Appellate Insults and Legal Payback

Have you ever wondered how appeals court justices insult each other. There is a wonderful example in the concurring opinion by Judge Frank of the Second Circuit in the case between the National Labor Relation Board and Universal Camera Corp. 190 F.2d 429 (2d Cir. 1951). This is actually the second time this case came before this court, the first time only a year earlier. In the meantime, the case moved up to the Supreme Court and was remanded with instructions to reconsider the weight of the conclusions of a special investigator for the NLRB, whose conclusions had previously been overruled by the NLRB's board. The facts of the case are not really important, but it is one of those cases that moves up and down the courts going one way and then the next, and my Admin Law book decided to reprint each of the opinions so that we could see how the case moved around. Judge Learned Hand, who is pictured above in the middle, and who, with a name like Learned Hand, was born to be a judge, wrote both of the appeals court opinions. He is one of those appellate judges, along with Cardozo, pictured left, and Warren, pictured right, whose opinions crop up again and again in first year casebooks. He is also one of the most well renowned and respected justices of American jurisprudence, which you will see when you read the way Judge Frank criticizes his majority opinion; or could Frank's words be just a mask for a scathing in your face appellate insult. This is how Frank's concurring opinion begins:

Recognizing, as only a singularly stupid man would not, Judge Hand's superior wisdom, intelligence and learning, I seldom disagree with him, and then with serious misgivings. In this instance, I have over come my misgivings because I think that his modesty has moved him to interpret too sweepingly the Supreme Court's criticism of our earlier opinion written by him. . .

If this had been a dissent, I think it would fall more to the scathing side; rather, after review Frank's words again, I see here a touch of a type of brilliance that we rarely see in our day to day dealings with the world anymore: the capacity to respectfully disagree. If only we all had the capacity to tell other's they have made a mistake with such craftily constructed phrases and such relationship edifying independence.

On another note, I received my first pay check for doing real legal work. (work study at the library circulation desk doesn't count) After forking over an ungodly amount of money, fronted by banks and the U.S. government, in order to work in this chosen field, I am finally seeing that there is hope of some of that coming back to me. And if I can proceed to earn that money with half the class of Hand and Frank, I think I am going to do alright by the law.

Work blogging

I decided to go ahead and write a short post during my lunch break at work. I am not well versed in the standards of internet use at work since this is for all practical purposes my first office job. I think blogging is alright. The other worker monkeys check their e-mail and such and a student I know who works at the State Supreme Court tells me she still floats around myspace while at work.

As I work on these insurance settlement demands, I can't help but wonder how all of these people thought to get a lawyer. If you are hit by an uninsured motorist and you are covered by your own insurance, I would never think to go out and find myself a lawyer. I guess before I came to lawschool I had a pretty negative connotation about suing, such that I never thought I would be in the position to sue someone else. Granted, most of these cases are settled, but there are still lawyers involved. Another reason for my bewilderment at the vast numbers of suits, or potential suits is that I have always had the most minimal of insurance coverage. Maybe when you have very comprehensive insurance, you have a tendency to want to get the most out of it. You are paying higher premiums for something, namely the right to recover "pain and suffering" in the event that you actually file a claim.

Being able to blog at work seems to provide a documentation of the random thoughts I have while reading the files I read. Normally these thoughts would pass throughout the day without ever making their way outside of my mind, but armed with ready internet access and limited in where I can get to during the break, I guess there is not reason not to give them a route out.

short absence

There is probably only a few of you still reading this blog lately because I have been updating so seldonly, and it is not going to get better in the next week. I will be leaving in the morning for Houston to go to a friends wedding, and judging by my previous weeks posting habits, it might be slow around here for a while. After several weeks of having almost nothing to do, things have picked up. I am working, volunteering, and taking a class. Plus, with the summer weather, when I am done with those activities, the last thing I want to do is sit longer at the computer.

This seems to be one of those posts where I return to the theme of blogging itself. I occationally, like many bloggers, feel obligated to reflect on this practice. I was reminded the other day that one of my more egotistically motivated reasons for started to blog was to get more name recognition when self-googling. It seems to have worked. If you googled my name last fall you came up with a listing for a town in India and a manufacturer of helicopter parts. Those listings are still there, but they have been bumped to the second page after a full page of hits that actually point back to me. This has had the added benefit that those who wish to find me can, such as old friends who I have not spoken to in years and whose random e-mail landed in my inbox as a pleasant surprise. All that aside, now that I can be found, I feel somewhat obligated not to disappoint, which means that I do hope to make blogging a more regular practice.

Until then, check out this fun blog that collects gossip about the federal judiciary, Underneath their Robes. Also take a chance to read up on the recent Supreme Court decision that barely held on to the protections of the Clean Water Act. You can read the Kennedy opinion and the Scalia dissent here. That should keep you busy until I get back; it is a 30 page opinion. For myself, I am heading to the the urban wetland of Texas that just this week is receiving a foot of rain a day.

Russkis

Have you ever noticed that certain languages, when you do not understand them, sound, when spoken, as if its speakers are arguing? I am speaking in this instance of of Russian. Did I mention that my legal internship is at a firm run by Russians, with Russian clients, bringing personal injury claims supported by the medical evidence of Russian chiropractors. Please do not construe my tone as indicating any opinions I have formulated about the nature of the work I am doing. I am not sure how much I should discuss my work in this blog, especially since I write under my real name. The real observation I am trying to capture in this post is the sense of how a solo practice law firm is like other small businesses. Families help out, there is a lot of work to be done, and you depend on your community to support you. Except for the fact that I sit in a cubical and work through file after file of settlement demands instead of a small workspace peeling potatoes, it is not all that different than the small restaurants I worked for before coming to law school.

The real work of justice: form filling.

I have worked my first day in a real legal office and I have uncovered the real work of justice. From my lowlly position of a back office with cubicles, I have come to see that the real footwork of the law is in filling out forms and in keeping track of lots of paperwork. And what kind of forms will I be spending three days a week filling out. . .settlement demands on behanlf of plaintiffs sent to insurance companies. Yup. . .I am an taking an internship in ambulance chasing and my work life will soon be filled with all sorts of accident reports from fender benders and medical records from chiropractor's offices.

On another note, I was back in the homeless shelter today doing intakes for the social security benefits legal services organization I volunteer for. Our clients are decidedly grateful, but many who are also present in the shelter loath our presence. Part of this is because they are not allowed to smoke during the time when we are in the shelter and the staff makes hourly announcements, by hollering at the top of her voice, that there is "no smoking 'till the lawyer's leave." This is combined with a general distrust of lawyers, or maybe anyone in a position of authority. I am still trying to get comfortable with my future position in life and I am sure I will come up against various attitudes toward lawyers, but I guess few like the one I had today.

After being at the shelter for 3 hours and putting down as many cups of coffee as the schitzoids, I really needed to use the restroom. I figured it was alright, because they always seem to be cleaning around the place. What I didn't realize was that there were no doors on the stalls in the mens restroom. There were several men already in the restroom when I went in to use the urinal. As I went to wash my hands in the sink, an older gentleman sitting on the crapper ostensiably serving nature, and because there were no doors he decided to ask me, "you're a lawyer. . .are you from the IRS?" I assured him that I was not there to discuss his back taxes and quickly made my way out of the restroom.

I think there are three lessons I should take from today's experience. One, when you are homeless, restrooms provide a certain protection from the rest of the world that lend a man the confidence to proffer proclamations from the throne. Two, everyone has an opinion about lawyers. Three, unless you are using your skills to help someone get money/justice, the opinion is just above their opinion toward the IRS.

Not-so-classic lines from law school classes

One of the recurring posts on my One-L blog was a segment called "Classic Lines from Law School Lectures." I hope to continue this tradition during this year. This first post is unfortunately an un-classic line, and it came from a student. I have been shocked at the lack of enthusiasm and participation in my Administrative Law class. Many of the students are night students, and I understand that they work all day and many of them have children and families, but even among the regular students, everyone seems like they are at law school simply as a means to get a job and that speaking is an obligatory burden equal to paying a toll to get across a bridge. There really few "thinkers" at law school, by which I mean individuals who have a genuine interest in delving into the material to absorb it in an authentic way and processing it through their own mind. So many students just want to have the snippets of knowledge handed to them in a linear package so that they can use rote memorization to prepare for the exam. This is not how I have evolved to understand learning or teaching or living, and thus I was shocked at how a Three-L responded to the Professor's request for suggestions on the best way to move through the material (The profession is the Chief Administrative Law Judge in Seattle. He has a lot of real world experience, but he has not taught in a while and is a bit rusty. He has a lot of enthusiasm though, which I enjoy) The student raised his hand and asked: "I am taking this class mostly because I know that administrative law is tested heavily on the bar, so could you maybe focus the class to cover the topics that are going to be covered by the bar exam." I was glad to see that the professor responded with a look of mild shock and disgust and said something like: "I will teach you administrative law and if you learn it, then you will do fine on the exam." The majority of law school students put the cart before the horse. They want to memorize the answer without building the mechanisms to think through the question.

The old fashion way.

As if the world was out to test my new job hunt methods, a day after I sent off my resume in the snail-mail I heard from an employer in Bellevue on the telephone. We did not exchange a single e-mail. There is certainly something to be said for the old fashion ways of communicating.

I also worked my first full day at my volunteer position. I am certainly relieved to know that there are jobs for lawyers where one can wear jeans. I guess that is the advantage of taking on homeless clients. I also enjoyed the work. The other advantage of working at a small non-profit organization is that they gave me quite a bit of responsibility considering I just started. It was nice to feel that my work during school does carry some weight. I have some of my own cases that I will take from intake, through the process, and hopefully through the successful completion of awarding benefits for the clients. I made faxes, I phoned other attorneys, I filled out online applications, and I wrote a client letter. Then I found out that one of my clients was arrested for Burglary II a few hours after I did his intake last week. I spent some time researching the chances of obtaining Social Security benefits with a felony charge, and it looks like he will be spending more time with our friends at the public defender's office than with us.

Tomorrow I think I will, however, wear my suit. I do not know what the dress policy is at this small firm, but I am guessing that it isn't jeans. I think I will stick with the old fashion way.

Job Hunt

I have not fulling described the difficulty I have expienced in finding a "law job" this summer beyond the fact that I do not hear back from prospective employers. The fact is that some people have had jobs lined up since sometime last winter, while there are plenty of people who are simply doing what I am doing: taking classes. The seemingly futile attempt to find a job got me down for the last couple of weeks, but I are starting to accept the situation. This does not mean that I am giving up, but rather, I am simply trying to get better. I have never really tried to get a "real job." I have always either been in school or working in non-professional positions, which I use as a term of art, because many of my friends who I worked with at those jobs were doing professional work as theatrical designers, chefs, or arborists to name a few. So when I found two rejection e-mails in my now organized inbox, I took this moment as an opportunity to rejuvinate my job hunt rather than fall into a slump of unemployed rejection. Although, I am trying something new. First, I sent off a hard copy of my cover letter and resume to two new potential employers. I have had such little success with e-mail, I thought I would be better of with hard copies. Then, on Thursday or Friday, I am going to telephone the employers to check up to see that they received my resume. No more waiting around wondering if employers had ever even noticed my e-mails.

In the mean time, I start my second day of voluneering today. I am working with a non-profit law center whose major work consists of helping homeless individuals and families to secure their disability benefits. On my first day I worked with a seventy year old gentleman who I could barely hear and a middle aged man who fought with the CIA in Laos in the 70's. He was 12 and from my understanding, we weren't in Laos. Right? It feels good to actually be doing something in the law. This work is so different from what we learned during our first year, which seems like an abstraction now.