QUITTING THE BAR, TWICE
King, Heather
QUITTING THE BAR, TWICE What the law taught me about faith Heather King omewhere around the last years of my drinking People sometimes ask me, "How could...
...True to form, he took it entirely as his due, puffing swers...
...and Larin America...
...The floor was heaped evolving spiritual consciousness of with medical records and rolled-up exhibits, the waferboard our time and an invaluable resource walls were marred with Scotch tape and nail holes, and the for those trying to make sense of the windows faced south, affording, on rare smog-free days, a new spiritual awakening...
...For three years, I had let him hold me in at random, blindsided by tragedy, stumbling through the bondage and I wasn't in bondage anymore...
...Down a hallway piled with boxes An inspiring contribution to the of Xerox paper, I had my own room...
...It just about killed me...
...leaning in toward his tense, sweaty face...
...Yes...
...In the end, we go through life assaulted to smithereens...
...0 Commonweal 17 May 19, 2000...
...she asked...
...I did manage to work up some af- and self-mortification, I'm an expert at...
...Given the toll litigation took whose conversion actually did begin by reading Etienne on plaintiffs, defendants, attorneys, and everyone else inGilson...
...Which days...
...I somehow managed to graduate with honors and pass the bar exam but, by that time, I had taken to starting the day with seven or eight Sea Breezes with the cirrhotic drunks at Sullivan's Tap and was more unemployable than ever...
...I longed for, but the actual practice of law, as opposed to "It's from your good friend, Betsy Gould," he said archly...
...Prietto didn't need me...
...What was the name of the The world in which I worked was all about technical com- street the store was on...
...What songs did for battle...
...rificial efforts barely worthy of I closed my eyes, counted to notice...
...QUITTING THE BAR, TWICE What the law taught me about faith Heather King omewhere around the last years of my drinking People sometimes ask me, "How could you have gotten I decided to go to law school...
...Nevertheless, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that practicing law was still the most terrifying thing I could imagine, I was consumed by the conviction that only by working as a lawyer could I prove I was not the loser and weakling I had always feared myself to be...
...I burned myself from turning to touch the face of the person beside with it, writhed with it, fanned the flames of it morning, me...
...One night I was hold- way I could have gotten through law school if I hadn't been S ing court in my usual loud-mouthed fashion drunk...
...Envisioning proudly the way my "Eric, we've only been over this about a million times," I contribution would make things easier for everyone, I de- interrupted, in a voice that could have cut through steel...
...notion that the surest way to reveal the truth is to place peoIn fact, Betsy was my bitterest enemy, and the case-a ple in an artificial stance of polar opposition and give them Commonweal 1 4 May 19, 2000 advocates who are ethically obliged by the concept of client the fear that it had rendered me permanently unfit for norconfidentiality to conceal the truth...
...after all...
...In a deserted park, I sat the kind of shock you might feel if you stepped out of the staring numbly at a patch of yellow lilies, as if trying to in- shower and looked into the face of a Peeping Tom, except it fuse myself with strength from their sunny petals and green was not just my body laid bare, but my soul, too, my entire leaves...
...I could scarcely be- the world really works than the wild-haired man writing lieve, after the hideous wrongs he had perpetrated on me, squiggles on his legal pad all day...
...I read the Confessions of Saint Augustine, which I volved, it seemed to me that people were paying down to the hadn't read since college twenty years earlier...
...I faced this ordeal by going on the wagon, vain for a subject that wasn't deadly boring, dry as dust, forcibly tearing myself away from the dreamy part of my and leached of every detail of the kind that makes things brain and switching over to the military part that dealt with interesting in real life...
...another bottle of rotgut wine I knew would lead to yet an"Now, are there any last questions about how to conduct other blackout, yet another savage hangover, yet another yourselves from the podium...
...darkness-now supports me while I "store up my treasure" In the world of litigation almost everything you do or say and try to make my way as a writer...
...There was the aunt came out, I was seventh in my class of over three hundred...
...gal's gluttony for punishment...
...Prietto of a minority over any alleged bigot, but I do not delude myhad managed to bring eight attorneys to their knees, had self these days that my legal work even remotely promotes the rendered us, finally, mute...
...Those hours in court, waiting to argue motions, were the "I'll do it myself...
...Eric, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps: East paralegal, had a bald spot and clammy hands, twiddled a 25th Anniversary knockoff Mont Blanc pen, and wore a blazer with a gold insignia over the breast pocket...
...Litigation does not seem to be working, has not manust before I left my job, I apologized to Eric...
...Does William Rehnquist know any more about how communicative...
...But I still wonder whether or hear is calculated, but this was so real you could smell it: or not I have used my time on earth wisely...
...She could not impress upon us firmly enough apartment...
...Yes, I thought to myself, classmates watched you squirm, attempting to respond to a I should be a lawyer...
...I've told him I don't know and I never quite recovered from the shock of discovering how many times, this case is a big"-he hung his hands that he found my best, most sac- limply like paws-"BOW-WOW...
...There was parents sent me every other week...
...was to sit around shooting the ticipating and, as usual, was making me do all the work...
...bit, read the Gospels...
...the interrogating lawyer even stopped defendant, any employee over any employer, any member snapping his gum...
...Have you started taking any prescrip- ble index, some day they will finally stumble across it: the tion medicines since your husband died...
...He played the guitar...
...Have numbers, stare long enough at some fiendishly unintelligiyou seen a doctor...
...it was my fear, my reluctance to become a full-fledged dues-paying citizen, my 4N New Releases...
...but my heart was knocking against my ribs so hard I could hardly breathe, much less speak...
...pantyhose and high heels, unfit for walking, that cruelly I can't describe the effect this sentence had on me...
...law school education-conceived in ignorance, executed in And they were never going to come on again...
...CHESTNUT HILL, MASSACHUSETTS Luckily, since I would have been entirely incapable of doing any such thing, I was not hired to try cases-that was Frank's forte-but to clean up the trail of destruction that FEATURFS Or 'IHi: FoI2uM he, with Eric's help, had left behind...
...glimpse of the ocean and, during the 1992 Rodney King riots, 0-8245-1841-1 515.95 ph a panoramic view of the city going up in smoke...
...I could even have tolerated into my office one morning, held his arm extended straight Eric if I'd felt that I was getting a grip on the essential truth out for a moment, and let a fax drop into my box...
...a book by a man who had found religion after undergoing a The knowledge that I had ever believed The Law to be terrible skiing accident...
...Louisville, KY 40205,502895-3411,cut.470, e-mail: l march5 lpts.ed u Commonweal 15 May 19, 2000 straight through...
...PANEL DISCUSSION...
...Another man with filthy clothes and wild the house, doing errands...
...Where did he buy his strings...
...He critiqued the intelligence and experience of var- JUNE 16-18, 2000 ious justices of the United States Supreme Court, held forth for hours on the science of jury selection, and rated the per- BOSTON COLLEGE formance of the city's top trial lawyers...
...Having been lulled by Howard Grav, SJ law school into thinking that lawyers pondered interesting Prayer and liturgy questions about chains of causation and the formation of 1-cor more information JVC...
...I instructed myself in panic...
...Physical complaints...
...WORKSHOPS...
...When my hus- I know exactly how they feel: I am still trying to figure all band died, it was like I had been sitting in a bright room that out, too...
...voted all my energy to not missing deadlines, not asking "Have you got those expert-witness subpoenas for Robinson for extensions, not making the secretary stay late...
...I burned with it, with thumb and forefingerof trial law: even agreeing with writhed with it, fanned the "this case STINKS...
...We orcism: the most cataclysmic grant of inner freedom (apart are good at finding people to blame, but the flashes of light, from having been relieved of the compulsion to drink) that the rare moments of illuminating grace in which we are I have ever experienced...
...arrogance that made me feel different and alone...
...I am deeply grateful for the paradox that my and someone, without any warning, snapped the lights off...
...1 Conprehen?ive War-Id History After the extra year or so it took me to work up the courage Historical surreys of eighteen politito draft a resume and go to an interview, I was hired by a cal regimes under which martyrdowntown firm whose office was in such stupendous dis- dom occurred, including the USSR array that I didn't take a lunch break in the first six months...
...existence, including parts that were probably hidden even I carried with me always the secret of my alcoholism and from me...
...band died...
...This was a major capitulation...
...I wrote appeals for • Dialogue about what JVC means for Jesuits, cases that had been dismissed because the statute of limi- former volunteers, the church, the world tations had run, motions for relief from defaults that had • Presentations of findings of studies on the been entered because nobody had sorted the mail, opposi- connection between the JVC experience and tions to summary-judgment motions which were un- spirituality and life choices winnable because no one had ever gotten around to • Keynote speakers John Staudentnaier, SJ and conducting the appropriate discovery...
...East 215-232-0300 contracts, I kept thinking, "When am I going to get to do jvceast@aol.com and www.ignatianpartners.org some real legal work...
...Robert Michael Franklin Jr., president of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) in Atlanta...
...The contracts questions featured com- useless detail and rote memorization, and burying myself in panies that manufactured widgets: I wondered what the the basement of the library from seven in the morning until secretaries ate for lunch...
...Even my clothing felt oppressive: boa constrictor YOU ARE MINE...
...I had gone through a long stage when I thought everything about the world was wrong, but now, having dimly grasped the concept of humility-like everything else, taking it to its furthest extreme-I was at a point where I thought everything about me was wrong...
...counsel table or, halfway there, "Oh, forget it," I muttered, descend into catatonia and have picturing for a moment how to be led gently away to the lovely his head would look if I county mental health center...
...Once I was accepted-I applied to just that one the solemnity of the occasion, the august company, the creplace-I figured that, somewhere along the line, I'd have to dentials of the corporate lawyers, appeals court judges, and study so hard I would naturally cut down on my drinking...
...This sense of alienation and deficiency, this intuition that I had missed some kind of essential truth available to everyone else was, in fact, the very reason I so ceaselessly craved the oblivion of alcohol...
...every murderer will be liable to the other silently smirking six-that I almost had a corojudgment.' What I say to you is: everyone who grows angry nary every time I squeaked out a tentative objection...
...We were all to thoughtfully added a footnote saying that when the guy dress in conservative colors, speak in a modulated, pleas- had finally gotten out of jail, she married him...
...Raking leaves together, painting he never turns...
...How often did he practice...
...The real property examples had a ten at night for fourteen solid days...
...They talked who, without even bothering to introduce himself, sat down, about letting go while the law advocated hanging on for all loudly snapped what sounded like the pack of gum he was you were worth...
...I had startwas supposed to level the playing field and yield a measure ed to think of God almost constantly-I had even started of justice, the idea that lawyers were actually going to sift praying-but there was still a gnawing void at the center through the evidence and, guided by the honor system, deliv- of my life that I was ravenous to fill...
...I never work, that force never sets the universe right in the thought for days about what I was going to say, reworking long run, that each courtroom victory only inflates the winthousands of scenarios, saying to myself, "Okay, if he says ner with a subtle sense of the wrong kind of entitlement and this, I'm going to say that," and "If he refuses to talk to me, fuels the loser with more hatred and rage...
...Now, for the first time in my life, I told myself, I would be at the very heart of how things worked...
...I asked...
...My flames of it morning, noon, and "The SUBPOENAS...
...nounce at 6:30 Friday night that I had to work all weekend...
...Mark Yaconelli, San Francisco Theological Seminary...
...Then, too, there was still that concept of The Law, shimmering in my Robe...
...After going back to waitressing for a year or so, I finally stopped drinking, worked as a real estate title examiner for a few years, got married, and moved to Los Angeles...
...It aged to advance or increase our civil rights in any meaningseemed to me that if blame were to be appor- ful way, has not made us happier or more at peace with ourtioned it would be along the lines of 99 percent selves and our fellow man...
...While the other students the jilted lover who had thrown lye in his girlfriend's face, were currying favor with professors and cultivating mencompletely disfiguring her, and to which the legal textbook tors, I was picking up strangers at the Beacon Hill Pub...
...which required reviewing an entire year's worth of notes Time bore me out: as the months passed, I searched in and material...
...Outstanding scholars, practitioners and church leaders will lead workshops in a variety of areas related to youth and family ministry...
...Opening yet ant voice, and say "thank you" at the end...
...In the end, we are all like those people in my old and preening in his usual way, and made not even the mer- torts textbook: the aunt who had the chair pulled out from est apology himself...
...I hissed, heart sank just approaching the night by pinpointing, springing to my feet like a rottcourthouse...
...I know too much up from nowhere to the forefront of my mind: "But many about my own capacity for hatred, my own propensity to who are first shall be last, and the last first...
...he play...
...While writers, in an unprecedented show of human interest, had the other students were taking summer internships, I was taking the Blue Line to Revere Beach, lying hung-over in the sun for a few hours, then repairing to the Hi-Lo lounge to swill $1.25 vodka gimlets for the rest of the afternoon...
...To make mat- loathsome aspect of my job was "I mean I've been telling him ters worse, it became immedi- since Day One," " he continued, ately apparent that I was not cut the fact that I hated Eric with a clamping his nostrils together out for the confrontational world estering hatred...
...of going without a drink for the eight or nine hours a regu- or "What is the proximate cause of a counter-offer...
...J his and 1 percent mine, but I had to admit that It sounds crazy, but could it be, I sometimes wonder, that if he had been the world's biggest blowhard, backstabbing given the parameters of the adversarial system, lawsuits jackass, I had not always been a model of sisterly love...
...Frank dispatched me to "defend" her deposiplained, or at least began to explain, why I, and from what tion against seven jackal-like insurance-company lawyers...
...I was sitting in my office snorting at the Readresidential streets west of Beaudry, desperate for a glimpse er's-Digesty style when a quote in bold capitals from the of something human: a plant on a balcony, a cat sitting in a book of Isaiah jumped out at me: I HAVE CALLED YOU BY NAME, window...
...If law Commonweal 1 2 May 19, 2000 school had seemed irrelevant and boring, I told myself, it was a defect in me, not law school...
...My resentment was a creation I various slits on the inside cover of a leatherette portfolio he worked on behind my closed office door: a sculpture, carved carried around at all times, but his true "specialty" was tak- from a mass of indignities and slights, whose contours I ing referral calls from potential clients...
...the abstractions of law school, only plunged me deeper into "Looks like they aren't going to cough up those documents, confusion...
...the lawyer interrupted...
...My answer is that there is no well thought-out plan...
...In the silence, a phrase floated causes of racial harmony or sexual tolerance...
...With two years of experience, he considered himself an expert on the American legal system and everything connected with it...
...I conveniently set aside the small facts barrage of supercilious, hypothetical, unanswerable questhat, in spite of a social service degree, I had never done any tions such as, "How do you propose to reconcile the Rule kind of work other than waitressing, that I was incapable against Perpetuities with the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur...
...people made me nervous...
...gles...
...I'm sorry for the times I was rude or un- humor...
...Instead, one afternoon my was red...
...I will always inreal sorrow, real grief, real love forever lost...
...He used to put gas in my car for hair spends hours filling legal pads with unintelligible squigme...
...from lying and stealing and killing, but from the hateful Just being present made me incandescent with shame thoughts that are at the root of those actions: "You have and, in addition, I was so completely intimidated by the heard the commandment imposed on your forefathers, 'You whole scenario-the overbearing interrogating attorney and shall not commit murder...
...One of the first things we were plunged into, for exon my barstool at Boston's Beacon Hill Pub when someone ample, was the moot court competition, a nerve-racking, remarked, "You ought to be a lawyer...
...lar job required, that I was not even sure what lawyers did...
...Then we had five, each of Law was going to be that it lacked all sense of humor...
...Penny Edge]] Becker, Cornell University...
...Could it be, as the I'll just...
...When she This induced in me a brief surge of hope, but getting good had gone to sit down in a lawn chair, he had snatched it out marks and functioning in the world are two entirely differfrom beneath her and she had fallen, fracturing her hip...
...you into prison...
...Contains moving I'd entertained visions of matte black accessories, cherry- biographical portraits of key protagonists...
...As it turned out, Mrs...
...The first year all the didn't even get that it was a joke-hardly anybody did- courses lasted both semesters, which meant we and that was when I saw that the worst thing about The didn't have any exams until May...
...she nodded...
...Insomnia, stomach pain, backaches...
...At the time, I was so nail-biting event that entailed researching and writing a brief bereft of my own ideas, so starved for direction, that I took on an assigned topic, presenting it to a panel of black-robed the chance comment of a virtual stranger and determined alumni, and, while an assembled throng of professors and forthwith to build my life around it...
...given to see that-losers, misfits, drunkards, weaklingsI still support myself with occasional legal research and we are loved beyond all imagining anyway...
...We women were not to wear our skirts too short or merely being addressed by a fellow human being almost caused me to hyperventilate, into a bold, assertive, self-confident advocate for victims of racial oppression and gender discrimination...
...Prietto was almost a caricature of the perfect client, which only spurred on the opposing attorney...
...It was still a little "inspirational" for my with his brother will be liable to judgment...
...Tell him to take the gum out of his mouth...
...That was when hold on to the compulsions and resentments that are killing I saw that Mrs...
...Luckily, I will read just guish I'd experienced in the worst days of my drinking...
...they are plaintiffs' wounds or defendants' wounds-in anyone else...
...Eric was vocal in his opinion that "we'd" never make any money on it, so Frank had simply excused him from parrank's m.o...
...wood paneling, and recessed lighting...
...Co-sf+oxsarc•d by The Louisville Institute and the Center for Congregations and Family Ministries, l.ouias illc ScIninarv, 1044 Alta Vista Rd...
...If only they turn enough tissue-thin pages, they must "I'm asking you if you have any physical complaints," the think, write down enough section and chapter and volume attorney snarled...
...The Context for Youth Ministry Today R. Stephen Warner, University of Illinois at Chicago...
...the lawyer sneered and asked, "What did you do on your time off...
...I warn you, you will not be released until Next thing I knew I had started reading Thomas Merton, you have paid the last penny...
...a pitiful crackpot and I got stuck Where are the Robinson subdoing not only my own work, Underlying every other poenas...
...Actually, this was right hypothetical estate called Blackacre: I pictured what kinds of up my alley: anything that reeks of the hair shirt, torture, trees might grow on it...
...She at the end of the course...
...misfits: grubby types with smudged-up notebooks...
...Commonweal 1 3 May 19, 2000 After a while I realized this was what real lawyers did medical malpractice, my least favorite kind-was hopeless...
...I know a little bit more now than I used to, where I work, with his head bowed over a book whose pages but none of it has come from a law book...
...It was like an ex- dark nights and occasional lights of a mysterious world...
...Her husband had been choir director at the Church of the Precious Blood...
...In the midst of life's hurts you can the heart of how things worked now filled me with the same an- choose joy...
...Tell him to stop badgering the witness...
...As far back as I could remember, I had-on sheer principle- hortly after I'd started reading the Bible, we thought and believed and done the opposite of anything took on Mrs...
...I breeze for a couple of weeks, get four or five glanced at the fax and saw that it meant drafting a motion to extensions of time for filing a major motion, compel the production of evidence, a time-consuming, teF wait till the last possible minute, and then an- diously grinding exercise in futility...
...Prietto as a client...
...She and her daughters went to the cemetery with flowers every weekend...
...he thing about law school that is ideal for an I'd wanted to lighten things up a little bit but instead, alcoholic is that there is only one exam and it is chalk in hand, the professor literally froze in horror...
...She was bringing dusty tunics...
...You pliance with the law and stretching it as far as you possi- don't know...
...Who, I keep writing...
...I started at the beginning of the book and read odaber x:13: 2004 Loiris&e' oetr>lirlary FEATURING...
...Number one," Eric was saying, rapping his knuckles Once I cleared away the wreckage of the past, I saw that we against the wall like some self-important professor, "even could reduce workplace stress, increase the chance of win- downtown you're not going to get a jury that will find ning cases, and promote cooperation with clients, court against a hospital in favor of a fat, black, convicted felon clerks, and other attorneys by simply adopting a rudimen- with cocaine on his tox report...
...one of the blurbs read...
...Simple, sincere, soft-spoken, Mrs...
...delivered it to Frank on a plate...
...Were they plastic strings or steel...
...The Gospels talked about giving while were gathered, was a paunchy man with a greasy red face the basic premise of the law was hoarding...
...On about anything that is printed, especially if I can read it on my lunch hour, I escaped the office and wandered to the company time...
...I was instantly disabused of any notion that workplace THE CROSSROAD PUBLISHING COMPANY camaraderie might ease my transition into the legal world...
...noon, and night by pinpointing, categorizing, and analyzing Eric had some complicated system of lists and little index his infinite character defects: his stupidity, his cunning sloth, cards bordered in blue that he was constantly rearranging in his soft, sluglike hands...
...There's something about law libraries that attracts wondering, is responsible for those moments...
...He belittled judges, sec- A JVC-JESLIT FORLM ON THE ond-guessed lawyers, and aired long-winded opinions on JVC EXPERIFNCE A\ll FLTL:1tE D1IdECTI0\5 the ways in which the law should be rewritten and administered...
...You don't know...
...They said to lay down your arms and I chewing, and started firing a volley of questions: Did your was in a world where all we ever did was gird ourselves husband have any hobbies...
...Did you get them or simplest status conference, in my infinite character defects: his not...
...would like to say my conversion began by readIn practice, I learned, for instance, that you "prepare" a per- ing the Summa Theologiae or Jacques Maritain sonal-injury plaintiff for deposition by asking: "The light I or Etienne Gilson...
...novelist Amos Oz has theorized, that a sense of humor is In the end, I walked into his office, forced myself to meet the last bulwark against fanaticism, and that therefore the his eyes, and said, "I know I haven't always been easy to worst thing about the law really is that it has no sense of get along with...
...What struck me now, though, was how pre- a wrongful death action against the hospital and several of cisely they spoke to my situation, how precisely they ex- its doctors...
...this guy was judge, who will hand you over to the guard, who will throw talking about Christ...
...was a recently bereaved widow whose husEver since my forced childhood stint in Sunday school, I S band had died during outpatient podiatric had associated the Gospels with stories about ancient men in surgery while she sat in the waiting room...
...Right...
...The idea was to refrain not just we give you money for the death of a man you hardly knew...
...yet...
...It was pinched after the first few steps...
...But enough about me- "Have you had any physical complaints since your huslet's hear about your previous lives...
...beneath her without warning, the fat lady in the grocery But when I walked back out his door, something had store insulted for no good reason, the beautiful girl maimed changed: some granite ledge inside me had been dynamited by a faceful of lye...
...Her work has appeared in Notre Dame Magazine and other publications...
...mystery of suffering...
...Instead, the lobby car- 0-8245-1846-2 $39.95 hc, illustrated pet was a liverish mauve, the walls were hung with Monet lily-pad prints in cheap gilt frames, and the coffee table, a 1)iarmuid O'Murchu white plastic cube, was covered with year-old copies of For- Religion in Exile tune and Sports Illustrated...
...After getting sober, I had embarked on a vaguely defined spiritual journey...
...Prietto my mother had thought or believed or done...
...Instead, he viewed me as ten, and said evenly, "Eric...
...How can only beginnings, not ends...
...she replied, bewildered...
...I could see, everyone else in the legal profession, was so The "host," in whose twelfth-floor conference room we deeply miserable...
...Heather King, a previous contributor, lives in Los Angeles...
...but Eric's as well...
...that the words were coming from my mouth...
...We were not extraordinary people, able to take expensive vacations," Mrs...
...I did not, for instance, work a single day the There was the woman who sued a stock boy in a grocery whole time I was in law school...
...Charles R. Foster, professor of religion and education at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta...
...It was not a very through law school drunk...
...You stink to me...
...I even, bit by last penny-even when they won...
...We usually went on retreats with different members of our congregation and...
...Prietto replied in her lilting Spanish accent...
...Justice...
...ent things...
...Harvard professors who had deigned to rearrange their Somewhere along the line I would be transformed from a busy schedules and grace us lowly students with their presperson with a nervous system so sensitive that, when sober, ence...
...Number two...
...One un- "The light shines in darkness and the darkness has not kempt guy with a yellowing beard sits all day at the library overcome it...
...In some strange, re- me, to think that a lawsuit could heal such wounds-whether verse way, she had already won...
...Prietto said softly, part of the world instead of cast aside and lonely...
...You could have stinctively side with almost any plaintiff over any corporate heard a pin drop...
...Goodbars and Fanta Orange, lent me so tomorrow...
...he heaved an exasperated sigh...
...by going without new clothstore for intentional infliction of emotional distress because ing, food, and all entertainment besides a weekly stack of she had asked him the price of an item he was marking and library books, I was able to survive on student loans and he had replied, "If you want to know the price, you'll have the hundred dollars my loving, oblivious, poverty-stricken to find out the best way you can...
...Simpering, he came endlessly, obsessively reshaped...
...No, it Commonweal 1 6 May 19, 2000 is the little things I miss...
...Although I neuroti- categorizing, and analyzing his weiler ready to jump across the cally overprepared for even the desk...
...Discovery" is the process mal life...
...Not the law of right-wing, terrorist Amerika, of course-for even in the early eighties, I was nothing if not a good child of the sixties-but the Thurgood Marshall, Brown v. The Board of Education, ACLU-type of law, the sacred kind of law that dug right down into the essence of how we live, in order to effect change, help people, make the world a better place...
...I had always secretly suspected that everyone but me had been handed a rule book at birth...
...For me, these were all huge accomplishments for which I was deeply, uncomprehendingly grateful...
...We prepared for months, researching esoteric points of Since my hangovers ruled out all possibility of commut- law, polishing our papers, and listening to endless tips from ing, I focused instead on the fortuitous circumstance that a our earnest legal-skills professor, who was fresh out of law law school was handily located just two blocks from my school herself...
...tary form of organization...
...Commonweal I I May 19, 2000 our heels too high or our earrings too dangly...
...Are you sure the light was RED...
...Still playing games...
...Rule Book, the code of behavior, how to be accepted and a "I don't think you understand," Mrs...
...I told Frank not to take that The adversarial system of civil law is based on the curious case...
...Can we smoke...
...er into the hands of the opponents the rope with which to hang their own client was ludicrous beyond all imagining...
...Somewhere along the line, I would stop being disenfranchised and clueless and start being privy to the inner workings of The Law...
...mind it was always a crapshoot stupidity, his cunning sloth, his Eric looked up in surprise as to whether I'd make it to the soft, sluglike hands...
...who sued her five-year-old nephew for battery...
...and asked, "What subpoenas...
...the lawyer rolled his eyes...
...When the marks fection for a few first-year tort cases...
...Why can't you be more grateful...
...He did not talk about those things in settle with your opponent while on your way to court with the context of an amorphous cosmic spirituality, either...
...taste, but there were passages from Auden and William Even in my untutored state, I sensed it was no accident Blake and the Psalms, and what I liked was that the author that almost immediately following this passage about anger talked about the ambiguity and contradictions of life, the was a caveat about the dangers of lawsuits: "Lose no time...
...I berated myself...
...But they were Sitting in the library surrounded by my highlighters and and, at that moment, they were as genuine as I could make Post-it notes and Federal Reporters, I don't have many anthem...
...She attended Mass every day...
...I him...
...their whole lives...
...481 Eighth Ascmic, Suite 1550, Ncv: York, NY 1000 Frank, my supervising partner, was a cigar-smoking bache- At your bookstore or call 1-800-395-069,0 lor eight years my junior who specialized in personal-injury and employment-discrimination cases and, as I knelt by the supply cabinet for a box of paper clips, considered it the IN CELEBRATION OF THE height of wit to inquire, "On your knees again...
...t Royal imagination like some Holy Grail...
...Now that I was sober, I The Catholic Martyrs of the thought, perhaps The Law would give shape to those ideals Twentieth Century I was seriously starting to think about: Truth...
...Unfortunately, nothing could have impressed Frank less, He ignored this completely...
...Unless that light secretary and ally Rose, a skinny Southern Bapwas really RED, it might look better for us if you don't say tist who lived on Mr...
...attack of excoriating guilt, I particularly identified with that I raised my hand from the back of the room...
...Why are you albound to produce, all relevant information, and, while this ways so depressed and drained and tormented...
...Otherwise your opponent may hand you over to the had read plenty of books about spirituality...
...I Underlying every other loathsome aspect of my job was was often overcome by a loneliness so acute I had to restrain the fact that I hated Eric with a festering hatred...
...whereby each side is permitted to request, and the other is Why can't you fit in like everyone else...
...Less than three times a bly could, while Christ made clear that legal codes were week, more than five...
...times when I felt most keenly the absurdity of my position...
Vol. 127 • May 2000 • No. 10
