Rant 0, Head Pats Lots

I had a nice rant all set to go here. I was going to lead off with some kind of riff on why religion is messed up, then get to the specifics about why certain hospitals and schools, despite being owned and operated by certain religious factions, should be absolutely no different than any other institution when it came to providing birth control as part of its health insurance package, and free, for that matter. Then I was going to point out that if my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins, then your right to freedom of religion ends where women's lives begin. And I was going to wrap the whole thing up by noting that of the illustrious panel of birth control "experts" assembled to testify before Congress today, not a single one of them could get pregnant (them all being male), and not a single one of them was a medical doctor of any sort whatever. Howdya like that, ladies? The people who purportedly run this country were going to make decisions that affect only women without asking the opinion of a single woman. (Or doctor.) You'd think that the women in Congress, at least, would find this disturbing enough to stage a walkout.

Then we settled the Burns case, and the email showed up.

Yeah, I know. Why do I worry about things legal when there's so much injustice and turmoil in the world. I dunno. Maybe because it's my job or something. Besides, I thought this case would never settle. I was expecting Boss Jason and Opposing Counsel would be tearing each other to bloody little shreds in front of Judge Fairness at the courthouse in a couple of weeks. You kind of get a feeling, when you've done this as long as I have, which ones are going to settle and which ones are going to court. Something like 98% of cases settle out of court, in case you did not know that. So spotting the ones that are going all the way is not easy.

Back to the email, though. It came from Opposing Counsel to Boss Jason, and after removing all the pertinent details so that I can post it without losing my job, what it basically said was this: "Your client should know that it was only your excellent work that enabled this settlement. I think if he were in the hands of 95% of other lawyers, we would have ended up trying his case. I think you did an excellent job and have added you to the short list of lawyers to whom I refer clients."

People, opposing counsel does NOT send complimentary email about your lawyering skills. At least, not very often. They're the black hats, remember? We're the white hats. We may be civil to each other (it is CIVIL litigation, after all) but we are not friends. To get an email like this is to receive just about the highest honor one lawyer can give another. And to hear that you're on the short list for client referrals--lordy, lordy. That's so rare as to almost be unheard of.

But wait. There's more. After that email went around the office, Boss Jason sent this one:

"I have to add Jennifer should also take some credit. She helped me get extremely prepared for depos and was responsible for drafting a large portion of the letters and motions."

Wow. Just wow. Even rarer than the complimentary email from one lawyer to opposing counsel is the complimentary email from one lawyer to a staff member. Which was obvious in the metric ton of emails I got from everybody else congratulating me. I saved all of them in my little subfile titled "Head Pats", but I may have to create a sub-sub-file because there were just so many. The assistant manager even congratulated me as he walked out the door, and he is NOT prone to That Sort of Thing.

And so, my rant dies a premature death. Well, I guess that's okay. Plenty of people are ranting on this one for me. And I'm at Afrah, and I've finished my meal, and I think I'm just gonna cut this blog post short and grab a cup of coffee before my OA meeting.