TO-WIT: My Little Black Book, Page One
The non-jury trial had just concluded and Judge had retired to consider her verdict. It had been a long and arduous case, full of exaggerations, minimizations, simplifications, qualifications, amplifications and lies – you know, a trial. I had gathered up both briefcase and client and was about to exit the courtroom when, as is my custom, I extended my hand to my adversary, a colleague of impeccable reputation who, as is his custom, had put up an excellent if not irksome defense. We shook hands and I gave him my best condescending smile. It has taken me years of practice to master it, that perfect formation of teeth and lip that, without a sound, says “I won, you lost, God is good.”
He smiled back sheepishly, as if to say “I did my best but hey, look who I was litigating with,” and once outside the courtroom, we headed in separate directions.
I had not gone more than four, maybe five steps when I was accosted by my client, by this time considerably irate. “How could you do that?” he exclaimed with vigor. “I mean, how could you?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant so I gave him my standard spontaneous reply. “You’ve got nothing in writing.”
“No, I mean how could you shake hands with that …that ‘lawyer’ after what he did in the courtroom.”
“You mean that remark about my mother?” I asked. “He didn’t mean it.”
“No, I mean all those stupid objections and those insidious remarks and all those awful, awful sneers.”
“He’s just doing his job. I don’t take it personally.”
My client was not satisfied and he became increasingly more agitated. “You guys rip each other apart and then walk off arm in arm. It’s all a sham and you’re nothing but a wus.”
With that, my client stalked off by himself for the exit. He made a wrong turn at the next corridor, walked straight into the domestic relations wing, turned left at the Domestic Relations Emergency First aid Room and, recognizing that he was lost, he stepped into the enforcement section office to ask directions. I shan’t see him again for a long, long while.
It’s a pity my client disappeared before I had a chance to explain. My colleague had been more than a little irksome. He had in fact been downright hebetudinous, nescient, stultitious and elephantine. Unfortunately, by successfully suppressing the wish to fling obvious invective in support of the just against the unholy, I have once again conjured up the pretense that I don’t take it personally.
I have practiced law now, man and boy, for twenty years and I have never seen the need to cling to a meaningless litany of respect. The true truth here is that I do take it personally, I have always taken it personally I will always take it personally and I love taking it personally. Taking it personally is what fuels my fire, what girds my loins for battle. This is, after all, a warrior’s profession and if I extend my hand in professional courtesy to you at the conclusion of a trial, it is with the same sense of warmth and affection that Attila had for the Roman Empire.
Early on in my career, I recognized that responding to vexatious opposing counsel with a right cross is not the answer. I abhor physical violence. Perhaps it is my keenly formed overlay of civility, perhaps my devotion to logic and reason, perhaps a compulsive fear of getting my clock cleaned. Whatever the reason, I believe that physical violence solves absolutely nothing unless my opponent is a good deal smaller than I am. I also recognized early on in my career that I did have a rather serendipitous affinity for words and it has been in that field that I have elected to bear my arms.
I have for years kept a little black book. In it I have compiled a virtually lethal assortment of professional-sounding expressions which I have used unmercifully on those occasions when the conduct of opposing counsel has warranted extreme retribution. The best part about my approach is that I am able to gain satisfaction without altering my superb professional manner. By the studied application of carefully chosen words and phrases, I can maintain the façade of professional courtesy while at the same tie inflicting mortal wounds.
If this instant rift with my client has taught me anything though, it’s that skillfully skewering a vituperative colleague with an artful compendium of verbiage affords precious little satisfaction if the skeweree lacks the sophistication to comprehend that he or she has in fact been skewered. In other words, no pain, no gain.
It is with that end in mind that I intend to set down for you my more or less complete lexicon so that those for whom it is intended, for once in their miserable, pathetic, wretched little careers, will have some inkling of what I am talking about.
The dictates of time and space oblige me, and you as well, to wait a while for further exposition. In the meanwhile, if we should happen to oppose each other in the courtroom, and if in the course of battle I should magnanimously refer to you as “my distinguished colleague,” you may rest assured that I mean every word and then some.
NEXT MONTH – PAGE TWO
© 1990, S. Sponte, Esq.