TO-WIT: THE GRAVITY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
It started out just like any other professional day, full of bright promises and aspirations which, the very second I entered the office, devolved into the customary chaotic array of phone calls, emails, crises and curses. So when in the midst of that day’s untidiness I received a call from a colleague, I figured it was just going to be another one of those routine jaunts to Hades.
“I’m calling just to let you know,” he said, “that I represent…” and he rattled off the name of the defendant I had just sued on behalf of a client. Now he is an expensive guy and that the defendant could afford him meant he had enough assets to satisfy any judgment I might obtain for my client. My hopes were buoyed.
“I should also tell you I am doing this case pro bono,” he informed me, “as my client doesn’t have a pot to pee in.” So sank my buoy.
Now this guy has never done a pro bono case in his life. When I asked him why now, he said “I don’t know. When the pro bono coordinator asked me, I couldn’t say no. I wanted to, I’m good at it, but this time I couldn’t get a single “no” out of my mouth. Please don’t tell anyone, if this ever gets out I’m ruined in this town.”
So we then discussed the case a few minutes. I offered to keep the costs down by not taking any depositions if he promised to answer any interrogatories honestly. He thought about it a few moments and then begrudgingly agreed. .
Something bothered me. It wasn’t that my initial view of the case had changed; to the contrary, it was a simple debt collection and his client freely admitted he owed the money. So long as the judge was not heavily in debt, it should be a slam dunk. And it wasn’t that I was feeling any more moved than I always am by the plight of a defendant bereft of even the most basic of porcelain necessities. I mean, what kind of decent lawyer wouldn’t have lots of empathy for anyone beset by the more unfortunate vagaries of life? That’s why I would have never lasted long doing insurance defense work.
I have never really understood some colleagues’ unwillingness to do pro bono work; thus a colleague’s sudden change of heart eluded my ken as well. So, next morning, in search of truth, justice and the American way, I called a therapist I know who specializes in treating lawyers who are losing their emotional struggle with the law’s caprices.
“Hi,” he said, “I hope you aren’t calling to cancel your appointment again.” When I told him what I was calling about he grasped the notion right away. “It’s sounds to me like an aging thing,” he replied, “the inexorable advance of the Grim Reaper. I’m actually writing a paper on this. As attorneys age they seem to have these ‘come to Moses’ moments and can sometimes become motivated more by righteousness than by lucre. That’s how they hope to secure their place in heaven or make amends for a profligate professional life. I treat a bunch, it’s a difficult and conflicted time for them as they transmute to acts of compassion. We can talk more about this when I see you Friday.”
It was an interesting hypothesis, to say the least, and one I could readily test. A quick call next morning to our pro bono coordinator followed by a peek at our last local bar journal was all I needed. Within the last six months, almost every lawyer on death row had volunteered to take a pro bono case for the first time in their careers.
“Death row” is a local joke. Every so often our bar journal publishes the names of all our members, in columns and by date of admission. Thus the leftmost column contains the names of the oldest members of the bar, and that’s “death row.” Many, many years ago, I was among the young lawyers who came up with that morbid witticism. It’s something I have since come to regret, particularly now that I’m on it.
I think my, uh, the therapist might be on to something. If in fact the urge for redemption comes with age and motivates aging lawyers to take on pro bono cases for the first time, there must perforce be something nesting in the psyche which attaches to that work some degree of righteousness and which draws us to it as inexorably as a meteor is drawn to the sun. There can be no other explanation.
As I sometimes do when I write about colleagues, I sent an advance copy of this piece to the guy who had called me.
“Listen, you little (a whole bunch of expletives deleted here),” he said on the phone in a rage after he’d read it, “I think you’re (many more expletives deleted.) I’m not old, I don’t need redemption, and I haven’t lead a profligate professional life.”
“Are you finished now,” I asked him as my pique began to swell. He paused a moment before replying.
“No,” he said in a calmer tone, “no. I, uh, was just wondering if I could get name and number of your therapist.”
©2019, S. Sponte, Esq.