From the Lips of a Lawyer...

I got stood up last night. We'd been making plans for when he was coming out to visit for about 7 weeks. Then the day gets here and nary a word. Not phone call, not an email, an IM or a text. Not even to say, "I can't meet up tonight." Needless to say, I was quite upset over it, and I cried.

I continued crying today. Off and on. It happened to be an "on" moment when my boss walked in and saw me crying.

Boss: Are you ok?
Me: I got stood up last night.
Boss: Ohhhh. Come on in my office.
*I sit down in the other chair and sniffle*
Boss: So what happened?
Me: We made plans, but he never even called. Not a word.
Boss: Hmmm. Was he LDS?
Me: Noooo *knowing where this is going*
Boss: Well there's your problem! AND you had coffee yesterday...
Me: *pause* I have coffee EVERY DAY.
Boss: That's not the point...
*boss ponders for a minute*
Want me to sue him?
Me: For what!? Intentional infliction of emotional distress?
Boss: Yeah! Maybe I should sue him; his infliction of emotional distress had made
you unproductive and interfered with my livelihood...
Me: *rolling my eyes* I don't let my personal life interfere with my productivity.
Boss: *blather blather blather* He's not worth it...you're a great person...blah blah
blah...I'm not really helping am I?
Me: No. But dads don't really get it...even if they do have daughters.

Only a lawyer would ask if his assistant wanted him to sue for getting stood up. Oye.

Miss Wolf, I presume.

Bankruptcy filing is supposed to be a pretty straight-forward process; and for the most part it is. And then...there are clients like Miss Wolf. She first came to the office for bankruptcy in 2009 - and for a full year continued to drag her feet, determined that she was going to file Chapter 13, the 3-5 year repayment plan. Miss Wolf is a broker of certain assets, and her income fluctuates. They FINALLY convinced her no Judge, not even one high on crack and Jim Beam would approve her plan, and she converted to a Chapter 7 (generally used to wipe out consumer debt).

She keeps crying wolf, saying she's ready, then pulling back. She keeps telling us she's done, then changing her information. This is why I call her Miss Wolf. She drags and drags and drags...and finally, one day, she is "ready." But guess what? I'm not. It's the week that Boss is out of the office sick *cough cough* and I have too much to catch up on. Besides which, she has extra creditors to add, and I have to keep prying the information out of her. I finally get everything corrected and entered, and print up her petition...then try to schedule a day for her to come in.

She tells me she's too busy - WELL GET UNBUSY, LADY! I set a day at the end of Sick Week, and she makes it in to sign. It all goes fairly smoothly...but Miss Wolf drives me nuts anyway. It's what she does. Then she decides to make my life a living hell.

She wants a waiver of filing fees. She is not destitute though. Instead we convince her to do installments. There are, of course, no instructions, so I split the filing fee into 4 equal payments set for the last day of the month for 3 months, the first payment to be made at the time of filing. And then I get to the software and start to do my upload to the bankruptcy site. *dramatic pause* "Sorry, attorneys in California cannot use the automatic upload option when paying in installments." My head finds the keyboard. I have to "open" the case manually on the site; ie, I wind up having to enter quite a bit of information by hand. It takes me 45 minutes to enter all this info so she gets billed at my hourly rate of $80 per hour (I'm a bargain. My boss bills at $340 an hour.) THEN I can start my electronic upload. I pay the fee, I think we're good.

2 days later I get a call from the bankruptcy court. They inform me that the filing fee installment split is $89, $70, $70, and $70; and the dates I have are incorrect as they are made every 30 days, exactly. So I have to fix the application, then submit the order, then ask Ms. Wolf if she can take care of the additional $14.25 via cash or money order down at the courthouse. She proceeds to rip into me about how she's paying us so that this stuff is taken care of, and it was my screw up so I should fix it. After a few emails back and forth, I cease to respond to her. She emails me the next day apologizing for being a grump.

Now, Ms. Wolf SHOULD be good to go, right? Noooooooope! A week later she tells me "Oh, I have some creditors to add to my petition." I'm ready to throw my computer over our balcony. I say "Fine, but it's $26 every time we submit a new list of creditors, and I need the fee up front, and I need all the information at once." I still have not received the information from her.

Ms. Wolf is one of my interesting characters in the job I go to daily.

Sick or Hooky?

(For the week of 2/9 thru 2/17)

I do enjoy my job quite a bit. I especially like when I have one day of the office to myself. It's much easier to get through everything I need to get done. Just one day...maybe two. That's how this was SUPPOSED to start.

The boss came in Monday and Tuesday. We took care of stuff, and then Tuesday night he took off. Now, I told this boss of mine that G-O-L-F should be considered a "Four Letter" word, that it was dirty, and it was not to be used in the office. Keeping that in mind, guess where my boss went for his 2 day jaunt. Yep...Pebble Beach. Mecca for duffers. The holy pilgrimage of golf. He told me he was going to come in on Friday before he left for a romantic Valentine weekend with his honey. Of course I looked at his personal schedule. Guess what was on for 10 a.m. If you said "A round of golf..." your guessing skills are rusty! It was a golf LESSON.

I'm looking at his schedule and knew he had to leave at a reasonable hour on Friday. I'm sitting there going "Yeah. There's NO WAY he's coming in today..." And I was right.

So he goes away for the weekend. Now, side note: He had been coming down with a cold so I told him to take Zicam (Zinc) before he went off to Mecca...I mean Pebble Beach. On Monday, he calls me at the office, cranky as sin, and tells me he's still sick. It's cool, in that he wasn't supposed to be in that day anyhow.

A few hours later, I get an email; my boss is pretty funny, even when he is sick...but apparently he was fighting off bronchitis or something. This is where things get interesting...because I was in the office myself with a cold on top of allergies!

I canceled his appointments and got adjournments for court appearances for the next 2 days. On Tuesday, I realize I'm gonna have to take the office to him. So I gather up all the items that had accumulated on his desk (image to the right). A week's worth of pleadings, letters, and other critical times, plus a pile of checks that needed to be signed so the bills could get paid. I loaded ALL that, plus some other documents (and a bar of chocolate) into a file and went over to his house to get him to go through and sign stuff, read documents, and deal with the mass of dead trees (ie, paper) so that I could finally file it all.

When I got back to the office, we communicated via his remote access, and I asked if he was going to be in. He didn't look too bad, and he'd been home for 3 days now, and out of the office for 7. I think at this point, he decided to play hooky. I canceled the rest of his appointments for the week, and decided at this point that I had done all I could do without him in the office to deal with his crazy-ass clients. Oh yes, there are crazy ones...

Sick or Hooky...I will have to give the counselor the benefit of the doubt...no jury would convict him...or maybe they would; he is a lawyer, after all.

I got a surprise when he finally made it into the office...walking past my desk just as I lift a clear mug of coffee to my lips. He is Mormon. So am I. But...that is another story for another time. :)

Breathing Room...and relief.

Remember that client I said sucked my will to answer the phone? The one that was calling every day, sometimes two, three times a day? Guess who called this morning? If you said Barney the Purple Dinosaur...what the hell is wrong with you? If you said "That Client"...ding ding ding! You win...Nothing! The receptionist buzzes me and tells me who is on my line. I sigh, and say "Ok." I suck it up and answer the phone.

"Hello, Mr. Client. How are you?" I'm prepared for another stress-laden rant about the process of bankruptcy, dealing with the trustee, and evil banks from hell.

"All of our accounts were unfrozen this morning." The relief in his voice is palpable. I actually FEEL it through the phone. I also feel my stress and anxiety leeching away.

"That is wonderful. I'm glad! I'm so sorry you guys had to go through this."

"We also called the car finance company and worked out the missed payment, and made it this morning."

I reminded him not to deposit his next paycheck into that account, but instead to take it to a local bank or credit union and open an account with a branch where we know who the bankers are and it's not some faceless conglomerate.

I suddenly feel like a 1,200 pound gorilla has been lifted off my back. Yeah, you've heard the phrase "Monkey on my back." A monkey is a slight annoyance. This issue had been weighing me down to the point where I couldn't sleep, I was cramping at night from muscle tension, and I when I did sleep, I tossed and turned from the stress and anxiety. This was definitely no monkey - this was a gorilla. I breathed deeply and calmly for the first time in a week.

I continued work on my end of month billing, I did some more client work, and generally had a relaxed day without feeling like I was on the verge of tears...or throwing myself from my boss's balcony.

Now, there's this administrative assistant who works for OWD and who does a lot of different things, including mail-room duties. She's awesome. But she's quiet. I don't hear her until she's right on top of me. So when she called my name I jumped. She set down an Overnite-Express package and said "This just came for you today." I looked at the package warily.

I sat there, facing off with this package. My thought pattern was something along the lines of "I don't think I want to know what's in that..." I got brave, however, and opened up the first envelope...

KERTHUNK...a huge bundle of papers, held together with massive rubberbands lands on the desk. I open the other envelope, and an equally massive stack of papers lands on the desk next to the first. I grab the paper off the top and it hits me. We're back to nightmare land. Remember a few posts back where I talked about D-Day? Then it was us, scrambling to provide discovery. Today...the tables have turned. But I'm not too thrilled about this.

This is Production of Documents by JPMorganChase ("JPMC") and Bank of America ("BofA"). This is also called "Document Dumping." I have just received 1240 PAGES of documents from the defendants, JPMC and BofA. Not only are there over 1,200 pages, much of it is documents with very tiny financial language - you know, the fine print no one ever reads but then it causes your credit card interest rate to skyrocket from 4.99% to 23.99% APR. I just sit there and have to laugh. This is what happens when big corporations with lots of money and lots of lawyers are sued by a single practicing attorney with one or two staff members. They dump documents on you at the last minute and show you that they can churn out paper faster than you can ask for it.

I wander into my attorney's office and let him know what I just received. He asks me if there is a verification. I look at him and say "Where might that BE in this stack?" He says it should be at the end. I look...no verification. I flip through all the other pages, thinking it may be in the middle of the mess. No verification. I relay this information to the attorney, who looks pensive. Then he says, "Then, technically, they did not produce any documents."

I just shake my head. Litigation is an interesting...and sometimes childish....game.

Things are going...*#$%&@

My clients are generally nice folks. Put them in high stress situations and they become anxiety-ridden parasites that suck my will to live...or at least answer the phone. Thankfully, clients do not have my direct line; the front desk runs interference for the whole office. I can somewhat avoid them if I really want to.

I should explain how my office is laid out. We take up most of the 2nd floor of a very nice building off of Fountaingrove Parkway in Santa Rosa. If you know where the LDS Santa Rosa Mission office is, you know where I work. Now, this second floor is mostly taken up by the lawyers and support staff of a firm known as OWD. But there was leftover space. What to do? Why, sublease! My attorney, a sole-practitioner has 2 offices and 2 cubicles. He in turn subleases one of his offices to another lawyer. Clients never get to come back to the inner-workings of the office, which is generally good. We keep our area neat, and files live in their happy drawers, so there aren't piles of files (say that 3 times fast!) lying around. But it's nice to know I don't have to worry about impressions.

So, back to clients. Yes. They are sucking my will to answer the phone. Every time the receptionist buzzes me and tells me this particular client is on the phone, my stomach clenches, and I have to steel myself. Not because he is rude - but specifically because he is in such a place of stress that it is unavoidable that I become stressed out.

I hit the point of utter abjection. I can't do this. I may have been the best legal writer at school, but this is the real world, with real people, and real problems. And I am feeling out of my element, and like I'm drowning with no life raft and no Ashton Kutcher jumping out of a Coast Guard helicopter as a rescue swimmer to drag me out of the stormy seas.

And this is where things went to *#$%&@. I came home, curled up in bed, and in the tradition of depressed facebook posts, wrote: "Confession: no matter how much success I have, no matter how many awards and accolades I win, I still feel ugly. And worthless. And like an abject failure."

It set off a sh**-storm of comments...and some arguments. In the end, a good night's sleep, some crying, and pushing through the "I can't do this" moments brought me to a point where I could at least fake it.

I'm wondering if this is the point in a new career where it is sink or swim. Maybe I'll just let Jaws eat me. That way I don't have to make a decision.

The Fhit hits the San

(*As always, names and details are changed to protect confidentiality)

The day was busy but fine. At 3:50 my attorney handed me a set of Discovery documents to send out. I'm slightly panicky. I have to be out the door at 4 p.m. but I calmly type up a proof of service and the envelopes, make copies and drop everything in the mail then head out the door to my appointment.

I get down to Steele Lane and stop for gas. I was running on less than empty. Then...DUN DUN DUN...my cell phone rings. It's not usually a good sign when it rings and it's NOT one of my programmed numbers. I pick it up...

"Hello?"

"Hello, Megan? This is Kelly* at the office. Your clients, the Carters* keep calling completely panicked. Can you talk to them?"

"Well I'm in my car. I can come back to the office and call when I get there; I don't have their number."

"I can give it to you..." I sigh and tell her to go ahead.

I call my client while sitting in the car at the gas station. I find out that the bank has frozen their funds. My jaw drops. They're without any cash or access to their money. I tell her to take a deep breath, I'm gonna make some calls, and I will get back to her tonight.

I call my mom. She's the bankruptcy paralegal that I just replaced. She's shocked, too. I call my favorite law professor and ask her thoughts. She thinks it's a violation of the automatic stay. I get back to my office. I'm lucky that it's a nice office in a nice area because it is getting dark. I hurry upstairs. It is now 4:30.

I track down my attorney. He is at the hospital with his wife. We conference quickly and he gives me some direction on what to do from here. I call back my client and find out exactly what happened.

My husband went to the store with our son to get some supplies for a homework project. The debit card wouldn't work. So I checked the accounts online like I had during most of the week and saw that they were all ZERO. I called and they said they put a hold on all the accounts, even the ones that weren't ours and that only the trustee could release them! What are we going to do? We have automatic payments coming out and we don't have any cash!

I try to calm her down and it's now my turn to make some calls. I'm racing against the clock - it's 4:50 p.m. I get contact with the bankruptcy department at Wells Fargo. I introduce myself as the paralegal for the attorney representing the clients. We have a stiff but civil chat. She asks if we received their letters. We did not. She offers to email them to me. I accept.

I wait calmly. I read the letters and I hit the ceiling. You have your nerve, Wells Fargo, asking if we received your letters dated that same day. Now it's time to hit the research. I did some quick searching online, seeing if this is an industry practice. It is not. I find a case from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which strikes down the practice. I'm on a roll.

I pause. I call my client. I tell her what I have found out. She's still freaking out but I tell her I'm working on it. I maintain professionalism, but I want to give her a big hug.

I get back to work. Now I've read the case, I've marked it up and I'm angry as all heck. The courts already said they can't do this. So stop doing it! I start writing up a legal letter for my attorney to use as a template in the morning. I realize at 7:30 p.m. that I'm up to 2 hours of overtime. I'm so glad at this point that I have purchased a squishy pillow for my desk chair.

I finally head home and go over the case with my mom. She thinks we're on point and she's still shocked that this has happened. I feel the fire of indignation, fighting for my clients. This is not over. I have only just begun to fight.

(Note, while I do change the names of parties for confidentiality, I have NOT changed the name of the bank in this story - this is an internal practice within Wells Fargo and not a law or industry wide practice. Thus we must shame them)

Further reading:

• http://caveatemptorblog.com/wells-fargo-freezing-bank-accounts-bankruptcy-illegal/
• http://www.bankruptcylawnetwork.com/2010/07/06/wells-fargos-procedure-of-freezing-accounts-after-a-bankruptcy-filing-invalidated/
• http://bit.ly/lexiswellsfargo

Where are my client documents?

There are some things in this world that are truths. If you drop your toast it will land jelly side down. Salad always tastes better if someone else makes it. Lawyers need constant supervision and help.

Attorneys know a lot about the law (some know more than others). They're great at writing legal arguments. And yet...there are times when they really do need their assistants. People like me. Case in point:

Mr. Attorney: Where are the client documents for the Smith* case?

Me: They're not in the file cabinet? Or on the desk?

Mr Attorney: No. I really need the client documents. wanders back to his office.

I shrug and continue working on my files. Attorney wanders back out and looks at files on desk. I get up and look through all our file cabinets, even the "closed" files. I walk into his office and see a "red well" file which could be THE FILE. I look at the name...

Mr Attorney: Ha! That's the Jones* file.

Me: Hey. I had to check.

I step around the chair and see a box labeled with the clients' name. I smirk.

Me: Are you looking for this big box that says SMITH on the side?

Mr. Attorney pauses and refuses to look at me for a moment. I try not to laugh.

Me: At least it wasn't on your desk... I get a look ... I'm going back to my desk now.
(*names changed for confidentiality)

Day 4: FRIDAY

The newly graduated paralegal has survived her first week. She's a little overwhelmed and stressed but she has made it through. All deadlines for this week have been met. All files are safely tucked away in their drawers. Client meetings for next week are set up. And now, to dump the cold coffee, and run out the door. Oh...well...Forgot we'll be hitting Friday night traffic on highway 101, but hey, no day is perfect.

Day 3: D-Day...D for Discovery.

In the world of civil litigation there is a nightmare that exists. It's something that must be done but everyone dreads when it is their turn. There are strict rules in the California Code of Civil Procedure that regulate this nightmare. There are strict deadlines. And there are severe punishments for violating these rules. Oh the world of: Discovery. Such an innocuous term for something so evil.

Discovery would be easy if you didn't have to involve the clients. But you do. Requests for Admissions: Admit that you do not have a leg to stand on... Special Interrogatories: State all the facts that support your allegations in paragraph 5 of your complaint. And my favorite...Production of Documents. This is the one where you harp on your client every couple of days to find every shred of paper that has been requested. If you're lucky, you have a helpful client. In reality, it's usually begging them, then it comes down to the wire. And then it comes to asking for an extension because in California you have 30 days to complete this.

Our discovery was due to be sent back in just a few days and we did not want to leave it to the last minute. As it was, the responses had four people in the office working on them and the signature pages and title pages had been messed up. It was nightmarish. We finally got all pages signed and corrected...right about 10 minutes before I have to leave. I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that tomorrow we can send out these HUGE collections of paper with time to spare.

Discovery - don't leave it off to the last minute.


Addition: I had nightmares over the weekend about this discovery. I woke up so stressed out I was actually sick to my stomach! Wow!

Day One: Office Administrator...or "Did they pay us yet?"

I have never been a morning person. I believe mornings should start at noon. I think there should be magic elves (or magical little-people, for you P-C crowd) that all they do is bring you coffee while you fight with the alarm. The Alarm. I will never know how my coordination is so bad that I run into walls, trip UP stairs, and fall down while standing still, but in the dead of sleep, I can accurately slap a 2 centimeter button on my phone to shut down the wailing alarm for five minutes of "Snooze" time.

I am also aware that this "Megan doesn't do mornings" thing has come to a violent end. Not just a whimper, but an "ohmigod we don't have any breaks in this 1950 Cadillac and we're careening down a steep mountain pass oh no there's a cliff aaaaaaahhhhh BOOM" kind of end. Megan is now a (reluctant) morning person. Sorta. I allowed myself time to go to McDonald's for an iced coffee. I got to work right when I planned - 9:30 a.m. I was allowed to create a schedule for myself and I figured 9:30 to 4 (allowing time for my standing evening appointments on M, T, and Th) would give me 6 hours on those days.

Day One: You are the office administrator. You work for a single attorney who has a contract attorney who shares the office set up...and you. You order supplies. You take care of the money. You do the billing. And you do this all while answering phones.

Today I get a crash course in where everything is in the office. Got it? (no!) Good, moving on. We're going to billing. And expenses. We keep double books. Everything goes into one, but not everything goes into the other. Client related - Amicus and Quickbooks. Office related - Only Quickbooks. Got it? Uhhhhhhhhh. Good, moving on...

In all honesty my trainer was my mom. I'm replacing her. So I know I can ask her if I need help when she's gone. But today...my head hurts. Can I do something easy like...uh...don't make me open the mail...there are checks in there!!! Ahhhhhhhhh!

I survive Day 1. Mostly because the Attorney is out of town so he can't bug me every 10 minutes.

Graduation Day

It's freezing. Ok, by California standards it is freezing. It's 58ºF at 5:00 p.m. And I have reason to be freezing; I am in a dress. A slinky, black dress. A knee-length, arm-baring, chest-showing, slinky black dress. I have decided that I'm wearing flat shoes and a big cozy hoodie into the "backstage" area of graduation, and there's nothing anyone can do about it, because, well, it's my night, and I want to be warm while getting to the "dressing area." I look longingly at my phone, but leave it in the car. And now...I dash...ok, I amble, better? I amble across the parking lot and go find my polyester robe and cap.

Yay. It's black. How fetching. Oh, and the cap is one-size-fits-all with an elastic adjustment band in the back. I am so glad that I decided to be me, be different, and add a purple sparkley floral hair piece in my red hair. It matches the purple stole they place around my neck for my legal degree.

The photographer totally photographs my bad side. I hate him.

I find my family and give them the hoodie (come back hoodie! It's cold!) then go mingle. Oh wait. I don't know anybody...oh I know a couple names. Everyone else is a complete stranger.

They finally invite us inside at 6:30, and tell us to find our names on the tape on the floor so we'll be in proper places for the seating. It's a pretty simple concept. You have a piece of paper showing the seating chart and your name is highlighted. In one of two colors. Green or Purple. Names are attached to the floor on index cards in one of two colors. Green or Purple. Match the two. It was like watching people have brain aneurysms to get the concept and find their own name on the floor. Especially the legal group. I muttered "These are my peers?"

We stand around and I'm starting to feel yucky. Hadn't felt well all weekend. Almost walked away from graduation...but now I'm sitting on the stage. What lovely spot lights you have Luther Burbank...I mean Wells Fargo Center for the Performing Arts. How blindingly shiny they are.

Someone talks. Then someone else talks. Then the guest speaker talks. I think. I can only hear half of it. My butt hurts. The two girls next to me have to pee. The crowd is restless. The speaker finishes and I think "Aha. Now...the walk!" ... PSYCH!

"Now we have 18 awards to hand out!" What? 18? Holy crap, we're going to be here FOREVER! None of the recipients know they are getting awards. Each department chose their best student...and each one was surprised. Now...the "Outstanding Legal Student".

They talk about this person with high regard. They think this person is pretty incredible. "The best legal writer the department has ever seen"...Wow. I'm looking around. And then it hits me. It's me. They're talking about me. I know I'm good. I just never thought I was noticed. I never believed I would win an award meant for the single best legal student. They get through the rest of the awards...and FINALLY it's time to walk across the stage.

We walk out the double doors after everyone has been announced (Me, 3.98 GPA, President's Honors, 100% attendance, Outstanding Legal Student - Specialized Associate's Degree-Paralegal). We walk out into a CRUSH OF HUMANITY (I use this term loosely). I find my family...They give me flowers and my jacket and they say "see ya at home" (I don't blame them). All I want to do is get to the table to turn in my "gown" (the polyester garb is NOT a gown. Gowns are made by Oscar de la Renta. Versace. Vera Wang. Isaac Mizrahi. This was a burkah without the hood) and my cap and find the exit for some life sustaining air.

I succeed, after diving through the sea of bodies. I probably could have crowd surfed to the table. I wonder what would have happened if I started a mosh pit? The caliber of some of those people, I think they would have joined in. I get there and turn in my non-designer "gown" and cap, and spot friends finally in the crowd...we motion toward one another and push our way outside. FREEDOM! AIR! FREEDOM! AIR! (which do I love more, I don't know, but I am reminded of my intense, visceral hatred for crowds, and my love of my personal space bubble).

My sweet friends give me some lovely gifts. A photo frame and a squeezey fish that lights up with eyes the bulge out...for when my boss makes me mad. We laugh about it, then talk a bit. Then go our separate ways.

It feels odd to be done and be called a "paralegal." For now, I'm perched on a parapet - but will I soar toward the periwinkle sky...or plummet to the earth? Time will tell.