Frustrations with my profession

I concluded the other day that practicing law would be lovely without opposing counsel, many clients, and the legislature. These three things are what detracts most from my enjoyment of the business and in that order.

Then I got to thinking and realized that was a gross over simplification. One of the things that eats away at you is that every day at work, it is always fight, fight, fight -- confrontation, confrontation, confrontation. At first, its only a small thing. After all, the practice is new and everything is interesting and exciting. Every issue is a new issue. But after nine years of this profession, this has become the dominant aspect of the thing for me. Its a rare day when I don't have to get argumentative or confrontational about something. I enjoy those moments. Drafting a trademark renewal or a contract. Incorporating a business. Even drafting a will (I don't really have enough tax background to do estate work all the time.) But those are not most of the day. Most of the day is responding to bullshit motions, calling opposing counsel so we can dance the nice professional courtesy dance with little sincerity, drafting bullshit motions that you file to "protect your record" so no one can sue you for malpractice because you didn't file them. You write letters saying where is the blah; you have ten days to produce it or else. You call clerks to schedule hearings. It's almost always a fight of some kind. The worst are probably when the siblings are fighting over the care of the parents or their inheritance. Right behind that is marriage/child cases. Then there are the corporate cases where someone hires a 100+ silk-stocking, big city, $400/hour, Biglaw lawyer who owns stock in paper companies and bombards you with frivolous, 100 page, motions that are just colorable enough that they don't get in trouble and that you can't afford to ignore so you have to draft responses. Then there are cases by pro se litigants and incompetent counsel which are almost worse because you don't always understand what they think they are up to. And let us not forget the cases where you have BigCorp on the other side following their script (say foreclosures here) where they do things automatically, "by policy" (Wells Fargo) and don't bother to look at the situation or the facts of the case or even open the damn file to realize the best course of action. You learn to hate them all.

I have one case now that just breaks my heart. I can't say everything I'd like b/c my clients have a right to privacy. It involves documents signed by an elderly person and the question in the case is really whether or not she was in her right mind enough to sign them. My clients are normal, average, middle class folk. This should be a fairly simple case, right? Wrong. We have Biglaw on the other side, so we got a ten count counterclaim alleging every possible and impossible legal theory for the issue and asking for millions in punitive damages. We've had motions of every kind filed from emergency injunctions to summary judgment to discovery arguments to arguments about discovery arguments. Opposing Council attaches everything to their pleadings and consistently misrepresents facts to the court. They argue they are entitled to summary judgment because there are no disputed facts which forces us to file pleadings showing all the places where their version of the facts are disputed but they just ignored in making their claim. I don't mind a well-taken motion, but these motion are not well taken and sometimes even self-contradictory. They are filed to run up fees and to harass us in a battle of attrition. My clients are closing in on the $30K mark in legal fees because of it when their fees should be closer to ten. They will not be able to recover their fees and will have to take out loans to cover them. This is not justice.

How do you explain to the client who walks in with a $15K claim that it probably is not worthwhile to pursue it because they will likely end up paying more than that to recover it. They should let the bad actor get away with it. They might be able to get away with paying less than that to recover it, but they can't be assured. Further, if they win, then we may have an equally expensive process to try to collect on our judgment. How do you explain to the client when a court treats you cavalierly because you "only" have a $40K case? (In Illinois, real cases start at $50K.) Where is justice here?

Yet the firm has to pay rent. It has to pay for the research tools, the copier, the fax, the secretarial support, and the computers. Oh and we have to eat too. And pay health insurance. And buy office supplies. We can't work for free. We can't give away services. Not if we want to stay in business.

I see all the problems. I don't see a solution. And that creates a lot of frustration.