Harriman, Fortescue and Marmalard was formed in 1905, when Johnston Auchincloss Fortescue returned to Philadelphia upon graduation from Yale Law School, Cum Laude. Fortescue, grandson of Jacob Browning Auchincloss, private counselor to John Penn, second Colonial Governor of Pennsylvania, had seen the need for counselors in maritime law to serve Philadelphia’s growing importing sector after managing his family’s Caribbean trading interests through the Spanish American War. Upon returning from Yale, Fortescue and his first cousin, Peterson J.K. Fistlewait formed the firm, purchasing office space in the East Atlantic Building, the jewel of what was then known as Spice Traders Row. They quickly solicited a stable of notable clients including Featherbottom Iron & Coke, Ltd., Pepperidge Trolleyworks and the Johnstown Dam Liability Trust.
Much has changed since then, but FHFM remains committed to the values and vision of its founders, to provide the finest representation to its clients and uphold the Philadelphia legal community’s storied tradition of
spirited, but genteel advocacy.

“Jesus, where’s the ‘Irish need not apply’ disclaimer?”
“What?” The voice on the other end boomed out of the receiver.
“Was I talking out loud? Just something funny I was reading.”
“So I don’t warrant your full attention?”

(more…)

Gunners
Everybody who’s been to law school knows these people…
Kevin was what law students call a “gunner,” meaning he ran his mouth off like a machine gun through every class. Law schools still attempt to emulate the Socratic Method used in The Paper Chase. The professor stands before the class, selecting students at random to provide “outlines” of lengthy, incredibly dull cases the student was supposed to read the night before. The student, in turn, is supposed to recite the legal issues in the case while the professor peppers him with questions designed to trip him up.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, in theory. In reality, most students bring laptops with outlines on them, or casebook Cliff’s Notes published by a company called Emmanuel’s. If they’re unfortunate enough to be called on by the professor – ripped from out of a daydream or a hangover – they pitch back a clumsy recitation of the crib notes on the case. It’s not much different than standing in open court, making a real argument, where most lawyers don’t half the answers to the questions the judge is asking. But if the process is supposed to train a student to “prepare, prepare, prepare,” well, it’s pretty much a farce. The average semi-intelligent student sleeps through class, crams at the end of the semester and only really shows up for exams.
In the vacuum of class participation are the gunners, a subset of student who came to the law looking for purpose. The gunner reads the actual cases. He reads a treatise on the cases. He reads biographies of the judges who wrote the opinions and analyzes every issue, from every angle. Armed with endless niggling observations and more interpretations of any given case than have been cast on Shakespeare, he raises his hand in response to every question the professor asks, debating his every point, finishing his sentences and volleying back his every closing comment with “Yes, professor, but what if…?”
This was Kevin. He couldn’t help his obnoxiousness. It was unconscious. He’d thrown himself into the gunner’s world – a black hole of endless dicta-parsing and mind-numbing midnight arguments with his fellow Trekkies about obscure Supreme Court dissents and the legislative intent behind constitutional amendments. He must have thought knowing everything, throwing every fiber of his being into the concept of law studentry and soaking up every irrelevant detail of every case we studied would render him the world’s greatest legal mind. Maybe he assumed the brain was as simple as a bicep – more curls, more strength. My guess is he just wanted to have something to be, other than what he was.
The Perils of Waking and Baking
No, it’s not a good idea.
Of all the “office highs,” “waking and baking” is the worst. My buddies Les and Martin had been ardent fans of the therapy, and when either of them saw me out, guzzling bourbons and bitching about how much I hated being in the office, it was always the same proselytizing… “You’re way too stressed. You need to bake before you go in. It makes the mundane shit interesting. The work becomes a game.” To me it seemed a horrible idea and terrible waste of dope. I couldn’t blast Traffic or Zeppelin in my office or swap favorite scenes from Trainspotting with my secretary. And what if a partner roped me into some awful meeting? “Hey, __________, can you sit in on a strategy meeting in the Rocco’s Industrial Meats case? You know… The one where the guy claims he lost an ear due to an improperly designed conveyor belt. We need a new set of eyes on it.” The cost/benefit ratio was terrible. Yes, the “wake and bake” did work, and yes, it could make the morning amusing. But when it failed, it made an already annoying situation fifty times worse.

(more…)

Due to scheduling constraints, the fourth and final part of “The Line” will be posted on Thursday. In the interim, here are a few more book out-takes.

On Experts

Most cases are only as good as the experts supporting the claims or defenses being made. These experts come in all varieties, of course, offering opinions on every conceivable subject that winds up at issue in a courtroom. From the post traumatic stress disorder caused by a botched tattoo to the wanton negligence of a shopkeeper selling Pop Rocks in close proximity to Coca Cola, if you can claim it half sober, there’s a “whore” a phone call away who’ll slap a stack of supporting scholarly references and anecdotal inferences behind it in exchange for the right sized check. They even have their own broker services. In every large city there’s a company you can call and order experts exactly the same way you’d order “dancers” for a bachelor party:

Dancer:

“Yeah, I need a blonde and an Asian girl. Skinny, with tight asses. No cottage cheese. Girls who know the drill.”

Expert:

“I need an accident reconstructionist and an economist. With some experience in court. No prima donnas. Guys I can handle.”

“Expert” in the litigation game means “Lawyer’s Proxy.” At anywhere from a few to hundreds of thousands of dollars for testimony and reports, offering dressed up professional opinions is huge business. Doctors whine about medical malpractice lawsuits, but a load of them pay their kids’ tuitions offering expert evidence against their own fellow physicians. The big accounting firms have developed a cottage industry out of it, devoting whole departments to running stock analyses on financial books and pumping out form reports in economic fraud cases for six and seven figure retainers. Engineers and chemists and scientists offer books of graphs and charts no one understands propping up every variety of product liability action.

And they all do what we tell them to. We tell them what we’re claiming before we hire them, so they know what they’ll be expected to say. If they don’t want to say it after they see the evidence, we fire them and hire someone else. As they put together their reports for us, we call them and discuss their findings. But they never send us any drafts because under the court rules, if the opponent asked for copies of those drafts, we’d have to turn them over, allowing the other side to see what we removed from or modified in the final report. And when the expert’s findings aren’t strongly worded enough in our favor we hammer away at them, in meeting after meeting, pushing the language of the thing as far as their professional ethics will allow. In the end, we rarely get exactly what we want, but we get what we need. As partners have told me in the past when experts balked at directives, “You have to remind these people — they work for us.”

On Being a Professional Dilettante

A Juris Doctorate makes you so much more than a mere “doctor of laws.” A decent advocate gets to play doctor of engineering, aeronautics, economics, environmental planning, corporate governance, toxic waste handling and every type of medicine or manufacturing from which a person can routinely claim to have been injured and sue for damages. You won’t find “professional dilettante” next to “attorney” in any dictionary or thesaurus (probably due to fear of a responsive class action suit), but that’s basically the definition of “litigator.” We know just enough about what we’re arguing to look like authorities on the subject in front of a judge or jury of people who don’t know anything about it… Or at least convince an opponent we would.

There’s no special trick to it. We do the same thing your broker, insurance agent, consultant and every other category of middleman who sends you a bill or “takes a cut” does. A third of the skill is getting a license, a third is offering the service people pay you to provide and the last third – the most important one – is learning the industry lexicon. No professional talks in simple layman’s terms. They glorify and blur the simplicity of everything they’re doing by using a secondary language nobody outside the field would understand. That’s their barrier to entry, the thing that keeps the client in the black about what he’s paying them to do or wondering why, with the benefit of a short correspondence course, he couldn’t just do it himself.

Your insurance agent will talk about “comps” of homes nearby and the “replacement cost scoring” when he explains your rising home insurance premiums. A broker will throw words like “no load,” “blended” or “sleepers” at you, spaced just far apart enough in the conversation to avoid sounding like a used car salesman while at the same time demonstrating he knows a lot of important things you couldn’t easily find online. Consultants speak in terms of “synergies,” “redundancies,” and “reallocations.” They do all sorts of “modeling” to “optimize” and “capitalize,” for maximum “maximization.”

Still, they’re all second team, pikers compared to lawyers. Litigators don’t just dabble in “surface intellect.” It’s their native tongue, the fuel of their arguments – the only way they can manage all the calls from opponents, clients and co-workers on countless different issues in a dozen or more cases involving disparate subjects and fact patterns. When they’re good at it, litigators can shift seamlessly from a telephone call about an action involving derivatives contracts to one about a construction accident, all while proofreading a brief in a products liability case. Few have a broad knowledge of the fine points of any case they happen to be discussing, but they’re masters of language, able to confidently use industry terms moments after first hearing them.¹ And they know the same way you could skate through an essay test by referencing one or two obscure facts to give the impression of deeper knowledge you can convince any client or opponent you’re in control of the information by throwing out the occasional bit of industry jargon in a casual, understated fashion. For most of the people litigators need to deal with, at least up to trial, where they have to really understand the subject matter, that’s as good as actually knowing what they’re talking about.
———-
¹ Outside the hard sciences and finance, half of what seems to pass for ability or proficiency is facility with “insider” language – an odd measuring stick. Lock a man in solitary for ninety days with nothing but old Michelin guides and he’ll come out a passable restaurant critic, conversant in the phrasing and language of the trade. It’s hardly a novel observation, but “semantic knowledge” always struck me as something people demonstrate in the absence of productivity. Next time you’re in a long meeting with colleagues, make two columns on a piece of paper and rank each person in the room by: (A) effectiveness; and, (B) use of industry jargon. Place the highest ranking names at the top of the column and work down in the usual fashion. At the end of the meeting, draw lines connecting each person’s name in column “A” with its placement in “B.” See how many “X”s you get in the middle of the page.

If you’ve had a boss over forty-five in the last decade, you’ve probably heard him lament a loss of work ethic among people from twenty-two to thirty-five. They say things like “The kids have no loyalty these days,” or “They don’t put in their dues.” Partners whine about working more because the associates won’t slave weekends, managers gripe about job jumpers bolting for the next better offer a headhunter pitches and doctors moan about interns refusing to stay up for days on end. And they all complain about investing thousands of dollars into “bright young minds” who quit to spend more time with their families or take off into some wild entrepreneurial venture after an early midlife crisis. They call us “get rich quick artists” behind our backs.

They’re right. We are get rich quick artists. We’re the Get Rich Quick Generation. And more than that, we’re the Get Rich Quick Doing Something You Like Generation. You think I’m writing a book for free? They gave me a nice check, and the thinking is, this will sell, and somebody will give me more, to write about other things. It’s a calculated risk. Like a lot of jobs, law pays according to what I’d call a “pain for dollars ratio.” The amount of annoyance, repetition or tedium in a profession results in a congruent income increase. The amount of enjoyment and true creativity one experiences in his work corresponds with a decrease in income. The only escape from it seems to be acquiescence – aging into the job and getting better at it, so the time and intellectual investment required to do the work decreases, making it more tolerable, providing the illusion of forward progression and happiness. The only problem is, as the money and the ease of the toil increase, time passes and your options decrease. Taking a chance on getting lucky – trying to find a job you love or something that might create enough capital in one shot to vault you out of the work force – rots into a fantasy.

The old guard love to see our generation fail in entrepreneurial endeavors because it reinforces the certainty and pragmatism that underpin their measured, conservative decisions. In the late nineties, I remember reading dozens of quotes in the legal trade rags from angry gray-hairs ripping the gold rush mentality of young associates who were jumping ship to take a chance at getting obscenely wealthy working for dot coms. At the same time, an exchange of salary information between lawyers on the internet drove first year associate salaries at top flight firms into six figure territory in every metropolis, even Philadelphia. For a “company man,” one of those partners who’d put in years of grueling hours, that must have been a sharp slap in the mouth. The kids weren’t just jumping ship; firms had to pay them premium dollars for the sliver of time they had the little bastards.

And worse than all of that, I think every partner or manager in every type of business understood that this was just the beginning of a long, ugly trend, at least for them. There’d been a seismic shift in the leverage dynamic, and nobody could figure out when it happened, why it happened – what caused the fucking thing. Suddenly the kids just started thinking differently. Management still had a general sense of control; money would always rule employees in the short term. But in the longer view, these new generations were demanding something else – something the business model couldn’t offer.

Now, closing in on a decade later, first year associate salaries at the best firms have climbed above $140,000.00 in most markets, $160,000.00 in others. The decent small and mid-sized shops have been forced to offer six figure starting salaries to compete and everybody from clerks to public defenders to judges have enjoyed ripple effect raises. Economically speaking it’s never been better to be an associate and still, even with all those pluses, the only thing eclipsing salary inflation remains, you guessed it – attrition. I guess the bloated paychecks are supposed to work like a billboard, attracting top associates to the firms and talented minds to the industry. But that’s only one perspective. From a different angle it looks like hazardous duty pay – the hallmark of something absent any other attraction.

“Can you hold this for a second?” She handed me her drink and took off her jacket. I have to assume women either don’t care or don’t realize what happens when they push out their rib cage taking off a coat. Thrusting a set of breasts in a man’s face puts him in an impossible situation. He has to try not to leer, but also not look away so obviously that it makes the moment uncomfortable. In this case, I had no choice. I had a head full of vodka and I hadn’t been laid in forever. Her dress was tight and sheer and yes, it was damn cold in that bar.

I must have stared for five seconds – forever in a situation like that – before I realized what I was doing and snapped out of it. How couldn’t I? Rock hard nipples are like fireworks or lightning. It’s impossible to stop looking, no matter who they belong to. Every man’s had that horrible moment in the dead of July, where the air conditioning is on full blast and some 60ish, 200 pound secretary or 401(k) administrator comes into your office and starts talking about some document you need to review or sign. She’s running on about something serious and work-related but all you can think of is those huge udders at the end of her massive, Double E torpedos poking through her bra at asymmetric angles, pointing toward the floor. Your mind stays on one repeating message. Don’t look down. Never look down. Stare at the eyes. The eyes, damnit.

Even more disturbingly, the phenomenon isn’t limited to women. A nauseating result of the “corporate casual” movement is the prevalence of ample bosomed males in pleated dress pants and golf shirts. Four of five lawyers have “office physiques.” Not walrus-like or Michelin Man fat – more sagging, swollen and flabby in bad places, the sort of people who should never wear anything form fitting. And yet, at least once a day in the summer you’ll find yourself talking to a co-worker in a tight golf shirt, rolls pouring over his belt, with B-cup man breasts and his high beams on full blast, thinking to yourself, Jesus, man, have you no fucking shame? Put those things away. I’m about to lose my fucking lunch here.

The only people who seem to be aware of high beams are young women. They walk through the office in the summer with their jackets on or their arms crossed tightly over their chests, leading to awkward conversations where both of you pretend not to notice their odd hunched-over, forearms-folded posture through the whole discussion. They understand. Nipples are important. Everyone focuses on the size and hang and curve of the breast, but it’s the hood ornament on top that makes all the difference. Replace the Flying Lady on a Rolls Royce with a crucifix, pyramid or Venus de Milo and you’ve ruined the car, no matter how amazing the rest of components are. A bad nipple on a perfect breast works the same way. It’s an awful letdown unhinging the bra on a spectacular set only to discover they’re topped with tiny, pinpoint nipples. The nipple is crucial, and only a fool or a eunuch would say otherwise. The law knows. It doesn’t ban the public display of breasts. It bans nipples.

I’m not going to rate every type. That’s a matter of taste. There are the brown ones you get with darker skinned girls and pink ones you get with fairer women. Some are so light they’re near indistinguishable from the skin around them. Some are riddled with fleshy little pebbles around the nipple itself and some are puffed out all around or cone-like, as if the areola and nipple are one in the same. Most tend to be circles, but I’ve seen ovals now and again. Some point up, some down, some 90 degrees dead ahead. I’ve seen them tilted outward and I’ve seen them centered. The larger the breast, the more the areola tends to look stretched. Smaller, pert breasts have always been my favorite. They seem to always have these fat knobs that point out sharply, just as hers were in that dress. As I stood there holding her drink as she took off the jacket the only thought running through my head was, Christ, you could hang wet towels off those things.

Law firm interviews are double album length lies, forced sales pitches for a thing nobody really wants. I mean, people want the salary. They want the benefits and the opportunity to make more money. But all the talk about “firm culture,” “goals,” and “how [insert firm here] is ‘different’ or ‘better’” is white noise – a candidate and an interviewee ping-ponging polite bullshit back and forth over a cherry wood table. I used to have anxiety attacks during them. Not the usual variety people relate. My heart didn’t race. I didn’t need to breathe into a paper bag or rub double vision out of my eyes. Mine were battles to keep control of my mouth. I’d breathe deep and stare at the lawyer talking, nod, smile, scratch my chin – give off any pantomime of interest to hide the urge to stand up, call “time out” and get to the meat of it…

Enough with the ‘fit’ and ‘attitude’ and ‘where the firm will be in five years.’ I only asked questions about those things because it’s common sense one should pretend to give a damn about his employer’s future. But the truth is, I’m just like everybody else. I don’t want to be here and neither do you. I want as much money as I can get
and you want to pay me as little as possible. So what’s the number? What are you going to cough and what’s the bonus structure? The rest of this fucking charade is irrelevant.

I haven’t been anxious during an interview in long time. After a dozen or so, you learn to say Nothing with authority, which is exactly what you want to do. Nothing’s ideal; Something’s problematic; Anything’s death. Nothing offends nobody and there’s no follow up. Something’s got substance and begs a question, which eventually leads to you admitting you don’t know what you’re talking about. Anything’s what a fool spouts in a pregnant pause – fragments of phrases he thinks better of speaking a couple words in, canned questions from career guides or Dale Carnegie sales lingo… All of them are doom. Anything sits in the air like a fresh wet fart. Nobody can even look its speaker in the eye. It takes a few years of experience, but once you’ve given up trying to say Something and learned to avoid the impulse to say Anything, you can get through any interview. I try to smile and nod as much as possible. When I think I’ve got a point to make, I remember what a girl told me in a bar years ago – “It’s a shame you can talk.”

* * *

“How has your experience at your current firm been?”
Excellent. I love it, which is why I’m here interviewing with you.
“Your writing looks good. Do you enjoy the research part?”
Yes, I also enjoy surgery and dental appointments.
“We’re very meticulous here. Can you handle that?”
That depends on the size of the check you’re giving me.
It’s hard dancing for suits. The process wears out the saccharine glands in your tongue. Saying things like “Law school was grueling at times, but rewarding” almost trips the gag reflex and by the time you’re done coughing pap like “I really get a charge out of researching cases” you feel creepy, soiled, like your grandmother just caught you jacking off. And no matter how many different ways you try to gloss it over, it’s obvious – no sane person wants any of these positions. The only honest answer – “It’s a job, and it sucks, but if you pay me a load I’ll deliver” – would have gotten me black balled as soon as the syllables left my tongue. …Even though that’s exactly the bargain under which almost every decent, normal person in a law firm is operating.

* * *

What do I really want out of a legal job?

Knowing what I know now… Well, if I had to do again, I’d be on the other side, bringing the suits, and I’d be looking to get that one monster claim. A chemical company dumping Dioxin next to a kindergarten… A drunken hedge fund manager pitching his cigarette boat through a sloop full of Jesus Freaks on a church retreat… Maybe a huge food company allowing ergot fungus to seep into industrial sugar shipments, causing thousands of people to hallucinate after eating Twinkies. I’d find a claim I could pimp to twelve unemployed Jerry Springer addicts for a barrel of dollar bills big enough to buy myself a compound near a beach and never have to walk into an office or sit through one of these bullshit sessions again for as long as I live.
You know who David Crosby is, right? Well, I read a story once, set in the peak of the late ’60s, in some artist community in California. Marin County, I think. Or maybe Los Angeles… Anyway, it was about Crosby waking up, fixing breakfast for himself, eating, leaving his home, filling his car with gas, driving to Joan Baez’s place a few miles away and walking into her house for a recording session before realizing he hadn’t put on a stitch of clothing… That’s kind of where I’d like to be.
That’s what we all want. We just can’t say it.