Let the Games Begin! TBH Launches Games Department
Just in time for Fathers’ Day, The Billable Hour Company presents three games especially with the legal professional in mind.
You’ll love playing Lawsuit!TM, a board game that lets you experience the thrill of courtroom drama as you hone your trial skills. Lawsuit!TM was created by Tina Eskreis Nelson, an attorney and a mom, as a Father's Day gift for her husband, to teach their three children a little bit about what their dad (and mom) do as attorneys. Now you can give a Lawsuit!TM for Father's Day, too (and we're not talking about a paternity action, either)!
Speaking of fun, while not technically a game, check out Law School in a Box. Forget about outrageous tuition, back-breaking casebooks and sadistic Socratic professors. In one portable metal container you’ll find a paperback book summarizing the entire law school curriculum, flash card study aids, a comprehensive final examination, and your very own diploma, suitable for framing. Not accredited, but educational nonetheless . . . and very expeditious!
Finally, we present the U.S. Constitution Quiz Deck. Dazzle friends with your mastery of Supreme Court lore, prepare for your final exam, or take some time to goof off discretely in the office.
For your convenience, we've put together two games sets. There's the TBH Fun and Games Set, which includes all of the items described above. And because we're a husband-and-wife team with a soft spot for other entrepreneurial couples, we've created the TBH Family Law Set, which includes Law School in a Box and Lawsuit!TM Buy the sets to save 10% off the price of the games if purchased separately.
So to celebrate Fathers’ Day, from now until June 17, with every order over $50 you’ll receive a free U.S. Constitution Quiz Deck. Dad will love it. Find out whether Father really does know best!
Another Take on What Constitutes Work/Life Balance and Why it Matters by Julie Fleming Brown
I’ve been rereading First Things First, by Stephen Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca Merrill recently, as I’m creating my list of "must read" books for clients concerned with time management, work/life balance, and the like. This book was first published in 1994 and I read it then. Perhaps the best accolade I can give it is to say that I’ve remembered many of its principles and still apply them today.
While reading the section entitled "The Main Thing Is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing," I started thinking about work/life balance and how "the main thing" may vary from person to person, and how work/life balance is often so poorly understood because the phrase suggests that there is a perfect balance between work and life that everyone should attain. That view is (in my mind) so fallacious as to be dangerous. I ran across two paragraphs in First Things First that address the issue beautifully:
We live our lives in terms of roles—not in the sense of role playing, but in the sense of authentic parts we’ve chosen to fill. We may have important roles at work, in the family, in the community, or in other areas of life. Roles represent responsibilities, relationships, and areas of contribution.
Much of our pain in life comes from the sense that we’re succeeding in one role at the expense of other, possibly even more important roles. We may be doing great as vice-president of the company, but not doing well at all as a parent or spouse. We may be succeeding in meeting the needs of our clients, but failing to meet our own need for personal development and growth . . . Balance among roles does not simply mean you’re spending time in each role, but that these roles work together for the accomplishment of your mission.
(Emphasis mine.) We each choose the roles we want to live, and we define how we want to live them through a mission statement or similar expression of values and intentions. Outside forces may impact the roles we live (the law, for instance, provides a minimum standard of care for parents) but generally speaking, we determine how to perform in and through each role. For instance, one person’s mission statement might open by saying, "I am a lawyer who . . . ." Another could read, "I am a parent who . . . ." And yet another might write, "I am a person who . . . ."
I hold that the mission statement that revolves around the person, not the roles that person seeks to fill, stands the greatest chance of success because the statement recognizes that a variety of attributes and skills will create the life that the person wants to live. The same is true, I believe, for career success. We bring our whole selves to work. As Judge Tuttle put it, "[S]ome specialized and highly developed techniques may be included, but [the professional’s] mode of expression is given its deepest meaning by the personality of the practitioner. In a very real sense his professional service cannot be separate from his personal being. He has no goods to sell, no land to till. His only asset is himself."
Work/life balance is necessary to replenish the self and to keep the asset fresh. The balance supports the work. And so (as I continue to seek a different descriptor) work/life synergy renews and sustains the resource that accomplishes the work. Just as some of us need 6 hours of sleep a night and some need 9, the source of renewal will vary in quality and quantity from person to person. What’s more, the synergy goes both ways: just as "life" facilitates "work," "work" may facilitate "life." A lawyer may carry out the duties of her work in part to teach her child of what it means to be a professional, or perhaps she may use her work to further her political beliefs. And quality and quantity will vary in this direction as well. What matters is the recognition that each part of a lawyer’s life, each role that he chooses to assume, will either support or undermine his overall effectiveness in life—recognition that exists in concert with appropriate action. And that’s why "work/life balance" and "work/life synergy" matter.
I challenge you today to consider what roles constitute your life. And then, search for the synergy among the roles that creates the whole. How can you strengthen your performance in each role in a way that will strengthen the whole of your life?
Julie Fleming Brown provides professional and personal coaching for lawyers on topics such as client and professional development, job searches, career transitions, and work/life balance. She is also certified to provide the DISC® assessment. Please visit http://www.LifeAtTheBar.com/ for more information and to arrange a complimentary coaching exploration session.
Stu's Views
by Stu Rees
Two cartoons that capture the essence of Lawyer Dads:
Like these cartoons? Send them to friends, clients or colleagues on greeting cards. To order, visit The Billable Hour Card Store.
Special Feature: Excerpt from Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student
by Martha Kimes
Martha Kimes' new book, Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student, has been described as "a One L for the next generation." The Billable Hour Company is pleased to present am excerpt from this book, in which Kimes takes the reader on a journey that the ABA Journal called "sometimes snarky, always emotional and ultimately enjoyable." Plus, one lucky Billable Hour customer, chosen at random from those who make a purchase during the month of June, will receive a copy of the book!
Prologue
THE THICK AND THE THIN
"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."
—OSCAR WILDE
The letter that arrived in the mail on that early December day was thin. More than thin. It was sickly, it was malnourished, it was positively anorexic. I knew at first glance what that meant. Good news from law school admissions offices does not come in anorexic envelopes. Good news comes in thick, heavy packages of impressive heft, packages that look like they’ve just feasted on filet mignon and chocolate soufflé, packages that scream out "We want you!" The thin envelopes? Those quietly whisper in your ear "You suck." You might as well just toss them into the trash, as there’s no sense in torturing yourself with letters that are certain to begin with the overly polite "After a careful review of your application, we are sorry to inform you that..." and always finish with a nice version of "We’ve decided you’re not worthy. But thanks for trying, and we do appreciate having received your $60 application fee." They only need one page to tell you that.
But I am a sucker for punishment, so I opened the anorexic letter. To my sheer and utter shock, the words on the crisp ivory page read "Congratulations. We are happy to welcome you into the Columbia Law School Class of 1997." Accepted. Not rejected. Accepted? To an Ivy League school? OH. MY. GOD. But what kind of law school sends acceptance letters in skinny envelopes? Are these people living in some sort of alternate reality where they don’t understand the universal significance of the thin envelope? Or is this all some sort of cruel joke?
With shaking hands, I called my husband, Joe.
"I got in," I croaked.
"What?" he replied.
"Accepted not rejected got in Columbia early admission law school accepted they said yes Ivy League oh shit!!!!!!"
"What?" he asked. "Honey, slow down—I can’t understand you."
I believe it was then that I started hyperventilating. "Columbia. Wheeze. Law school. Wheeze. Columbia Law School? Accepted? Wheeze. Early decision program? New York City? CAN’T BREATHE."
"Take a cleansing breath, Martha. Slowly. Breathe in and out."
"Why? Is that how they do it in the Ivy League? Wheeze. Are you trying to tell me that I don’t even know how to breathe like the other fancy students there? You don’t think I’m good enough? Wheeze wheeze. I mean, I know that I don’t exactly come from a long line of Harvard-educated lawyers, but, my God, what kind of person are you? We’re still newlyweds—the ink is barely dry on the marriage license. You’re not allowed to be cruel yet. You’re supposed to be supportive! Wheeze. Congratulatory! And instead you criticize? How dare you? Wheeeeeeze!"
Yeah, that was a harbinger of things to come.
There’s no doubt that I’m a smart enough person, but I hardly border on the brilliant. If you skip class and are looking to borrow a day’s worth of notes, I’m a good person to ask. But if you’re desperate for an A and hoping to copy from someone’s test, you might have better luck looking elsewhere. Unless, of course, it’s a standardized test, in which case I’m your woman. (Not that there’s a chance in hell that I’m letting you copy.) You know how people always argue that standardized tests are unfair because "they don’t test people’s intelligence or knowledge, they just test people’s ability to take standardized tests?" Well, I’m a proud supporter of that system because, intelligence and knowledge be damned, I happen to have a spectacular ability to take standardized tests.
The Law School Admission Test changed the course of my life. Before I took that exam, I was just an average Midwestern girl with average grades and a degree from an average college. Sure, my parents had stressed the importance of education, but always within certain limits. I was expected to do well in my studies and I consistently did, without ever trying all that hard. I was the product of public schools, and that was just a given in my house—when your parents drive a used Ford Escort, there’s not a lot of extra money to throw around for private school tuition. (Not that there was a private school anywhere near the small town where we lived.) When it came time to go off to college, it was not a matter of researching universities near and far in order to choose the very best school to fit my needs and allow me to grow personally, socially, culturally, and intellectually. My mailbox was not filled with glossy brochures from small liberal arts colleges across the country picturing gorgeous quads and ivied buildings. That just wasn’t our style. In my house, it was more a matter of "Okay, which state school do you want to go to? And don’t go giving some crazy answer like UCLA or Colorado State. We mean which state school in this state that we now live in called Wisconsin where resident tuition is inexpensive."
To my parents’ credit, their philosophy pretty well matched that of most other families in my town. Except for a privileged few, we kids were destined to be Wisconsinites for at least four more years. My high school fantasies about breaking away mostly involved sitting around on the burnished orange velvet couch in the living room of my family’s modest ranch home with my best friend Leah, snacking on Doritos and off-brand diet cola, and dreaming about the virtual Eden that was Madison, where the main campus of the University of Wisconsin was housed—all of ninety-nine miles away. Sure, I would have rather ventured off far away, but you can make a lot out of ninety-nine miles’ worth of distance if you try. Especially if your parents are on the verge of a divorce and you’re trying the best you can to separate yourself from all of their issues.
During high school, I waited tables at the local Pizza Hut three or four nights a week, serving carbo-loaded food to overweight people, and squirreling away tip money into my college savings account. Each extra basket of breadsticks that I could talk a table into ordering would transfer into an extra twenty cents or so tip-wise, so I always tried to do the hard sell. I came home each night exhausted, stinking of sweat, dough, and pepperoni, but bounded into my bedroom, dumped the tips out of my waitress apron onto my bed, and excitedly counted up the pile of one-dollar bills and heaps of change that I had earned.
Leah and I both applied to and were accepted by the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and we excitedly headed off to be college roommates. A few months later, she began sleeping with my ex-boyfriend, to whom I had lost my virtue the year before, and with whom I had not parted on pleasant terms. As one might imagine, that roommate arrangement turned out rather disastrously. Aside from lamenting the demise of my friendship with Leah, college meant long-awaited freedom from my parents and the glorious opportunity to experience life on my own. (Read: drink lots and lots of beer, skip lots and lots of classes.) When I wasn’t going to house parties, attending college football games, or acting like a poseur doofus smoking clove cigarettes in the Rathskeller of the student union, I attended class, studied enough but not too much, and managed to earn respectable but not write-home-about grades. I divided my time between studying, partying, and working to earn tuition money.
For some reason, it never really occurred to me to stop and focus on what I was going to do once college was over. Wisconsin was a very large state school, with over 40,000 students enrolled, and it wasn’t as though career counselors were purposefully wandering the 933 acres of campus, hunting down random undergraduates and forcing them to face the music. They were there if you sought them out, but if you didn’t, you could survive in peaceful, ignorant bliss until graduation.
In the movies, after you get your college diploma, you are handed an entry-level job in a mysterious field like marketing or banking or human resources or pharmaceutical sales, along with a cubicle that you can call your very own, a bulletin board upon which you can tack Dilbert cartoons, and a box of business cards that make you feel more important than you actually are. To this day, I wonder why it is that at no point during my four years at college did one person (be it a career counselor, professor, or parent) say to me, "You know, you’re going to have to find a job and a way to pay your rent after graduation, because student loans and two-dollar all-you-can-drink parties don’t go on forever, missy." Possibly they assumed that such a statement was self-evident. If so, they were mistaken.
I was barely three steps off the stage at college graduation, diploma proudly in hand, when that fact did become obvious to me. I was armed with a B.A. in psychology and philosophy, neither of which was the most practical or marketable field of expertise, and I was suddenly hit with the realization that I had no idea what to do with my life. And that I had bills to pay. And that soon I would be getting a little rumbly in the tumbly with hunger, and that even ramen noodles cost money. And that this here piece of paper that I got in the mail says that in six months they expect me to start paying back the student loans I took out? Don’t they know I’m not even employed? Nervously, hesitantly, I visited the university’s career services center, where I met with a counselor named Delores who wore a gauzy, flowing purple tunic and chunky turquoise jewelry. Delores asked me a litany of What Color Is Your Parachute?-type questions about my ideal work environment and my personal communication style, sat me down to take a Myers-Briggs personality test, pronounced me a "type INTJ," and then explained that I would do well at a job that allowed me to use my "creativity and originality" within a "structured environment." The world was wide open to me, she said, and she wanted me to consider all my options. Where would I be happiest working? Might I like the climate in San Francisco? Had I ever considered working abroad or traveling? Did I prefer a bustling, big-city atmosphere or a more laid-back, small-town life? Would I prefer the predictability of working for a large corporation or the informality of a smaller business? Had I ever considered an entrepreneurial venture?
These were all questions that were lovely to ponder in the abstract, but not too practical to my real-life situation. I lived in Madison. My boyfriend, Joe, lived in Madison. We lived together in Madison. Neither of us had any money to move away from Madison, even if we were so inclined. And I needed a job right away. I didn’t have time to spend months exploring the depths of my psyche to try and determine what sort of career would help me become completely self-actualized. All of this information seemed quite disappointing to Delores. But sometimes the truth hurts. And the truth definitely hurt me, because Madison was a college town flooded with overqualified, underemployed workers—people with master’s degrees and Ph.D.s could be found tending bar and waiting tables all over the city.
As a stopgap measure, I took an eight-dollar-an-hour job stuffing envelopes at a small local nonprofit organization (a job that provided me with neither my very own cubicle nor my very own set of business cards), and considered my options as I stuffed. Fold paper, fold paper, stuff envelope, seal. Become an oral surgeon? No. I don’t really like mouths. Fold paper, fold paper, stuff envelope, seal. Astronaut? Nah, you probably need to know something sciencey to do that, and I barely made it through Chemistry 101. Fold paper, fold paper, stuff envelope, seal. Insurance adjuster? Oh, please. Fold paper, fold paper, stuff envelope, seal. Philosopher? I’m qualified to do that, but I’m not seeing many philosopher needed ads in the paper...Fold paper, fold paper, stuff envelope, seal. Law school? Maybe I should go to law school. That’s not a half-bad idea. With a law degree, maybe I could even do some good in the world!
I had always enjoyed a good argument, and the thought of becoming a lawyer had crossed my mind on a few occasions—the prospect of practicing law intrigued me. But I must admit that my decision to go to law school was made by default more than it was fueled by a raging desire to practice law. I wanted so badly to be an adult, to be a professional, to be taken seriously, but I had no idea how to go about it. With no other real clues, hints, or prospects for a professional future, law school seemed like a respectable, practical option that might actually land me a real job—one that didn’t involve opening someone else’s mail, learning how to operate a telephone switchboard, or standing in cushy, orthopedic shoes saying "Hi, my name is Martha, and I’ll be your waitress this evening." A job with not only my own business cards and my own Dilbert-ready bulletin board, but probably even my own office (maybe with a window) and possibly even my own secretary.
"Law school opens so many doors," my uncle Mark said.
"Don’t do it," my aunt Elaine, Uncle Mark’s wife, said.
"If you were a lawyer, you could work to achieve social justice," said the director of the nonprofit organization I worked for.
"With a law degree, you will have infinite opportunities," proclaimed the new, no-nonsense career counselor who I had gone to see behind Delores’s back.
"I have no idea what to do with my life," I responded. "Count me in!"
"I don’t know what to do with my life either," Joe told me. "Let’s get married. I’ll stand by your side while you get your law degree, then I’ll get to ride the gravy train once you’re a highly paid attorney!"
"Yes!" I answered, to the world’s most romantic proposal. The dual coups of marriage and law school would undoubtedly transform both of us into serious, respectable, mature adults.
The problematic part of the whole scenario was that Joe and I would be paying for the nuptials ourselves. Although our parents were happy to hear of the planned union (they found it infinitely preferable to our sinful cohabitation over the previous year) and surely would have loved to help us out financially if they could have, that just wasn’t in the cards. We didn’t even bother to broach the subject, as it was understood from the beginning. Chances are, if your parents don’t pay for your college education, they’re not paying for your wedding.
I had visions of a candlelit ceremony where I would stand, radiating a beautiful bridal glow, costumed in a flowing white silk wedding gown. In my dreams, the ceremony would be followed by a lovely reception at a lakeside hotel (with an open bar and champagne fountain), complete with a tiered cake adorned with fresh strawberries and roses, with a miniature bride and groom perched on the top. The reality was that we were stretching it to even think we could afford a wedding at the courthouse followed by a reception at the local VFW with pitchers of foamy beer, a greasy fish fry, and an Entenmann’s Iced Devil’s Food Cake. The disparity was troublesome, to say the least.
I didn’t really need the fanciest of weddings—I’m not one of those girls who began collecting back issues of Modern Bride magazine at age fourteen—but I did want something memorable in its own way. It was the beginning of an exciting new adventure for Joe and me, and I wanted something that would do it justice. Ultimately, we decided that we’d either find a way to do the traditional white dress down the aisle or would do something altogether unconventional. Not that we really knew what "unconventional" would be. Vegas? A beach in Mexico? I just hoped that we’d be able to afford the wedding before gray hairs began sprouting from our heads.
The solution came via fax one day while I was at work, answering phones and stuffing yet more envelopes. An unsolicited facsimile, an advertisement, boasting of discounted airfares to locations near and far. Incredibly discounted airfares. Airfares that even Joe and I could begin to afford. Clutching the paper between white knuckles (because I knew that what I was about to propose was a long shot), I took the advertisement home and presented my case to Joe, using my best lawyer-to-be voice.
"Joe, you know how much I’ve always wanted to visit New York City, right? Well, I saw this ad today that says that we could fly there for only $120 each. Round trip. I think we should go. If we stayed with your sister and her husband, it wouldn’t cost us a penny. It would be fabulous! And you know how we’ve been worrying about how we’ll ever afford to get married? Well, I was thinking...why don’t we get married while we’re there? We talked about doing something exotic. New York is exotic, right? Maybe we could find a judge to marry us in Central Park. Central Park!"
Joe said nothing.
Nervously, I kept pitching.
"I’m thinking a sort of elopement. Tell people afterward and let the chips fall where they may. We wouldn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of getting both of my parents together in the same room for our wedding or with the drama of our two families actually meeting. And, seriously, how cool would it be to say that we eloped in Central Park? Plus, it would be like a wedding and honeymoon all wrapped up in one. And all for less than $300! Or for sure for less than $500. How can we ever beat that? I know we can’t really afford even that right now, but we do have credit cards we could use. In the long run, it would be way cheaper than any of our other options."
Anxiously, I awaited his response.
"Let me call my sister to make sure it’s okay," Joe said. "But I’m in."
So, on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon in early September, we flew out of Madison and landed at LaGuardia Airport. I had my face pressed so tightly into the tiny airplane window, craning to see my first glimpse of New York City, that I’m surprised my nose ever recovered its natural shape. I took in every detail of the foreign-feeling taxi ride through Queens and Brooklyn, and we were in line at the City Clerk’s Office at nine the next morning to get our marriage license. After a day and a half of wandering around Manhattan—me with my mouth hanging open and a tiny bit of excited, overwhelmed, New York-jealous drool dripping from my cheek the entire time—Joe and I got married in a cozy nook of Strawberry Fields in Central Park, with Joe’s sister, her husband, and their nine-week-old daughter as our witnesses. I wore a short, strappy, bright red dress that I had purchased, on clearance, for $39 at The Limited. Joe wore a plaid jacket and a thin black tie that were, in retrospect, both quite regrettable.
We wandered around the park for several hours afterward, enjoying the perfect, sunny seventy-two-degree weather and eating ice-cream sandwiches purchased from a curbside vendor. That night we stayed at the now-defunct Hotel St. Moritz in a deeply discounted room overlooking Central Park. Two days later we returned to Wisconsin. Joe had to drag me back kicking and screaming. I was in love with New York. I wanted to stay.
Once we were home, I turned my attention to the law school portion of the Martha Adulthood Plan. My 3.35 undergraduate grade point average was within the realm of the acceptable, and as long as I could get a respectable score on the entrance exam and write a coherent application essay, I figured that I shouldn’t have a problem getting into law school somewhere. My expectations weren’t too high, and I wasn’t spending too much time overanalyzing the whole situation by worrying about pesky little things like, you know, how I was going to pay for this whole endeavor or the fact that I could legitimately stand to be about $100,000 in debt if I ended up going to a private school. Those were mere quibbling details! To be worried about later! Meanwhile, this plan offered an end to the otherwise endless fold paper, fold paper, stuff envelope, seal.
The first step was to take the Law School Admissions Test, better known as the LSAT. The LSAT is a standardized exam designed to test students’ critical and analytical thinking skills. Unlike every other college or graduate school entrance exam in existence, all of which question students’ understanding of actual subjects like math or science or history, the LSAT requires absolutely no concrete knowledge of any subject matter whatsoever. It doesn’t test what you know, it tests the way you think. This makes the LSAT the perfect gig for intelligent people who really don’t know anything. People like me. It’s nice to know that the world accommodates us, too, even if it does relegate us to a life in the law.
Under the guise of examining your logical reasoning skills, the LSAT ties your brain into intricate knots. It does so by asking questions not far removed from this:
A man walks into a bar, and the bartender tells him that he will serve him five free beers if he can answer one question correctly. The man readily agrees. The bartender lines up eight beers on the bar: an Amstel Light, a Budweiser, a Corona, a Dixie, an El Toro, a Fosters, a Guinness, and a Heineken. He sets forth the following rules: If you drink the Amstel and the Guinness, you must also drink the Heineken. If you drink the Dixie, you may not drink the Fosters or the Guinness. If you drink the El Toro, you may not drink the Budweiser. You must drink exactly two of the three bottles of Budweiser, Corona, and Fosters. Now, you have three minutes to come up with a complete and accurate list of the five beers that you can drink to follow all of these rules. Go! (Note: you may not change your mind and ask for a shot of Jack Daniel’s instead.)
Because I am the type of geek who gets an instant endorphin high when presented with a task that involves making checklists or graphs, with solving puzzles or logic games of any sort, or with answering any type of question asked in a multiple-choice format, the LSAT was my friend.
I spent several months mastering the art of working out these mind-bending problems, and each Saturday afternoon I could be found sitting at my bright blue-painted desk taking a three-hour-long sample exam, scoring my test, and then analyzing my answers. Although I had consistently been doing well on my practice exams, when test day arrived, I woke up in a clammy sweat, my stomach a bundle of clenched nerves. I was so afraid that I honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to make my legs walk the mile and a half to the campus classroom where the exam was to be held. But I had no choice. I was counting on this plan to work. I forced myself to put one leg in front of the other, did some deep breathing to try and calm my nerves, and motored through the exam, which turned out to be not too terrible. Uncharacteristically, I left thinking that I hadn’t done half bad, even though I hadn’t been afforded the luxury of taking a Kaplan test prep class like many of the other people in the room. I had done all I could; there was nothing else to do but sit back and wait for my score.
I agonized terribly during the monthlong wait, which seemed interminable. When the results of the test finally arrived, I was speechless. I had scored a 172 out of a possible 180 points. This placed me in the 98th percentile of all test-takers nationwide—a truly stellar score. A score that, I quickly realized, was probably good enough to counteract my less-than-fabulous college grade point average and gain me admission into a better-than-average law school. My mind started racing with the possibilities. Suddenly I was catapulted into very unfamiliar territory. I was face to face with the prospect of admission to an esteemed institution instead of a continuation of my relative mediocrity. I had a brief vision of myself driving a Jaguar XJS someday instead of a used Ford Escort.
I spent the next few months in frenzied excitement, sitting with Joe on our sagging couch and poring through mountains of glossy law school brochures, each exclaiming the diversity of the student body, the breadth of the curriculum, the brilliance of the faculty, and the wholly unique experience that I could get from that school and that school alone. Phrases such as "There is no other law school that brings together such intellectual talent and commitment, from such a remarkable diversity of cultural perspectives, in such an exciting campus, so never mind the enormous price tag" and "Our commitment to rigorous and exciting legal training and to pathbreaking scholarship has no parallel, so try to ignore the fact that you will have to mortgage your entire future to attend" peppered my dreams. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well.
Law school catalogs always feature photos of people looking so fascinating, so brilliant, so intellectually desirable that even if I had been a conceptual artist hell-bent on producing postmodern sculptures made entirely out of recycled metal for a living with absolutely no interest in the law whatsoever, after an hour locked in a room with a stack of those brochures, I’m pretty sure I would have had pen to paper filling out an application. A shorthaired and severe-looking woman pictured in a lecture hall, mouth caught agape in speech, hands gesturing wildly, surely making a brilliant observation about the true meaning of Justice. A bespectacled man, older than your typical law student, photographed in animated conversation with a professor, clearly having a meaningful discussion about the intellectual pitfalls in the Supreme Court’s most recent decision. A gorgeous woman with a shocking head of dark curls pictured reading a book in the law library, undoubtedly digesting legal precedent dating back hundreds of years and formulating ideas for changes in the American penal system that would make our entire society a better, happier, more peaceful place in which to live. I wanted to be one of those people.
Enjoying the opportunity that I hadn’t been given when selecting an undergraduate institution, I argued the relative merits of close to a hundred different law schools with Joe. Together we distilled the information in the catalogs that I had received, then I studied the lists of law school rankings until I had them practically committed to memory. Finally, I came up with complex lists of "safety"schools, "reasonable target" schools, and "pipe dream" schools to which I might apply. The final product reflected nothing so much as my desire for the two of us to leave Wisconsin and start our lives over somewhere else. My choices were scattered liberally all across the country, with a noticeable gap in the flyover states: Harvard, New York University, the University of Southern California, Loyola, the University of Washington, Northeastern, Georgetown, Florida State University, and Columbia—my very first choice of school.
I approached college professors who were complete strangers to me, but who had at some point decided to give me good grades in my classes, and asked them to consider writing letters of recommendation attesting to my intellect, character, and overall fitness to practice law. I shed tears of frustration when attempting to write some sort of meaningful and insightful personal statement that would, in three double-spaced pages or less, provide a glimpse into my true self and demonstrate exactly why it was that Saint Peter should open the pearly gates of an elite law school for me and allow my entrance.
I filled out a financial aid application two miles long that asked me questions about how much money my parents had made at their high school jobs and whether or not I had properly invested the babysitting money I had earned when I was thirteen, and then I fervently prayed that somehow, some way, I would figure out a way to finance this whole endeavor. I knew it would involve taking out staggering amounts of student loans. But at the time it kind of felt like Monopoly money—it wasn’t like the twelve actual dollars occupying my wallet at that moment. It was theoretical money. Plus, no one would lend me more than I would be able to afford to repay, right?
In the end, I sent out one application and one application alone. I had fallen in love with New York City on my brief marital visit, and I had taken to fantasizing about living there someday. Columbia was the best law school in New York City, and that was where I wanted to be. Even with my high LSAT scores, I didn’t think my chances of admission were particularly good, but I was determined to try. And I soon found out that Columbia had an early decision program that I hoped might just be my way in. Essentially, they promised to give me an early answer (and, by implication, a potential leg up in the selection process) if I promised them my soul. If they accepted me, I promised to enroll, withholding any other applications and forsaking all others who might say yes to me down the line. I knew it was a long shot, but I had nothing to lose. I’d get Columbia’s answer in December, and if they said no, I would still have plenty of time to send in applications to my other chosen schools. If they said yes, well, I couldn’t even let myself imagine what I would do if they said yes.
I waited with bated breath each day as I checked my mailbox, hoping to see a fat envelope from the admissions office. Although the envelope was thin when it arrived, it contained the magic word Congratulations. I was going to the Ivy League.
Martha Kimes grew up in small-town Illinois, small-town Virginia, and small-town Wisconsin. She spent the first 18 years of her life dreaming about living in a place that wasn't so small.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Martha went off to New York City to attend Columbia Law School. To find out more about that period of her life, you're going to have to pony up and buy her book, Ivy Briefs, which chronicles her law school adventures.
Martha was a practicing lawyer for nine years. She graduated with honors from Columbia Law School in 1997, and was a litigation associate at an elite New York City law firm for several years before finally throwing in the towel, moving her family to Arizona, and sacrificing her giant law firm salary to work as in-house counsel to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America.
Martha is now a writer living in Phoenix with her husband, Joe, and her two sons, Donovan and Simon. She misses New York desperately, and has concrete plans to return the day after her youngest son goes off to college.
She loves hearing from her readers, so please feel free to contact her—especially if you happen to share Martha's unnatural fondness for beef jerky, impractical shoes, and bad reality TV. Chances are, she'll probably e-mail you back.
Go to the Head of the Class Action
by Bob Pladek
You guys over there, pair up into groups of three.
~Yogi Berra (1925 - )
People getting together to sue other people dates back to medieval England. Before then, I suppose—with legal access denied—angry mobs did what is expected of angry mobs. Remarkably, even today some groups avoid Rule 23 and opt for self-help.
In 1960 Chief Justice Earl Warren appointed an advisory committee to give some shape to the mush of contradictory rulings on when/how/why classes could be certified as such, and what they could accomplish. The net result was (1) making it easier to bring injunctive actions; and (2) clarifying a "class was a class" when its shared attributes were greater than those of its individual members. These pretty obvious fixes ushered in the age of class actions: an age we have yet to . . . and may never . . . emerge from.
Groucho never wanted to be a member of any club that would accept him as a member. But recognizing the inherent leverage in a class action suit, attorneys battle as much over class commonality as the alleged underlying tort. These actions have taken on something in the manner of populist, economic referendum: mostly-private initiatives significantly affecting the way business does business.
Not surprisingly, the internet has become a recruiting tool. Even my mediocre searching skill discloses scores of sites—most financed by law firms—the prime objective of which is to turn individual complaints into a million-member march on whatever by dispensing information on current suits, and soliciting instances of injury to evaluate potential for future actions. Classactionorg.com even purports to gives the "pros and cons" of class actions, though only the pros are listed. (One quick sidebar: the author of the small white paper evaluating pros and cons is listed as Professor George Mentz, JD, MBA, CWM, CPM, MFP, CAM, RFT, CTEP. The Professor’s defense of using the internet to put together class actions seems closely linked to his profession of internet recruiting. And p.s: he’s the registered owner of classactionorg.com. He does, however, list links to three other complaint sites, including myclassactionlawsuit.com. Which he also owns.)
Costs (drags) to the American economy, to innovation and initiative; the needs of the many (millions helped) versus the needs of the few (thousands hurt); the very role of the judiciary versus the legislature—all social, political and fiscal questions class actions continually bring into focus. Perhaps, as with any tool, there’s no way to conclude all results are good. Or bad. And so refinements continue, as they do with every law, regulation, rule, court decision, abs braking system, pollution control, prescription drug recommendation/warning, commission-sale incentive, disclosure or disclaimer.
We Americans, after all, love to tinker.
Bob Pladek is the normally civil Special Sections Editor for New Jersey Lawyer. This article is reprinted with their permission, which wasn’t overly begrudgingly given. Bob’s views, thankfully, are entirely his own. Send a nice note to him at Robert.pladek@njlnews.com
Juris Comic
Song of the Month: My Will
by Bob Noone & the Well Hung Jury
I got some time
before I pass away
have a nice portfolio
and an IRA
A large nest egg as you might quess
it's recorded in my bequest, it's my will...
I've got so much money,
the relatives envy me
couldn't spend it in 2 lifetimes,
maybe three
I guess it's understood
why my family treats me so good, it's my will...
Instrumental
The kids treat me nice
call twice a day
I'm on the board of Directors
of the United Way
They're so kind and you ask why,
They can't wait until I die
For my will...
Just one of the hilarious songs on
Poeticus Lex: Lien on Me
by Fred C. Russcol, Esq.
If you've done work on real estate,
But lack of payment is your fate,
You may pursue redress by means
Of filing some mechanic's liens.
(Some building sites, it seems to me,
Though hubs of great activity,
Create more exercise for lawyers
Than for carpenters or sawyers.)
It's very crucial to comply
With all the precepts that apply;
Else your filing will be tossed,
And your lien may well be lost.
(Opposing counsel wracks his wits,
Picking statutory nits,
Endeavoring to demonstrate
That your lien should get the gate.)
Liens are statutory works,
With lots of complicated quirks,
And if these tests you do not pass,
The common law can't save your ass.
The law prescribes the service dates,
After which the lien abates
If proper service is not made
Or service proof is not displayed.
A lien can help you to get paid
For improvements you have made,
But if you don't take proper pains
Losses may supplant your gains.
A willfully inflated lien
Can put your claim in the latrine;
The Court's empowered to decide
That you must pay the other side!
(To add insult to injuries,
Also pay his lawyer's fees!)
With every Lien Law dictate met,
A "happy ending" stage is set;
To collect the funds the owner owes,
File an action to foreclose.
When, at last, your goal's achieved,
And money worries are relieved,
Thank the one who brought the thrill-
By paying your attorney's bill!
Fred C. Russcol, Esq. is Of Counsel to Castro & Remer, P.C. in White Plains, New York. This poem was originally printed in the Westchester Bar Journal and is reprinted with the permission of the Westchester County Bar Association.
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