Anonymous Lawyer

I'm feeling a little guilty today. Not too guilty, but a little bit. It's not really my fault, but an associate died in a train mishap this afternoon. She was trying to make it back to the office with a box of documents we sent her across town to pick up, and she drove through the railroad crossing right as the bar was coming down, and got plowed down by a train. The other part of the tragedy is that one of our partners was on that train, heading down for a court date in another city, and ended up delayed for an hour while they dealt with the deceased associate and her car. So both clients are upset, and I'm feeling the brunt of it.

The reason I'm feeling guilty at all is that I was the one who told the associate to hurry back to the office. I may have yelled. I didn't tell her to get hit by a train. I may have told her to exceed the speed limit. I may have told her, when she called from a red light, that this was more important than traffic signals and that the firm would reimburse her if she got a ticket. I did not mention railroad crossings specifically, but I did tell her that if she got stuck at a drawbridge, she should just swim the documents across if it would save her time. But I didn't mention railroad crossings specifically, so I'm not feeling specifically accountable.

But, frankly, even if I had mentioned railroad crossings specifically (and, like I said, I'm almost entirely positive that I didn't, or if I did then I was probably kidding and she should have known that), it's her fault for needing to rush at all. We sent her to the document warehouse last Thursday with plenty of time. No one told her she needed to sleep a full night's sleep every other night. That was a decision she made on her own, and it cost her valuable time. Time she could have spent waiting for the train to cross, if she hadn't wasted that time earlier. Time she would have had to wait for the train to cross, if she hadn't attended to other, more "important" needs. She knew there would be a time crunch at the end. She chose to use her time in a way that ended up proving unwise.

And we're paying her husband for the hours she spent in the document warehouse, even though she never had a chance to enter them into the billing system, so how guilty can we really feel?