the pelican

once more with feeling

court --

a room wherein are commonly found large numbers of thieves, muggers, arsonists, perverts, degenerates and lawyers.

or something like that.

yeah court. only i probably type that most often with the capital C. plaintiff requests the Court for an extension of time. pursuant to the Court’s order of March 13, 2007. and such other relief as the Court deems proper and just under the circumstances.

law was something i thought was pretty cool. a blueprint. a form of society wherein individuals are both held accountable and protected. the ideal. the practical application of social and political philosophy. a refuge. the great rational fairness. the crucible of the courtroom in which the truth will fine itself down into awareness. that from metaphysics there is a physical reality that is described and perceived and communicated and understood through comparison and contrast as a system of categories a hierarchy of levels of awareness which provide the rational basis for ethics and the actualization of reason in its most divine sense. nous.

and since i was a kid i loved grammar. and thus i was destined for aristotle. oooh the utter logic of it. the mirror of mental operation in a verbal framework. subjects and predicates. subjects and objects. the living breathing verb of language itself. and the lovely descriptive adverbs and adjectives like delicate flowers of lemon buttercream icing. down to the smallest conjunction or preposition all the way to the subjunctive conditional. it all seemed so obvious to me. so logical. so simple. the whole emotionally electrically charged chaos of communication could be broken down and taken apart and examined and perhaps even have some sort of meaning and purpose communicated. form and matter. essence and accident. substance and form. 

this and that. black and white. ones and zeroes. off and on. here and there. life and death.

breathing in and breathing out.

and more than anything i wanted some sense to come of it. some good. yes i wanted good. for the good. pro bono. still do, actually. still do.

and now i am running wild at work towards an utterly diabolical trial. there’s just no other way to describe it. and it’s times like this i am so glad i am not an attorney, and yet i am not thrilled with being the paralegal either.

now i can’t speak for criminal law, but in the civil world, only the crap goes to trial. the stuff that they’re willing to fight all the way. petty unreasonable disputes. vendettas. wars. the hardcore inability to compromise. communication breakdown. refusal to pay the fine and move on with life. impossible or too precarious to admit mistakes. no possibility of surrender. people who’ve painted themselves into corners.

the good stuff settles. eventually. it’s just a matter of time.

but trials are about disputed facts. disputed amounts. just plain disputes. argument. rage. lies. he said i said you said she said she saw he saw they called 911 and he drove away and he’s got medical bills but he used to limp before all this didn’t he because he ran through that stop sign and he told him what for and he didn’t hit him with his car he must have fell and he left the scene of the accident because he feared for his life and then he went straight to his lawyers’ offices and red flags go up red flags go up red flags go up.

and it’s a weird thing and maybe the client doesn’t really need the money but he insists that he needs to spank this guy this road rage guy this guy who hits him and drives away. they are like two demons dancing spitting slapping each other. pulling hair. says not. says so. says not. i’m telling. yeah you go ahead. well i am. did not. did too. nyeh. nyeh nyeh. i’m gonna make you pay you jerk you shouldn’t be allowed on the streets you’re a menace no you’re the menace no you are well you’re a danger and you don’t play by the rules. nyeh.

and get this they’re both in the healing arts biz. oh yeah. one of ‘em will realign your body and the other will sell you all the necessary supplements you could possibly digest. they are here to serve. they are here to help. they are here to heal.

well anyway it’s just plain stupid all around. and not the sort of thing i typically have to do. to be involved in. it’s just not. and it doesn’t feel like helping an injured person so much as helping be his hired gun to punish some fool with a temper who crossed the line he crossed the line he went from exchanging words over traffic maneuvers to doing some actual harm.

and nobody will go on with their lives until this ugliness has been played out in three acts with money spent and experts endorsed and photographs produced and receipts copied and doctors subpoenaed and witnesses deposed and medical records gathered and motions filed and days in court.

oh they must have their days in Court with a capital C. and we all hope this to turn out any way other than it is going to go which is all the way to Court in less than a month and we’re at the edge we’re at the edge the very edge of all this time and all this effort and all this discovery and all these depositions and all this expense and here we go.

and somehow there’s still this ideal of law, when there just doesn’t seem to be anything civil about it at this point. it’s a tattered flag that yet waves.

and while i have probably accumulated enough crises and drama for a lifetime of episodes that i probably really should be writing about instead of contributing to, i have to wonder why.

why the stress and the drafting of subpoenas and the scheduling of witnesses and the preparation of the trial management order and the organization of the exhibits and the making of all the blasted juror notebooks and the phone calls and phone calls and messages left and messages not returned and email and discovery and summaries and bates labels and indices and temper temper tempers flaring in the workplace as the attorney starts to blow the top right off his popper and the deadlines the deadlines the deadlines must be filed before five p.m. and the adrenalin and the depression and the mania and the exhaustion and the highs and the lows and the squabbles and the snapping and the apologies and the silliness.

ok so it’s a paycheck.

sort of.

and i think 14 years is way too long to be doing this sort of stuff. way too long. and i made so much better money when i worked for the big firms but it had no soul because the clients were huge corporations and insurance companies and now it’s for the people the people the injured people the one the insurance company the good neighbor that is just never there never home never there when you need him.

and so i guess they do provide some form of job security.

but you know you know i have another case a sad case a bad case a legal malpractice case that was essentially caused by an over-worked staff member missing a deadline. the paralegal’s worst nightmare. she missed a deadline and the right to redeem was lost and lots and lots and lots of money went right down the drain and the attorney is responsible the attorney is held to a higher standard of care a higher standard of doing business a higher order a sense of order a professionalism an embodiment of an ideal and it was such a little mistake just a tiny mistake but with such expensive consequences and our guy is truly injured ruined devastated by this mistake he has no alternative but to hold the attorney responsible for this minor mistake even though the real harm was done to him by a business partner who cheated and stole and squeezed all this money out of him and then managed to squirt out of his settlement like a watermelon seed squeezing and squishing his way through somebody else’s little mistake.

and none of this is about justice. it’s pretty clear that really only happens at the karmic level. karma happens. and happens and happens. and spins and spins and turns and turns.

but this is business. just business. 

and i’m being yelled at by busy stressed-out attorneys who somehow want me to be able to read their minds because they don’t have the time to explain what they want and get mad at me when i remind them of their deadlines but later tell me how much fun they think this all is. attorneys who walk out the door and leave you holding the file catching your breath in the last minute crunch filing the document on line and wondering why.

and it’s always a pain to go to trial and the worst part is it takes so much time so much focus so much effort so much energy but it doesn’t stop all the other cases the other deadlines the other stuff going on doesn’t stop or all freeze up and wait for the trial to be over. no it keeps going and coming at you and and coming and coming and coming and piling up and piling up. 

and yes i’m very fortunate to work for some decent honorable well respected experienced knowledgeable guys. i do. for that i am blessed. i have seen some of the other options. i have worked in other places. i have seen many many things. i have learned so much. never a dull moment. never boring. never the same.

i guess i just don’t know where this is going anymore.

and they say the western form of laziness is to cram our lives full of so much meaningless busy busy busy activity that we load ourselves down with all sorts of misplaced importance so that we never have time to address what is really important.

and i whine that all i ever wanted was some order. some accountability. responsibility. awareness. to bring behavior into awareness in order to make some sort of sense out of it. to avoid doing harm. honor. ethics. ideals. to operate on a level playing field. to avoid war. to mediate. to communicate. to settle amicably. a framework for compromise. to be able to refer to the rules, to the protective guidelines to hold accountable to spell out the consequences to protect the innocent to help the injured to save the world to redeem humanity to hold promises in tact to make it clear to communicate effectively to be able to work it out to understand to understand to do some good to help out to make it better.

and so i work in a law office.

go figure.
 

posted by: limine at 00:06 | link | comments (9) |

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