Anonymous Lawyer

Today was our first annual Volunteer Day at the firm, orchestrated by the new Outreach Committee, organized as part of a settlement after a few of our neighbors sued us for some bogus charges they couldn't prove. But instead of dragging it out and fighting them in court, we decided to pay a little bit of money and commit to being a "nicer corporate citizen" and "giving back" to the community. The term "giving back" doesn't make any sense to me. They didn't give us anything to begin with. So there's no "giving back." It's just "giving." And when you've worked hard enough to charge $700/hour for your services, it doesn't feel very good to just "give" hours away.

I don't understand successful people doing things for free. If someone offers you a free pair of shoes, you wouldn't take it. You would think something's wrong with the shoes, that if they were any good they would cost money, that someone's trying to pull a fast one on you. It's the same way with people's time. Someone offers me something for free, I have no choice but to assume it has no value. Someone says they'll help me for free, they must not be very good at what they're offering to help me do. I wouldn't send a child to a free school, I wouldn't rely on the free police to protect my family, and I certainly wouldn't want someone building a house for me if they weren't good enough at it that they could charge some money.

Nevertheless, as part of the settlement we agreed to spend a day helping some organization build a house for poor people. As if building them a house will really solve the underlying problem of why they're poor. Anyway, we assigned each partner 3 associates, and we took our associates down to the construction site and spent the day supervising as they did the work. It was a ridiculous waste of my time to have to sit in a chair, answering e-mails on my BlackBerry, while my three associates carried wood and hammered some stuff into the ground. The chair they set up for me wasn't very comfortable, and they ran out of water bottles before lunch.

I had a side bet with one of the other partners that I could get my associates to do more work than he could, but my associates were lazy and I lost. Even the threat of weekend work didn't get them moving any faster. Toward the end of the day I realized a loophole in my side bet, and so I had my associates undo some of the work my colleague's associates did, unscrewing some bolts and knocking over some support beams, but my associates weren't even skilled enough to undo enough work to put us into the lead. The organizers were a little confused about why they were taking things apart that they should have been putting together, but I slipped one of them a $20 bill and she kept quiet.

Luckily, we were all back in the office by 6:00, so everyone was able to work a half-day anyway. It's not like clients put all their problems on hold just because we want to waste a day helping the community. It'll take two days just to catch up on the missed phone calls.