Hard Lessons Learned

The summer is a good time to reflect on the crazy stories that make up a career in law.

It is the middle of one of the funkiest weather summers ever, and my kids yesterday said they can’t wait to go back to school.(?) While it is true that rain almost every single day seems downright tropical, it gives one time for pensiveness — about your current state, your past and your future. This week I am reminded of several incidents in my career that I wish could be erased, and I thought I would share some with you.

I will never forget my first day as a summer associate in Biglaw. I was tasked to draft a complaint. I was given a template and sent on my way. Two hours later, the partner who had assigned the work came to check on me. I admitted to her that I had not gotten very far because I couldn’t get the text in the caption box of the complaint to align. She calmly patted me on the head and showed me how litigators don’t need to reinvent wheels through the magic of records files…

There was the time when I was simply too tired and failed to hit “save” on the memorandum that was due the next morning. And lost the document that I had been slaving over for an hour and a half. Or, 1.5 for you still billing.

At a summer mixer, I asked if a person was a partner at the firm, and was boozily told that there are big offices in firms and little offices in firms, and that he had a big office.

When hired later in life by an upstate firm I was to meet the Senior Associate responsible for recruiting me for an early morning round of golf. Wanting to make the best impression possible, I arrived at the club early, practiced putting, and walked back to my locked car to retrieve my clubs, when I saw the keys hanging in the ignition.

Twice, I lost items on Metro-North. Once, I left a suit jacket on the luggage rack, which was never returned or retrieved by lost and found. (Side note, if you thought the airlines had interesting stuff from lost luggage, head to the bowels of Grand Central sometime and you will discover the wonders of lost and found.) The other incident was when I left a pie from the Little Pie Company (sour cream apple), as well as my briefcase. We chased the train all the way to Poughkeepsie, only to see the conductor throw the pie in the trash, and no briefcase – until a year later, when I received a call from lost and found. They had my briefcase. When I retrieved it, it had a Quran inside, notes from Brooklyn Law School classes, and my phone bill and gum from over a year earlier. So, not only did someone from my alma mater take a briefcase that wasn’t theirs — and use it to attend law school —  they lost said briefcase and it was returned to me. Definitely one of the weirder stories of my career.

Sponsored

Then there is the good stuff. The office sex and drugs. The love quadrangles between partners and their clients, and their wives and their clients. The sending of limos for briefcases, the debauched parties and debauched partners. The firm boondoggles where champagne flowed freely until it ran out, and then a partner would take a group to a strip club. And oh, yes, Canadian strip clubs, where everything goes, making Las Vegas look tame. The inter-firm fighting over points and compensation, the skullduggery of taking clients out. Introducing sketchy “former” Mossad agents to a group of young associates. The utilization of client funds resulting in firm litigation. The settlement of said litigation resulting in a cover up from the partnership at large. I could write a book. Maybe I will. Keep cool, keep dry, and keep billing.


After two federal clerkships and several years as a litigator in law firms, David Mowry is happily ensconced as an in-house lawyer at a major technology company. He specializes in commercial leasing transactions, only sometimes misses litigation, and never regrets leaving firm life. You can reach him by email at dmowry00@gmail.com.

Sponsored