Dead Cat Bounce

The Seventh Circuit has spoken and . . . we lost.

Almost exactly ten months (10 months!!) after my argument, the 7th finally got around to issuing the opinion. I figured that because they had kept it so long, that the news was not going to be favorable, but I continued to hold out hope that we might win at least a partial victory on the sentencing issue. I am a little miffed at the way the court handled one of the issues, basically side-stepping our argument and ruling on a much narrower point of law than, I continue to believe, was at issue, but nothing in the opinion was dramatically unexpected.

For all the worry some people have over criminal convictions being overturned on appeal, the reality is that that the appellate courts rarely reverse the trial court. And - and again, in contrast to the T.V.-inspired idea that most non-attorneys have of the criminal process - cases simply do not get reversed on "a technicality." If you hear that a criminal conviction got reversed, it is a good bet that either the court, the prosecuting attorney, or the police really screwed something up. The law is malleable, which is its strength, but also its weakness. If the judges want to rule in a particular way, there is almost always a credible argument that they can make which will allow them to do it.

So while I am disappointed, I am not surprised by the court's decision. Only good point is that my colleague at The Firm who took over as the attorney of record will have to take care of procedural hassle that is required to close out the representation. That is the ticket - come in, dazzle the audience, and then make your grand exit before you have to slop out the elephant cages.

The New Gig

So, here I am, back in the land of the gainfully employed. (And very happy to be here, thank you very much.)

I hit the ground running with my new firm on the last week of May -- I was in court on the first day! -- and have been going steady since then. This is definitely a very different experience from my "Big Law" job. My new firm is a small commercial litigation office that also does some probate litigation, a little attorney representation and a dabbling of other types of cases as well. I will be the the sixth attorney and the least experienced associate (which means, lots of routine court calls which now seem very exciting, but will probably lose their luster at some point).

The two partners are both great guys, with the lead partner being a real old-school litigator from whom I think I can learn a lot. Per my entry below, I am excited about the possible opportunities that taking this job opens up, and eager to throw myself back into the practice of law.

First on the list - buy a couple of new suits! Having the one nice suit that hangs behind the door in my office is not going to cut it anymore. Being in court on any particular day appears to be the rule, rather than the exception here. (And I would not have it any other way.) After that - I really need to bone up on the state court rules. Two years at The Firm and I know basically nothing about in-courtroom procedure. (The fact that I am validated in my belief that document review was basically useless for acquiring any practical skills, is cold comfort.)

Big Versus Small (A Shift In Thinking)

The job search has been pretty dismal in general, but is currently looking up and I hope to be able to report good news soon. As I said in the last post, the layoff may end up being a good thing in the end. 

I tend to stay too long at jobs. From background and observation I have an aversion to jumping ship when things get rough, even if it might be the wisest course. One of the good things about being back out on the market has been interviewing with the type of small firms that I did not look at during law school. The law school brings in firms for on-campus interviewing (OCI). As you might expect, these tend to be mid-size and larger firms that do regular, yearly recruiting. I got a ton of interviews through the OCI process, so, at the time, never felt the need to look beyond that resource.

During the OCI interviews, I was never very impressed with the mid-sized firms. They had all the drawbacks of the large firms, without several of the advantages. My experience with the mid-sized firms was projected onto smaller firms in general, leaving me with a poor (and undeserved) impression. However, the recent interviewing that I have done has really opened my eyes and made me rethink things drastically. While the recent layoff is almost certainly coloring my thoughts to some extent, I have been really impressed with what I have seen so far and have been focusing my job search toward firms in the 5-25 attorney range.

At those firms I would be getting into court right away, and perhaps even running my own cases in short order. The big firms provide a lot of support of a certain type, but unless you get lucky and land an assignment on the one plumb project that comes down that year, it can also take a loooooong time to get actual trial experience or even get assignments where you are materially involved in the strategic aspects of a case. The small firm will give you that experience out of the gate, with the added motivational incentive of being put into a position where the possibility of spectacular failure is a very real option. (Of course, there is no chance for spectacular victory without the risk of its opposite.)

I think I know now what would be my ideal setup going forward and long-term, should my career stay in the private sector. I may not get that ideal immediately, but it is nice to have a new frame of reference and a renewed goal in mind.

Funny Thing Happened On The Way To World Domination

I got laid off.

Come to think of it, that really isn't that funny.

So there is this joke I (used) to tell about how I was surprised when I got called back for an interview with my (now former) firm (henceforth, "The Firm"). I had been so sure that The Firm wouldn't be that interested in me that I had been completely relaxed during my on-campus 20 minute interview - it was a wash out already, I figured, so I just went into it thinking it would be another good practice session, had a very nice and normal conversation with the recruiter, and then didn't think much more about it. The same was true for the call-back interview in The Firm's office in Chicago - no way they were going to hire some old guy with a ton of public interest/government stuff on his resume, so might as well have fun, enjoy the free lunch and hotel room, and not worry too much about it. The "joke" concludes that perhaps there was some mistake that got me through all the screening steps that should have alerted them that I wasn't "one of them" and that I kept expecting that they would realize their mistake and that I would get a little tap on the shoulder and a nice, burly man in grey to escort me from the building. 

On the morning of Friday, February 27, 2009,  I got the tap on the shoulder - although it was really a call from one of the hiring partners and a very civil meeting in my, at that point soon-to-be-former, office and rather than a security guy to escort me out I was given a week to "transition" all of the current matters I was working on.

But here is the thing about that "joke" - it was almost total bullshit. My way of being self-deprecating about having landed a very nice, very prestigious, and very over-paid job that I felt I was supposed to feel at least a little bit sheepish about. I was a cattle-rancher's son and suburban under-achiever, for crap's sake.

Truth was, though that I loved the job, liked the prestige, and felt like I deserved to be there. I was working beside smart and motivated people from much more impressive sounding schools, but when I looked around I didn't say "crap, I am out of my league," I said "yeah, I think I can take these guys." With the rare exception of a couple of truly mind-blowing legal superstars (and one up and coming superstar), I knew that if I was willing to put my shit down, I could hang. I didn't feel out-matched or out-classed, I felt like I belonged. I still feel that way, although it is a little hard not to internalize The Firm's apparent disagreement on this score.

So, I have been back out on the market for a little over a month. I fully anticipated being out here again at some point. (Even if I had decided that I wanted to shoot for the partnership brass ring, generally less than one in ten junior associates ever make it through to partner at the same firm that they start in.) I just did not expect it to come around so soon.

The gloss had come off The Firm apple a bit in the last six months. There had never been enough work to go around from the day I started back in 2007, but the second half of 2008 was pretty dismal. Work was extremely thin, and I had never landed a substantial assignment in the area of law that I was most interested in. The politics, bureaucracy and day-to-day bs that comes along with any large organization was even more prominent than it would have been had they been working us all to death (as would be usual, and as we had expected when we signed on).


Even still, I had sought out and landed several excellent work experiences - my Seventh Circuit appeal being a particular highlight - and had grown to be very close friends and colleagues with many people at The Firm. While my layoff may still end up being a relatively "good thing" in the end, it would be disingenuous of me to say that I was happy to be laid off, because I most certainly was not. Beyond the financial hit (mitigated by a generous severance package), I continued to be eager to show my stuff. To prove what I knew to be true, that I could hang.

I Get Paid To Do This?

In general, the work that I do on a daily basis isn't glamorous. Forget everything you have seen on television about the life of a lawyer. Television lawyers talk - they argue with opposing counsel in the courtroom, in the judge's chambers, in their office, in opposing counsel's office, they argue with each other, etc. Real attorneys don't actually do that much talking - even, if not especially, the litigators. What we do is read a lot and write a whole lot. We hardly ever get to appear in a courtroom, and even then it is often just for a minute or two so the judge can ask us if we want a continuance (yes, we always want a continuance). We do wear suits . . . but usually only when we have to appear in court, which again, isn't very often.

So my day to day job is often rather tedious - an exercise in staying on task and paying attention to detail. I'm not crafting new constitutional norms or harassing a witness on the stand until they break down and confess. (Trust me, no one was more disappointed than I to learn that this was not normal, everyday behavior.)

But the firm that I work for is pretty generous, and part of that generosity is allowing us low-level associates to do a lot of pro bono work -- unlike some firms, there is no limit on the number of pro bono hours that count toward our yearly billing requirement -- and there is a lot of very interesting pro bono work out there if you want it. I have done, and continue to work on, quite a number of different pro bono matters - assisted a client in obtaining an order of protection against an abusive ex-boyfriend, helped an immigrant who fled from a small African country in order to protect herself and her daughters to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare that is our immigration system and gain asylum status here in the United States, helped another immigrant who was denied adequate medical treatment while in custody seek redress from the people in charge who should have known better, and others. But this year I've had one big pro bono case that has dominated both my time and attention.

It is a criminal appeal before the Seventh Circuit. I was assigned by the Court to serve as the attorney for a man convicted of felony possession of a firearm. It's a relatively simple and straightforward charge, but the facts of his case and his trial were anything but simple and there were actually a number of issues to explore in his case and a strong argument to be made that the handling of his trial had been unjust. Over the course of about six months I -- with great help from some more senior attorneys at my firm -- scoured the record, met with the client (in a very John Grisham-esque scene at the Terre Haute federal facility in Indiana), and put together a brief to the court laying out our arguments for why my client deserved a new trial. The government put forward their response, and we countered with our own reply. -- See. Lots of reading and writing.

Yesterday though . . . yesterday was oral argument. Yesterday, I got to be Perry Mason, Jack McCoy, Eugene Young, and maybe just a touch of Cousin Vinny thrown in for good measure. Oral argument is where myself and opposing counsel go before the three-judge panel who will decide the case and who have already read our briefs, and present our best 10 minute argument for why we should win and the other side should lose. I've been told that you rarely win a case on oral argument, but that its entirely possible to lose one there.

Argument went well. I served my client, and made a good case for his interests. The weeks before were filled with an incredibly amount of stress for a 20 minute total performance, but . . . I must admit . . . it was also a heck of a lot of fun.

So today I'm back, reviewing draft pleadings and reading cases for a memo that I have to write - not very dramatic. Yesterday, though, . . . yesterday was all about the drama. More please!

The Joy of Being a Stub...

So, when exactly do I get to start feeling like a real lawyer?

Been a few months now at the new job and haven't had much of anything that a marginally qualified administrative assistant couldn't handle. With a handful of exceptions, projects have either been thin or just lots of tedious detail work. The majority of my assignments have just been tons of proofing. Feels like being on law journal as a 2L all over again... except the copy I'm proofing is a lot more mundane now than those articles were back then.

My firm works on a regular year cycle (January through December) for advancement and pay/bonuses. The billing requirement doesn't really kick in until January, so any time we bill now until January 1st doesn't really "count."

In theory this is a good thing: you can take it easy, only take on projects that you are really interested in, and have nights and weekends free for the life that will be abruptly taken away from you once you have to start scrambling to get hours to keep up with the billing requirements. In practice, however, it becomes sort of an odd high-wire act. Everybody knows what is expected of us come January 1st, but what is expected of us until then is much less clear. Are we really supposed to act like our hours don't matter, or are only those of us who manage to bill like crazy going to be picked for projects come the time it really matters? If we don't have anything, is it really okay to leave at 2:00 to go home and pet your cats?

My firm is actually pretty good about this (as I'm continually finding out it is about most things). Nobody is going around checking your desk at 6:00 p.m. (or 2:00 p.m. for that matter) to see if your there, and, while they of course want you to be willing to help out if you can (gotta be a team player!) they also really seem to want you to go out and enjoy yourself if you really don't have anything to do. Oddly, just about the time that I figured this out, my work schedule filled up and I ended up spending several late nights and one weekend banging away at projects while more senior attorneys shook their head. They "had" to be there, what was my excuse? But now that's done and I'm back to doing next to nothing. Well, at least there is another couple of weeks to enjoy being slow. Once the new year hits, being slow won't be fun anymore.

FYI . . . I'm a lawyer!

Well . . . okay . . . I still need to get sworn in. But the results for the Bar Exam were posted today and, wonder of wonders, I passed! Now it's just ceremony. I don't know if anyone who hasn't been through the experience can truly understand what an immense relief getting the news is. Everyone of the new hires at my firm that I work for are intelligent and were dilligent law students. Everybody took the Bar study course and spent the time studying. But when the results came in yesterday, it was like a collective sigh of relief escaped the building. The test is difficult, but the passage rate is high. I don't think that anyone was truly afraid that they had failed, including myself. The consequences of failing, however, to your pride as well as your career can be enormous. Getting those results felt like the real end to my days of being a student. It had as much impact, if not more, than graduating. Good to have that behind me. Feeling much lighter today.