Anonymous Lawyer

Hey, out of character for a minute here, I kind of want to respond to some of the comments on the last few posts (even though I know I probably shouldn't). I'm as frustrated as you are that I don't post more often. I'm not trying to screw around with my readers, obviously if people hadn't been reading this, I wouldn't have had the awesome opportunity to write the book, and I'd still be flailing around looking for something to hit the way Anonymous Lawyer somehow managed to. So I have nothing but appreciation for anyone who takes the time to read what I'm writing, and I'm humbled and flattered that there are people actually complaining there isn't more of it. (Although maybe humbled and flattered aren't always the first things I feel when I read some of the comments...)

I wish I had more to say as this guy right now, and I keep hoping I can force it, and throw posts up there hoping it'll spur me to get back into the groove and hit some well for this character that I haven't yet explored. Obviously the biggest part of it is that I'm not working at a law firm, and so I'm not being hit with the ideas and inspiration I'd get if I were really living in Anonymous Lawyer's world. That's not an excuse, it's just an explanation. There will be more that I have to say as this guy, I'm sure of it, and hopefully some of you will enjoy reading it. It just hasn't been there while I've been working on some other writing projects, and it's been long enough thinking in this character's voice that maybe I've needed a bit of a break from it.

This is all just to say: I'm trying. And hopefully when Anonymous Lawyer does return regularly, it'll strike a chord the same way it did when I started, or, I don't know, a different and better chord. That's a terribly inarticulate thought. I'm sorry.

This is not some way to trick anyone into coming back here. There's no ads on here, I don't get any money when you click. But I can't give you a date when there'll be regularly updated consistent new content on here, because I don't know. I do think it'll be sooner rather than later. Because it would be monstrously stupid for me to lose the audience I've built, and the good will of that audience. And the threat of losing the audience should probably be enough to kick the inspiration back into full gear. Or perhaps this post can give me a clean slate to start up again without worrying I've already squandered whatever momentum was here before.

Thanks for reading, honestly. It's very rewarding to have created something people read, even if I torture myself for not being able to keep it going forever.

--jeremy

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I've missed you.

But my absence was unavoidable. Part of the settlement.

The head of the firm discovered the blog -- more specifically, an associate, who obviously didn't have nearly enough work to do or he wouldn't have had time to be dicking around on the Internet, thought he could get some brownie points by passing it along -- and got the partnership to force me out because of it.

We negotiated a buyout, and I agreed to stop blogging for sixty days.

Today is my first day at a new firm, less prestigious than my old one, with stupider associates who come from less highly-ranked schools and who scored significantly lower on the LSAT.

Even the paralegals smell worse here.

I'm grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to start fresh, but, really, what's the point? I suppose this is how John Kerry must feel, or Joe Biden, or Bob Dole, or anyone else who's been on one track and suddenly finds himself having lost a battle and sees nothing ahead but more of the same. I'm sure Senate life is one thing when you feel like you can be President one day, but quite another when you know that chance has passed you by.

I don't mean to compare myself to a senator. My work has touched the lives of far more people, and usually in significantly more devastating ways. But I think my point holds true. There's a stretch of any intelligent person's career when you're striving for something. You have to be, or you couldn't possibly bring yourself to go to work every morning. The ambition has to be there, it has to drive you forward, or else I don't know how anything could ever get done. My biggest triumphs have been driven by ambition. The briefs I stayed up all night to write, as an associate. The clients I spent weeks wooing, as a partner. The underlings I pushed to give me their best, regardless of the consequences.

You can't create fear in others without having that driving force inside of you. If you're just doing it for the paycheck, you can't ever quite summon yourself to care enough to torture people below you. The mistreatment has always come from something greater than the looks on their faces when they find out they have to cancel a vacation. It's always been motivated by something more than just wanting to see them suffer. It's about making a name for yourself. Getting to the top. Proving to yourself and to the world that you matter. That you're not just another lawyer. Or another suburban mom or dad, regardless of profession, with a job and a nice house and a stagnant life.

So many people just go to work, come home, withhold love from their spouses and kids, and then do it all over again the next day. An "exciting weekend" involves a trip to the mall, or burying your wife up to her neck in sand at the beach, or telling the nanny she can go to the doctor and you'll babysit your kids for a couple of hours. And then maybe a vacation every five or six years to really spice things up. But that's never the life I wanted. I wanted more than that. I wanted power. Not necessarily the power to control others, although that's always fun, but the power to control my own destiny. To know that I was special. To know that I was different. To know that there was nothing I couldn't achieve.

And for a while, my life was just as I planned. There WAS nothing I couldn't achieve. Partnership. A seat on the executive board. Speaking slots at top legal conferences. Students begging me for interviews. I had it all planned out: run the firm by age 50, then turn my head toward politics, spend a few years as Attorney General, and then take a consulting job in the private sector so I could turn my three houses into twelve.

But all it takes is one fall from grace for the vision to change completely. I've always said, to my kids and to anyone who'll listen, that the key to happiness is fooling yourself into thinking that what you do matters. But once you go from the top of a prestigious law firm, with a view of the ocean and an entire team of recent immigrant custodial workers who think it's perfectly normal for the men in suits to throw food at them and laugh, to a place like this, with a view of a warehouse out my window, three partners to a secretary, and a vending machine instead of a cafeteria... well, the illusion is over. I'm nobody. I'm just one of a million people exactly like me, doing the same work, for the same Fortune 1000 companies, and earning the same seven-figure salary. I'm not that special.

And it hurts. It hurts to know that it's probably all downhill from here. I can't recreate the glory, I can't repeat the miracle that was my previous existence. I lucked into my life -- it wasn't all luck, of course, but I'd be a fool not to admit that luck played a part in about 4% of it -- and the odds of hitting the jackpot twice... well, it's not going to happen. I've reached my peak, and that hunger is gone. Partly satisfied by my former heights, but partly just beaten into submission.

So now what? Do I fake the rage and the passion to hurl office supplies at associates? Do I pretend to be someone I'm not, just to keep up appearances? Or do I settle into this life, show up late and leave early, act distant but cordial to my colleagues, and do mediocre work that will let me stay here for the foreseeable future but leave me unfulfilled and empty inside? Or do I use all of this as a challenge? As a challenge to be even better than before, despite the almost-certain lack of positive outcomes that will result. As a challenge to make those under me work for their future in a way I never really had to work for mine. As a challenge to find power where none really exists, and exert this imaginary power over anyone foolish enough to believe it's there. As a challenge to be a better man than ever before, as measured by the amount of tears other will shed in my presence.

I don't know. I don't know if I still have it in me to look quite as critically on those around me and make them feel so bad about themselves. I suppose I will have to see how it goes.

NEW POSTS COMING FEBRUARY 1...

I've been burning to post these past couple of weeks, but the secretary who usually transcribes my words (from my state-of-the-art personal voice recording device to the computer) has been on strike, along with the rest of the support staff at the firm. It's been a frustrating situation, for sure. It's long been our practice at the firm to pay secretaries only for the time they spend performing certain tasks for us: answering the phone, making photocopies, sharpening our pencils, cutting our meat. As a matter of philosophy, we've felt it unnecessary to pay them for being idle, when they can be sitting at their desks doing other income-producing work if they like. (One secretary, for instance, earns almost $400 a year selling magazine subscriptions to recruiting candidates she pressures into buying while they wait for her boss to be ready for their interviews.) So, just like attorneys, they're required to clock every minute of their time, and we determine, at the end of every two-week period, how much time they've spent on productive work, and therefore how much they should get paid.

And now they've gotten greedy.

We've always maintained, as a matter of philosophy, that we can only pay for the kind of work that we're absolutely certain provides value, because otherwise there is room left for abuse. The secretaries are insisting that we pay them for the time they spend on the Internet. And since we're not yet able to distinguish productive Internet time from wasteful and unproductive Internet time, we've maintained that time spent on the computer counts as unproductive time and we will not pay for it. Three weeks ago, they decided they cared enough about this issue that they all banded together and struck. In response, we assigned our associates to do double duty, and have dug in our heels. We can afford a long strike more than they can, and, as a matter of philosophy, we refuse to cave in to their ridiculous demands.

After all, who hasn't passed by a secretary and seen her on MySpace? Or playing solitaire? Or online shopping? Why should we pay them for that? They can be using eBay to sell their possessions, or Craigslist to make extra money on the side for what the young people are calling "casual encounters." It's not our duty to double-pay them. Just like we can't double-bill our clients except in certain circumstances.

As more and more of them lose their homes, I feel confident they will come to their senses and return to work. In the meantime, although it's a strain on our associates, they're certainly paid well enough to handle it, and it's not like us partners aren't feeling the strain as well. Many of us have started working part of the day from home, putting our spouses to work as support staff. Of course, many of our spouses are less than entirely competent. So we're definitely feeling the brunt of this. When the Internet is proven to actually add value to the business process, perhaps we will consider paying the secretaries for their time spent using it, if we're feeling generous and can make up for it by trimming their health insurance benefits. But for now, we fight the good fight, and hope for a just and proper outcome.

Some of my associates are just arriving after last night's firm-wide Halloween party. As it got late, I told a few of them they didn't have to come in until 11 this morning. That's the 'treat'. The 'trick' is that it's going to count as a vacation day. Of course, the disappointment is that they probably won't even notice they've lost a day of vacation, since anyone who uses more than 30% of their days gets flagged in the system and is automatically assigned extra work to prevent any more abuses of our generous vacation policy.

The Halloween party is a relatively new tradition at the firm. For a number of years, we all dressed up and visited a local hospital, cheering up the patients with promises of potential malpractice suits against their doctors. But four years ago, in a bizarre coincidence, the majority of us dressed up as the Grim Reaper and the hospital had to ask us to leave. Fortunately not before we got through the pediatrics ward and the surgical recovery room.

I pulled out the Grim Reaper costume again yesterday. Not so much for the Halloween party at the firm, but because I promised my wife I'd visit her great-uncle in hospice care before heading to the office, and I thought he'd get a kick out of it.

The firm party went as well as could be expected. The annual trick-or-treating event involved the associates coming to each of the partners' offices to receive either a piece of candy (provided by our secretaries) or a bit of document review due by midnight. Some of the secretaries unfortunately ignored the directive to bring candy into work and we had to use paper clips as a proxy in place of chocolate. I forced my associates to eat the paper clips. Luckily, only three of them choked.

A few associates asked if they could leave early to go trick-or-treating with their kids. It amazes me that people still ask to leave early. Even the sign I insisted we post in the attorney lounge ("No, You May Not Leave Early, For Any Reason, Ever!") doesn't seem to deter them from marching into my office, adorable picture of a toddler wearing an Italian suit ("He's dressed up as YOU for Halloween!"), offering to work late nights and weekends (as if they won't be here anyway), begging to get off work just a few hours earlier than usual, maybe 6:30, 7:00, 7:30, anything to be able to help their kids steal food from the neighbors. "It's his first Halloween!" He won't even remember it. "My wife is eight and a half months pregnant and can't take the kids out by herself!" Maybe you should have thought of that when you got married. "She loves candy!" Well, you shouldn't be encouraging it. We did that with Anonymous Daughter and look where it got us. 12 years old, a hundred and sixty pounds, and a borderline case of juvenile diabetes. My wife has no self-control. We can't give her cupcakes whenever she asks for them. We can't dip her vegetables in sugar. No matter what these idiotic cookbooks tell us.

My wife bought that ridiculous Jessica Seinfeld cookbook about hiding vegetables in brownies, cookies, and ice cream sandwiches. I think she feels an affinity toward Jessica Seinfeld as a similarly situated accomplishment-free wife of a successful genius. Not that my wife ever cooks. But she gave the book to our housekeeper and told her to make some of the recipes. Not for the kids, but for her. My wife hates vegetables, she always has. Anonymous Son loves them. Cauliflower, brussels sprouts, lima beans, he'll eat anything. My wife eats chicken nuggets and Chef Boyardee Spaghetti-O's. So now the housekeeper has to sneak swiss chard into the chicken nuggets and endive into the Spaghetti-O's or my wife says she'll fire her. It's all because the doctor told her she wasn't getting enough Vitamin A.

Anonymous Daughter dressed up as a pumpkin for Halloween. Anonymous Son dressed up as Fred Thompson. My wife paraded them around the neighborhood for 15 minutes, they got three bags full of candy, and then gorged themselves until they both threw up. Luckily, I missed it all and didn't get home until they were fast asleep. I'll see them during the weekend sometime, ask them how it went, see how their October was, catch up over a quick breakfast before heading to the office. They're both late with their invoices for the October allowance, so at least that'll save me the 10% I penalize them for tardy filing.

Sorry for the long delay between posts. I was trying to paper-train this new dog Ellen DeGeneres gave me. And then the media got involved, took the dog away, my kids were in tears, it's been a rough past few weeks. Ellen's dog controversy makes sense to me. I side with the animal shelter. You can't just give important things away without making sure the recipients meet certain standards. It's the same way with assignments. Associates can't give assignments to their colleagues without getting permission first. Every associate brings a certain set of liabilities to the table, and when I assign someone a project, there's a reason. It's not like all of the associates are interchangeable parts who could all do the monkey-work we give them. It's not like all the associate assignments are garbage that any moron could do if only they put in enough mindless hours staring into their computer screens.

Oh, wait, no, I'm getting assignments mixed up with something else. Suits. They can't trade suits because not everyone is the same size, and some associates are men and some are women and some are neither. So we can't have them trading clothing without permission. But assignments? Who cares, it's all just to keep them busy and ratchet up the client bills, so if someone wants to take someone else's task, I don't care as long as it gets done. And if someone wants to take everyone else's task, great, SuperAssociate can do all the work and still make the same salary and get the same bonus as everyone else, and still have no idea whether or not he's going to make partner until it's too late and he's poured his entire soul into this place.

I overheard two associates talking about how they feel like they have to put their personalities in a box when they come to work every morning. I challenge that on two counts. One, it's a waste of boxes. We need boxes for documents. There will never be enough boxes. The number of documents associates need to sort through is infinite. We need an infinite number of boxes to hold them. Despite the "computer age," everything still goes in boxes. Even computers come in boxes. Two, they should not be coming to work "every morning." There should be nights they never leave. So there should be mornings they are already here and thus do not need to arrive. If there are associates coming to work every morning and leaving every night, we need to give them more assignments, or demand more from the assignments they do have.

The only reason I have time to post today is because a deal I've been working on for the past six and a half years just fell through. A senior associate who's been with the case since the start, and has put almost twenty thousand hours on it, started crying. "So my entire time at the firm has been for nothing, it's a waste," he said. Crybaby. It's not a waste. The client still paid. It's not like anything monumental was going to happen in this guy's life once the deal closed. For him it shouldn't matter. It's a problem when associates get too invested in the work. They're drones. If they care whether or not the deal closes, they know too much. I don't like to even tell my associates the big picture. They don't need to know what they're working toward. Most of them would quit if they knew the secrets our clients have, if they knew the ends we were the means to help our clients achieve. We cash checks from some evil people. But I want to protect my associates. They don't need to know the truth. Partners are the only ones who need to know, because we make enough money that we can drown the truth in expensive luxury goods. It's amazing how much you can forget when you spend your six hour annual vacation on your yacht. It's amazing how much you can forget when you buy black-market sleeping pills and develop a crippling dependency.

My daughter had a birthday last week. I forgot. My wife thought it would be fun to see how long it would take me to remember. It took four days. I walked in on her birthday sleepover party and it still didn't hit me. I threw down my briefcase on top of the half-eaten birthday cake, walked upstairs, swatted aside the balloons, shoved the wrapping paper down in the trash can (or maybe I just told our housekeeper to do it, I can't remember), and collapsed on the fold-out couch (my wife and I have been sleeping separately for a while now), without ever realizing. It was only when I saw she updated her Facebook profile with pictures from the party that I realized what I'd missed. So I put a message on her Wall and hopefully that'll take care of it. I'm going to text her later just to see if she'd logged in yet to read it.