Stay of Execution

I Am The Talk Of The Town

It's such a small state. Such a small legal community. News travels very very quickly. I am learning some interesting things, about the way grapevines work, and about the legal market I'm a part of.

Thanks to you blog friends out there who have been so supportive by email and here on the site. Free fall feels surprisingly good.

Telephonic Hearing

I am sitting in on a telephonic hearing, covering for the Big Guy, representing a client who has a tangential interest in outcome of the hearing on a reasonably complex transaction. Basically my job is to say one sentence, to make sure that nobody forgets a bundle of rights held by my client. The rights aren't in dispute -- everyone knows about them, and nobody seems to care. My job is just to be on the record, preserving them, and making sure whatever order gets entered by the judge has a little clause noting that our rights aren't prejudiced. But there are at least four attorneys, plus the judge, plus a couple of interested parties appearing pro se, having a heated debate about a whole bunch of things. My turn already came, and I said my sentence, not stammering too much, and the trustee specifically acknowledged our rights. So I think my time is done, but I'm not certain -- it may come up again. I'm also not certain of the etiquette: could I just hang up, if I were sure I were done here? Or do I wait until the hearing formally adjourns? If I were there in person, I wouldn't just get up and leave the courtroom. Would I? Sometimes people do. Maybe some of the people in the room already have. So much of all this is visual cues. It's interesting to listen (over a not-ideal speakerphone) to a complicated conversation among a whole bunch of unfamiliar parties, without the benefit of body language, or even any real familiarity with names and voices. It's hard, too, to know when to speak up -- you can't tell if someone in the room is getting up out of his chair, smoothing his jacket, and opening his mouth when you pipe up to say your little "my client wants to preserve its rights!" sentence. It takes a really different kind of listening to understand what's going on when sound is all you've got. I'll learn.

All Request Day Continues

To the fellow who emailed me with the question about what's the right cash amount to give a graduating high school senior, hmmm. That's another stumper for me. I think the Gilmore Girls on DVD is a much better idea. Or what about something interesting but unusual (for a high schooler) that she could do with a friend -- like tickets to a theater company or day passes to an aquarium, or even a gift certificate to a restaurant? Probably the teenagers out there are rolling their eyes and would want the cash or the DVD. I remember, though, the year my grandmother got me four tickets to a show at the symphony -- not really my thing, but three of my friends and I got all dolled up and went out to dinner beforehand and felt like sophisticates, and the evening stands out as a memory even though I don't remember the particulars of the show at all. And I don't hardly remember any of the checks I got, even though they always seemed to me to be the best gifts ever. A boat ride? A golf lesson? A rock climbing pass? What about a book like Bartlett's Familiar Quotations or a decent atlas -- everyone should have one of those. Or a kite -- a nice flying kite with a long and fluttery tail? Everyone needs a kite, but most people forget to buy one. I'm always inclined more toward gifts that someone will remember (even if it might be a miss) than ones that will be safely in the zone of the expected. But I'm generally lousy at selecting gifts, myself. Good luck.

We Interrupt This All-Request Wednesday

... to bring you the following announcement.

I just gave my notice at my firm. My last day will be June 25.

I do not know what I will do after that. I have some ideas, and will be thinking a lot about it over the upcoming months. I welcome your ideas and suggestions as well.

Obviously, there's a lot of backstory here, that I have not chosen to broadcast on the Internet. I trust that you understand that.

Lawyers as Parents

A 30 year old woman emails me to request that I post about being a parent in the profession. She tells me she's been admitted to law school but just can't bring herself to fill out the check and send in the deposit. She doesn't have kids yet, but would like to, and wonders what the demands of school and the profession mean with respect to raising a family.

She writes:

I also have the desire to become a mother and start a family (someday). Does law allow a woman to have a successful career and balance family responsibilities?

I want to do both, but feel I may be setting myself up for failure. If I want a family, how can I leave a career that will allow me to do both - for another profession that may not be as family friendly...? My age is certainly a factor - biological clock and "second" career prospects.

I would like to give you a helpful answer, my friend, but I have the very same questions myself. This is a realm where I don't think it's okay to bluster groundlessly as I usually do, especially because you have a big decision to make. Instead I can only pass your request on to my readers. Evan (and his lawyer wife Andrea, highly credentialed as a mother) and Carolyn probably have something to say. I wonder if Anonymous Lawyer does. I think here the different perspectives of fathers and mothers are important, so I'd welcome the thoughts of both. Blue Rabbit (April 22 post) had some things to say about growing up the daughter of a hard working lawyer.

My reader DID make a request I can help with: more information about my pretty dress. You can find it online at Nordstroms -- search "BCBG Max Azria." Happy to help.

Sheets vs. Halyards

PJM requests an explanation of the difference between "sheets" and "halyards." An excellent question. First, let me say how much I LOVE to teach adults about sailing. All Stay of Execution readers are invited to visit me and come out for a sailing lesson. I love it not only because I love the subject matter and because adults have the attention span and the abstract thinking skills to "get it" quickly (although kids pick up the "feel" and the more instinctive reflexes you need better than adults), but also because I think adults who attempt to learn to sail are courageous and brave. I admire and envy them at the same time -- moving tentatively into a world full of mysterious vocabulary words and invisible forces and unstable surfaces that move around and leave you with bruises and bumps. And we sailors aren't often very good at articulating the information you'll need to get out on a boat and feel useful and acclimated. If we do bother to teach you the name of something it is most likely that we will only teach you one of several existing names for it, and when we next reference the thing we will use an entirely different name than the one we taught you. So anyway, adult learners, you're brave to come aboard, and your courage will be rewarded by a lifetime of great experiences on boats.

"Halyards" and "sheets" are both types of lines. ("Line" is the sailor word for "rope" -- we never say "rope" unless the line being referred to is four inches thick and made of thick brown hempy stuff and connecting a tugboat or something to the dock. Please pay attention to this because we will shake our heads with irritation and correct you every time you mix this one up. Why? Just because.) Both halyards and sheets control the sails. Halyards pull the sails up the mast. Generally, once you pull a sail up, you keep it up there for the duration of your sailing adventure, so you'll encounter halyards at the beginning and the end of the day. Until you've messed around with the halyards and gotten the sails up, there's no need to bother with sheets.

But once the halyards have pulled the sails up, you tend to coil them up (to make sure if you need to let the sails down in a hurry the line will run smoothly and not be tangled up) and forget about them while you're sailing. That's when you use the sheets. The sheets adjust the angle of the sails to the wind. If you let them all the way out the sail will flap around uselessly like a flag on a flagpole. By pulling the sheet, you give the sail a certain shape, and it is that shape that creates the lift effect that can make the boat go forward. (If we were at lunch together I would be furiously drawing diagrams on napkins right now). The sheets are where it's at while you're sailing.

Another All-Request Day

Save me from this bleak, bleak grey weather and my chilly, dreary mood. How can I help you? What would you like to know or see or hear my opinion about? You request it, and I'll give you my two cents.

[One of these days I am going to write a post about how I prepared for the bar exam, because it's looming on the horizon for those law students who just finished up with school. It's a bear, don't get me wrong. But I don't think you need Bar-Bri, or to get all nutso and crazed about it like Alex Wellen did in Barman, and like so many folks do. So no need to request that one; it's in the hopper.]

A Good Way To Die of Hypothermia

...would be to go out to your boat, alone, after work, on a cruddy cloudy 46 degree day, with wind from the northeast and some choppy waves, and spend a couple of hours pumping it out, cleaning junk off of it, and untangling the spaghetti mess of wet ropes (we sailors call them lines). There's no radio on the boat to call for the launch, so you've borrowed a horn, but your boat is way way out in the anchorage and the sounds of the horn will be lost well before reaching the dock. And the launch driver is up in the dockhouse with the door closed and a paperback novel open, anyway. It's freezing outside and nobody but a few freaks are out on their boats. Drop your cell phone in the bilge for good measure. You recover it quickly but can't be sure what damage is done. There's hardly any coverage right here anyway.

When you've had enough, tie the canvas cover over the cockpit and notice that your fingers are starting to have trouble doing what you'd like them to. You've been touching nothing but cold metal or wet rope for a couple of hours, so the fingers are red and a little bit puffy. All it would take while you're tying the cover to the shrouds is one wave to spill you over -- there are no lifelines on this boat -- and you wonder if you would be strong enough or have the dexterity to climb back aboard. Maybe from the mooring line you could climb up onto the bow? Not sure if you could keep a good enough hold on the rope. Probably you could. Or maybe you could swim all the way in -- but it's a long way, maybe half a mile. More likely you could swim over to that lobster boat over there and clamber up to the stern, but then what?

This didn't happen to me, of course, except for the cold hands and the coiling of lines and the dropping the cell phone into the bilge. I watched a flock of maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty seabirds pass by way way overhead, moving and changing their formations as they passed -- it was quite lovely. And I'd arranged with the launch driver to come get me at an appointed time if he didn't hear the horn beforehand, and he did, smiling and wind-tousled and wearing an orange slicker. It was great to be out there.

I Am Learning So Much

I (sort of) know the difference between rolled roofing and rubber roofing. I know about Polyglass Electraflex and something called EPBM. I know what a "square" is (10' x 10'). My roof is 2.5 squares. I know more than I'd like to about ice dams and what they do to flat roofs. I know that my roof isn't technically flat, it's 212 pitch. I am learning some things about what certified roofers can and can't do. Because I have visions of putting on an addition above this very roof within about five years, it doesn't make sense to invest in a roof that will last me 20 years, and I am learning a little bit about alternatives to a completely brand new roof. I learned from one contractor yesterday that my second lot is a "gold mine" and that if I wanted to build a multi-unit apartment building in the backyard where the garden is now, he could help me right out with that.

Catkins

Some of the cars in my parking garage must spend their evening hours parked under trees, because I've noticed a couple of cars all covered in what looks like green confetti and streamers. But a closer look reveals catkins, dozens and dozens, strewn all over the body of the car, like the morning of New Year's Day when nobody's cleaned up yet. And other cars must live under maple trees, covered as they are with helicopter seed pods. It's like certain cars in the garage were invited to some raucous party that the clean cars, safe in their garages, missed out on.