Call it karma. I buy a new (slightly used) car and it has a squeak. Nothing major. Just a tiny little squeak coming from behind the dashboard. Just a little peep to remind me that this car is, in fact, not new. New cars do not have squeaks coming from behind the dashboard.
True: It is a 2008 Mercedes Benz. True: It is black. True: I love this car. True: It will not get me laid—but still, why does it have to have that squeak?
It’s like my goddamn resume. No matter what I accomplish in life, every article ever written about me on Above the Law or in a legal paper will contain the TTT imprimatur or footnote that while I managed to [fill in impressive legal feat here], I graduated from [TTT shit law school]. The car is my legal career. The squeak is the subtle reminder that my credentials are like the bold orange script written on windshields in a used car lot. “Like new!” “Runs great!” Fuck you.
Lawyers always focus on the exception to the rule. The tree and not the forest. That’s the whole point of our stupid profession—figuring out how and why this one specific instance is different from all the rest. In success, I’m like the young minority who manages to go to college and not smoke crack despite a mother who didn’t finish high school and smokes crack. My relevance will never be that I did well—it will be that I did well despite a less-desirable start.
When I go back to my law school to volunteer as a trial advocacy coach, it’s like I’m leading a support group for slightly used cars. These kids are clueless, just as I was back in the day. They don’t realize that no matter what they do—no matter how many times they wash or wax the car—they’re buying a squeak. For 3Ls, this mentality becomes apparent pretty quickly.
My job as a trial ad coach is to rekindle the spark of confidence that is the key ingredient to any good oralist’s presentation. To remind them that their resumes not mean NOTHING in a courtroom unless they let them. The concept of “the sale” is foreign to any law school student who has spent the past three years being told that where you put the comma is a life and death decision. “Forget the rules, just SELL me.” Without a willingness to embrace their competitive advantage, a TTT resume will wreck these poor kids. “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings.”
Back to the car: Yes, it is sick. (Sick the way urban youths mean it, not the way a nurse means it.) Yes, it’s black-on-black with a big engine and all kinds of bling. It’s a work of art.
However, the half of me that is Jewish must note, for the record, that I got a great deal on the car. Got a great rate. Could sell it today and make a profit. I’m borrowing the money from an insurance company at 4.5 percent, which for a used car is a steal. And to hear me tell the story of the buying experience is akin to those bass fishing shows on ESPN at 8 AM on Saturday mornings during baseball season.
But no matter how much confidence and pride I have in that car, that goddamn squeak won’t go away. It never will. I won’t let it. Because even if I get it fixed, I’ll just be upset about something else. The car is dirty, or that it’s not the newest model, or that it somehow reflects the inner inferiority I feel to Big Firm associates. And that’s exactly what they want. And then the terrorists win.
It’s that squeak that drives me. It reminds me that I’m glad all your friends got laid off. And I hope more law firms fail. Big ones. I hope the whole system comes crumbling down on your silver-spooned heads.
After just 13 months on the job, I am on my way to court appearance #150 tomorrow. Just so happens it’s in Riverside.
I live in Santa Monica. That’s as far west as you can get in LA—or as far west as you can get in the lower 48, pretty much. My appearance is in Riverside is scheduled for 8:30.
Riverside Superior Court, according to the navigation system installed on my new-to-me Benz, is 78.3 miles away. Imagine you live in Manhattan, you have a hearing in Philadelphia, and you have to be there at 8:30 tomorrow morning. From Latham’s evil layer on 3rd Ave. in Midtown to the Southampton courthouse is also, ironically, about 80 miles away.
This whole appearance is to cover a CMC (the 5 minute hearing where the judge gives you a trial date a year from now and tells you to play nice with the other children). So what would any logical lawyer do, even if he has a shiny new car to play with? Arrange a CourtCall.
CourtCall is the company that sets up telephonic appearances. Why drive when you can strain to hear what is being said into a speakerphone on the other side of the courtroom? Sure enough, I emailed my trusty office manager, Holly—a newly hired Alpha Pi UCLA grad—and asked her to set it up. I know I sent this email because I had to find it and forward it to her as proof when, after I asked her where my CourtCall sheet was for tomorrow, she looked at me as if I asked her if she was on her period.
While Holly generally does a good job, this kind of mistake is practically unheard of at Latham. Which means my alarm is set for 5:25 to gear up for a 160-mile ride. Squeak.
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Call it karma. I buy a new (slightly used) car and it has a squeak. Nothing major. Just a tiny little squeak coming from behind the dashboard. Just a little peep to remind me that this car is, in fact, not new. New cars do not have squeaks coming from behind the dashboard.
True: It is a 2008 Mercedes Benz. True: It is black. True: I love this car. True: It will not get me laid—but still, why does it have to have that squeak?
It’s like my goddamn resume. No matter what I accomplish in life, every article ever written about me on Above the Law or in a legal paper will contain the TTT imprimatur or footnote that while I managed to [fill in impressive legal feat here], I graduated from [TTT shit law school].
