BipolarLawyerCook

I took a year off between my swanky women’s college and my super-expensive law school to work. Ok, well, I didn’t get in to the first set of schools I applied to, and I didn’t apply to a safety, so I had to take time off. The second go round, I did get in to a top tier school, but didn’t make the mistake of applying only to the Ivies. Silly me.

I would have loved to do public interest law after law school, and did, in fact, apply and get a number of interviews. However, fluency in Spanish and French notwithstanding, middle-class white woman tend to be mistrusted as new hires– we get married and have babies, I guess. So I took a clerkship with the state court system, and learned how to be a lawyer, instead. It was an excellent opportunity, and I have huge respect for the front line judges who have to hear motions and try cases, civil and criminal, day in and day out. I also gained enormous respect for the clerks, court officers, and law librarians who support the enterprise. From there, I entered private practice, and have worked in one form or another of insurance defense law since. That means I litigate cases, go to court a fair amount, and live my life by the “billable hour,” the unit of measure by which 60 of the golden hours of your life are nickel and dimed into 47.5 hours by some bean counter at an insurance company’s accounts receivable office.

I’ve worked at bigger firms and smaller firms, and now am in the process of deciding what comes next. Along the way, I’ve been certified as a mediator, and I would like to do more of that. I am disenchanted with the status quo– not so much the legal system per se, as the astonishing lack of insight that lawyers fail to bring to bear on the extremely inhumane conditions in which we practice. The hours, the speed of practice, the adversarial way in which we treat not only our opponents but our colleagues, the stereotypes we continue to apply to ourselves, preventing ourselves from being feminine, collaborative, human.

Since January of 2008, I have been doing contract legal work, freelance food and dining writing, and working on certification to do appellate work for the state’s public defender’s system. I’d like to do some work a bit more directly aimed at the public good. We’ll see where the road leads.

I initially blogged anonymously because I was afraid to get dooced. Since I started, though, I’ve become less concerned about what people think, and more concerned with honoring the truth as I see it, even if it’s something that knocks me out of the running for job. I’ve been telling political half-truths for too long, and I’m tired.

Though it should go without saying, anything you read on this site that pertains to the law is purely an expression of my opinion. It is not legal advice. I am not your lawyer. You are not my client, unless you have a letter from me, signed in actual ink. You can, however, rely that the tales I tell here are the truth as I see them. You can also call me on anything you think is bullshit. It’s OK– I’m a lawyer, I get paid to fight.

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