That's actually the number one answer I should be giving when I'm asked why I'm out of commercial practice. But I don't, because I have a very advanced idea of what bullshit is, and I hate to gripe, for many reasons, chief of which being that I think to gripe is to be extremely ungrateful. But let's look at all the things I didn't like about it.
OK well, at my first job I worked in a pretty cramped office. I had a computer, a desk, and high bookshelves, stuck in a wedge end facing the center of a circular floor. I think it sucked, I think it was a miserable place to sit and work. The chair I had, well, that we all had, was awful, it probably looked old when it was made, and that was probably in the early nineties. That's good in a sense, I didn't want to stay there at all. I remember sleeping on the stiff carpet once, over a weekend. That doesn't exactly make for pleasant memories, I suppose. But walking around the floor, it was a pretty sombre place, a little cold and hushed. I did not like it. I did not like the meeting rooms, well, most meeting rooms anywhere are pretty terrible, funnily enough, and I did not like the so-called partners' rooms. There was just something about that office that didn't scream fun, and coming from the university, where we were used to having beautiful spacious rooms, large tables, high windows, and corridors and halls in the pre-war style, well. It was like living in an enclosed tenement, next to crotchety landlords. I did not like it, and I felt bad for people who had been there longer than I had, which is a little strange way to be for a first year associate. When I drive by the tower I give it the finger, for old times' sake.
OK, next, I did not like three out of four of the partners I worked with. We worked for all of them at once, and immediately you might think, Oh God, that sounds awful in practice, and by and large it is, when you're at the plump end of the paddle. We had to fill in hours, which was extremely not fun. If I had one thing I would never do again in my fucking life it would be filling in my god forsaken hours. I would rather clean toilets than fill in hours. Part of the reason we filled in hours was for the partners to figure out how we were partitioned out. That is a fucking lame reason. Trying to fix a workload coordination problem between partners by having your employee report his functional hours is in my view getting it ass-backwards, given that time-spent is a function of multiple variables, including not least difficulty, efficiency and appetite. In my view it's impossible for any employee to objectively or accurately represent to one partner the task given to him by another partner; conversely, it's arguably far more effective for partners to either inform each other of the amount of work partitioned out to each employee, or to be more or less responsible for assignments to selected employees. Of course, the first option requires diligence and transparency, and the nature of a partner's work or preference for employee may make the second option unpalatable. In short I think the pool system referred to here requires far better partners' coordination than was apparent at my first job.
Of course, the hours system is also a way of checking each employee's, broadly speaking, efficiency, and for partners to figure out how much clients can or should be billed. Both of these two things is, in my opinion, rubbish. Efficiency in legal work is not something that can be intelligently measured (except in conjunction with other considerations, and then strictly only as a minor factor) by hours spent. Work must chiefly be assessed by the quality of the product, and forcing employees to think in terms of duration, imposed terms of duration, mind you, is in my view counter productive to a very great degree. We are intelligent people, and we broadly know whether or not we are working well in any set of circumstances. Of course, the nature of practice is extremely difficult, but I strongly doubt any notion that we have no clue about time-efficiency. I mean, come on, we've done exams all our lives under timed conditions, are you kidding me? We get it, trust me a little, OK. Well, you can guess whether or not time is a factor the partners tend to emphasise when it comes to efficiency. As such, this sort of emphasis would encourage associates themselves to be selective with their reported hours, and that would be stupid on so many levels. And conversely let me tell you this, it takes a lot of inefficient struggling to get to a certain competency. That's actually essential, believe it or not. We need time, in somewhat nursery conditions, to figure it out.
As for per-hours' billing, it's all rubbish anyway. It's estimated, given a fee cap, then the partners' hours are somehow magically massaged to make it look as if the partners spend as much time, if not more, than the associates on each file. OK, you gotta play your game, I get it. But you know, all things considered, as a reason for filling in hours this becomes rubbish.
A vast amount, a vast amount of time is spent waiting around court to be admitted into the judges' chambers. I don't even want to go into it. Every damned hearing means time wasted. I hated that feeling, it gave me a nervous, resigned anxiety. With the advent of technology this felt stupider with each passing day. I remember once taking a taxicab in this sort of mood to court, and hearing the Gypsy Kings on the fucking radio. It changed my life, man, it snapped me out of a funk, a fugue.
Anyway as for the three partners I did not enjoy working with, they were demanding, unpleasant, and curt with their time. That's fine, but I did not enjoy it. Cao Cao once wrote, 疑人不用, 用人不疑, which is to say, if you doubt someone, don't employ him, and if you employ someone, don't doubt him. Henry L. Stimson said much the same in 1945 when he wrote, as the US Secretary of War, to his President,
"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust."I'll admit, I was a pretty terrible associate in my first year. But you know, I think the firm could have been more responsive. There are reasons why a first year associate struggles, these aren't fucking mysteries. But I guess it's fair enough that if at first I don't impress someone, then it becomes harder, all things considered, to turn out right in their eyes. I get it. In my mind, I know that I'm pretty bad in my first year at things, just like in school. I wish I'd done better, but I hadn't, so that's the truth of it. It helps to have a little faith in people is all I'm saying.
There was also another so-called consultant in the firm who was basically the lady boss, and boy she acted like it. Working for her made my skin crawl. At some point she actually told me and another associate, well I was doing this just to test you, and you guys did a good job, you passed the test.
As for expenditure, well, at some point our claims for transport allowance home was curtailed. That kind of blew it for me. I mean, we're not fucking around here, we too want to go home, and that goddamn eighteen or twenty dollars these guys weren't willing to give out is just pathetic in my view. And not to mention that disbursements can and should be claimed from a client, given that a judgment sum usually includes a small mention for disbursements. That kind of blew it for me.
The hours and the pay, well, it ain't nothing. I get better of each, easy. I never regretted neither. And I need my own time out of work. Work isn't important enough to define me, and it never will. Most days I went home asking myself, did I earn the two hundred and fifty dollars of pay that I'm owed for today? And if I did, fuck it, that's all I wanted to know.
As for the good work we did, I had a couple of pro bono matters that I remembered well. But given the rather meagre standing I had at the firm and the attendant pressures, so much for it, you know what I mean?
Did I become a better lawyer? Yes. Would I have a better run of it now if I went at it again? I'm pretty sure of it. Is it worth my time, is it worth me getting back in it? Absolutely not. Commercial practice is the pits and little in the type of industry that was the subject matter of disputes was essentially interesting. Now law school was tremendously interesting, and as a student it was about the most fun thing I could have done. But lawyering was bullshit. I'm not cynical, as you can see. I have my reasons, and that makes me a critic, not a cynic.
The industry is in a pretty weird state at the moment, as the middle section of lawyers has gone completely thin. It goes to show you that the golden days have gone, and that in the past, being a practicing lawyer for the long haul was a far more palatable notion than it has been for recent years. Take efforts to increase the numbers of graduating students with moderately unenthusiastic growth, exports and all that internationally and you get the sort of conundrum we apparently face today, where there aren't enough spaces for first year associates, but the third to tenth year lawyers have disappeared. Well, I'm on the outside looking in, chuckling sarcastically. So screw you, practice, you were bad for me, and it doesn't take much of a man to know himself well enough to figure that out.
