After the Leaves Have Fallen

"I wasted time, and now doth time wasteth me."

-William Shakespeare, Richard II

A gray morning in the Southern Tier, leaves all fallen but too warm to snow. We're supposed to see a high of 58 tomorrow, four days before December. So much for the great global warming hoax.

And tomorrow is my youngest's 26th birthday. Time flies. I saw a reference in the NYT to the fact that the movie Gladiator, which I've never actually seen, came out a quarter century ago. Is that even possible?

The trial ended late Thursday afternoon with a defense verdict. I drove back to the farm that night, sat visiting at the airport Friday morning with Mayor Ward and my new friend Tom the Deputy while waiting for the fog to lift, then flew back to KELM and beat Peg home by a few minutes.

As is often the case, this latest defeat in court has dragged out more insight than any success. I tried my first case to a jury in February of 1998; looking back, I've enjoyed pretty much none of it, and my won-loss record wouldn't have allowed me to keep my job if I'd been an SEC football coach. I've flattered myself with the job title "trial lawyer", but it's the corner of the legal profession where I have zero gift. Fundamentally I don't understand people, can't get inside their heads and figure out what makes them decide one way or another. So I try to reason with them like I have seven of me in the jury box, find my argument unassailable, and stare stunned into space when the verdict is read back at the end of the trial.

It's gotten worse, this disconnect between me and the folks in northwest Florida who populate the venire. They voted for DJT three times, for Pete's sake. That also draws a little disdain into the incomprehension, which likely makes me all the less persuasive.

The part of me that's what is left of my soul has always known I was in the wrong profession, as evidenced by a brief vocational chronology since leaving law school:

1997: Join the firm and start trying cases.

2000: Announce I'm leaving the firm to do huge aircraft transactions for airlines and air freight carriers at one of Atlanta's biggest firms. I change my mind when they make me a partner two years early.

2002: Stick my toe in the water with an interview for a law professorship, only to learn I'm not competitive without a published scholarly piece. I spend the next two years completing that prereq while billing 2000 hours annually.

2004: I'm certified as a circuit civil mediator, hoping this will fill my calendar and I can litigate less.

2007: I interview for several law faculty jobs, accept one, and the following year move to Charleston to teach and write, a move I equate at the time to being released from prison. I even write a novel while I am there. I had the time.

2010: Tail between legs, I return to Florida and the firm after the family dramatically fails to thrive in South Carolina. It's a bitter pill.

2015: After a year of discernment, I'm accepted into an Episcopal seminary and go to Manhattan with my youngest to scout neighborhoods. I decide not to go in large part because his major health issues need to be a priority. In retrospect, that was probably a blessing.

2018: Hurricane Michael hits, and I switch firms two months later after they bulldoze my house.

2024: I start my LLM program at NYU, hoping to learn enough tax law to litigate less or maybe not at all.

2025: I leave the second firm and go out on my own, hoping to shift my practice to mediation/arbitration and estate and business planning so I can litigate less or not at all.

Definitely a pattern there. I've always known I landed in the wrong neighborhood professionally. Is it too late to change that? I reckon we'll see.

But a lesson one might draw from all that is you're not going to do your best work at something you profoundly dislike doing. There are facets of the law that provide a perfectly good fit. The courtroom houses none of those.

Now to play a tax lecture on my computer and piddle through a rare day with no scheduled events and plenty on my desk screaming for attention.