TO WIT: APPELLATION SPRING
Although I had received the appellate court opinion several davs earlier, it wasn't until later that the thing truly jelled for me. Ir happened while I was driving to work, listening to "Fanfare for the Common Man" on the car stereo. Ir's an elegant piece of music, both inspired and inspiring, and it's one of the great works Aaron Copeland left behind as a market, a unique and treasured remembrance of his passage. He was far luckier than most, his place in the human pantheon assured by the sheer splendor of his creative energies.
I have always wished to do that, to compose the great song or write the great poem, to create something, anything, of
We traverse an arcane world,
we lawyers, and our victories
and defeats are not generally
the stuff of ages.
lasting worth to mark my journey. But aside from three spectacular offspring and a goofy talent for putting words to paper in cogent array, I have done precious little. I fear, to warrant my commemoration. Composer of nothing noteworthy, I expect no sects after death to cherish my memory or worship at my altar. (Who among us does?) As I wrote many years ago, no cadre of bared breaths await my every word, and I expect I'll pass along uncited and unseen.
Yet I had sat there reading the opinion and was completely oblivious to its portent. All along I thought the case significant, but even I was impressed by the opening line of the opinion. "We consider for the first rime whether or not. ... " wow, it was a case of first impression. That probably explains why I couldn't find any cases directly on point, huh?
Hunkered down now as I am in the amber-glow days of my career, these things have a different meaning for me than they used to. Ir surprised me, astonished me, in fact, to realize that even after reading the opinion far enough to know I had won, I kept on reading. I wanted to know, needed to know, how much of my analysis, how much of my brief, how much of me was in that opinion.
It matters more now than just winning or losing. Now it's a matter of markers. We traverse an arcane world, we lawyers, and our victories and defeats are nor generally the stuff of ages. Our work products don't get sung, nor even hummed, and for the most part, even among our peers, we labor anonymously. Who of our ilk, save Clarence Darrow perhaps, is remembered for his work, lionized for the strength of his character, for the courage of his convictions? Alas, too often our profession gets remembered for convictions of an entirely different sort.
Surely it is the stage of my life that has turned my attention to these things. The geriatric components of it, however, make it no less meaningful.
I want to be remembered, and now, albeit in a cloistered kind of way, I will be. A case of first impression: How many of us can lay claim to that lofty perch? Already I have received a number of phone calls from colleagues and legal publications across the state. They want to know more about it; they are taking note, and it is of me and my work that the note is being taken.
OK, so maybe I don't get a Grammy out of this or a Pulitzer or a Nobel. And maybe no one asks for my autograph or turns me into a bobblehead, although my clients have been aiming me in that direction for years. But lawyering is what I do, and a lawyer is who I am, and sometimes, when the wind is just right, it turns our that my music can be quite beautiful as well.