But I Ain't Ever Going Back . . .

So I had an interview for this contracting gig which further confirmed that the lot of a full-time lawyer is a stress-filled tiresome one. The partner with whom I interviewed was a young dood, well, young from the the point of view of lawyers - he graduated law school three years before me, which puts him in his early thirties. The offices were decent - not the dentist office decor of my prior SmallLaw, but rather bright white lighting and walls contrasting with dark wooden desks and black ergonomic chairs. This firm, although also a SmallLaw, was a step above prior SmallLaw (hmmmm, I guess I need new names before it gets confusing - I guess I'll call interviewing SmallLaw the Trial Boutique and the other SmallLaw Phuqued Firm).

Tired Young Partner seemed stressed and out of it. There was no social chit chat - it was straight to the "what I need" and "what can you do" portion of the interview. The reason why he was interviewing was because he had too many balls in the air to deal with the day to day minutiae, which was perfectly understandable. A captain of a ship can't attend to the rusty gears in the engines, the delivery of the mail, and the vegatables in the stew while at the same time making sure the ship travels from Paris to New York - there's just not enough time in the day. What they needed was someone who wouldn't need training (not enough time), and do what needed to be done to get the case moving forward - research, law and motion, maybe some depos, getting everything prepared for trial.

So I can forgive Tired Young Partner his lack of social chit chat, and I'd rather have directness rather than 30 minutes worth of forcing myself to smile and gettin' bupkiss. Then the Big Red Flag appeared. There was a knock on the door halfway through the interview. An equally tired but really pissed looking secretary came in. She was a slender, petite Latina woman with a fistfull of pleadings in her hands and a big ol' scowl on her face.

"Hmmm, can we get this in Word?" Tired Young Partner said.

"It would change the format," Pissed Secretary replied in a very terse manner.

"Well, she says she can't open it by e-mail. How can we send it to her so that everything is the same format?"

"We would have to retype everything," she said through gritted teeth.

"Fax? Can we fax? But then how can we deal with revisions."

"Why don't you just leave blanks for her to fill in."

"OK. I'll do that."

Pissed Secretary leaves without a word.

I've been around to recognize that terseness of the voice -- this wasn't a one-off bad day Pissed Secretary was having. No, that terseness, that scowl, it comes from years and years of too much work, too much stress, too many fire drills. It was taking all of Pissed Secretary's effort not to reach over and throttle Tired Young Partner.

OK, lawyers stressed out - par for the course. The support staff, who every lawyer worth his salt knows is the backbone of the operation, who you have to keep happy or else you're going to be doing all the phone calls, copying, faxing yourself in addition to the law and motion, discovery, trial work, if the support staff is pissed - whoooooo boy. Now this isn't to say that if they offer me the gig that I won't take it, but I won't be losing sleep if I they pass on me.