TO-WIT: HUBBELL, HUBBELL
Oh, and it’s a glorious day. So what if it is a Monday. So what if my Plaintiff in a nifty little auto case got married over the weekend and his lower back problems have miraculously disappeared. So what if the only thing my new computerized billing program has done is calculate with ruthless accuracy just how much I haven’t been paid. None of that matters now, for in today’s mail, junk mail day though it may otherwise be, I have found sanctuary.
I have here the most recent inquiry from Martindale-Hubbell, and once again I have the chance to commit to paper, under the luscious promise of absolute confidentiality, the opinion I hold of some of my local colleagues. Is God in His heaven or what?
Now don’t take this the wrong way. The practice of law, after all, is a combative and adversary business, and in the heat of battle it is simple human nature to wish to hurl a clever barb or two, particularly when the colleague for whom it is intended is not present. After all, if God had truly meant for mankind to refrain from flue, why then did He give us ears?
While I have always scrupulously adhered to the notion that it is not becoming to speak ill of colleagues, even though the temptation be great and the moment perfect, it has never been easy. In fact, it has always seemed such an unnatural and inhuman chore, this buttoning up of lip and in the earliest years of my practice, I was bloating from my quandary.
And then it happened. Just as one poignantly recalls a first kiss, a first fling, a first penicillin shot, I recall my first visit from Martindale-Hubbell.
Without the slightest portent of things to come, I had spent the entire day in trial against a colleague who had vehemently objected to my accident reconstruction expert’s calculations as to the circumference of a cul-de-sac on the grounds that any computations involving pi were barred by the Rule Against Perpetuities.
“I believe my esteemed colleague misapprehends the law in this regard,” I responded in my best jury voice, while my tongue, entirely of its own volition, desperately sought in vain for an epithet which, if applied with sufficient vigor, would prevent my adversary from ever reproducing.
Moments that beg for invective, when not seized on the spot, have always festered with me like a canker sore. I returned to my office that day when court adjourned, weighted down by barb unflung, and I sat alone with my eyes slowly turned yellow from accumulated bile. Just then my secretary came in to announce that a representative from Martindale-Hubbell ad arrived and wanted to see me.
“I’ll only take a few minutes of your time,” he said, after introducing himself. “We’re updating our information for the next edition, and we would appreciate it if you could give us a frank evaluation of a few of your colleagues. By the way, this is strictly CONFIDENTIAL.”
He handed me a list which, mirabile dictu!, included the name of that day’s adversary. Try since then though I might, I have never been able to recreate the exact phrases that sprung spontaneously from deep within my subconscious. Though the rep tried to get it down verbatim, seven or eight seconds into my soliloquy his pad burst into flames. By then I was on such a roll, I failed to take notice. It wasn’t until his hair caught fire and I was distracted from my obscene reverie by the smell of scorched Brylcreem that I realized I no longer had his undivided attention.
What a catharsis. I had no sooner given the rep directions to the emergency room and bid him Godspeed when I realized I felt ever so much better. “Come back soon,” I yelled to him in an afterthought as he hastily disappeared down the hallway, “there’s more.”
We have met many times since then. I am always ever so pleased to see him and I reassure him that the scarring around his ears is minimal. We chat about the weather and my practice, and he comments that I am the only lawyer who sends him an engraved invitation to call. When all this foreplay heightens my senses to borderline delirium, he takes out his list and I have my way with it. It’s all over much too quickly to suit me and before I know it, we are having one last cigarette and he is gone.
It would be neither fair nor accurate to conclude from all of this that I hold most of my colleagues in low esteem. To the contrary, most of them do a fine job directing the collisions of little worlds, and I like and respect them.
However, there are some that, as a result of one or more unsavory clashes, I denigrate with the sheerest of delights. If nothing else, I am a person of strong opinions, and I do not shrink from the professional obligation to state my views, in the strictest of confidence of course.
Wouldn’t you just love to see the names on my list and the comments I put down next to them? Well, you can’t. I may well be opinionated and vindictive, but I’m no fool. Rest assured, however, that if you possess sufficient intellect to read this, you are probably not at risk. As for the rest, only Martindale-Hubbell and I know for sure and we’re not telling, are we, boys?
© 1987, S. Sponte, Esq.