JUNE 2, 2019 – I immediately called my client at home in southern France. He’d been expecting me to call after the hearing. “How’d it go? Did we . . .” “Can you hear me?” I said, repeatedly. Bad connection. I tried ringing again but the call wouldn’t go through. To improve the signal, I …
“IS YOUR CLIENT FAMILIAR WITH THE POETRY OF WALLACE STEVENS?” [PART II]
JUNE 1, 2019 – Once we’d settled in, the judge took his seat behind his commanding desk and asked us one by one to identify ourselves and our clients—none of whom was present. My guy was the only individual party in the case. The other parties were giant corporations, and I’d wanted to position my …
“IS YOUR CLIENT FAMILIAR WITH THE POETRY OF WALLACE STEVENS?” [PART I]
MAY 31, 2019 – The case revolved around an arcane issue, and the resulting briefs were sufficiently dense to put any judge fast asleep. They had been a laborious undertaking for all of us lawyers involved—briefs in support of cross-motions for “summary judgment.” When the time for the hearing arrived—9:00 on a Monday morning in …
THE RETRIEVER, THE DOBERMAN, AND . . . THE FELINE
MAY 14, 2019 – Yesterday afternoon I spent two-and-a-half hours holed up in a conference room with another lawyer, an accountant, and a business guy. Our goal was to agree on a number as we pored over financials, struggling to find the source of a discrepancy. By the meeting’s end, we agreed only that we …
FUTURE SCREENPLAY?
MAY 11, 2019 – In earlier times, I was more intense. Each day I’d crawl into the cage, jump on the wheel, and make it go round and round. I was sure the wheel drove a generator, because a little light bulb inside the cage blinked as soon as the wheel began to turn and …