JULY 14, 2019 – Here are three more “relics of the past.”
THE GRINCH. A memo from the department head at my second law firm to all eight department associates, chastising us for being lazy, stupid, and otherwise deficient. The withering diatribe concluded with this:
Each of you should reflect on what your career goals are and whether those are consistent with the firm’s, and if not, what you intend to do for a livelihood in 1993. Please let me know as soon as possible. We need the space.
(Before the memo came out, I myself was deep into talks with a recruiter for a bank job, which I took. The department head would himself soon leave the firm; more than a decade later (after he’d gone through treatment), I actually hired him to second-chair a jury case I was trying—I needed a junkyard dog at my side, just not in the lead.)
A SENSE OF HUMOR. An internal bank memo circulated by the head of my bank’s commercial real estate lending department a few of his minions. It started off in a serious tone: Under the caption, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, it read,
It is imperative that you negotiate the insertion of the attached language into the mortgage securing each of your loans. / Please let me know if you are having any difficulty achieving this goal.
In turn, the “attached language,” read:
Section ____. End of the World. Upon the occurrence of the end of the world before full payment of the indebtedness, the indebtedness, at Mortgagee’s option, shall become immediately due and payable and full and may be enforceable against Mortgagor by any available procedure. For remedial purposes, Mortgagee shall be deemed aligned with forces of light, and Mortgagor shall be deemed aligned with forces of darkness, regardless of the parties’ actual ultimate destinations, unless and until Mortgagee elects otherwise in writing.
(I remember that generation of bank executives. They were smart, savvy, experienced, and with a couple of notable exceptions, exhibited a sense of humor. They also drank heavily—and openly—at lunchtime. Of course, all of them were white men. Some died young, some died old. But my memories of them have survived all these years.)
BEFORE “GOOGLE.” In early 1989, a fellow senior associate and I were appointed by the chairman of the law firm’s commercial department to build a “collection of articles” about—you guessed, it!—the law (Zzzzzz). My cohort and I came up with the idea of circulating a memo to members of the department, urging people to offer up recommended articles from their caches of legal journals, newsletters and periodicals.
Considerable effort went into drafting, proofing, revising, re-proofing that memo.
(We then handed things over to an unlucky legal secretary who pulled teeth, photo-copied, punched holes, inserted paper into a three-ring binder (with dividers), and typed up an alphabetized, topical index. All before the internet, and before “Google” was a name, let alone a verb.)
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
