Those who can do, those who can't teach.

- George Bernard Shaw

Kendall and his kind are classic Office Tigers. He's a water cooler Clarence Darrow; sweetest swing on the driving range; best batting average in the slow pitch softball league. Kendall is the brightest legal mind, the most eloquent and forceful silver tongue... when he's sitting behind his desk, bragging to people whose paychecks he controls.

Kendall would have you believe he pounds opponents into dust in the courtroom. We all know that's a lie. There's a difference between trial lawyers and litigators like Kendall that the Kendalls of the world don't want you to know. To the layman, "litigator" and "trial lawyer" are synonymous, or subspecies of the same genus. Nothing's further from the truth. To people in the business, particularly those who are forced to ply both skills regularly, they are entirely different breeds. The litigator is a paper mill, creating truckloads of letters, motions and document demands - pitching semantic hand grenades at the opponent via fax. He massages language, mentally masturbates issues and makes sure all the deadlines are covered. A litigator's skill set is as much rote organizational discipline as strategic ability. To be a good one demands little more than tenacity and punctuality.

Most litigators fancy themselves fantastic writers. They're actually just very logical, dry, literal - stiffs, severe to the point that joking in their presence seems wrong. Good legal papers are dull, formulaic, keeping the points and arguments simple enough for a middle schooler to understand. You state your argument in the first sentence, fill in the law in the middle sentences of the paragraph and end with a conclusion which is nothing more than a restatement of the first sentence. Legal writing doesn't even approach "writing" in the literary sense. It's organizing points on paper, in a row, to give the judge a checklist of issues to roll over and decide half daydreaming. The only trick to it is conciseness. The subject matter's always drier than dirt. Make the big points early; by page four, the judge is asleep. If you can spell and write at a ninth grade level, file all your papers on time and demand full replies through discovery, you're two thirds of the way to being a solid litigator. If you give off the perception of being intelligent, punch out decent paper and construct a solid strategy in the average breach of contract case, you're good enough to get an "excellent" professional rating ("AV" in the www.Martindale.com lawyer rating system). Kendall reminds me weekly that he's rated AV.

Trial lawyers and lawyers with practices that involve a heavy amount of hearings or oral arguments have a different skill set than pure office litigators. They're gamblers, putting it all on the line. They strategize like their litigator brethren, but unlike the litigators, they operate in a forum where punctuality and proper spelling aren't enough. In the paper world, you can control everything if you devote enough man hours to the project. There's always a reconsideration petition or amendment to remedy the worst mistake. Standing in open court, you have 3 seconds to make most decisions. No matter how much you plan, no matter how much you prepare, when you get into the courtroom, a thousand different things you never expected happen. Bullets pour in from angles you didn't know existed.

Beta - [a] second in order of importance; "the candidate, considered a 'beta male,' was perceived to be unable to lead his party to victory."

Kendall likes to say that the best prepared lawyers always win, as though diligence were all that was required to try a case. "It's all about preparation." He's right in a sense, but that's only half the story. Otherwise, everybody'd be a trial attorney. You can prepare for months, but when your notes go out the window because the witness is saying things you never expected, and the judge issues rulings dead wrong on the law, preparation alone isn't saving your ass. At that moment, you have to rely on that skill you can only pick up from having to talk your way out of trouble. You have to have lived and made the normal silly mistakes kids make. You have to have been caught with another girl, busted for skipping school or nailed throwing a keg party while your folks were away. Kendall never lived. He was grown in a petri dish and programmed into a little legal computer. He didn't understand how to think fast because he'd never had to. He'd marched through a gauntlet of standardized tests, ass kissing, mechanical "yes-man"ing and billable hour calculations to his corner office.

In the courthouse, you have to do what Kendall can never do - hedge risks and decide on the fly, without a full vetting of all the potential results from every imaginable angle. Any wrong move can damn your case. You have no idea what the jury or judge is or isn't paying attention to and can only make educated guesses as you go. What makes court truly impossible for people like Kendall is that you have to read people, from the judge's eyes and body language to the inflections in an opponent's voice betraying which of his arguments are the weakest. You have to be more than an automaton, and understand how legal concepts operate when applied in real life. You have to understand that, even if you're dead right on the law, the judge is never going to grant you an injunction evicting a pile of tenants to start demolition of a building to make way for a Target.

Biff Tannen: And uh, where's my reports?
George McFly: Uh, well, I haven't finished those up yet, but you know I... I figured since they weren't due till...
Biff Tannen: Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!

- "Back to the Future" (1986)

Kendall cowers when one of the three lawyers here who try all the cases appear on the floor. Watching him discuss a case with them is watching a pathologist consult with a surgeon. The few trial lawyers we have are solos who sold their practices to the firm or ex-US Attorneys or local prosecutors. They sum up people in a moment. To them, Kendall's a support lackey with a big office. I've been at the meetings where he has to brief them on the case to get them ready for trial. He's a kneeling sycophant, guffawing on cue like a mutant Ed McMahon in white knuckle Dewar's withdrawal... all but offering hand releases to the room in a shaky Colonel Klink whine. Everything that makes Kendall the tyrant he is among the associates disappears under the weight of forced introspection, his low reality shoving a wingtip up his hydraulically sealed ass. Kendall's outgunned and out of his element. We're on trial - Fantasy Lawyer Camp is over. Kendall sighs a lot. The briefs on esoteric strategies he forced us to slave over on so many weekends never leave a folder on his desk. He fiddles with his watch, waiting for orders from trial counsel. "Kendall, can you get someone to have these exhibits organized? Thanks."

But those are memories of different days. Today is Friday, and it's late afternoon - Kendall's Day, His Time... where he shines. Normally, to avoid running into him, I'd sneak out of my office at 3:30 and burn off the last hour and a half roaming floors or reading magazines in the library. But I lost track of time today. Wallace, a college buddy who's an aficionado of net porn (so much so he once crashed his small company's server sending movies to his friends) has sent me a pile of movies.

Computer porn is crack. I can never stop at one hit. It's not sexual... more like a slot machine or blackjack table. What'll the next file pop on the screen be? What's behind that link? You'd think by this age, between porn, dingy b.y.o. strip joints and personal experience, I've seen and registered in my mind every conceivable combination of tits, ass, legs and pussy on the planet. You'd think after spying at least million nipples I wouldn't need page after page of them, dotting my screen like a pile of brown little periods filling up thumbnail links. Do I need to see another bush? Is there any style physically possible I haven't seen somewhere? Yet there I was, pouring over thumbnail after thumbnail of "Centerfold Outtakes," straining my eyes to find the black splotches in the middle of the tiny pictures that let you know it's a full frontal shot (a technique all but useless since the onset of today's "Brazilian wax" era).

I've lost years of my life looking at net porn. Hypocrites like Pat O'Brien cry on daytime talk shows about how it ruins their lives, sours their relationships with women and costs them jobs. It can do all that, but I couldn't imagine a life without it. I don't want to live in a world without internet porn. I remember what it was like digging through old Playboys in some friends' garage, flipping through tattered pages of a disco mitt pussies and tan lines obscured by gauzy photo effects, jammed between an interview with Dick Cavett and an article about jazz. Internet porn cuts through all that shit. Bang. You want a money shot? Here it is. You want a Latina on all fours with her ass in the air like a baboon in heat? A skinny redhead like that girl on the cover of the Blind Faith record riding a whiffle bat? An Asian and a Swedish Tart playing nuns gone wild with whipped cream in the pantry after hours in the convent? A "Catherine the Great" movie? That's a tough order... How about a crackhead working that action with a donkey behind a barn in Tijuana? Use your imagination... and try not to look in her eyes. It's all there, keystroke to keystroke... how can you stop playing that slot machine?

Of it all, Wallace's porn is the best. Today, he's forwarded me nude aerobics, gang bangs, lesbian orgies and something I wisely refuse to open titled "Chimp." It's tempting a visit from the IT Goons, but I'm so goddamned bored, and the stuff is so damn good. Crisp resolution and flawless movement - no cheap pixilated garbage stopping and starting and jumping between scenes like old home movies. The best of the bunch is "Pepsi Challenge," where a skinny blonde gives birth to a Pepsi can. Physically amazing... One minute she's smiling and the next, Pop! - she's just given birth to a 12 oz. can of soda. Open. Drink. Smile. The joy of Pepsi.

"Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too..."

- Bill Lumbergh, "Office Space" (1999)

"_________, can I talk to you?" Kendall's in my doorway with his pad.

My watch says it all. 4:00. What was I thinking?

"I have this very important hearing coming up and I need a memo..."

Shit. Shit. Excuses... excuses... I used the "Wedding out West" last month. Death in the family sounds canned. Already did relatives visiting from abroad. Shit, I've got two seconds here...

"Kendall, I'm not available."

"This is very important. This motion..." The lecture tone kicks in.

"My... fiancée is having surgery."

"Surgery?" He knew I was lying. And I knew I was fucked if he asked me where she was having it. I gulped air and stared at him. "Yes, she's having, uh..." Knees, ankles, eyes, breasts, appendix... shit. I scanned my desk, the walls, the monitor. "...Uterus surgery."

"On the weekend?"

"Polyps and such..."

"On the weekend? Is it an emergency?"

"Uh, no. Well, I mean, yes. Not cancer or anything. Just being proactive."

"Proactive?"

"She'll be laid up for days. She'll kill me if I leave her over the weekend. Her parents won't be here until Monday morning, which is why I'm not taking Monday off."

Kendall knew I was bullshitting him, and I was pretty sure he knew I knew he knew. But he figured I was more trouble than I was worth, and my excuse was just uncomfortable enough to make cross-examining me too queer an affair, even for him. He turned and stared down the hall. "Have you seen Tom?"

Tom is a 4th year litigator - a decent, quiet guy who sticks to himself. Tom doesn't want anyone to know anything about his personal life, for good reason. He has some strange habits, one of which is "huffing" magic markers. Tom takes a pile of those industrial strength black and red markers from the supply room, uncaps them, seals them in a Ziploc bag and leaves it in his desk for an hour. When it's done fermenting into a bag of acrid gas, Tom closes his office door, opens it in his face and sucks in the fumes. He claims two strong hits get him through the afternoon. "It's not a long buzz, but the effects linger. You're slow and stupid for an hour afterward. Perfect work high. Everything gets amusing."

Tom's description was intriguing. It was also dead wrong, at least for me. When I tried the magic marker high, I thought I was having a seizure. Imagine the worst sixth grade glue or gasoline sniffing buzz and multiply it by five. Now mix it with the nausea you felt after trying to trip by eating bag of Morning Glory seeds Freshman year. I fell back in my chair, saw a kaleidoscope of colors and shook for a few seconds. Save nitrous oxide balloons - on which you all but channel Jesus' inner peace - solvent or gas highs are dull, shitty buzzes. The huffer doesn't deserve much better. He's the lowest class of dopehead - too cheap to buy street drugs, too lazy to steal prescription meds and lacking the commitment to any high longer than ten minutes (which is about all you can take of a glue/paint thinner/WD40 or gas high before a skull splitting migraine kicks in, pasting to you the floor, crying for death). The best "peak" of the magic marker high felt a little like "Love Boat," that PCP laced weed you'd occasionally get at concerts - the kind that made you feel like your brain was being siphoned out of your ear and your hands were falling off. I had a sinus headache for a day after I hit the "marker bag." I'm no huffing man. And I'm fine with that.

"I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this."

- Randle McMurphy, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975)

Kendall stomped off to torture Tom. I frantically zipped off an email to him - "RE: Get out of your office." I grabbed my bag and jacket, shut off the computer and ran for the elevator.

When I got back into the office Monday, the gossips were whispering around the copier. I stood nearby and listened. The details were sketchy, but they were clearly comparing notes about a something that'd happened last Friday afternoon. Tom must've seen mine or someone else's email warning him about Kendall too late. In no doubt a magic marker semi-coma, Tom jumped into a miniscule closet behind his office door moments before Kendall got there and barked his name. When Kendall didn't see Tom in the office, he asked everyone within earshot where Tom had gone. "His monitor's on. Leaving the monitor on when you leave is a fire hazard. So he's here. Where is he?" The marker fumes got the best of Tom. Depending on which magpie was giving you the gossip, Tom either wheezed, coughed or sniffed while Kendall was standing outside his door. Kendall heard it, and opened the closet.

There isn't much you can say standing in a closet, bleary eyed, a bag of topless markers in a baggie in your hand. If Kendall had had any non-work life - if he'd read any papers outside the local legal rag or paid a stitch of attention to those pamphlets on "huffing" the teachers sent home with his kids - Tom would have been cooked. But all Kendall cared about was Tom's hiding from him.

Tom spent the weekend writing a memorandum outlining law for a motion to preclude the admission at trial of draft financial documents in a breach of fiduciary duty case which had only been filed three months prior and was tentatively scheduled for trial 14 months from then. Kendall assumed Tom was stealing the markers, a suspicion validated by the supply room clerk who confirmed that hundreds of markers had been taken over the past year without explanation. Tom confessed he was an amateur artist and had been taking them home to work on posters. He promised to start buying his own. Which he did.

After I'd heard the story from the magpies, I walked down the hall to my office. People stopped me along the way. "I hope everything goes well." "Give her my best." "Is it over already?" Kendall had told Denise my excuse for not working over the weekend, and she'd told the floor.

"How'd the 'operation' go?" Denise had a chunk of bagel lodged between her eyeteeth.

Fuck, the uterus thing. I have to remind Lisa not to call me here today.

I closed my door and called Lisa. "Honey, yeh, listen. Don't call here today or tomorrow. And if anyone here asks how your surgery went in the future, say 'great'"... "What? No, no... I can't explain now - it's a long story"... "Oh, one other thing... People get uterus polyps, right?"

I hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen/break room. Karyn was sanding by the refrigerator, pouring the first of a half dozen Sweet N' Lows into a coffee. "I hope it goes well. I was laid up for days after they gave me an episiotomy when I had my daughter. It's really invasive when they operate there. I still have a scar."

"Thank you... uh, things will be... fine. Just a routine procedure."

I went back to my office and got on the net. Episiotomy?

Jesus Fucking Christ! I wish I hadn't had Yahoo.com. I wished I'd gotten a call from some client and forgotten to look up the term. And I really wished the definition hadn't had a graphic illustration with it, because now all I could picture was Karyn's weather beaten face, cigarette dangling from her lip, atop that graphic. "Careful down there, doc. My piercings get infected real easy."

I got up from my desk and opened the door, startling Tim, who was walking by. Our eyes met immediately. He tore his finger away from his upper lip and hid his hand behind his leg. Busted, red-fingered... I knew that during whatever awkward exchange we had for the next 10 seconds, Tim would be rolling mucus balls between his fingers behind his back. "Hey, _________. I hope that hospital thing goes well," he feebly offered. I stared at him for a moment and opened my mouth. No words came.

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 3:44 PM

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