An illustrated guide to the ancient art of using karate-style objections at trial.
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lawyering
This letter confirms our conversation in the breakfast room on March 10, 2012, in which I said “Good morning,” and you said “whatevs.” This also confirms that, for reasons I believe were apparent, we did not discuss matters further.
This letter confirms last night’s discussion over dinner in which you indicated that you “never really liked” your mother’s chicken fricassee or her jambalaya. This was the first time I had heard you indicate such a preference to me or to your mother. Based on our discussion, it is unlikely your mother will serve either of these dishes in the near future. Please inform me in advance if this should otherwise not be the case. Also, for the record, we were eating paella.
Alton Jay Ferris (born August 6, 1995) is an attorney and child law prodigy. He got his start in the legal profession at age 4 when his father—a textbook editor for West Publishing—brought home a civil procedure treatise. Ferris became mesmerized by the applied logic of the rules and began to read anything related to the law, often asking his father to bring additional books home from work. At age 5 he pawned the family piano in order to purchase subscriptions to various treatises and to buy online legal periodical subscriptions. He also made a game of pointing out legal errors in many of the texts that his father brought home to him, circling them and making notations with red crayon.
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My New Year’s resolution is to stop drinking coffee. Not because I get jittery and develop coffee-induced Tourette’s syndrome, or because I sweat coffee beans all day. It’s not even because I have matching coffee stains on my cheap suits, or that I have withdrawal headaches like a crackhead. You see, my office does not provide any complimentary coffee, that bitter nectar of gods. Welcome to the life of a government lawyer.
My work load is not for humans. When my boss throws files on my desk, I want to hurl them right back at him. Seriously, on any given day, I have over 100 active/open cases. Sure, they may be small cases, requiring short court appearances, but they are still cases, my friend. To get through the day, I need at least four full pots of coffee. Yes, pots, not mugs.
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By now, you’ve likely heard that Tom Brady’s dimpled chin and fluid throwing mechanics vanquished the noble and righteous crusade of Timothy Richard Tebow. Though, in what came as a surprise to Tebow critics (read “haters”) everywhere, they were never on the field at the same time. I watched this game as a palate cleanser since my Chicago Bears promptly shat in the woods. I was hoping for an entertaining game that would allow Tebow the chance to pull off his late game heroics once again.
And then, in good Christian fashion, steal Brady’s wife.
For the last two months the sports world has been going nuts discussing this topic. For those of you living under a rock, the learned consensus apparently is Mr. Tebow is a quarterback that has no business playing in the NFL let alone going 7-2 as a starter this season. Pundit after pundit, fan after fan attack everything about the guy from his bad throwing mechanics, to the offense tailored to his strengths or that he apparently is a Christian. If you’ve gotten to this point you can probably guess that this game sparked my intellect and inquisitive personality actually, I just didn’t have an idea for this column until an hour before my deadline to ask who is the Tim Tebow of the legal world?
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I’ve written before about the imbecile asshat litigation partner who creates an oppressive environment of constant terror by forcing me to do the substantive work on every single motion/brief/deposition that he “volunteers” for on other partners’ cases.
One of the blessings of this year’s holiday season has been an intense increase in his ongoing reign of terror over me because his Thanksgiving/Hanukah family obligations have left him with little time to do any real work of his own, thus he’s been forcing it all onto me. As a result, I’ve had to suffer through listening to him talk in countless meetings and conference calls during the past month, and I’m starting to notice an overwhelming trend in his speaking habits: he literally never says anything of any real substance. Ever.
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