Commuting is hard... Golden Gate Transit is a cryptic, unpredictable mess and leaves me wiped out as soon as I get home. Which is too bad, because I really should be blogging regularly these days. I feel like important parts of the Great Change are underway, maybe even more important than any that occurred during law school. These are the parts where I finally learn about how to be a lawyer.
There's mechanical things I'm learning about, having lately gotten to be up close and personal with all sorts of legal documents (removal notices, proposed orders, demurrers, etc.) and such. Also, yesterday, for the very first time ever (well, except for an appellate hearing or two) I got to go to court! It's kind of embarrassing, actually, that in three years of law school I never had occasion to get there. I almost got to go last summer, but the trial I was to see got postponed. And I didn't get to do a practical clinic that might have had me appear in one myself because I went abroad instead, so I'm trying to catch up for lost time. Anyway, yesterday one of the attorneys I work with had to appear in support of a motion and I went with her. It was really fascinating, watching how it all played out and listening to the arguments that preceded ours. It drove home something I've been coming to realize just by finally hanging out with practicing lawyers: that there's a lot of generally unspoken intangibles about the practice that one needs to learn. This includes things like mastering the quirks and processes of each court (e.g, attorneys sign in for court in San Francisco, but not so in Santa Clara), as well as the subtle knowledge that only experience can bring. As an example, a conversation with my boss the other day revealed that there's the way the law works theoretically, and then there's how a judge might realistically rule. In other words, you can shoot for the stars for your client, and you might be right, but judges have natural inertia and are not going to be prone to rule extravagantly for your client, no matter how justified such a ruling might appear to be. Judges prefer to take smaller steps, and by recognizing this tendency the lawyer can achieve better results through better strategy.
It's things like these that I keep discovering every day as I begin to finally ascend this massive learning curve of how to be a lawyer. So while of course if I could just snap my fingers I'd love to find myself in some nice litigation associate position I could grow in for a while, until I'm able to come up with one I'm starting to feel better about the other opportunities I've managed to cobble together. I now have at least through the middle of January scheduled with exciting, educating, and for the most part paying work. In fact, I just got a paycheck, the first one of any significant size in a long, long time. (I can pay my rent! Whee!). But not everything I do for money these days is law related. On Saturday, for instance, I'm babysitting...