The Rose Garden, Chapter 19 – In the Wilderness

Law office boardroom, Source https://www.htwlaw.ca, Author Tony Wong (Free Use)

“Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it?  I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert ” (Isa. 43: 19).

Kite flying was something I did not do well as a child.  Still, I tried every summer to make a successful kite, one that would soar overhead.

I was aware that kites could be purchased at the local five and dime, but did not think to ask for one.  It was clear such frivolities were beyond the family’s means.  Instead, I constructed my kites of the materials at hand:  loose-leaf paper and cardboard, bakery string, and rags.

The kites did rise briefly, but never very high, resolutely though I ran with them down the hill in front of our house.   I dreamed occasionally, myself, of flying — capable in dreams of rising effortlessly off the ground, like a bird, whenever I wished.

I was not very adept at sledding either.  Snow did not fall often enough in the Bronx to allow much opportunity for practice, and the hill in front of our house was not particularly steep.  I did not view these conditions as bearing on my sledding abilities.  Despite them, I persisted.

Emotional Transparency

The situation was much the same at the first legal firm at which I worked.  This was a medical malpractice firm.  I had not heard of malpractice before; knew only that I wanted litigation.  Suddenly, the biology major I had pursued made sense.

My first firm specialized in brain-damaged infant cases. These are among the most serious and difficult, with large monetary value.  Because of that, trials in this specialty are hard for a young attorney to come by.  One of the first principles driven home to me was that the attorney’s ego must be secondary to the clients’ good.

Trial work here was the Holy Grail, the measure of an attorney, but always something mysterious, as well. As young attorneys, we jockeyed over the few available trial opportunities.  Little by little, we acquired the necessary skills.

I, however, made a fundamental mistake.  I let my feelings of insecurity show at the office.

Fear is a natural component of trial work.  Those who have done it for any length will confirm this.  We carry the responsibility of the clients’ welfare.  The full force of risk falls upon us.

We have high rates of alcoholism and substance abuse; are prone to depression; die of heart failure and stroke, sometimes in the courtroom.

We are an irreverent bunch.  Some of this is due to the fact our jobs require us to push the envelope.  Some of it is a reaction to the stress — a response that, as children, my sister and I used to call “laughing in the face of death.”

Unfortunately, my emotional transparency (a consequence of boundary violation) was viewed as a vulnerability.  No matter how hard I worked, I was passed over.

As young attorneys, we often had to request the rescheduling of trial dates by the courts.  We joked that our cards should read, impressively, “Adjournments in All Courts.”

With litigation as common as it is in this country, court calendars are heavy.  Judges are impatient to move cases along.  Adjournments were not always easy to secure.

On one particular occasion, I was instructed by the Office Manager to obtain a short adjournment on a case already marked “final.”  On the way to court, I had an accident on the parkway.

It was a rainy day.  Traffic was heavy, but moving.  A vehicle entering from the right caused the driver ahead of me to stop suddenly.  I slammed on the brakes in order to avoid a collision, and went into a spin on the wet pavement.

Time seemed to stand still.  A huge truck came into view.  I closed my eyes and gripped the wheel, anticipating impact.  Expecting to die.

Instead, my vehicle came to a soft stop.  I opened my eyes to find I had spun 180 degrees and was facing the vehicle originally behind mine, our bumpers barely touching.

None of us in the vehicles involved had been injured.  The police took a report, but we decided as a group to go on with the day.  As far as I know, no litigation ever resulted.

My concern at that moment was getting to court on time.  I got back in my car, drove the rest of way, and managed to get the necessary adjournment.

To my dismay, the Managing Partner was unhappy with my efforts.  Though my inadvertent mentor, he accused me of having manipulated the situation, so that no other attorneys would be available on the adjourned date, and I could try the case.

I was stunned.  Thankfully, I could point to the Office Manager’s written instructions.

I never mentioned the accident.  There seemed no point.

Things reached such a level of frustration for me at the firm that I found myself crying in the office bathroom one day.  As I sat on the edge of the tub, it suddenly dawned on me that I deserved better.  I dried my tears, walked out, and gave notice.

Attacking the Insecurity

On very nearly my last day, the Senior Partner made a remark in passing that finally demystified trial work for me.  “Trial work,” he said, “requires comfort with confrontation.”  Had I only realized that sooner.

To that point, confrontation for me had implied defeat.  I fought hard, but did not see myself as the equal of my adversaries.

The problem was not one of inexperience.  It harked directly back to the incest.  In a dispute, I did not think I would be believed.  More than that, I felt that defeat would result in my obliteration — the child fearful for her life.

Once the source of my insecurity was identified, I could attack it.

Several years later, on a review at another firm, I was characterized as “territorial and confrontational.”  The remark was not intended as a compliment.  My employers never knew how proud I was to have earned it.

Rape Cases

I worked next at a general litigation firm.  This broadened my experience to include premises liability and the subspecialty of rape.

Oftentimes, victims of rape will have no monetary recourse against their attackers.  Either their assailants are never located or they are what attorneys term “judgment proof,” i.e. without the financial means to satisfy a judgment.

Under the law of negligence, the risk reasonably to be perceived is said to define the duty to be obeyed.  Risk, in other words, is assessed prospectively, not with the benefit of hindsight.

As a practical matter, what this means for crime victims is that they can — under appropriate circumstances — bring civil suit for damages not only against the individuals having committed crimes against them, but the landlords of those premises where the crimes occurred.

This allows for monetary recovery.  It is a way for society to reimburse victims, while encouraging the implementation of safety measures on the part of landlords.

My firm represented the agency overseeing poverty housing for the City of New York.  Thousands of crimes occurred annually on its premises.  We defended the agency against the civil suits arising from those crimes, rape among them.

Not all alleged victims had, of course, been raped.  Nor could the agency be held responsible, if it had taken proper safety precautions at the premises.  I routinely questioned rape and alleged rape victims at deposition, becoming a rape expert.

Partnership

I continued to handle medical malpractice cases (one of the few attorneys at the firm to do so).  I became familiar with products liability and construction cases, along with class actions.  I handled multiple death cases, among them a decapitation.

I tried and lost a death case at this firm to one of the best known attorneys in the city.  When I called the verdict into my office, I asked the Senior Partner, only half in jest, whether I still had a job.  Laughing, he replied, “You’re a member of the ‘million dollar club’ now.  Come on back to the office.”  It was a remarkable moment.

The firm was a volatile place with high turnover.  Workloads were grueling with billable hours heavily emphasized.  I regularly amassed among the highest totals.

Despite all this, when the time came for partnership, I was told I was not ready.  A number of male attorneys, it seemed, were.  I did not feel I could stay under those circumstances, and said so.

The firm relented.  The partnership, however, was ashes in my mouth.

Balance

Suddenly, life was arid.  Balance became an issue for me.  I longed for a child and so decided, with great reluctance, to float a resume.  That I would continue with defense work was not in doubt.  I was, after all, defending myself.

As things turned out, the recipient of my solitary resume chose not to call me, but one of the Senior Partners.  That brought matters to an immediate head.

I explained as best I could to my partners.  The firm, as had my previous one, graciously allowed me to remain on while I searched for another job — this one “in-house.”  That term is used for insurance firms whose attorneys are actually corporate employees.

In-House

The position I accepted was an exciting one.  I was to serve as counsel to a drug manufacturer, on class action litigation involving a medication intended to prevent miscarriage.

My hope was that the hours for an insurance carrier would be somewhat less than for a private firm.  That assumption was soon dispelled.  I found myself working longer hours than at my last firm.

The difficulty lay in the fact that the carrier was attempting to handle complex litigation without adequate resources.  Litigation costs by outside counsel were so excessive they could stand to be cut, but not to the bone — not without jeopardizing the welfare of the client.

And the insured manufacturer — not my employer, the insurance company — was the client.

This placed me in an untenable position.  A Greek immigrant I once met put it well.  Describing his own frustration at being required to cut corners, in a manufacturing context, he had said, “The quality is in the corners.”

As the months went on, I was asked to take on additional litigation, also, of a class action nature.  Ultimately, I staffed and trained a Trial Unit to handle sophisticated products liability and toxic tort actions including asbestos.  At one point, we had 1,900 claims.

This meant that I could no longer devote my time exclusively to the original client. We were, also, operating on a shoestring.  Massive amounts of paper came in.  Decades old documents had to be catalogued and analyzed.

Internal politics were vicious.  Many of the Claims staff had long-standing relationships to and favored the outside counsel with whom we competed for the work.

Regrettably, the Managing Attorney of the general liability firm to which my unit was initially attached, came to see me as competition.  A sincere man, he mistook my attempt to warn him about rumors at the office as a power play for his job.

To my surprise, I found I loved management and was good at it.

When the decision was finally made to create a separate office for the class action litigation, I was encouraged by another manager to apply as the new Managing Attorney.  Unfortunately, I lost out on that promotion, from which point things only went further downhill.

The new Managing Attorney assigned me the thankless task of reviewing bills.  This was time-consuming, tedious, and essentially clerical in nature.  I grew more disheartened by the day.

What made matters far worse was that the Trial Unit, under his leadership (or lack of it), was collapsing before my eyes.  I could see the bricks falling, but was powerless to intervene.

Again with the greatest reluctance, I began searching for employment.  I took a position as Managing Attorney for another insurance carrier, this time with the mandate to start and head an office of my own.

The task was a daunting, but exhilarating one.  I successfully established the office, and went on to become Chief Claims Counsel for this carrier, overseeing litigation and statutory/regulatory compliance nationwide.

That all sounds far  more glorious than it was.  Yes, I came into my own.  Yes, I had increased responsibility; was, I believe, able to accomplish some good.  But the struggle was enormous.  By the time I left the job, the work environment was barren. I was for many reasons past exhaustion.

At no time during my legal career did I consider revealing the full extent of my health issues.  Physical ailments — back pain or migraines — could be discussed.  Even alcoholism would have been acceptable, had I suffered from that.  Depression, anxiety, and the shame associated with them were for me to deal with…privately.

The profession does not tolerate weakness.  Better to pretend that weakness is not present in any of us — especially since it would require real courage to acknowledge the truth.

Looking back, I know it was the people that mattered.  Bitter as the losses were, I am certain the reason God allowed me to experience them was to teach me that.  I had mistakenly pursued positions and titles to reassure myself that I had value.

We fought together in the trenches.  We bore one another’s sorrows; shared one another’s triumphs.  We laughed together; cried together; argued and joked together.  Wherever life may have taken us since, that bond remains.

Having taken a year off to deal with family health issues, I was next hired to rehabilitate a small in-house firm that had fallen on hard times.  How hard, I had no idea.  That I had to send out five hundred resumes before locating the job, made it urgent I succeed.

At this last office I managed, we filled more than six dumpsters with debris in the first two weeks.  That included broken furniture and moldy books removed from the library shelves.  We scraped gum off the walls.

The office was repainted, and the file room reorganized, with well over 150 boxes of closed files shipped to storage.  A filing backlog measuring nearly fifteen feet was eliminated.  A comparable typing backlog was eliminated.  Past-due bills in excess of $100,000 — some dating back five years — were finally paid.

For all that, we seemed to operate under a dark cloud.

There were ten new hires made in the first few months, but almost a dozen resignations or terminations over the same period.  The latter were for a variety of reasons — personal and family issues, professional advancement, workload, lack of adequate support staff, and performance.

This left some twenty percent of our positions still vacant.  These were at all levels:  secretarial, paralegal, trial attorney, and supervisory.  During the same time we, also, had several of our permanent staff out on family leave.

There were more than twenty-five temporary staff utilized in rotation to offset this.  Temporary personnel, in effect, outnumbered permanent.

Though temporary staff contributed substantially to office viability, the quality and reliability of temporary assistance could vary greatly.  Many of our temporary secretaries had little knowledge of grammar, and less of court rules.  One woman arrived reeking of alcohol.  Another disappeared midday, never to resurface.

The use of temps engendered problems of its own.  These ranged from the imposition of massive training needs on our already over-taxed permanent staff, to a lack of file continuity, computer vandalism, and threatened violence.  The interview process was constant.

To cap things off, company layoffs and rumors of layoffs were ongoing, further eroding morale.

Nevertheless, we opened 750 new suits in a period of eight months, with pleadings prepared and filed, despite a corrupted database.  We resolved 450 suits during the same period.  An office-wide salary review was undertaken, and long overdue increases were arranged.

But I protest too much.  There were those who experienced only the whirlwind.  I never grieved more in the work environment than over this office; left only when it seemed I would do more harm than good to stay.

Ministry

With the Philadelphia economy blasted and my health precarious, I sought employment as a “contract attorney,” in order to make ends meet.

Contract attorneys generally serve for reduced pay, without benefits, on long-term, repetitive projects at large firms.  They can be dismissed at a moment’s notice when projects end or clients choose to decrease expenses.

The work was detail oriented, but hardly difficult.  It was the boredom that was the challenge.  I felt as if my life had fallen off the radar.  An air of hopelessness hung over us all.  The people I encountered, however, were amazing.

I toiled alongside a dedicated criminal defense attorney and civil rights activist; an aspiring novelist; and an elder law attorney, among others.

I met a young music producer with the capacity to influence inner city youth.  I came to know several former Peace Corps members; a Wiccan and former opera singer; a devout Buddhist; and a gay man, who had served the rural poor when no one else would.

To my astonishment, I found, again and again, that I had something in common with these gifted and unusual individuals.  For reasons of His own, the Lord seemed to afford me great insight into their lives.  I could so clearly see their potential.

In 2005, a layoff was announced.  Not all of us were to be rehired.  I was working with a group that had grown particularly close.  Our concern was for one another, when we learned of the layoff.

Driving home from work late one night, I was overcome with love for my companions.  It suddenly became clear that this was what Christians call a “ministry.”  It was my role to encourage.  Contract work was merely the means.

Sometimes, I had the opportunity to act as a sounding board.  Sometimes, I had the privilege of restoring confidence; providing comfort or focus.  Many times, I was, myself, heartened by the kindness of those around me.  If nothing else, I prayed.

Ours is always a good God.  Ministry or not, without question, in the darkest of times I was immensely blessed.

Copyright © 2008 – Present Anna Waldherr.  All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60247-890-9

Wishing You All A Merry Christmas!

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