This Week
Friday, 3 July, 2009Some notes from work this week:
Item: When I am appointed to a case, I send out an introductory letter to the client explaining how appointed counsel works, what I can and can’t do, and some tips to help them through the process (i.e., show up for court). Most of these FAQs are in response to actual frequently-asked questions. This week I had to update the letter with the following:
Due to my heavy workload and the number of clients I represent, I cannot help you with personal business, such as feeding pets, picking up your mail or newspaper, paying bills, or communicating with your landlord or utilities companies. Please arrange for a friend or family member to do these things.
Yes, someone asked me to feed their dogs and pick up their mail while they were in jail. And to get the paper, so nobody could tell that he wasn’t home and break into the place. More than one someone.
Generally I only have to add a paragraph to the letter when two or more people ask me to do something. Last month, I had to add a paragraph explaining that no, I can’t also handle your divorce for free. If one more client does it, I will also need to add a paragraph saying “Dress appropriately for court– this means do not wear a t-shirt that says ’shit happens when you party naked’ to your arraignment, especially if you are facing sex-crime charges.” (Yes, this happened– also a pot-leaf t-shirt on a MIP).
Item: All law offices get free magazines in the mail. Publishers send the magazines to convince you that you need to subscribe to them to set on the coffee table in your waiting area to amuse your clients and take their minds off the screaming coming from the conference room. Most mainstream publications do this– National Geographic, TIME, Juggs– but a profusion of highly-specialized publications have also started sending our office trial issues of their journals, leaving us with an odd assortment of magazines like Christian Juggalo, or Arizona Gynecologist Gazette. Yesterday a divorce client was thumbing through an article in Walleye In-Sider magazine with a strange look on her face– turns out Walleye obsession was a trait that broke up the marriage.
Item: I’m looking forward to Monday’s arraignment schedule, following our National Holiday. I expect several new juvenile cases. Last year, the number of MIP appointments who also had bandaged and seared fingers and hands was astounding.
Item: On a sad note, my laptop is dead. Many of you remember my ultra-classy, wood-grained Dell Inspiron from lawschool. After nearly six years of faithful service, the hard-drive crapped out and it now makes a very worrying grinding noise upon startup, and tells me that it has no hard-drive. I shouldn’t be surprised, but the thing did serve me very well for longer than any other computer I have ever had. I am now writing this blog from work. I plan to get a netbook in the near future, and a desktop in the near-but-not-as-near-as-the-netbook future.









