That’s the sound of my head hitting the desk. I am SO very tired.
This morning = court. Nasty custody negotiation where OddFellow taught me some interesting tactics to get the opposing party to agree to what we wanted. Lots of subtle manipulation and negotiation tactics that I need to learn. Thank God we’re only a few blocks away from the courthouse – we were able to negotiate what we wanted for our client without having to go into an actual hearing, so I ended up running back to the office and drafting up the order then and there. It’s nice to be confident enough with my drafting skills to be able to do that.
I’m going to start making OddFellow take me to court more often. It takes time away from my work at the office, but it makes me much more comfortable in that environment. I am not a very open public speaker or terribly outgoing, so this is *definitely* going to be a learned skill for me. I also tend to be very passionate in my speech when I feel strongly about something – so I need to learn to curtail that and be more measured in my conversations with people. The more I watch OddFellow and others interact in the courtroom environment, the more I’m learning how I want to develop (and, conversely, what I DON’T want to do!) as an attorney.
I felt bad for one poor guy we saw – we was defending himself pro se in a debt defense action. We only caught the tail end of it – seems that he had a contractor he had hired to do some roof/gutter work hadn’t held up his end on the bargain, so the homeowner just stopped paying him. The contractor filed suit against him to claim on the debt. Today’s hearing was simply an administrative hearing – something about allowing the contractor to modify the complaint – and a trial was scheduled for November. This poor guy was trying to plead the facts to the judge, and she kept trying to tell him that this was just to deal with this one issue – and that he’d get his “day in court” in November. He just was not having ANY of that. Poor thing – I can understand his frustration, but that’s when he needs to hire an attorney to help walk him through the process.
Ah well. Off to try to clear some stuff off of my desk before the weekend. Tonight: homework. Tomorrow: homework. Sunday, homework. You sense a trend? Midterms are coming up, and I’m determined to be ready for them.
