Anonymous Lawyer

This weblog thing is getting addictive. At least on the weekends I feel less bad about billing clients for it. I'm kidding. This isn't billable. It's "professional reading." Well, sort of. I take your brief into the bathroom with me, though, and that I'm billing. It's nice to be here on a quiet weekend night. Well, not nice exactly. But tolerable. More than it used to be. But I play golf every Wednesday afternoon, and I take my vacation days and all in all this isn't terrible. Plus this hiring committee stuff is fun. The hardest phone call related to this stuff I ever had to take was this girl, she was from a decent school, great grades, it was totally a borderline call, could have gone either way, and it was just that the people she met didn't click with her, or something. Just wasn't strong enough in comparison. So we decided not to give her an offer, and sent her the form letter, but she called to ask what happened, and at first I put her to voice mail, and I didn't really want to deal with it, but I had to, so I called her back, and I explained that we really liked her, and it was right on the edge, nothing specific that she did, could have gone either way... and she starts crying on the phone, saying we were her top choice firm, and listing off the reasons -- and they weren't bad reasons -- and I just didn't really know what to say. I felt bad, but there was nothing I could do -- and she had an offer from a great firm. But had me on the phone for a half hour, I felt like I was talking her down from the ledge. Other than that this job is pretty cool though.