Advice to Young Lawyers #31

Editor’s Note: “In an Awful Bind in Birmingham” first wrote Legal Underground last week. Unfortunately, in order to protect his identity, he’d changed so many details about himself and his situation that his problem wasn’t understandable. After being asked if he could try again, he did. – Evan Schaeffer

Dear Mr. Schaeffer:

You were right. I fudged a bit in my first letter. Frankly, it happens every time I find myself under incredible stress. It’s not that I lie, exactly, it’s that I slip into a comic writing style invented by Woody Allen in his 1972 book Without Feathers. I promise not to do it again. That’s my intention, anyway--although to be perfectly honest, I might be distracted by the wild parakeet that just landed on my shoulder, told me it was the latest addition to Arianna Huffington’s stable of bloggers, and asked if I had any good posting ideas.

Oops. There I go again. I apologize. It’s parrots that like crackers, so this thing must be a parrot. While I’m looking for something to feed it, let me get right to the point. My problem is that the partners at my law firm have a number of habits that are frowned upon in the business world. One of them is that they require me to work an inhumane number of hours. Another is that they’re willing to penalize me if I don’t. While this is also true of other professions--the profession of being a garment worker in a third world country, for example--those other professions don’t require you to take on a huge amount of debt in order to get into the club. But my profession did. For me, it meant a boatload of student loans, a new Mercedes for my wife for having to put up with being married to a lawyer, the mortgage on our large house that says to all my relatives that I used to be a schmuck but now I’ve made it, and my extensive wardrobe of silk dresses that complement my very hot feminine side. 

No, no. Not the dresses. That’s just the stress talking again. And my relatives still think I’m a schmuck, especially after one of them found out I often go to a club across the river where I pay women to smack me in the rear end when I get down on all fours and hee-haw like a donkey.

Oh, God. That’s not true either. Your patience must be wearing very thin. Here’s my question: Do you know a way I can tell my bosses to go to hell without taking on the risk of losing my job? Even though I hate my job and would love to lose it, I have my family to think about, not to mention the traveling circus of Iranian midgets who wouldn’t be able to sustain themselves without me. I love them all like children and carry their pictures with me in my Palm Pilot. Can you help?

Signed, Still in an Awful Bind in Birmingham

Dear Still in an Awful Bind:

How can you tell your bosses to go to hell without being fired? Let’s see if I know the answer to your question. Now that I think about it, I probably don't. Although I've often told my bosses to go to hell over the years, I either said it to them when I was alone in my office with the door shut or after I had already resigned my position. Therefore, these examples from my own life don’t help very much. Then there are those times when I told my bosses to go to hell through the process of sublimation, that is, by telling a mental stand-in for my bosses such as my wife Andrea or one of my kids to go to hell, which made me feel manly and powerful when they ran out of the room in tears, but which also caused other problems with respect to Andrea, who would often use my outbursts as an opportunity to throw something sharp and pointed at my head.

Frankly, the way I used to sublimate my problems with my bosses was regrettable, but not nearly as regrettable as your own means of sublimation, that is, by writing like Woody Allen. Not only does he seem to be an exceptionally nervous person, but I discovered just last week (and again today) that it's nearly impossible to imitate his writing style, especially the comic essays of Without Feathers. You'll have to find a way to get rid of that nervous tic of yours. Why not try imitating some early Mark Twain or perhaps James Thurber from his middle period? Ian Frazier is also a real cut-up. If one of your goals is to make people laugh, try imitating the style of one of your favorite federal judges. It’s a solution that will completely hide your problem if you find yourself suffering bouts of anxiety while writing an appellate brief.

To truly take care of the trouble with your bosses, you'll have to become the boss. It’s a suggestion that’s worked quite nicely for me, even though it took longer than I expected for it to happen. But I was patient, and my patience paid off: now I’m in the enviable position of having people tell me to go to hell. As long as they do it when they’re alone with their office doors shut, I don’t really care.

Will it ever happen to you? Knowing you only from your letters, I sort of doubt it. But never say never.

Your friend, Evan Schaeffer   

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