JULY 12, 2019 – Recently I moved my offices from the Flour Exchange Building to the TriTech Center, two blocks closer to the center of downtown Minneapolis. What prompted the move was a big rent hike. The new space is fresh, “high-tech,” splashy, and appealing, especially to hipsters . . . like me. It even comes with a huge, flat-screen TV in the “commons,” featuring Bloomberg Business News all day long. The bottom line for me: a smaller office, lower rent, higher value, and a rejuvenating kick in the butt.
But making this change was not easy, especially for a guy whose Medicare card just arrived, signaling the imminence of the “Big 65.”
As a rule, lawyers are conservative by training and experience. Okay, fine. You’ve got your Michael Cohens, your Alan Dershowitzes, your Michael Avenattis—media-hungry rogues and renegades, ruffians and radicals—but most lawyers are steady-Eddies/Edwardinas. I’m a steady-Eddy—except when I’m not.
Now add the pinch of age, as in traditional retirement age. I needed to force change upon myself. I realized my old office had become expensive storage space for drawers, cabinets, banker-boxes stuffed with paper; storage for fancy furniture that had zero effect on my ability or capacity to practice law. In response to my old landlord’s notice of a rent hike, I gave notice that I would simply hike.
In the course of scanning, shredding, tossing, packing, moving all that paper and office stuff, I uncovered many relics of the past. Just a handful of examples:
- A “day file” from my years at the venerable old law firm of Briggs & Morgan (1982 to 1986)—a copy of virtually every letter, memo, document I issued out of my office; a kind of “hard copy” back-up system.
- A boxload of “A drive” floppy disks—about three years’ (2000 to 2003) worth of loan deals.
- The appellate briefs of a case (1983) that made me famous (if getting your name in ALR 4th , a law case reporter makes you famous)—a case I won against the future Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court and involving a matter entirely outside my practice area: the murder of Mariachi band leader behind the wheel of a van outside Winnipeg, Manitoba by a gunman who had just held up a liquor store.
- A wad of tightly packed business cards about five inches thick, bound by a bunch of rubber bands. Before tossing them out, I spread them across my desk like a Vegas dealer spreads a fresh deck at the black jack table. Years of people, deals, encounters seemed to jump alive in front of my eyes.
- My trusty Minnesota Title Standards—an essential reference for every Minnesota real estate lawyer. Until less than two years ago, the Real Property Section of the Minnesota Bar Association insisted that these be available only to Section members and only in an old-fashioned three-ring binder, with periodic updates. One day my three-ring binder version will be a collector’s item. Then again, maybe not.
- A broken Russian tea glass from the Trans-Siberian Railroad. There’s a story here.
To be continued . . .
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
