Defying Expectations

My partner and I now have a target date to end the slouching towards the end of our law practice: November 15, 2010. Our friend Stuart is due to move to our offices that day, take over our overhead, and, along with our friend Brian, essentially take over our law business.

We'll stick around after that, of course, to consult on the cases, and try to keep making rain. But, for the first time since 1986, I won't have a desk in an office outside of my house...

Before I left for vacation, I started packing up. I found my diplomas in a storage room (when we moved into our current office in July, 2007 we decided we were too cool to hang them on the wall) and popped them into a box.

I guess I should have held each one, looked skyward like in a movie drama, and mused upon the memories involved in attaining each one, but, no --just schlepped them to the car where they're still sitting in my trunk.

When my friends Jeff and Lili bought their house, they found a huge cache of diplomas, papers, and news articles about the previous owner's career. He was a Dr. Zeppa, the top UM surgeon for many years, and the force behind the building of the world reknowned Ryder Trauma Center. In fact, when you visit there, there's a 10 foot photo of him in the lobby.

Lili called his kids (his widow had been placed, demented, into a nursing home) and told them about her find. "Take all the stuff to the dumpster" Lili was told.

Instead, Lili called UM Med School, and I think they took all the memorabilia. But still --Zeppa was far more significant, career -wise, than I am, so my diplomas and admissions to several courts don't need archiving...

Saturday night, as I was walking (staggering, after 4 vodkas) to my Canes seats, I ran into an old colleague, Eddy. Eddy is a fine defense lawyer --owns a 5 lawyer firm in the Gables. He married very well --his wife is lovely.

When I told him I was shutting down, he was incredulous. His questions came faster than they do when he's deposing an ill prepared expert witness...

John Lennon, another far more significant careerist than I, said it best in "Watching the Wheels," when he noted people asked him why he no longer runs the ball...

So, I'm heading to the office today, to start the throwing out of accumulated files. I found a funny one from years ago, when I responded to a citation from Dade Animal Services, fining me because I didn't renew my cocker spaniel's license on time. Poor Alfred had died 2 years ago, and I couldn't simply tell them that.

No --the wise ass in my crafted a legal pleading, ending with "So, let sleeping dogs lie..." I'm sure the bureaucrat who got it never really got it, but they stopped sending the citations...so I guess it was effective lawyering.