When I started practicing law, I joined a firm which had one exceptionally large client and very many small clients.
The large client needed help with interesting transactions, sophisticated corporate reorganizations, financings with lots of zeros, and creative corporate structures. Large files with large billings.
The smaller clients brought simpler work such as incorporations, small business purchases, and simple shareholders agreements. Small files with small billings.
“You look like you don’t have a clue what you are doing,” said absolutely nobody the first time that they met their Dentist. Or their Surgeon. Or their Accountant.
Many years ago when I was working 1,000 hours a week and my daughter was very young, I was trying to get her to eat an apple after a busy day at work. She was having none of it. Frustration levels were rising on both sides. Finally, with tears streaming down her face, she blurted out, “I want my parents dead.”
I whine a fair bit about the legal profession. Occasionally someone asks me what I would have done differently if I could go back and start over. Of course, the trite answer is “be an optometrist.” (Some neat things about being an optometrist: (i) you get to wear a white coat; (ii) the hours are fairly regular; (iii) you rarely have to worry about getting sued for prescribing the wrong lenses; and (iv) according to Dr. Google, your average salary will be higher than the average salary of a lawyer.)
One of the most intelligent lawyers who I ever met tells a story about the early days of her marriage as she adapted to the daily routines of domestic life while balancing the pressures of law school. One of the chores which she attended to every week was defrosting her freezer and throwing out the meat that was past its best before date. Yes, from the freezer. Every week. Then, one day, she was chatting with her mother on the phone and lamented the time and money wasted doing this every week. Her mother’s response was one of incredulous laughter. As my friend tells the story, she simply did not know what she did not know.
It is a slow news day in my retirement world, so I thought that I would break from my own tradition of writing lengthy posts and just post a brief thought.
I need an articling student. You know, those law students who we hire to write articles for us which we can publish under our own name. (That is why they call them “articling” students, isn’t it?) Of course, those of us who have real class include an acknowledgment that we were ‘assisted’ by the articling student, giving a whole new meaning to the word ‘assist’ which now means “to do all of the work.”
If I had an articling student, I would have had something useful to post today instead of this drivel.
I need an articling student.
I know absolutely nothing at all about Karate. I am about to prove that.
I had only one Karate lesson in my life. Actually, it was my young son who had the Karate lesson. I was along as part of one of those “Dad and Son” programs.
Back in the 1990’s, the Standard Chartered Bank out of the UK opened a subsidiary in Canada called the Standard Charted Bank of Canada and set about making commercial loans.
One of the Bank’s customers was a client of mine who I will call Sol. Sol had a line of credit for his business of about $3,000,000, back when $3,000,000 was a lot of money.
I often find myself speaking to law students and young lawyers who are having difficulty deciding what area of law they should practice. I also hear from older lawyers lamenting their original choice and thinking about making a change.
For a bunch of smart people, many of us lawyers choose how to spend most of our waking hours in some pretty dumb ways.
Few lawyers would disagree with the statement that “law school does not teach you what you have to know to be able to practice law.” I imagine that the general public would find that to be surprising. It is called “law school” after all.