TO-WIT: OUT OF PRACTICE
I’m not sure why I did it that morning some months back. It hasn’t been my custom for quite some time, but when the mail came, and my secretary wasn’t in, I opened it all myself.
It didn’t bother me much that there were bills there that I had no knowledge of. For many years now, I’ve let her take exclusive care of that stuff. It didn’t bother me that there was correspondence there from people whose names I didn’t recognize, I’ve been letting her take exclusive care of that stuff as well. And it didn’t even bother me that there were pleadings there responsive to things I don’t remember filing, on cases that I didn’t recognize, on behalf of clients whose names had escaped me. There were, though, a bunch of catalogues I understood.
Then it cold-cocked me like a compulsory non-suit; I had become very far removed from my own practice and I was quite content and complacent about it.
This remove is not a recent phenomenon. Over the last several years I had been putting more and more work on my secretary, work that, in all candor, I should have been doing myself. I probably should have realized that this “here, you do it” mentality had gone too far the day she lost an argument in appellate court. I was actually quite surprised by the outcome; she had written a masterful brief.
It then occurred to me that the last three clients who called I’d referred out. Two sounded like decent cases, but I nonetheless sent them to colleagues who had previously referred stuff to me. The other one I referred to a colleague I couldn’t stand, knowing that the statute of limitations had already passed and that he was unlikely to figure that out until he had spent a small fortune in discovery. But hmm, was there a red flag in all of this?
I’ve been practicing law since 1970, and not that long ago it didn’t seem that long ago; now, however, it does. At this age, many of my law school classmates are already gone from the law. Some have gone into business, a few into teaching, some have just retired, and others have been elected to the bench.
Whatever had initially motivated them to practice law apparently no longer did so, and I now know that feeling all too well. It’s never been just about the money for me. What’s caused me to stand up to this profession’s relentless cannonading for almost fifty years, what has pushed me to get back up every time I’ve been knocked down, what has enabled me to stagger to my feet and gesture emphatically, has been the fire in my belly, that yearning for truth, justice and, yes, even though now it’s far less recognizable, the American way. Oh, I still have a fire in my belly, sure, but now it’s mostly just indigestion.
Why it’s gone who knows. Perhaps it’s just that the years past have come a’calling for payment. Without that lust to make things better though, without that craving to be the savior of abandoned souls and the architect of the litigation that shelters them, I can’t practice anymore. So I’ve closed my office, and I’m done.
Let there be no moaning of the bar, I’ll still be around. I’ll do more pro bono work, I’ll still write, I’ll teach again, and I’ll enjoy it all. What I won’t do is miss the corrosive, adversarial grind of daily practice or the business of running an office or the occasional unease about my secretary’s lawyering. It’s time for me to go, and the very worst thing I could do is not recognize it.
I’m sure we’ll still see each other now and again, at bar association functions, at CLEs, and at the occasional landlord/tenant hearing when your avaricious client tries to throw some poor, struggling family out into the street. It will be good to see you, even if, inexplicably and after my so, so many years, you still fail to yield to the obvious correctness of my position.
© 2018, S. Sponte, Esq.