"Not both of them." I snapped into the phone. "You're wrong. I'm positive." I was half paying attention to the conversation, barking into the receiver as I sat in the lobby, leafing through the firm's brochures on the coffee table.

Fistlewait, Harriman, Fortescue and Marmalard was formed in 1905, when Johnston Auchincloss Fortescue returned to Philadelphia upon graduation from Yale Law School, Cum Laude. Fortescue, grandson of Jacob Browning Auchincloss, private counselor to John Penn, second Colonial Governor of Pennsylvania, had seen the need for counselors in maritime law to serve Philadelphia's growing importing sector after managing his family's Caribbean trading interests through the Spanish American War. Upon returning from Yale, Fortescue and his first cousin, Peterson J.K. Fistlewait formed the firm, purchasing office space in the East Atlantic Building, the jewel of what was then known as Spice Traders Row. They quickly solicited a stable of notable clients including Featherbottom Iron & Coke, Ltd., Pepperidge Trolleyworks and the Johnstown Dam Liability Trust.

Much has changed since then, but FHFM remains committed to the values and vision of its founders, to provide the finest representation to its clients and uphold the Philadelphia legal community's storied tradition of
spirited, but genteel advocacy.

"Jesus, where's the 'Irish need not apply' disclaimer?"

"What?" The voice on the other end boomed out of the receiver.

"Was I talking out loud? Just something funny I was reading."

"So I don't warrant your full attention?"

These were picked off the top of my head as I scanned through my library. I tried to select obscure or overlooked albums, but a few classics slid into the list here and there. Mostly it's alphabetical by artist, except for a few instances where I didn't feel like following that order.

Abba - Gold: Greatest Hits
I can't explain why, but there's something evil about Abba's music. Evil in a good way, as in it makes me want to get wired, get loaded and get laid. Partly nostalgia, I'll admit. But there's something more to it... The soaring harmonies, they way those insidious, simple, high notes on the piano kick the music along. Or it might be something Swedish, perhaps Scandinavian. My wife's half Norwegian, and I love that squeeze-tube caviar they sell at Ikea.

AC/DC - Powerage
Supposedly, Keith Richards' favorite record by AC/DC, which isn't surprising, since it has a Stones-y feel. This is the band when they were just playing straightforward rock and roll, before the heaviness and polish of Highway to Hell and Back in Black. "Rock n Roll Damnation," "What's Next to the Moon" and "Gimme a Bullet" are some of the band's greatest overlooked gems.

Allman Brothers - Live at the Atlanta International Pop Festival / Live at Ludlow Garage 1970
Folk Festival is just like the legendary Live at the Fillmore East record, only with a broader song selection. And disc two of Ludlow's Garage has the greatest, heaviest "Mountain Jam" I've ever heard.

Beatles - Abbey Road
I like Sgt. Pepper's and The White Album just fine, but this is the Beatles record I listen to over and over. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is built around this great, sinister lick and "Something" is one of those tunes you wish went on for another five, eight or fifteen minutes.

Beck - Mutations
Somehow, this elegant little record was buried in Beck's catalog, listed as an EP between Odelay and Midnight Vultures. Probably a marketing thing, as it was moody and bleak and mostly acoustic, with little of the sonic painting he was doing on the albums before and after it. People rave about Sea Change and it's a great record, but I think Mutations is as good, if not better, than anything else Beck's done.

Jeff Beck - Beck Ola
Rod Stewart fronting one of hardest guitar records of it's time. It's a no-brainer.

But there was more to it than that. Carlin was "post-commentary." Not in some cheap silly fashion, as artists are "post-modern" or candidates claim to be "post-politics." The universal truth and clarity of Carlin's observations placed them as close to "beyond dissection" as any entertainer's work could ever be. Media's cheap and most of it's full of shit. We can parse and qualify the points of ninety percent of the mouths we hear on television, radio or the internet. Not Carlin. There were no two meanings to anything he said, and whether you liked it or not you knew in the end, He Was Right.

I won't embroider that point here. Better to let Carlin explain himself. Watch these video clips from his last HBO special, It's Bad For Ya.

The bullshit that binds us

God bless America

Your imaginary rights

Start at minute 4:00 of the first clip and move through the following two. If those fifteen or so minutes don't savage all the delusions and absurdities at the heart of our aggregate national idiocy, you're not living in reality.

"The stop sign's hidden behind that overgrown tree." Chris turned down the stereo, looked around, then accelerated toward the bridge. "They need to prune that shit... It's an accident waiting to happen."

"I saw it fine."

"Of course you did." He rubbed his eyes and focused on the road. "It's easier from your angle." The explanation was nonsense, but I didn't bother to press. Never question the driver... Just be happy it's not you.

"Why'd you turn down the music?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why'd you turn down the music? That didn't cause you to miss the sign."

"I don't know. It just seemed the proper thing to do." Chris was partly right, and partly wrong. His reaction didn't "seem" anything. He'd turned down the music out of fear... A fight-or-flight response - one of those senseless idiot tics we default to in an awkward or heated exchange, like darting your eyes around the room or saying "Excuse me?" when someone asks a question you don't want to answer. He was buying himself a moment, to gird for police, ponder what he'd say if a patrol car pulled out of an alleyway and clicked on the sirens. "Can't be too careful, considering..."

"I understand... Better safe than sorry." I pulled the lever below my seat and slammed it back. "Here, it's your shot."

"Hey! What the fuck?" Martin barked from the backseat. "You just knocked the fucking bowl all over me."

"We should smoke this anyway." Stu held a joint in the air. "That thing's all clogged."

"Can you wait until we get there?" Chris snapped back.

"Why?" Stu flicked his lighter.

"So we'll be able to speak to these chicks, for a few minutes at least."

Chris had a point. Outside a Phish show perhaps, nobody's ever gotten lucky based on the fact that he was really, really stoned. When you're loaded you're happy - a charming rogue of sorts. Whacked on hallucinogens you're an explorer - strong enough to give up "control," check out your inner wiring. That and you're helpless, playing to the "Florence Nightingale" gene so many women hold. Stoned, on the other hand... Well, stoned is a different story. Blazed out of their gourds, most people are dull - deep in thought below, retarded on the surface. In the typical social setting, "hyper-baked" is rarely engaging or witty, and never charismatic. You're slow and silly and chitchat seems impossible. And though you'd probably like to think otherwise, believe it, brother - there's no such thing as "small-talk," particularly with women. A smart one - the kind you really want to fuck - isn't making idiot chatter. She's testing you, kicking the tires... Seeing how fast you can shift from one subject to another. How well you'd relate to disparate varieties of people. Out-of-our-skulls high, most of us fail that exam.

In many ways, baking before you go out is deciding to not even attempt picking up women. You might make an effort, and you might even think you have a chance. And yes, on any given night, anyone can strike it lucky. But generally, globally, getting high is the last thing on the planet you want to do to land a chick. Think of all the stoner characters in movies or TV... Slater from Dazed N' Confused? Spicoli? Do you recall these characters having girlfriends? Sure they're ridiculous stereotypes, but they weren't crafted out of thin air.

"You are such a fucking cramp." Stu wouldn't let it go.

"Humor me, will you?" Chris was getting whiny. "Just this once... I'd like to try to maybe, just maybe, get laid."

"By getting all fucked up on Jager?"

"You think I'd do it sober?"

"You don't have to hit it, Chris." I tried to "split the baby" to end the dispute.

"If we light that, I'll wind up out of my tree."

That was always the problem with baking. When you're bored, you want to be baked. Until there's something better to do, when you suddenly don't want to be baked anymore. Problem is, by then it's too late. And nobody ever gets "just a little high." It comes on sneaky, slow and lethal. There's nothing to do, nowhere to be. No looming deadlines or people to see. You take a few hits. Then you take a few more. Then you start thinking, I should have a few more, just to make sure I've had enough. Every "few more" leads to another "few more"... Forty minutes later you're watching an infomercial for "The Garden Weasel," wondering if there's ice cream in the freezer and it hits you - Shit, I'm retarded... a goddamn mongoloid. And there's no way out. All you can do is deal with it.

Add a bottle of liquor to the mix and you're cooked. From immigrant miners drowning the misery in Seagram's and Lucky Strikes to hippies cannon-balling joints with rotgut wine to the modern day "Masters of the Universe" chasing Churchills with Johnny Walker Blue, smoke and liquor have been our national speedball since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Cigarettes, cigars, dope - they all taste better with whiskey. And the more you have of one, the more you want of the other. The "joint and shots" mixture is a crippling, incessant cycle. The tar burns the throat. The shot kills the burn. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Three or four in, you start feeling niiice - pleasant, careless and clueless. Seven or eight in you're numb - lucid and coherent, but not really there. Ten or twelve in you're Gone - bigger than your being, immortal and impervious, all knowing and all seeing. That's the peak, of course, the ledge before the drop. Anything more than that that and you're fried, blathering and staggering, in that helpless, wretched state where you find yourself picking up a candle instead of the bottle and filling the shot glass with melted wax. And then, suddenly - SWAK! - Here come the spins... Ohhhh... The whole room is moving... So fast... So dizzy... I feel like I ate bad fish... Somebody, please, stop it. Cry all you like. Bury your head in the couch. The more you close your eyes, the faster the revolutions.

"Shit, Chris." Stu snapped from the back. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"What?"

"Let me know if you're going to take a fucking turn that fast."

"That's not my fault. The road did it."

- Dumb and Dumber (1994)

"Can I ask why?" Jeffrey stopped in his tracks the minute we met eyes. The fish was in my hand, in the air, dangling above my lips. Thankfully I couldn't answer. My mouth was already full, stuffed like a chipmunk's with acorns.

You can always ask why, but that doesn't mean I have an answer. We stood there for a moment, not saying a word, each of us taking in the scene. There was Jeffrey, a partner from my group, standing, staring, open cell phone in his hand. And there was me, behind the deli, next to a dumpster, peeling slabs of lox from a wax-paper package and shoveling them in my mouth. It wasn't an ugly moment. He hadn't caught me getting high with the bicycle couriers who openly smoked dope behind the buildings or stepping out of a massage parlor. This was just strange. It's not everyday a person turns the corner on his way back from a client luncheon and runs into one of his employees in a suit, cufflinks and tie, gorging himself in a filthy alleyway like some vulture gnawing carrion. To all the common passers by, I might as well have been eating rancid meat from the trash, an overdressed wino, white collar crack-head or escapee from a local psyche ward... One of those wretches who stumbled around the blocks bleating about conspiracies and begging for change. But Jeffrey knew better. He knew I was sane - too sane, really, and this was something else... something odd, seditious and bizarre.

He was right. Sort of...

I hadn't walked out for lox. I'd walked out to leave. It was a Monday and I'd snapped. You know those Mondays. Everyone knows them. Those mornings where a ten minute flurry of phone calls, faxes and emails turns a perfectly calm week to a shit rain of idiot paperwork... Those moments where you can actually feel your face turning purple as some Napoleon threatens you over the phone... I'd gone in hoping for Nothing - a boring, dead week, the best thing you can hope for in a law firm. By eleven I'd been peppered with five calls, four letters and a half a dozen emails. All annoyances - the usual pile of grating, niggling demands. "When can you get me this?" "When can you get me that?" "When can I expect this other thing?" From the incoherent threat letters of grammatically retarded plaintiffs' lawyers to the tyranny of emails from management about the ten days of time sheets I still owed, every communication held that same selfish refrain... "Gimme, gimme, gimme... I want to take something from you to make my situation better. I'm going to sap your energy, drag your mind to a task the benefits me, my wallet, my bottom line. I want things, and I'm going to burn you and everything else around me like fuel to get them. I have car payments to make, tuitions, golf course minimums... My wife just ordered granite for all the bathrooms."

I'd walked out the door to catch a cab, go home, put on a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops, jump in my car and drive. No destination in mind; just step on the gas and run. Bolt from the box, from that crushing claustrophobia... Take off on the highway, through the cornfields and mountains and the desert. Never stop moving. Float around the country like a salty drifter in one of those old beer commercials - the grizzled sort stalking into dusty bars with "Big Log" or "Midnight Rider" playing in the background. Get space, air, breathe. Live like a fucking American, like goddamned human.

I stepped out the front door and looked up the street for a cab. The firm was on a slow corner, so I decided to walk a few blocks, closer to City Hall. Then I saw the sign in window of the deli. "Nova Lox, $22.00 pound." Hmmm. Few foods on Earth beat quality kosher lox. Salt and raw, smoked salmon... Poor man's sushi. I could easily eat a half pound alone - no bagels or onions or tomatoes, and none of that disgusting cream cheese heathens smear on the stuff. It was almost lunch, and there was no resisting hunger... or my chronic ADD. The decision came like instinct. A moment later I found myself in the deli, in line, waiting to order. Fuck it. My "escape" could wait a moment. I'd grab a quarter pound, appetizer size - something to eat on the run...

And really, let's face it - Where was I going? I wasn't going to get in the car and drive off for the Left Coast. I'd do what I did every time I lost my mind at the office - get a cab home and sit in the living room, taking my pulse, catching my breath and reasoning with myself. You have to go back. Everyone hates it. That's why they call it work. The problem isn't the job - it's you. The rest of the world suffers through this shit and you're going to have to as well.

Serenity now... Serenity now...

I'd tell myself the same thing every time, something I knew all too well, from so many doomed "escapes" - all those frenzied midnight runs and frantic, pointless road trips that had gone horribly, hideously wrong. All the times I'd thought the answer was in distance, speed and movement - a simple matter of placement, stumbling on a magic "elsewhere." And all the times I'd learned... Running just to run is running in circles. Or running in place, maybe, depending on how look at it. Either way, you wind up at the same finish line.

* * *

The first "escape" fiasco I remember was in college, sophomore year. A bunch of us were sitting in a room in the fraternity house, bored and restless, facing another dead Thursday night. Same beer, dope and people - another keg party in the basement, repeating the tired drunken ritual we followed every night. Looking back now, that seems like Nirvana, a moment most of us would give a finger to have again. But then, there, as crazy as it sounds, the scene could get routine, like you were living in an endless loop of reruns. There was the same music - that constant hum of "Jessica" or "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" pouring out of the basement stereo.¹ The same beer - $30 kegs of Milwaukee's Best, frequently warm or skunked. And all the same women - the ones you'd already tried and failed to hook up with, hooked up with and didn't want to hook up with again or knew would never, ever, under any circumstances hook up with you. We needed something different, a totally new scene. That or a distraction, something to occupy the mind - a quest, challenge or competition of some kind.

Kevin was what law students call a "gunner," meaning he ran his mouth off like a machine gun through every class. Law schools still attempt to emulate the Socratic Method used in The Paper Chase. The professor stands before the class, selecting students at random to provide "outlines" of lengthy, incredibly dull cases the student was supposed to read the night before. The student, in turn, is supposed to recite the legal issues in the case while the professor peppers him with questions designed to trip him up.

That's how it's supposed to work, in theory. In reality, most students bring laptops with outlines on them, or casebook Cliff's Notes published by a company called Emmanuel's. If they're unfortunate enough to be called on by the professor - ripped from out of a daydream or a hangover - they pitch back a clumsy recitation of the crib notes on the case. It's not much different than standing in open court, making a real argument, where most lawyers don't half the answers to the questions the judge is asking. But if the process is supposed to train a student to "prepare, prepare, prepare," well, it's pretty much a farce. The average semi-intelligent student sleeps through class, crams at the end of the semester and only really shows up for exams.

In the vacuum of class participation are the gunners, a subset of student who came to the law looking for purpose. The gunner reads the actual cases. He reads a treatise on the cases. He reads biographies of the judges who wrote the opinions and analyzes every issue, from every angle. Armed with endless niggling observations and more interpretations of any given case than have been cast on Shakespeare, he raises his hand in response to every question the professor asks, debating his every point, finishing his sentences and volleying back his every closing comment with "Yes, professor, but what if...?"

This was Kevin. He couldn't help his obnoxiousness. It was unconscious. He'd thrown himself into the gunner's world - a black hole of endless dicta-parsing and mind-numbing midnight arguments with his fellow Trekkies about obscure Supreme Court dissents and the legislative intent behind constitutional amendments. He must have thought knowing everything, throwing every fiber of his being into the concept of law studentry and soaking up every irrelevant detail of every case we studied would render him the world's greatest legal mind. Maybe he assumed the brain was as simple as a bicep - more curls, more strength. My guess is he just wanted to have something to be, other than what he was.

The Perils of Waking and Baking
No, it's not a good idea.

Of all the "office highs," "waking and baking" is the worst. My buddies Les and Martin had been ardent fans of the therapy, and when either of them saw me out, guzzling bourbons and bitching about how much I hated being in the office, it was always the same proselytizing... "You're way too stressed. You need to bake before you go in. It makes the mundane shit interesting. The work becomes a game." To me it seemed a horrible idea and terrible waste of dope. I couldn't blast Traffic or Zeppelin in my office or swap favorite scenes from Trainspotting with my secretary. And what if a partner roped me into some awful meeting? "Hey, __________, can you sit in on a strategy meeting in the Rocco's Industrial Meats case? You know... The one where the guy claims he lost an ear due to an improperly designed conveyor belt. We need a new set of eyes on it." The cost/benefit ratio was terrible. Yes, the "wake and bake" did work, and yes, it could make the morning amusing. But when it failed, it made an already annoying situation fifty times worse.

It was the summer after graduation. I was living at home, studying for bar exams. People say that's a stressful gig, but it seemed more holiday than anything else.¹ Wake up at 10:00, fix breakfast, go to the gym for an hour, come home, turn on music and study on the deck. When I'd memorized enough material I'd go out with friends or rent a movie. Two nights a week I'd go to a bar review course. It was a great summer... Sunshine, free food and a stack of Allmans and Dead discs playing in the background.² The only annoyance was being penniless. Freeloading whiskeys from friends was terribly embarrassing.

I remember the sun waking me up on the morning of the interview, on a couch in the family room downstairs. Shit. I'd wanted to be up at 8:00, but my watch said 8:45. I had less than an hour to race into Philadelphia, park and run into a law firm in the center of town. I showered, shaved, ran out the door and jumped in the truck. Son of a bitch, I slammed my hand on the dashboard. The gas tank was empty. I'd reminded myself half a dozen times the night before - Make sure the truck has gas... Fill the gas tank... You didn't fill the gas tank yet! The self-nagging was wasted. As soon as I started watching television I forgot about the interview. It's always been like that. Try as I might to stay on focus, the minute anything sidetracked me - a newspaper open on the kitchen counter or a phone call from a friend - I forgot everything I was doing. It was annoying to have to run like a madman to make the interview on time, but I couldn't say it was surprising. I did everything at the last second, and though I never admitted it out loud, that was clearly how I liked things - running, confused, planning as I went. There's a freedom in menacing deadlines. Instinct takes over and all you can do is react... You hope.

"Leo only gave us money for one."

"Idiot." Indeed he was. And standing there on Leo's patio, watching a mosh pit of people push and shove for those last cups of suds, hearing the sound of glass breaking inside as drunks dropped tumblers and bottles of wine on the tile I couldn't help thinking he deserved everything he was getting. From the horrible bad trip he was suffering to his parents throwing him out of the house when they came home and saw the damage, Leo'd earned it all. He'd made an ass of himself, buckling under peer pressure, thinking he could buy status with beer. Everything about the spectacle was embarrassing... That he wanted to be liked so badly and actually thought it would work -- that the people drinking on his patio weren't just using him for his huge empty house.

I remember being confused when Nolan had told me earlier in the week that Leo wanted to throw a keg party, wondering why. "He lives on one of those estates in the country, right? Why not just get a few cases of beer and some bottles of vodka? We could hang out in his pad with some chicks."

"I don't know. He said he wants to throw a keg party."

It didn't make any sense to me. Leo didn't have enough friends for a keg party, and if he thought it would gain him some he couldn't have been more deluded. Our high school was a vicious social hierarchy. It was private and small and the forces that kept the pecking order controlled it with a vengeance. There were the twenty or so hyper-cool kids at the top, the usual prom court and varsity lettermen types. Below them you had The Middle - "acceptable" people in varying grades of popularity. Some of them were social climbers, fawning over the coolest people in the place like a fan club or a pack of Hollywood assistants, trying to punch through to the higher echelon. Some were like me - passive surfers, latching onto the parts of the scene that interested them from time to time, letting go when it wasn't fun anymore.

Managing your slot in the social structure full time seemed an awful lot of work, major effort for a thin, fleeting payoff. It would have been nice to be quarterback, nail all the cheerleaders and have your ass kissed around the school, but as the old Zimmerman song goes, "that was [not] my fate." I wasn't at the top of the pyramid, and that was alright. The way I saw it, as long as I got laid, loaded and got into a decent college where I could get laid and loaded some more, I was doing fine. Really, what else matters between sixteen and eighteen?¹

But that's easy for me to say. I wasn't like Leo. He was at the bottom, a classic American dork - short and skinny and acned, crippled with a litany of nervous social tics. He even spoke with this strange affectation, like he was gnawing on pistachio shells or just left a dental appointment with a tongue full of Novocain. In the easiest, kindest terms, Leo wasn't ripe. He looked like he was still in junior high, waiting for that final push out of puberty... A lousy place in high school, where the women and the alpha males all look twenty-four at seventeen.

Leo'd never be a player in that world, and it looked weak to try - a craven, desperate move... nakedly ambitious. The people he wanted to impress would only respect him less; resent him for thinking he could buy their affections. Leo was stuck in his caste and that wasn't changing no matter how many parties he threw.

Leo didn't see that, of course. All he knew was he wanted a keg, a party, and I had a connection. "Sure. We can get that done." I promised him a keg of Busch, the usual swill. "We'll get it to your place on Friday night, around eight." Who was I to fuck with his dream?

The plan fell through on Friday afternoon, as they always did. Nolan and I drove to the home of our "connection," an alcoholic named Kenny who bought us all of our alcohol. Nobody was home. Just a sign on the door - "Gone up North." The son of a bitch was on a fishing trip. Over the course of the week Leo'd told everyone he saw that he was having a party. The word spread like flu. By Friday afternoon, friends from other high schools were calling me about the thing. I estimated there were at least a hundred people on the way, and now we had no beer.

"Can I borrow your guy?" I called my friend, Melissa and started begging. "The keg for Leo's fell through." I knew she had a wino in one of the housing projects who bought her booze.

"You have to pick me up. He freaks out if he sees strange people." An hour later Nolan, Melissa and I were trolling through the projects, looking for "Carl E.," a middle-aged cirrhotic who fancied himself a player.

"If he talks about being a pimp, humor him." Melissa warned. "He gets mad real easy."

"What's the 'E' stand for?"

"Who cares?"

An hour later I was getting out of my car in a parking lot next to a beer distributor, handing the wheel to a low rent Dolomite reeking of Wild Irish Rose. "Okay. It's all there." He laughed and counted our money. "Now give me your number."

"Excuse me?"

"Give me your telephone number." He barked as he adjusted the rear view mirror in my car. "I have to give them a number when I buy kegs. And make sure it's real. They won't sell to me no more if I give them fakes. I need to buy my own beer in this place, for all my parties, you understand?" Melissa was right - Carl E. got agitated in a hurry. I froze in panic and gave him my home number.

"Michelob..." Carl scribbled the number on an old receipt. "Now that's good fucking beer."

"We just want Busch."

"I know that. I'm talking about my beer. I don't drink fucking Busch. I drink Michelob."

"Sorry. My bad."

Thankfully, blessedly, ten minutes later and one keg heavier we were dropping Carl E. off in the projects, mission accomplished. "This is fine right here." He started opening the door before the car stopped moving. "I got to see a woman in that building over there."

"Thanks, Carl."

"Don't lose that keg." He snapped as he got out. "That's worth good money."

"We won't." Whatever... Just get the fuck out of my car.

An hour later we were in horse country, tapping the keg at Leo's house. An hour after that the place was filled with carloads of high school kids, half of them already loaded on booze they'd stolen from their parents' liquor cabinets. People were all over the house and property, running through the garage and the stable and disappearing into empty rooms to fuck. Some were chugging beers and vomiting, others passing out on couches in the library and lawn furniture on the patios. The place was littered with every rotten stereotype of the hopeless high school drunk - Exhibit "A" in support of the twenty-one year old drinking age.

On Experts

Most cases are only as good as the experts supporting the claims or defenses being made. These experts come in all varieties, of course, offering opinions on every conceivable subject that winds up at issue in a courtroom. From the post traumatic stress disorder caused by a botched tattoo to the wanton negligence of a shopkeeper selling Pop Rocks in close proximity to Coca Cola, if you can claim it half sober, there's a "whore" a phone call away who'll slap a stack of supporting scholarly references and anecdotal inferences behind it in exchange for the right sized check. They even have their own broker services. In every large city there's a company you can call and order experts exactly the same way you'd order "dancers" for a bachelor party:

Dancer:

"Yeah, I need a blonde and an Asian girl. Skinny, with tight asses. No cottage cheese. Girls who know the drill."

Expert:

"I need an accident reconstructionist and an economist. With some experience in court. No prima donnas. Guys I can handle."

"Expert" in the litigation game means "Lawyer's Proxy." At anywhere from a few to hundreds of thousands of dollars for testimony and reports, offering dressed up professional opinions is huge business. Doctors whine about medical malpractice lawsuits, but a load of them pay their kids' tuitions offering expert evidence against their own fellow physicians. The big accounting firms have developed a cottage industry out of it, devoting whole departments to running stock analyses on financial books and pumping out form reports in economic fraud cases for six and seven figure retainers. Engineers and chemists and scientists offer books of graphs and charts no one understands propping up every variety of product liability action.

- "A Little More for Little You," Tyrannosaurus Hives (2004)

The next email I received from Ellis on the Statcorp settlement was three or four days after the first, and it confirmed my worst fears - he and opposing counsel were playing chicken.

From: _______@______________.com
To: ________@______________.com; ______@______________.com
RE: Statcorp Settlement

Spoke with Statcorp's counsel again today. He said his client reiterates its refusal to indemnify for anything in re Global. We either accept the deal as is or reject it. He says they'll pull the offer off the table.

No chance of that. He'll come back. They'll buckle.

It was the last correspondence I got about the case from Ellis. After that the discussions went into "standoff" mode, an agonizing limbo between "settled in principle" and "dismissed, subject to a signed agreement." Most people need closure, a sense that something's over, for good or ill or other. Not Ellis. He seemed to thrive in that netherworld, inches from the finish line, oblivious to the annoyance of being so close - of all but knowing the orgasmic satisfaction of putting a piece of litigation out of your head forever... of boxing all that wasted paper and shipping it to storage, to rot on a shelf in a warehouse, deservedly forgotten and properly, eventually, incinerated. Ellis could stretch out the construction of a formal agreement for months. What did it matter to him? If the settlement tanked in the interim, he didn't have to try the case.

And tank it very well could. A handshake deal between a pair of Philadelphia lawyers isn't worth a quart of rotten milk. And I knew every day that passed without a signed agreement - every day that passed with no follow up email from Ellis or any word about the negotiations - was one day closer to doom. The meanest sound in law isn't a judge ruling against you or a jury finding for your opponent. It's not the sound of a bickering asshole opponent on the phone while your morning coffee turns cold or some whining, haughty partner nitpicking your work as though he were William Fucking Safire. No, the meanest sound in litigation is silence - the email left unanswered, the phone call unreturned... the mute stare of a judge or jury or appellate panel after you've just finished making an argument riddled with holes and inconsistencies. Silence equals thought. You've said too much, shown a weakness, and the audience is angling for the best method to exploit the flaw.

In a game of chicken over the terms of a settlement agreement, silence signals the start of the "sudden death" round. All or nothing. Somebody caves or the case goes to trial. It also means failure - that somehow, some way, two groups recognizing they had enough at risk to compromise in the broader picture couldn't meet minds on the phrasing of some minuscule concession.

Every day I heard nothing, and every day I got more and more annoyed. The job was thankless enough, but this? Working your ass off to push the other side into a pittance settlement only to have the whole thing collapse in a pissing contest between the scriveners who punched up the settlement papers? I tried not to get angry, remembering the situation was terminal - that Don Quixote wouldn't have been fool enough to rail against the folly and sloth of the average law firm. Try as I might, though, every day I saw Ellis in the hall the same fantasy ran through my head. I saw myself racing at him as he passed an empty office, checking him into the room with my shoulder and slamming the door behind us:

Listen, you twisted fuck. Conceptually, I don't care if you blow the whole case with this game of chicken, but I worked my ass off on this thing... And you want to know why? Because I want the fucking files out of my office, off my goddamned desk. I'm bored with it, sick of it... Sick of working on the same issues day after day - filing briefs filled with the same technical arguments and writing the same "Statcorp this..." and "Statcorp that..." entries in my time sheets over and over and over again. If you fuck up this settlement and I have to prepare all the dry as dirt shit in those files for trial I am going to strangle you with the cord to your blessed fucking speakerphone.

It drove me nuts that Ellis ignored his complete lack of leverage in the negotiation. Most of that's studied ignorance, of course. Being an advocate is being obnoxious - offensive, pushy and coarse... absolving a client of having to act like a shit, at least directly, to get what he wants. The average business litigator is an instrument of greed, trading in manipulation - exploiting the chasm between what language allows and decency dictates. But even in that amoral/immoral universe, even when he's asking for a hundred knowing he's only entitled to ten, the litigator always knows what he really, truly deserves, the best he's going to get with his limited bargaining power.

Ellis's demands weren't obscene on the surface. The problem was all in the context. Our leverage was paper thin. Legally, our defenses rested on a single point of contract law. We claimed a provision of the contract excusing our client's alleged breaches was unambiguous. The other side claimed it wasn't. Most of the previous cases on the issue went in our favor, but none dealt with the exact language in our contract. And on the "gambling" side of the equation, Statcorp had already spent enough money on its claim that any flurry of legal bills for weeks of negotiations on the language of what should have been a boilerplate, cookie cutter agreement and release could easily push the company's general counsel to take his chances at trial.

- PL

...Like most things in my life, I only realized I'd bought a rusted lemon of a career ten miles down the road, standing next to the heap, reading the "BUYER TAKES AS IS" fine print on the sales ticket. So I did what hundreds of thousands of lawyers do every day:

If they kept "real life" records, 80 percent of lawyers under 35 would submit time sheets including entries like that. After about three years of that futile wheel spinning, and endless conversations with career consultants and job placement specialists, you realize that unless you're a transactional lawyer or employment litigator, businesses don't want or need you. The old saying - "You can do anything you want with a law degree" is technically true... In the same sense that you can do anything you want with a degree in Eastern Religions or a union card.

No one outside law firms is stopping general litigators from doing something else, but they're not paying them to do it either. If you ask a career consultant or an HR specialist, they'll tell you point blank - "Litigators are trained to be adversarial and they tend to alienate people. We pay for that skill set when needed, but there's no need to have it around all the time. And you can't even fire them. When you do, they sue you."

----------
¹ See Rushmore soundtrack. Still the finest obscure gem Wes Anderson has dusted off in one of his movies. Though his use of the Kinks' "Powerman" in The Darjeeling Limited does come close.

To read more outtakes from the upcoming PhilaLawyer book, see "Nuggets," Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III, and Vol. IV.

"When do they get back?"

"Monday."

"Call a glass store tomorrow. They have emergency services." Getting a plate glass door repaired in seventy-two hours was a tough order, but it could be done. I wasn't sure of that, of course, but I had faith. My folks had gone away a few months before and I'd invited friends over. One of them had sex with a virgin on a white couch in our living room. The aftermath was a red-and-white couch, smeared with Jackson Pollack patterns of blood splatters. When I saw the thing, I was certain I was doomed. How does anyone explain that to his mother? "I had a nosebleed" would never suffice. The stain was too wide, blotchy and smudged, like a small child had gone mad with finger paints or red Magic Markers.

My immediate thought was to scream. Christ, did you fucking stab the girl? Am I going to find 'Helter Skelter' smeared in blood on the dining room mirror?! Then I looked at girl, straining to avoid pouting, watching a pair of drunks arguing over how to wipe the remnants of her innocence out of furniture cushions. I figured it'd be crass to throw a tantrum, and that was probably a blessing. The cooler side of my head guided me to the kitchen, to the phone book in the drawer next to the refrigerator. Is it listed under 'laundromats,' 'laundrymats' or just 'cleaners'? The next morning I peeled off the upholstery covers and ran to the closest dry cleaner. Forty-eight hours and a hundred dollar cleaning bill later the stains were gone, like magic, the couch's dignity restored.

"What about the fight?" Chelsea was running every rotten contingency through her head. "What if those assholes wind up in the hospital? They're going to call my parents!"

I didn't have an answer for her on that. "Look, I'm sorry, but I have to leave. I still have to drop Nolan off at his place before I go home." I felt guilty walking away, leaving her there shell-shocked, with all the drunks running amuck in her place, spilling beer everywhere and screaming back and forth about the lynching that was still taking place outside. But I knew we were already pushing our luck. The noise level emanating from the property was growing. People were hollering, blaring music from their cars and roaming the woods, yelling to one another as they tracked the kid who'd gotten away. It was only a matter of time until the police were at the door.

The minute I opened the email I got a sick feeling in my stomach - an immediate recognition this was just the beginning... The first little move that would set a chain reaction in motion, destroying everything I'd worked on for the last few months.

From: _______@______________.com
To: ________@______________.com; ______@______________.com
RE: Statcorp Settlement

Statcorp is refusing to assume the liability on any future claims arising from the Global Processing venture. Their counsel simply refuses.

No shit he refuses. I'd refuse as well, on principle - on the basis I wasn't about to go back and run through days of due diligence for a pointless, gratuitous demand.

Our client didn't have any risk of litigation accruing from the Global Processing venture. It was barely involved, and the project barely got off the ground. Hell, it was our client's refusal to go forward with its duties under a broad agreement with Statcorp - including the Global Processing venture - that caused Statcorp to sue it in the first place. Statcorp's complaint was an ironclad defense to any future claim. If anyone was wronged as a result of something Global Processing did, all we had to do was hold up Statcorp's own allegations, stating our client had refused to put a drop of sweat equity, let alone a single red cent, into the thing.

Still, Ellis, the partner assigned to finalize the settlement with Statcorp, pushed forward with the demand, putting the whole thing at risk, for no good reason. They'd sued our client for millions and we were getting rid of the case for nickels - barely nuisance value - and here he was, laying the proverbial straw on the camel's back, seeing if there wasn't some way he could muster defeat from the jaws of victory.

A few years before, when I still thought law was a rational trade, I'd have lost my mind - flipped out and gone running down to Ellis' office, begging him to lay off, capitulate... think of the minimal upside and the enormity of the potential loss. "Damnit, Ellis, if you keep pushing these people they're going to call the whole settlement off and roll the dice in court." Not now. Now I just smiled, laughed to myself and ran the odds in my head. Sixty/forty the settlement implodes. If Ellis and opposing counsel get bitchy with one another, trying to prove who's smarter, seventy/thirty.

Ellis was brilliant - a master of the mechanics, the law, and the art of structuring agreements. The problem was all that focus on the technical details blinded him to the practical realities of the negotiation. He didn't seem to understand, no matter how much leverage you think you have, there's always a point of no return - that one step too many, straight off a cliff. Some people get it. They understand that whether it's haggling over the price of landscaping services, a new set of tires or a multimillion dollar corporate dispute, if you get ninety five percent of what you want, but your opponent refuses to buckle on that last little bit of your demand, you take the deal and run. Some people don't. They only know what they want - all of what they want - even if they don't really need it, and they'll put their ninety five percent gain at risk just to push for that last little bit of gravy.

This allergic reaction to compromise is common in litigation, or any business involving zero sum games and rampant neuroses. People get locked into the idea of beating the other side so badly they forget that any resolution where you're doing better than the opponent, even by the smallest increment, is a "win." Once things are moving in your favor in settlement negotiations, the battle isn't between you and your adversary anymore. It's between you and your ego, greed or insecurity - finding that line where you've clawed all you can from an opponent without frustrating him to the point that he says, "Fuck it. You're an asshole. Let's just try the goddamn case."

They're right. We are get rich quick artists. We're the Get Rich Quick Generation. And more than that, we're the Get Rich Quick Doing Something You Like Generation. You think I'm writing a book for free? They gave me a nice check, and the thinking is, this will sell, and somebody will give me more, to write about other things. It's a calculated risk. Like a lot of jobs, law pays according to what I'd call a "pain for dollars ratio." The amount of annoyance, repetition or tedium in a profession results in a congruent income increase. The amount of enjoyment and true creativity one experiences in his work corresponds with a decrease in income. The only escape from it seems to be acquiescence - aging into the job and getting better at it, so the time and intellectual investment required to do the work decreases, making it more tolerable, providing the illusion of forward progression and happiness. The only problem is, as the money and the ease of the toil increase, time passes and your options decrease. Taking a chance on getting lucky - trying to find a job you love or something that might create enough capital in one shot to vault you out of the work force - rots into a fantasy.

The old guard love to see our generation fail in entrepreneurial endeavors because it reinforces the certainty and pragmatism that underpin their measured, conservative decisions. In the late nineties, I remember reading dozens of quotes in the legal trade rags from angry gray-hairs ripping the gold rush mentality of young associates who were jumping ship to take a chance at getting obscenely wealthy working for dot coms. At the same time, an exchange of salary information between lawyers on the internet drove first year associate salaries at top flight firms into six figure territory in every metropolis, even Philadelphia. For a "company man," one of those partners who'd put in years of grueling hours, that must have been a sharp slap in the mouth. The kids weren't just jumping ship; firms had to pay them premium dollars for the sliver of time they had the little bastards.

And worse than all of that, I think every partner or manager in every type of business understood that this was just the beginning of a long, ugly trend, at least for them. There'd been a seismic shift in the leverage dynamic, and nobody could figure out when it happened, why it happened - what caused the fucking thing. Suddenly the kids just started thinking differently. Management still had a general sense of control; money would always rule employees in the short term. But in the longer view, these new generations were demanding something else - something the business model couldn't offer.

Now, closing in on a decade later, first year associate salaries at the best firms have climbed above $140,000.00 in most markets, $160,000.00 in others. The decent small and mid-sized shops have been forced to offer six figure starting salaries to compete and everybody from clerks to public defenders to judges have enjoyed ripple effect raises. Economically speaking it's never been better to be an associate and still, even with all those pluses, the only thing eclipsing salary inflation remains, you guessed it - attrition. I guess the bloated paychecks are supposed to work like a billboard, attracting top associates to the firms and talented minds to the industry. But that's only one perspective. From a different angle it looks like hazardous duty pay - the hallmark of something absent any other attraction.

DM

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

- Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski

"Collect call from a 'Mr. Sparkle.'"

"From where?"

"San Francisco, sir."

"Why collect?"

"I don't know, sir. Will you accept the charges?"

"What does a phone call cost these days?"

"I don't know sir."

"You're the operator."

"I don't have a land line, sir."

"Fuhhh-- Go ahead... Put it through..."

"Hey dude." I immediately recognized the voice.

"Alex? Why the fuck would you call me collect?"

"I wanted to see if they still did that."

"Why not just ask the operator if you could do it and leave it at that?"

"I don't know. It got away from me..."

"Working hard again, eh? Who's this call getting billed to?"

"Haven't decided yet. I've been soaking the Chinese clients a lot these days. They mint bills on the shitter."

"So business is good?"

"The money's OK. The people... well that's different. It's like that Hot Tuna song, you know, the one--"

"'99 Year Blues.'"

"I always forget that title. Makes no sense."

"I hum it around the office..."

"But fuck all that... I'm not calling about me. I read that piece about Zelig and you have it all fucking wrong. You're just popping off nihilist rants."

"As opposed to what? Your book of virtues?"

"I thought you might become the first Dadaist blogger, but you're no Dadaist."

"So then I'm a Dadaist?"

"Only if you stop writing again."

"I can't."

"That's because you have no values. You're a groundless scowl... taking potshots from the bully pulpit of anonymity."

"I'm doing a book."

"Then you're a sellout."

"Oh, really... Who should I follow?"

Silence. 1... 2.... 3... "D.B. Cooper. There was a hero. That's escape..."

"He jumped out of a plane with a stolen bag of cash."