Part III of "An Examination of the Lawyer's Briefcase"

Part I: Introducing the Lawyer's Briefcase

Part II: Selecting the Perfect Briefcase, Including Tips for Care and Cleaning

Part III: More Suggestions for Stocking a Lawyer’s Briefcase

The conventional wisdom about stocking a lawyer's briefcase is as follows: Having selected a suitable briefcase, it should be filled with things that are useful and necessary in a typical lawyer's day.  Pens, paper, spare change, partially-written legal briefs: all such items, it is commonly thought, would make fitting additions to a lawyer’s briefcase.

While this is technically correct, the lawyer cannot stop here. A lawyer's briefcase should contain not only ordinary sundries, but also something the lawyer deems irreplaceable.  The reason is easily explained.  No matter what the contents of a lawyer’s briefcase, the lawyer who loses it will go into a panic.  Lawyers are supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing; losing a briefcase exhibits an irresponsible turn of mind and an utter lack of control over events.  Therefore, no matter what the contents, the lawyer who loses his briefcase will experience a rapid heartbeat, labored breathing, and sweating at the top of the head.

This sort of extreme response will seem odd to non-lawyers, especially if the lost briefcase turns out to contain nothing but used paperclips and an MP3 player.  How can the lawyer prevent appearing foolish after the retrieval of a lost briefcase?  Only by having the foresight to stock the briefcase with items so important that their loss will justify his panic after the fact.

A brief example will illustrate my meaning.  Consider the senior partner who accidentally leaves his briefcase in the courtroom.  When he discovers his error, he will send his most-prized associate to retrieve the missing briefcase, pushing the associate out of his office with stern words such as “Hurry up, you moron!”  The startled associate, who may already be angry at the partner over mistreatment suffered in the past, will have no trouble locating the lost briefcase in the judge’s chambers.  Since the judge is also likely to bear no love for the senior partner, probably considering him to be overbearing and dull-witted, you can bet the two sudden allies will have quite a time rummaging through the contents of the senior partner’s “missing” briefcase.

To prevent the embarrassment that can ensue in such a situation, it pays to keep something inside the briefcase more important than a Newsweek magazine, nail clippers and a Rubik’s cube.  The right way to stock a briefcase can be illustrated with another example.  There is a story of a well-respected fiftyish lawyer, quite obese but always snazzily dressed, who showed up late to a meeting of the plaintiffs’ lawyers who were overseeing a large antitrust class action.  Not only was the fiftyish lawyer late to the meeting, but his complexion was so shockingly crimson that the other lawyers knew immediately that he was having a heart attack.  The meeting was halted, the lawyer was commanded to lie down on the conference room table, and the assembled lawyers argued for ten minutes over the correct way to administer CPR.  Finally, a medical professional who was not hostile to class action lawyers was summoned.  It turned out, of course, that the lawyer's heart was perfectly fine.  Instead, there had been a problem with his connecting flight from Philadelphia and his briefcase had been lost.

To justify the crimson-complexioned panic, it was critical that something very important turn up in the missing briefcase.  And that's exactly what happened: the briefcase, it turned out, contained the lawyer’s little black appointment book, which was filled from front to back not only with dates and deadlines, but also with evidence of a secret second family the lawyer had hidden away in South Dakota.  This is just the sort of critical information that should be stored in a lawyer’s briefcase. 

How do I know what was in the date book?  Just after the lawyer stopped hyperventilating, the airline called with news that the briefcase had been identified and carried off by someone claiming to be a reporter for the New York Times.  It was then that the poor lawyer really did suffer a heart attack.  The lawyer’s second family was revealed not only in newspaper accounts, but also by the family's presence at the lawyer’s unexpected funeral.

Some will object that the tragedies retold in these paragraphs would have been prevented if the lawyers had simply taken more care with their briefcases.  This is undoubtedly true.  Having stocked the briefcase with important items--things such as the date book mentioned in the second anecdote, bearer bonds with a face value of two million dollars, or perhaps one of the three existing pairs of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz--the lawyer should use the briefcase as it was intended to be used.  It should be grasped at all times in his dominant hand.  If it becomes necessary to use that hand, it should be switched to the other hand.  If both hands become necessary, the briefcase should be placed near the lawyer’s feet and never let out of his sight.

The lawyer can also choose not to carry a briefcase at all.  But then he wouldn’t be much of a lawyer, would he?  Surely you see the problem.  If you don’t, it will become obvious in the next and final installment of this essay.

Coming up in the weeks ahead:

Part IV: Matching the Briefcase to the Occasion

And next up in the ongoing series of essays on "Things Important to Every Lawyer": The Circle of Advisors

[Like this post? It's one of many included in my book How to Feed a Lawyer (And Other Irreverent Oberservations from the Legal Underground). Details here.]

Comments

[Shelley]

Of course, it also has to match shoes, gloves, and belt.