Typical Tuesday

My Tie Yesterday

One of the things about my job is that my schedule is not always my own.  It can change at the drop of the hat and is subject to the whims of clients, colleagues, judges, partners, and family demands.  I often wonder how I can anything done given the myriad of different things I find myself doing on any given day.  Yesterday was an example.

I got to work and began working on an emergency motion that had to be filed before noon in federal court. As I crafted my strategy for the document and began drafting it, it dawned on me that everyone had overlooked a key weakness in the opposing party's position.  The defect meant that we did not even have to file any document with the Court.  I called my co-counsel to explain my strategy and then we called the judge's clerk.  The clerk agreed with us and confirmed that we did not have to file anything.  I just saved my client and the Court a bunch of time.  Case closed and chalk one up for the good guys!

Then I turned my attention to my two other federal court filings that I had to complete before noon.

At noon, it was time to start preparing for my 2 p.m. hearing on a motion I had drafted.  I sent the Court's tentative ruling on my motion to my client and conferred briefly with my co-counsel up in Los Angeles County.

A little after 1 p.m., I headed over to the courthouse for my hearing.  I had about 10 minutes extra, so I decided to swing by the County Recorder's Office to get a copy of my son's birth certificate.  When I walked into the Recorder's Office, they told me it would take 15 minutes to get the birth certificate.  I told them I had to be in court in 10.  Luckily, it only took 5.

Not necessarily a model of efficiency...

I think I can type a lot faster than the average person who uses the self-service computers in there.  It also helped that I paid cash for the birth certificate ($23).  I can only imagine how much time it would have taken to get a check processed (write the check out...show ID...etc. etc.) or for them to run my credit card (do they even take AMEX--you know, for the miles!).  You know how painfully slow government bureaucrats can be!

Then it was off to court.  I got a couple of funny looks from the homeless people lining the Civic Center Plaza as I stretched my legs by sprinting back to courthouse--files (and birth certificate) in hand.  I did notice that those homeless people might not have had much other than their shopping carts and their bags of aluminum cans (that they turn in for recycling), but they all seemed to have matching blue tarps to protect those shopping carts from the rain we'd had the night before.  Funny how new and uniform the blue tarps looked, but I'm sure they worked great.  I wonder if my tax dollars paid for those tarps?

As I walked through the metal detectors into the courthouse, one of the sherriff's deputies complimented me on my tie (see above).  He asked me where I got it.  I'm not really noted for my fashion sense, so I have to enjoy these moments when they happen.  (The tie was made by "Chaps" in case you're wondering and I have no idea where I got it or who I got it from.  I'm assuming I didn't pick it out for myself if I was getting a compliment on it!).  I took that as a good omen.

Not my judge, but you get the idea...

It took over an hour before the judge called our case from his busy docket.  I always enjoy hearing the other cases and it gives me a chance to gauge the judge's mood and thought process before I have to argue.  In this case, there was a fascinating back-and-forth involving a woman who tripped and fell over a hidden stump in a planter box at a local Costco.  Whatever you may think about frivolous lawsuits and whether or not someone should be able to file a lawsuit if they hurt themselves because they leave the sidewalk and hurt themselves while taking a detour through a landscaped planter box, the exchange was fascinating.  The judge was 100% right on the law.  The attorney not so much...

 The judge didn't comment on my tie, but did grant my motion.  I wish I could say that it was because of my brilliant oratorical skills--but it wasn't.  Since the judge had agreed with my written logic, I knew enough not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  I think the only words I might have uttered were: "Thank you, Your Honor" when he granted my motion.  He was obviously a very wise and astute judge!  ;-)  I'm glad I won because my clients had surprised me by showing up to court.  I walked my clients out and headed back to the office.  It was now after 3 p.m.

Pho Bac...It's way better than it looks!  :-)

I actually stopped to get some lunch and then got back in the office--almost in time to leave for my son's Little League baseball game.  The game was at 5 p.m., but he only has two games left in the season so I felt like I needed to be there.  Don't worry, I made good use of the 30 minute drive time to the game by calling co-counsel on one of my matters to do some strategic planning.

At about 5:45, I left S.'s baseball game to go to R.'s baseball game.  The only problem was that R.'s baseball game was 20 minutes in the opposite direction.  I managed to pass the time by making some phone calls about the Scout activity that we had planned for that night.

Remember my prior posts about Little League baseball?  Well, I'm not sad to say that the season is almost over for both of my Little Leaguers.  But R. got on base and scored a run in the 6th inning of his game last night when his team came from behind to go up by two runs 6-4.  They ended up winning!  Yay!  R. was on cloud nine!

This type of play happens all too often in Little League...

The game didn't finish until 8:30ish (making 3+ hours of Little League in one night), which meant that we missed R.'s Scout meeting.  He was supposed to get interviewed for a rank advancement to Tenderfoot.  Looks like that will have to happen another time.  By the time we got home, it was after 9 p.m. and I had been through another 12+ hour day.

I put the kids down and then was faced with a quandry...do I crack open the laptop to do some more "homework" or do I go for a run.  The question became academic when I crashed and collapsed into bed.  I think it's the first time I've gone to sleep before midnight in a long time.  I have no idea why I was so exhausted...it was all just pretty much a typical Tuesday.  Can't wait to do it again?  :-/