Scoplaw

Glass Heart Uncracked

And so I finish my first courtroom stint with a whimper, not a bang, as nothing has gone to trial recently, nor have any of my specially researched issues come up - and so the caselaw and arguments sit dormant, waiting for the right client.  But I'm still in one piece and haven't picked up a contempt charge yet.  Which is good, and firmly in the non-bang category. 

I've been having productive "So how do you defend those people" conversations recently, but ones that are not the usual kind (as in, "the criminal justice system is an adversarial process, etc.")  In related thoughts, I've been rewatching Battlestar Galactica in the evenings - the cylons just took over New Caprica, and the recurring lines are:  "What do we do?"  "Fight 'em till we can't."  Which is basically the personal attitude you have to have. 

Last night was spent with red wine, good conversation (although not so much about what I do, thankfully), and a lot of walking about at odd hours.  Good head clearing walking though - I wasn't the only one apparently, as I got 4 post-midnight text messages from various people who didn't sleep.  Something is probably in retrograde.  The rest of this weekend should be a sedate one.  I've already made soup and am thinking about getting the sewing machine going to make some alterations.  On-the-bike Scoplaw is several inches less around than the Not-on-the-bike Scoplaw.  Plus, since I won't have umpteen cases constantly rolling for trial, any which of one might go, I can wear some non-trial/general work suits in the courtroom.

Wasted Wishes

So I got back on the bike, twice, and tooled around the keys.  It was just enough to get my metabolism back up and let me know exactly how much this two month long coughing/sickness jag had taken out of my cardiovascular system.  Still, even with my reduced wind, I wasn't completely hopeless after my long bikeless stretch.

But then came the sunburn across my back and shoulders, which was decidedly unfun.  I got to meet some very nice people (a professor, a school-teacher, a med student, and a roommate) while still in the "I can feel every fiber in my shirt" stage.  I talked (briefly, but more to come I hope) about Thoreau and Emerson.  In Miami.  With someone who knew what they were talking about.  (!). 

Today was the bubblepop phase as all the blisters decided they'd had enough of being blisters.  It made for an itchy and uncomfortable court calendar.  Still, when you have bubble-wrap packing sheet issues like I do, it's kind of fun when your back is magically transformed into a similar substance.

So now it's just me, a glass of red wine, Tylenol, the Red Sox on the radio, palmer's lotion, a raging appetite, and another week without trials.  Meh.  I won't even get into the latest state absurdities.  People are facing layoffs and there's vacillation on the most obvious of money-wasting-for-no-point issues.  Well, we all can't be appreciative of Kantian ethics, I suppose, when justice-at-any-cost results in injustices elsewhere.

All in all not a bad week.  I'd endure the sunblisters for good company any time.  Although the two are not related in any way.

The Samely Different (a post in which the author of the blog touches on past, present, and future, in his usual rambling quasi-autobiographical way.)

Well, some email has rolled in, given the tenor of the next-to-last post.  So, I thought I’d sit down and try to see what’s changed with me in the past year or so.

First though, I have some BIG news – I’ll be shipped out of my old division to a new one soon. That means a new judge, new clients, new types of cases (basically the old crimes cases with the addition of traffic cases), and a new trial partner(s).

Most important, my clients will be OUT OF JAIL!!! That changes everything – for example, a defense continuance no longer means several weeks of my client eating bad food, wearing an orange jumpsuit, being crowed into unsanitary, insanely loud, constantly lit, and freezing concrete and metal surroundings, while being separated from his family, simply so his attorney can get something crucial squared away.

Yea! (that deserves its own paragraph.)

In other changes, my Mental Health client load will be nearly non-existent by comparison, giving me more time to focus on that. I’ll be actually in the office (instead of in court) during regular business hours. So I’ll be taking more depos, and doing a different kind of investigatory work. I also expect my motions practice to pick up, which could be interesting since that used to be one of my strengths before I began work in my “they’re-in-jail, just-try-it” division. My workload is probably also going to drop, in the sense that I won’t be pulling 7am to 9:30pm days (as I did this past Thursday).

Outside of the court room, this means I’ll be able to be more in Miami itself (during daylight hours) and take care of some personal things that have been on the back burner during my stint in my soon-to-be-old division. (No more vacation days burned on getting my student loans in order!)

Or so rumor has it. I haven’t gotten official word as I was in trial (post below) when the news was announced.

I’ll be sad to leave my current courtroom(s) and my trial partners. Given the staffing travails we’ve undergone, what with people leaving and being sick and coming on to be trained, it’s sort of the worst time to leave, from my selfish perspective. Since we’re just now cruising at full strength I want to keep the pressure on the state (This has resulted in 4 jury trials in 2 weeks, to say nothing of the 2 cases the state nolle prossed last-minute before picking a jury, with our client dressed in a suit and sitting at our table!)

However, its also perhaps the best time to be moved, since things are working well. I told my mom fighting the state was like keeping your hands around the closed jaws of a snake – you don’t want to let go until you’re sure the next person has a firm grip.

I have *every* confidence in my trial partners – I just wish we had more time to develop even more strategies together, since we have changed how we found our division in pretty significant ways.  In fact, just today, I was reviewing some old materials and came across a note written by one of my partners that said “Go on X, not Y.” I had asked him to research a last minute issue that would determine how we’d attack one particular argument the state was going to be making. We had only the most minor of opportunities to discuss it (trials are fluid things). I was busy with other trial issues, so he just handed me the note, right before the issue was ripe. And so I stood up and did my thing, fully trusting that my partner had framed the issue correctly and was going to be able to back me up on it. He had, and we won pretty convincingly. It takes awhile for me to develop that level of trust with people, and I’m going to miss having both my partners at my side.    

I’ll only be across the hallway though, so I’ll be able to pitch in as required, certainly with the daily heavy lifting if someone’s sick or ill.   

I’ll also be sad to leave my judges – the 3 regular judges I’ve had, plus the recurring covering judges we get from time to time. I felt I could work with all of them – although each of them has their own unique style, and none would ever mistake one for the others. 

I’m wondering how different things will be with my new judge. I know that the protocols of that courtroom are different (more formal), which might even be something of a welcome change. I’m getting very colloquial in my practice – I almost addressed a judge as “Judge” the other day, instead of “Your Honor”. Seems like a small thing I know, but it’s emblematic of what I don’t always think is an appropriate relaxation on my part. I’ve heard very good things about the new judge, and already have some expectations about what kinds of things I’ll be able to do in that particular courtroom (as opposed to being in *any* courtroom with less clients, daily drama, and more time to get truly creative with my practice).

I think the funniest thing is the new judge’s demeanor on the bench, which has drawn both praise and criticism from the various and sundry defendants, witnesses, courtroom personnel, advocates and attorneys. I told my mom the good and the bad on the phone yesterday and she started laughing, “But Scoplaw, that’s YOU!” And not-quite-sadly, I had to agree. So it should be an interesting ride, given that I don’t always respond to myself well.

**

As far as what’s changed with me in the past year, I think there are a number of lines anyone can draw in their life – significant events which change the daily tenor of what we do, or even, how we do. But such lines are never nearly as clean as we subsequently pretend them to be. So with that in mind, I’m drawing a line about 9 months ago, although what happened just before and just after make it a broad fuzzy line. 

About 9 months ago, I moved to FL – not knowing more than two people in the entire state south of Orlando. That whole surrounding period, from May to August, was pretty momentous: the final dissolution of what had been a very important relationship, graduating law school, leaving DC (which on some level I still love, and with which I had a good life), studying for the bar, taking that exam, taking on new and very important responsibilities in a strange place, wherein I didn’t know the local lingo and customs. All in all, it was a story about moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar, about relying on what I knew, and trying to make new things happen.

Basically, as soon as I arrived, my work took over my life. However, even early on, I was able to get a lot of things done that I wanted to, and the degree to which my work has impacted my free time has only changed for the better, albeit slowly. So, yes, I still do the very Scoplawic hunting through junkstores, visiting libraries, watching movies, reading books, writing poetry, buying and cooking food, building and riding bikes, socializing with interesting people – but all these not as much, and all these somewhat more desperately snatched from the mundanities of dishes and laundry and vacuuming and getting suits and shoes and self ready for court each day. However, a good deal of “moving to a new place/starting a new profession” things are simply done by now – no more bar exam/character and fitness review to eat up my weekends, no more trying to find adequate local suppliers of avocados and bicycle parts.

What I haven’t been able to do is take on any significant new learning (I had fantasizes of resuscitating my Spanish), although I have picked up a few things here and there, as I’m wont to. I’m also not sure I’ve had enough reflective time to really come to grips with all the changes that happened in my life in that last bit in DC phase. I know I have, and that it’s mostly done. I’m not sure it’s entirely done or not. Which is part of the problem of not having enough reflective time - these things have to be tracked, not thought about once or twice.

The really significant learning/growth has come mostly from courtroom/trial experience, as well as from rapidly moving through a lot of clients.

The office down here was tremendous in as far as it gave me both training and discretion to do what I thought I could for my clients. After an August shadowing a truly exceptional felony attorney, and a crash course (self-taught) in FL crim law/procedure, I was moved into the most frenetic division in county court. At first the workload was overwhelming, as was the feeling that I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was able to keep going though, largely because I knew that Law School, whatever it was, wasn’t interested in teaching and drilling the skills you need to succeed in a courtroom. Of course, Law School, especially the clinic, was invaluable in actually getting me ready for the job as well – just not always in the most obvious ways.  I have to say there’s no way in hell I’d have done the job well without my clinical experience. The summer internships were crucial, but the clinic gave me a way to personally contextualize the abstractions of the law into actual client representation; it taught me about practice and set me in motion.

So, after a relatively slow start in terms of trials, I’ve been able to get my feet under me and get some stuff done. I have my favorite moments (and some never to be repeated arguments) and on the whole, I think it’s been a tremendously great experience, no matter how much I whine about FL as a cultural wasteland.

I’m *much* more comfortable in a courtroom, even in front of a (literally) red-faced and shouting judge. I feel I have some grasp of both trail strategy and technique. I’m at least becoming somewhat acquainted with the rules of evidence in a practical way. (There’s an analogy to be made between literature academics in relation to poets, and appellate lawyers/law academics in relation to trial attorneys. You tend to use the same rules/information differently, and one seldom appreciates the other’s efforts.)

All in all, in the past 9 months, I’ve been to jury trial about 16 times? plus another 4 or so dispositive motions where witnesses were called and crossed. We’ve had probably twice that number of near misses (cases we’re completely ready on), ranging from nolle prosses early on during trial day, to (more rarely) ones given in the middle of actually picking the small panel. If we considered the number of cases the state declared ready on at the day of trial, which we then discovered had fatal flaws, turned over our cards, and got the state to drop the charges, I’d guess it would be about 60 or so. I’d also have to guess we’ve had well over 10 motions to dismiss (no witnesses called) granted by the judges as well. (Oddly, I don’t remember the wins all that well. I do remember each Guilty verdict quite clearly though – there are 4 of them, 3 single counts and one split.)

The backdrop to this is about 1500 clients (just me personally, not my division) the vast vast majority of whom are offered and take credit-time-served sentences, with or without a formal finding of adjudication, at one point or another.

I’m not sure I could have done this in any other office in the country. I mean, anecdotally, I think my experience has been unusual. It’s certainly subjectively recent to me in odd ways. Someone asked me (questionnaire) what my profession was. I said “attorney” – but it felt kind of weird to say, like I was still pretending at it or something.

Anyway you slice it, it’s a tremendous amount of courtroom experience to digest – and I’m sure I haven’t done so as well as I ideally might. And that, in effect, is what’s been largely occupying my brain for the past nine months.  There are a lot of things I haven’t yet done, but I think I’ve gotten a tremendous exposure to trial practice, plus a sampling of the more random scenarios and unusual hearings.

So, I’m largely the same, everything’s still there. I’m just working with a different focus at a different level of intensity. I may not have as much time to write long posts about poetics, but for now I must leave that to others, without very much regret.

Or not, depending on what happens with the new division.   

Damn it.

Sheldon Brown died. 

Sheldon was a man who rode bicycles.  A lot.  And thought.  A lot.  And decided to share what he knew.  On an epic scale - with no renumeration but your satisfied curiosity.

I'm not sure how one can possibly measure the number of people Sheldon was a virtual mentor for - nor the number of people who were encouraged to fix a bike, get on it, and in so doing, slowly begin to realize a vision of what our world could be - how we could live healthier, less wasteful, more aware and creative lives. I like to think the here and now is enough - that one must not need to be purchasing something in preparation for, jetting off, driving toward elsewhere to live.  And if Sheldon stood for anything, it was the counter principal; build, ride, live, right now.  And that seems to be something that people realize.

I'm currently working on a Pugeot fixed gear, frame found on the side of the road.   It may be a gift bike, or a loaner for anyone who visits.  Her name is Sheldon. 

Working in the Background

I'm hopeful I'll finally be able to shake this whatever-it-is I've been carrying around.  I keep trying to kick it out and it won't go past the door-sill.  Grr.  Uninvited guests are usually a joy.  This one ain't. 

A lot of the background work I've been putting into the division has paid off in expected ways - which then pays off in unexpected ways.  I thought I'd have to cancel yet another doctor's appointment when the State continued their pattern of nolle pross or CTS on our trail cases, enabling me to get some more (and more potent) western medicine.  I'm not sure the last case we had which involved further jail time/additional terms for anyone.  I mean, we've had them, but just not in the past few weeks.  For us (as a division) "a few weeks" means about 100 cases set for trial. 

I passed on what sounded like a very fun trip to Savannah, GA with friends.  Besides coughing in the car with them for 10 hours (ack!), I've a few housekeeping things to catch up on, not to mention some trial prep.  (I snapped a great pic of The Mayor with our stack of cases - it was about 1.5 feet deep on his desk.)  We must be ready on everything we must be ready on, of course.  This week features some charges I haven't seen before, some interesting issues, and a handful of cases that, if not dropped, must go to trial for different structural reasons.  So I'm fairly confident that I'll be in front of a jury on Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs.  Unless of course, the state crumbles.  Which happens. 

Some of you may have read about the massive budget problems the FL judiciary is facing, resulting in threatened lay-offs.  I think my job is fairly secure, but in any event I'm not worried.  One thing I do well is land on my feet and go on.  And to be honest, I haven't really spent all that much time thinking about it, except for a few seconds of very non-emotional "huh - well, I guess I'd have to do X, Y, Z."

**

It's good Friday, which means I have the day off.  Yea!

And it certainly looks like an awesome and breezy day outside in my tropical city.  I got a wedding invite recently for cousins who are getting hitched down in the D.R. which will be fun.  I'm not saying Miami has jaded me, but the weather above our palm trees is *so* consistently amazing down here that the thought of the D.R. is kind of ho-hum. 

I have to wonder how much the fact that I love my job, despite the chronic overworkedness, comes from a) our success for our clients, b) the awesome weather and sunlight, c) the ability to bicycle at any point  in the day/week/year without massive prep work, d) the amazing people I work with.  I mean, I don't want to imply that I don't inherently love what I'm fortunate enough to be paid to do.  Because I do.  But I could see it getting to me if I were slush-bound, in low-lit dark weather, jury/voir-dire-less, and/or working with a bunch of disengaged self-absorbed would-be litigators.  Which I understand happens in places.  The Mayor and I talk about this a lot - he's from Uruguay, I'm from New England, so we both understand real seasons.   

I think I'm going to go goof off for a bit.  Buy a cigar.  Have an aguapanela or a cuban coffee, a couple of pastelitos de guayaba.   Walk around in Little Havana for a bit listening to a new set of Skatalites songs.  Stop in a cafe and work on some poetry.  Maybe catch dinner/whiskey later with The Mayor. 

I'll stop by the office at some point and get a few things done in there as well, probably with the window open. 

Hmm.  Sounds like a plan.  See y'all soon.

Random Senses of Arrival

Discussing Uribe with a quite-gorgeous 6ft-plus-tall red-headed Scandinavian political-science professor over avocado and arrugula.  One so-seldom gets to write such things.   
Having the State nolle pross or offer CTS on all of our divisions trial cases.  Almost like they were scared to go to trial.  Heh.
Introducing a dear friend to Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter and other random cultural goodies - and not infecting her with the plague.
Watching the State implode (bad faith violations/misrepresentations to the court) to the point where we flat-out manhandled a Richardson hearing into a nolle pross.
4 unexpected weekend phonecalls from old friends - none more northerly than the Carolinas.
Actual moments of unexpected just-nothing-happening which feels surprisingly like boredom.
Still being sick.
Spending a night reading poetry aloud. 
Being totally unphased (but still confused) when a slightly-something inmate started screaming at me, "You're a fucking vampire!" over and over. 
Cresting over the eleven-hundred client mark.  That's in 200 days here.   
Hearing nice things about my rep. and practice from strangers via strangers.

** 

I am filled with an increasing conviction that I have space to make things happen now.  I'm not sure why I have this sense of "yeah, I can handle it" pushing-everything-backness. 

Perhaps it's a feeling that our division is back to full strength with the addition of our new cracker-jack trial partner (it's now me, The Mayor, and our new Lioness, which drops us under 200 cases per person for the first time in a couple of months).  Perhaps it's now that I'm most Sr. attorney in our division, on either side of the aisle.  (We burn through 'em fast, and my "status" is purely nominal and measured only in weeks - but it's pretty cool to have been able to implement a plan, remake a division, and start bringing people into that plan.)  Perhaps I'm thinking creatively about the law again; enough recent arguments have stuck at trial to, I hope, give the state pause.  But beyond that, I feel I'm again starting to braid interesting ideas together strategically and am once again getting aggressive with the state. 

While I can still grow (tons! obviously!) as an attorney - I feel less "rushed" about it.  I don't mean that to sound lazy, but rather that I feel I am actually working on growing *now,* instead of being caught in the mad rush of clients, cases and trials, all-the-while hoping that "someday" I'll be able to start making legal headway. 

And what to do with my increasing amount of "free" time?  I think it's time to resuscitate my cooking and finish off a long lingering poetry project. 

Of course, this could all just be the cold medicine talking.

Reason #1342 in my Dislike of Fossil Fuel Driven Transportation

Alternative titles to this post could have been:

Another Day, Another Grease Tat

Why I Shave My Legs

Pavement Surfing 101

But, anyway, reason 1342 would be oil, on the road, literally.  Which'd result in a drop-'n-slide and yet another grease tat for the Scoplaw.  Ouch.

All in all it wasn't too bad, but the ride endorphins are fading out and the pain's coming in.  And of course, the one thing that I don't have in the office (stopped by to get some folders on the way home) is a bottle of pain killers.  I *do* have Neosporin here though, thankfully, and I had water to clean it on site. 

What happened was this: I was cornering at a reasonable rate of speed on smooth pavement, pavement that featured an oil slick, created by some oblivious motorist, no doubt.  Front wheel shot out from under me, and since I corner by leaning, I went down pretty fast, but caught a lot of weight on my gloved hands.  (Thank you reflexive brain! though shoulder may complain to you later.)  It was basically one of those classic grating slides, which I much prefer to sudden stops by (or into) immobile objects, or worse, getting hit by perpendicularly mobile objects with more mass than I. 

Hush lost some aluminum off her brake handles, I lost some skin off my legs and elbow.  Oddly (or not), the new road patch on my elbow overlays my old scars there, which, I think, protected me somewhat.  (I've been building this one up for over 15 years.)  My right hip flexors, bad shoulder, and both my palms are just now informing me they were involved as well, but I think only moderately.  My cycling gloves protected my hands, my shorts protected my hip, The top of my shoe caught a lot of friction instead of my leg, and so, all in all it wasn't that bad, also due to the smoothness of the roadway and lack of sand.  I'm actually most worried about the shoulder. 

While there wasn't much blood, there were some glass bits which reminded me of just when the inconvenience of leg-shaving pays off.  It's *so* much easier to tweezer out glass, pebbles, and dirt if there's not a mat of hair and blood to get through first.  Sorry for the image kids, but from the non-bicycling middle Americana I find myself amongst, I endure a lot of random comments.

It's just another one to walk away from.  And if you squint, it sort of looks like Jesus:

 

(pause)

I think this is mid-week or something.  I've been in trial 3 days running (basically 12+hr days) and tomorrow is a trial day.  We lost the first, which was disappointing on many levels, but there's an appeal there - so we're not quite done.  We won the second, which was, in many ways, more of a stretch going into it all. 

Tomorrow - who can say?

The week has thusfar featured more than usual courtroom drama, including a couple of contempt charges (client, not me), alleged criminal behavior in the courtroom itself, shouting, finger pointing, and frantic scrambling to manage absurdly large calendars prior to trial.  Out of the craziness came some nice and unsought kudos from judges, prosecutors, and clients.  I think when I have time to digest things, this will go down as a good week - right now there's (always) some major or minor emergency in the fore of my brain that's demanding my attention to the exclusion of reflection.  And honestly, I'm a bit afraid to pause for fear of not getting through the rest of my tasks.  Starting and stopping over a short span has always (for me) been more exhausting than going twice that distance in one stretch.

**
Coda - Today I got the most random and lovely gift in the mail.  I plan to very carefully explore it this weekend.  I don't think I'll be able to give it and/or the complex but useful instructions proper attention until that time.  More details on that when it happens.  Thank you Kat!

Small Complaint

Well, my little viral and bacterial houseguests seem to have been finally kicked out - there's a really nasty strain of something going around the jail/offices down here.  That's the good news.  I'm a bit run down, but most of the mending is already done.

Also in good news was being able to hack through weekend bond hearings and get a lot of people released and/or their charges dropped.  My opposite numbers for the state attorney's office seemed pretty reasonable in this regard for nearly all our cases.  The juvenile cases break your heart though, especially the 12 year olds.

The bad news is my body is telling me today is Friday, given that the hearings on Sat. and Sun. were 8am-6pm days, door to door.  And after a Monday (8am-6pm in court) involving two contempt charges against a client, another walk-in client being locked up, a bit more than usual trial-day craziness/drama, a huge calendar, a voir dire (we go to trial today), and a generally angry and desperate set of boxes (both men and women), I could use something of a break. 

Amongst all the craziness, I did have three absolutely great clients - one calls me "blue eyes," another calls me "lucky charm."  Then there's the current trial client - everything you can ask for in terms of working with a client: engaged, funny, perceptive, appreciative, hopeful but not cocky. 

Even on the very worst days all you need is one client to say "thanks" - either overtly or through their attitude.  That's fuel to keep going for the next 24 hours.   Sometimes the whole week.

New Addition to my Neighborhood

A fishbowl.