Billing In Odd Places

One of the best things about my job is that I can work practically anywhere. Unless I need to meet a client or discuss something with a partner, I can do my job at home, in a coffee shop or even beachside. All I really need is my computer and internet access. Sometimes I don't even need that!

Here are some odd places I've billed today:

1) While taking a shower this morning, inspiration suddenly struck. Mid-lather, I basically drafted a letter to opposing counsel in response to a letter he sent me the day before. So, that would be .1 for preparation of correspondence to opposing counsel....while lathering my hair!

2) When I arrived at the ferry station I realized that they had switched out our usualy ferry boat for an older boat, one without an outlet. Ugh, if only I would have known, I would have charged my laptop. I circled the boat but the only outlet I could find was in the women's bathroom. Guess where I prepared my status report? The smell was less than inspiring though.

3) Later in the day I had to travel to a nearby city to do a privilege review of our client's documents. When we travel for work we get to add that in to the amout of time it takes us to complete the billable task. So I happily rolled down the windows and bellowed along to the songs that played on my favorite country station, all the while billing some good, quality time. NICE!

My joy was interrupted, however, upon my return to the office. The second I stepped back into the office, I received a letter from opposing counsel stating that our answer to a complaint was overdue and warning of a pending default judgment. My heart skipped a beat for a second. Then I berated myself and wondered how I could miss such an important deadline. Of course, in my state you can defeat a default judgment by bringing your answer to the default judgment hearing but I didn't want to look bad in front of the partner!

Then I read the letter more carefully and looked up the civil rule only to discover that opposing counsel's argument is in direct conflict with the plain language of the civil rule. According to the civil rule, we had over 30 more days to file our answer. Um, seriously? Did he even read the rule? In response, I sent him a one paragraph letter re-stating the local rule word for word- with relevant portion bolded, of course. I really, really wanted to end the letter by saying, "EAT THAT!"*

But I refrained.


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* This reminds me of one of my favorite lawschool professor's rants. Essentially he lectured to his 1Ls that students and attorneys need to read statutes really carefully. His quotable from that lecture was, "learn to read statutes, or else your children will not go to college."

Office Decor

My office badly needs a make-over.

The walls are bare with the exception of two nails poking out indicating where the old inhabitant hung his diplomas.

My desk is ugly. Butt ugly. It's a very light, yellowish fake oak color. And it's almost sparkly in the sunlight.

There are stacks of paper everywhere. I've been so busy billing that I've only had time to organize my case files into stacks of paper lined up across my desk, bookshelf and windowsill. Yes, it's pretty bad.

But at least I have my shoes in order. (see that white envelope to the left of my Frye boots? That's my law school diploma. Nice place for it huh?)

I've decided that my office needs this:


(a Fathead wall cling of a fireplace)

What do ya think?

Too Crazy To Blog

This week in one word: CRAZY.

I've basically been working every waking hour since Sunday. I'm crabby. Tired. Stressed. And I feel like I've been dropping the ball all over the place.

The source of most of my craziness is a case that I am helping on been helping that is scheduled for trial in a week. This case has basically taken all of my energy and mental thought. And I've only been in charge of certain assignments so I really feel for the associate handling the case. This week I finished up some motions in limine- which were filed today with a bazillion exhibits. It felt SO GOOD to see those go out the door and know that I won't have to work on them again- until our reply is due. However, at the last minute today I was reminded that we needed a declaration in support of the motions. OMG. I had totally forgotten about those..... There went the first half of my day.

Last night I started woring on special verdict forms for all the claims and parties involved. That was a crazy experience. It reminded me of a "Choose your own adventure" book. I think I still have a headache from those.

TONIGHT I have to work on the Trial Brief which I haven't started and which I have to turn into the partner by end of day tomorrow. In other words, I won't be sleeping tonight.

Wednesday I gave an in-house CLE to the attorneys at our firm. The topic I chose to present on was service of process with regards to foreign and out of state defendants. It was an hour long CLE but I put a total of 10 hours preparing for it. Thank goodness I get CLE credit for all of that time. I think next time around I will chose a topic that is (1) easier and (2) more thrilling. At least no one fell asleep....although I swear one attorney was sleeping with his eyes open.

I had to do all the above in addition to keeping up on my other cases-- which involved preparing and filing a 12(B)(6) motion to dismiss, drafting interrogatories and answering a complaint.

All in all, I am in serious need of a vacation. But, at this point, I'd settle for a full night's sleep (I'm averaging 4-5 hours of sleep per night this week). I wish I could look forward to the weekend but I'll be preparing an outline for an upcoming deposition and drafting another motion to dismiss instead of enjoying the weather. Seriously- who knew law was so much work?

It's Wednesday And I Still Need A Drink

My cases continue to explode on me. I swear that there was an urgent task on each one of my cases today (I have 7 of my own cases and I'm assisting on an additional 3 cases- that's alot of urgent tasks). While the stress level is pretty high, I ABSOLUTELY love being overwhelmed and knee deep in litigation. At the very least, it's better than the alternative.

I've responded to and initiated enough phone calls and emails today to make anyone crazy. Seriously, by the end of the day I counted up over 19 tasks that I billed as a .1 which related to some form of communication with a client, opposing counsel, expert or other third party.

Oh and I had over an hour long phone conference with one of my clients who doesn't speak English. And the interpreter in on the call didn't help much. She had such a thick accent that I almost couldn't tell when she was speaking English to me or the foreign language. Do you understand how hard it is to explain Washington law to a newly arrived foreigner with no knowledge about our legal system, especially when everything being said is filtered through a third party interpreter!? It's especially hard when they are the defendant and have no idea why they are being sued. That phone call was definately the most challenging hour of my day.

I can't even believe there was a time when my work load was light. I think my current work "to-do" list contains enough billable hours to last me for a whole month. But aside from the craziness, things keep getting better. I'm finally growing into my position. I feel a sense of confidence in my role as an attorney. I'm giving recommendations to clients and to the partners.

BUT most importantly of all, I HAVE BUSINESS CARDS!

This is so much fun!

Oh and did I mention that I left my office tonight at 8pm? Yeah, where's that drink?!

Tuesday And I Need A Drink

Warning: incessant rambling follows:

I love and hate three day weekends. For some reason, time seems to slip away faster during a three day weekend than a normal weekend. How can this be when there is an entire extra day in there?! I hate that I can't slow down enough to enjoy life even during a holiday or a three day weekend. I feel like there is always a back log of chores, work and other "stuff" that I can't even begin to categorize on my "to-do" list. But I always seem to ignore it all or push it off for "next weekend" in the name of my quickly-escaping sanity.

Thank goodness for photos- without them I would never remember what happened in my fast-as-lightning life. (BTW- Jacob LOVES sparklers, pop-its and all other "f-eye-woks."

I'm the kind of person who requires a lot of down time. I have the physical "need" to veg out in front of a TV, computer screen or cooking magazine. I can't tackle anything on the weekend until I've fulfilled my quota of veg time. Good thing for me that shopping is also an acceptable method for fulilling my weekly veg time. I know many people HATE grocery shopping. But I absolutely love it. I love to take my list to the store, peruse the aisles to find just the right ingredients for my weekly menus and revel in all the consumer choices before me. I love buying snacks and treats and yummy things to eat. I should be a professional grocery shopper for Hell's Kitchen or Rackel Ray or [insert favorite cooking show}.

And the rambling takes a new direction..., The worst part about a three day weekend (besides the fact that it goes by too quickly) is that you have to return to work. Today, when I got to work every single one of my cases decided to explode on me! By the time noon rolled around (seemingly in the blink of an eye), I had made a call to an expert, called opposing counsel to have a nice argument about service of process, took a call from a client, made a call to another client, called an insurance company, scheduled a site visit for my expert, finished a status report, signed a notice of appearance and reported to two different partners on two of my cases. I was dead tired by noon but I felt like I got nothing done! As the day progressed, other demands seemed to pile up on me until I thought my body would sink into the floor.

And then I desperately needed one of these:


Or these:

The funny thing about my job is that it is so unpredictable from day to day. As I lay in bed the night before work, I plan out all the tasks I will accomplish the next day in priority order. But by the time I get to my desk the next morning, listen to my voice mails and read my emails, my task list is overcome with a slew of new "highly important" tasks and assignments. My task list dies until the next day where it just gets pushed aside by other new tasks. I've had one assignment on my personal mental to do list for an entire month!

I guess this is how things go in the litigation world. It's crazy and insane and draining, but I feel like I'm doing something important and valuable for my client each day. Each day I navigate local rules, use case law to support my position, confer with clients, strategize with experts and generally push my cases that much closer to resolution. All of that is precisely why I love every second of this crazy little thing called litigation.

Jury Trials & Tribulations

Our firm has a monster of a trial coming up ... and I was enlisted to help! When I say monster, I do mean monster. There is one plaintiff, who in essence represents over 80 people, four defendants and four third party defendants. As the defendants we get to defend claims against the Plaintiff as well as pursue claims against the third party defendants. Plus, this case involves 10 causes of action, none of which have been settled by motion or summary judgment. It's pretty exciting around here!

So Partner sends me an email asking for my assistance in preparing for trial. Then Associate walks into my office:

Associate: "Hey, did you get Partner's email? Do you know what you need to help with?"
Me: "Yes, I got it right here. Prepare jury instructions and.... motions in lime?"
Associate: "Um, you mean 'motions in limine.' Do you think you can handle those? I'll give you all the prior status reports and pleadings that you will need."
Me: "Sure, no problem. Actually, I'm pretty excited."
Associate: "Good."

Associate walks out of my office. I take a big breath, turn to my computer screen and immediately google "motions in limine." This is the epitome of being thrown into practice. You get to work on assignments you never knew existed with names you can barely pronounce. Like voir dire....who the hell came up with that term?

Then there's the jury instructions. The first ten jury instructions were kind of fun. You have to establish the elements and burdens of proof for each claim and try to present them in a coherent fashion to the jury. Except the pattern jury instructions are dripping with legalese. I re-read them and kept thinking to myself- really? I barely understand this definition of proximate cause and I went to lawschool. You're going to pull 12 random people off the street and talk to them about superceding causes unbroken by a direct chain of sequential events? Good luck with that. I might as well write all these jury instructions in Chinese. The jury can just decide which party is correct by which witnesses have the most realistic looking toupes.

Also, I have a beef with exhibit lists. Can someone please explain to me why I have to review an "exhibit list" containing 997 exhibits? Seriously? My poor brain can't handle it all. Why do we even need exhibits? I mean people swear to tell the truth (the whole truth and nothin' but the truth) anyway, right (ha ha)?

After I'm done with all that, I get to work on voir dire questions and a trial brief. Cool huh? Actually, I have no idea because I have never seen a single set of voir dire questions and I have no idea what a trial brief is! Let the fun begin!

The crazy thing is that most cases never get this close to trial. Many lawyers never really get a chance to do trial prep work. I should feel lucky that I get some of this experience so early on in my career. But I can't help but be amazed at how much of the trial prep for this high stakes case is being done by lawyers who have no idea what they are doing (me!). Then I reemember, in the field of law, you never have all the answers.

Muddling Through

There is a lot of stuff on my mind tonight.

We found out that one of Jacob's grandmas might not be able to watch him anymore. During the work week Jacob spends half the time with my mom and half the time with my husband's mom. We've been so blessed that he is being watched by people who love him almost as much as we do. And we've been so fortunate that we haven't had to pay a small fortune in child care. With our mortgage and my student loans, it would be rough.

So, right now we're re-thinking our child care options. We only need to find child care for twice a week but it's still stressing me out. The thought of leaving Jacob with someone who is not family for 11 hours a day (7am to 6pm) is totally weighing on my mind and filling me with guilt. Then there's the cost. Then there's the ever present but usually dormant thought that maybe I'm making the wrong decision by going to work. And then there's the fact that we want to add to our family soon, so the guilt and the cost will likely double. It all makes my stomach churn.

I keep reassuring myself that anytime I feel that I need to, I can quit my job. Quit my career. We could survive off my husband's salary if I took a mindless part time job to cover my monthly student loans. But I love my career. I could never find another job I enjoy this much. And I've worked SO hard to get this far. I worked my BUTT off to get where I am now. Can I just throw it all away- is that even responsible considering my $120K in student loans- in order to satisfy the little nibbles of guilt that come and go?

I think I have to accept the fact that I will never be 100% at ease with my decisions no matter which path I take. But it just plain sucks. I just want to know what's "right." But in life, just as in the practice of law, there is never a simple "right" answer. Life and law are all about muddling through.

Sidenote: We had a great Father's Day weekend. We went on a seaplane tour of Seattle and then had a three course meal on Lake Union!

27 Banker Boxes Full Of Hell

Work has been crazy this week. I have a million things due and not enough time to complete them all! From Monday to Thursday, I billed over 34 hours. That might not seem impressive to some people but that's usually my weekly goal to reach my 155 billable hours per month. And that time is in addition to a 1 hour work lunch, a 1 hour work function and a 2 hour in-house CLE. To put it lightly, I'm kind of exhausted.

And guess what I get to do today? Resume document review of 27 banker boxes full of construction documents! I started this task yesterday and I only got through about 8 boxes for the entire day. In total, I reviewed 4 years worth of construction meeting minutes, 2 years worth of change orders, and god-only-knows how much random correspondence. UGH. 19 more boxes of awesomeness to go. Opposing counsel did their review of these boxes in one day- with 6 people helping out. I get to do it in 2 days, by myself. YAY! (not).

So, you know what's not so awesome about finally having a bar number? Opposing counsel gets to see how new your bar number is and try to take advantage of you. It's pretty much a lovely walk in the park with a rainbow sno-cone....

Weeks ago I was tasked with scheduling this awesome document review project with opposing counsel. The documents are at a third party counsel's office (this party already settled out of the case). After working with everyone and their important schedules, I finally got a week set aside for the doc review. Weeks later and one day before opposing counsel is supposed to review the files (it just worked out that they were scheduled to review first) a partner from opposing counsel's office calls me up all frantic-like. He claims he wasn't involved in the whole scheduling process and begged me to switch days with opposing counsel.

I was a little bit excited to have a partner from opposing counsel's office call me. See, I'm IMPORTANT now. I have a BAR NUMBER. (insert head inflate). So I decided to be nice and accomodate him. This is what that complying with the "spirit of discovery" is all about right? So I agree to switch days and we both left the conversation satisfied. However, I did think it was odd that instead of just rescheduling his day for review he specifically asked me if I would take his day so he could take my day.

I pop into Partner's office to let him know about the schedule change. Partner looks at me and asks, "did he say why he couldn't go tomorrow?" I reply, "No, he just told me he had a conflict and asked if I could go first." Then Partner looks at me again and with this wise old expression on his face (except he's not really old and, in fact, he's kid of hot- in a partner-sort-of-way) he says, "I think he wanted you to go first so he could copy all the documents you flagged."

That's when it all made sense. DUH. Why else wouldn't he just reschedule with the third party who has the documents? Why else would he make a specific effort to call me and request to switch days? on the phone he was so pleasant and I thought I was doing him a major favor. But to find out that he was swindling me the whole time- UGH! I feel so burned!

So what did Partner and I decide to do? We called third party with the documents, and rescheduled our review for later in the week (to be honest, we weren't prepared to view the documents one day early because we were waiting for a phone call from our client regarding what we should be looking for). Small victories are important in the practice of law. Especially when you are staring into the heart of a mountainous pile of banker boxes awaiting your review.

More On The Billable Hour

Thanks for all your comments. I just have a couple more things to say about this topic though. First, I need to clarify that I work in insurance defense. Billable hours are hard at any firm, but when your clients are insurance companies, billable hours are an exceptional pain in the ass. You all know the reputation of insurance companies when it comes to handling claims... "deny, deny, deny." (side note: I think insurance companies might actually be hated more than attorneys, not quite sure though). Well, they have the same mentality when it comes to paying their attorneys.

Our clients are VERY strict about what bills they will pay. I have to word my billing entries just perfectly if I want them to be accepted as a legitimate billing task. It's a steep learning curve. And we get audited quite often- just think of the billable hours I lose from reviewing my time entries, correcting my audited entries and appealing their denial of my time entries.

I think you all are right that generally, associates should not be cutting their own time. In general, I don't do this unless a partner specifically tells me I can't bill more than X hours for a certain task. For example: one partner wanted me to put together a checklist and memo about how to subpoena non-parties. He told me this was not billable. When I had to put together a subpoena, he instructed me that whenever he's the partner on the case, a task like this cannot be billed at more than a .1. Yeah, that's 6 minutes for something that took me 30 minutes to do. This problem doesn't come up very often though and I know as I do more of these things I will become more efficient. (For the person who asked about stipulations: we generally will see if the other side will stipulate to provide records. If they won't, then we will subpoena the records from the party who maintains them. In my experience, plaintiffs will usually stipulate to authorize the release of medical records unless they have prior injuries and want to keep them from being discovered.)

Another billing problem is purely the result of me being at the bottom of the totem pole. When there are non-billable, non-client related marketing projects, those tasks generally will fall on me until the firm hires someone who is greener than I am.

So I know this billable hour thing will get easier when I become more experienced and when the non-billable work gets handed down to someone else. The problem is that I'm a semi-perfectionists. If there is a guideline or a bar set, I like to exceed it as much as possible. Not meetng my weekly/monthly billable hour requirement is killing me. I feel like a bad associate. I know the firm will cut me some slack for a while but it personally irks me that I can't meet the goal. I survived law school so you'd think I'd be used to being just mediocre or just passing by now. But I'm not. The inner perfectionist in me still lives.

I want to beat the billable hour. I will beat the billable hour. I just need to find the motivation. Or I need to block all access to the internet/my phone/tv/cooking magazines/my child. Yeah, that might work.

The Mondayest Monday

This week I had the Monday of all Mondays. And it was actually a Tuesday.

Thanks to the long Memorial Day weekend, Tuesday was my Monday. And yes, my billable hours are going to suffer for that. But let's not think about that right now.

When we got home from the coast, instead of finding a happy envelope containing my bar card waiting for me, I found a sad, wrinkled, wet and waterstained envelope containing my returned bar application. I'm not even sure why the post office returned it. It had nothing on it telling me what was wrong with it! I was so mad! This was the second time it had been returned to me (the first time, I didn't put enough postage).

So on my Tuesday-Monday I decided to hand deliver my application on my way to the office. After scouring the block where the bar association was supposed to be and walking into wrong buildings for like 10 minutes, I found the bar association across the street, marked clearly by a sign with big bold letters. Ooops. Dur.

I crossed the street and walked into the building. Then I got into the wrong set of elevators and ended up on an entirely wrong floor. I finally made my way back to the lobby where I eventually found the elevator that would take me to the correct floor. I marched proudly into the bar association office in my slacks and sneakers and then, not so proudly, handed over my still-wet and water stained bar application.

When I handed the receptionist my application, I couldn't for the life of me remember the word for "wet." I looked at her and said, "Sorry my application is..... uh.... watery." She looked across the table at the weird girl in green sneakers (that would be me) and probably mistook me for a legal messenger (but at least I didn't smell like one- man why do they all stink? And what's up with their weird bags?).

I finally made it to my office after stopping at Starbucks and spilling coffee down my pants. I plopped down in my office chair and not one second later an associate storms in and (frantically) asks, "Hey, can I see your appendix? Where's your appendix?"

What? I stared at him blankly for a second trying to process his statement. "You want to see my appendix? You mean like this one?" I point to my abdomen where I believe my appendix to be. He looks at me all crazy like then roars a horrendous laugh out of the gaping hole in his contorted face. "No wierdo. I need to see the appendix to your motion for reconsideration because I'm preparing one too and I want to see what yours looks like."

Oh yeah. THAT APPENDIX! Me = laughing stock of the 22nd floor office suite.

So that was my Non-Monday Monday. Phew.

Oh yeah, this is the icing on the cake: at one point in the day I was on a semi-important phone call with one of our experts. We started to discuss the case and the science that would support our position on a liability issue. He starts to say something really important but I can't find a pen to jot the information down. I have the phone tucked between my ear and my shoulder and I'm using two hands to surf around the top of the desk, pushing stacks of paper everywhich way to locate that DANG PEN. I give up and open my "pen" drawer where I find one blue, one red and one green CRAYON. Don't ask why I have crayons in my desk.

So yes, I took down a super important note with a flashy blue crayon. I couldn't help smiling from ear to ear each time I pressed the blue tip to my notepad. In fact, I think I should use crayon more often....I wonder what the partners would think if I handed them a note in blue crayon?

This Is How I Do It

So many people have asked me about my schedule and what I do for child care. This post is for them.

First off, the running theme here is "family." Without them, I just couldn't handle it. I couldn't do what I do. I rely on my family for so much.

I am very amazingly fortunate. Both my mom and my mother-in-law are available to watch my son during the week and they live near(ish) to us. I KNOW. I'm very lucky. Most people I know would give their foot to have one parent living nearby for childcare. I have two sets of parents willing to help me out! Honestly, my law degree is part theirs. I could never have completed law school as a long distance commuter and as a new mom without them. I also feel like my paycheck is part theirs because they save me about $1000 to 1500 a month in child care!

I live across the water from Seattle. My commute to work is about 1 hour and 40 minutes. My husband's commute can be from 10 minutes to 40 minutes long, depending upon which city he has to work in for the day. My in-laws live about 25 minutes away and my parents live about 35 minutes away. Our home, my parent's home, my in-law's home, my work and my husband's work is each in a different city. See how complicated this is getting?

But we worked out a pretty good system.

5:50am: I wake up and get ready for work. Sometime shortly after my shower, my husband and Jacob wake up. One of us will give him a morning bottle and we laugh as he runs around the house opening and closing doors saying "bye bye" either to us or to other random things in the house.

7:00am: I head out the door and walk a mile to catch my ferry. On Mondays and Wednesdays and on every other Friday, my sister-in-law picks up Jacob and drives him 35 minutes to my mom's house. In the car, Jacob gets to play with his two young cousins, one is just a couple months older than him. My sister-in-law manages to get three car seats into the back of my Subaru wagon and they are off- sharing graham crackers and pointing out all the buses and trucks they see along the way.

On Tuesday and Thursdays and every other Friday, my husband drives Jacob to his mom's house. Jacob will point out every truck, tractor, car, bus, and "big" truck along the way. When he sees a semi or a bulldozer, my husband has to brace himself for shrieking! Jacob LOVES machines. He's 100% boy (when I'm not dressing him in a bra).

7:20: My ferry leaves. During the ferry ride, I either sleep (if no one is talking too loudly on their cell phone or clipping their nails- EW!) or I do some work on my laptop.

8:30: My ferry arrives in Seattle. From the ferry terminal, I walk about a mile to my office, picking up a skinny vanilla latte along the way.

8:40: I walk into the firm office, say "hi" to my favorite co-workers and duck into my own office to crank out some billable hours.

5:00pm:I leave the office at 5:00pm every night (at least I have so far) and walk another mile to the ferry.

5:30: My ferry leaves Seattle. I will either sleep some more or do more work.

6:30: My ferry arrives in my city. From the ferry terminal, I walk another mile to my home (unless my husband picks me up).

7:00pm: I arrive home. On Mondays and Wednesdays when Jacob is at my mom's, my sister-in-law will pick him up and bring him home. The other days, my husband will do it. But always by the time I get home, Jacob is there waiting for my with big smiles and hugs. For 2.5 seconds his eyes light up and he screams "mama, mama." Then the novelty of me being home wears off and he is back to pushing his toy fire truck around the house.

We eat dinner as soon as I get home. Usually dinner is a frozen meal I prepared ahead of time the Sunday before, or it is leftovers. I've found some awesome casseroles that I can make on Sunday and freeze or refrigerate. My husband pops them into the oven when he gets home and then it's almost ready by the time I get home. I also make a lot of make-ahead meals that taste just as great when they are leftovers: meatballs and sauce from scratch with garlic bread, chicken parmesan, chicken cordon bleu casserole (amazing!) or dumplings with sauerkraut and ham have been what I've mostly made so far. I only have to make one or two meals ahead of time and we eat the leftovers for the rest of the week.

8:30pm is Jacob's bed time. We read him stories and tuck him in with his two stuffed dogs (named "Oof" and "More oof").

9:00pm: I will usually try to trek to the gym to work out. I've been training for a half marathon but lately my knee has been hurting. So we'll see how that goes.

10:00pm: When I get home from the gym, I usually will watch some TV with my husband or play on my computer or catch up on work. We hit they hay sometime between 11:00pm to 12:00am. Somehow, I function on 6 hours of sleep at night.

My secret for getting through crazy weekdays: lots of coffee, chocolate, amazing family, the best co-workers ever and a great job!

My New Life

Now I finally understand what people mean when they say that formerly foreign phrase, "I don't have time for facebook!" It used to shock me to my core that PEOPLE just didn't have time for FACEBOOK. I mean, Facebook soaked up like hours of my day at a time. It was the only way a lawstudent like myself could socialize- from afar and not in real time.

Well, NOW I know.

This has been a hard, busy and tiring week. And you get to hear all about it.

In some ways coming back feels just like I never left. I get my old office from the summer back. I'm still not quite a lawyer because I'm waiting on bar results so I get to do the same things I did as a summer associate. I know most of the people already so there aren't too many "getting to know the co-workers with small talk" awkward moments. In fact, the social part of work is AWESOME. My first summer I was so nervous and shy. Last summer I was more confident and didn't spend all my time hiding in my office. This year, I feel like quite the social butterflies and am very comfortable in my environment, it feels like an old shoe (except for remembering how to use the dang printer/copier/fax machine). Even annoying guy from the summer is already asking me to buy him coffee and calling me Pooky.

My first day was a little frustrating because my only project was to review and analyze invoices from co-counsel. UGH. It was horrible. The second day was pretty much the same. But today I was assigned three different discovery status reports to go out to our clients. I was also assigned a research project and the task of contacting another client and answering interrogatories. Oh and a Motion to Dismiss! This is more like it! I love working on tangible client deliverables and drafting pleadings! It was great to see the face of the associate who assigned me a status report when just 5 hours later I handed him my first draft- he was shocked and impressed that I had actually completed it the same day! That felt pretty darn good.

I love the partners. They are so friendly, personable, and approachable. I feel like they genuinely care about how I'm doing at the firm. They all have small children at home and they totally understand where the mommy in me is coming from when I show up to work. It feels great to have partners come into my office to give me assignments and end up staying fifteen minutes longer than expected because we are chatting it up about our kids (!).

There are only two frustrating things about work. (1) The famous BILLABLE HOUR. Sheesh. I'm so nervous about meeting my hours. I never had a problem working there over the summer but now that I'm salary I'm worried about slacking on meeting my daily requirements. (2) Learning how to practice law. I mean I feel heads above most first year associates that I know just because I know the very basics of business of insurance law practice already and I have two summers of experience. But there is still a steep learning curve when it comes to learning how to handle a case from start to finish- in that regards, I have MUCH to learn.

Finally, with the return to work comes the return of the Mommy Guilt. I leave the house at 7am and return at 7pm five days a week. That means I have about 1.5 hours each weekday to spend with my fast growing toddler. With Jacob, I'm so conflicted. I enjoy working and using my law degree but I feel guilty for not always being there. I feel like everyone but me is raising him. I worry that I am going to miss out on so much of his life. A heavy weight of guilt hits me each time I walk out the door in the morning. Why is working away from home so hard for mommies and not so hard for daddies (my husband never feels this guilty and conflicted, why do I have to? It's just so unfair)!

Cee, The Pretender

So the Real World begins for me this week as I start the first day of the rest of my career. I am pretty much 79% a walking ball of anxiety and 21% excited out of my mind.

I've interned for the past two summers at this firm but when I start on Monday things are likely to be very different. Instead of assigning me a research project or a single pleading to draft, they will hand me over a whole case list of my very own. I usually hate first days because they are so awkward and unproductive and full of paperwork, meetings and introductions. This time around it wont be so bad because I aready know most of the people and they are giving me my old office back (I LOVE my old office! It even has a view of Lake Union and if I croon my neck I can kinda see the ferry boats coming and going from downtown Seattle-not to mention that guy who likes to lay out on his veranda in his birthday suit!).

There are some great associates there who will be excellent sources of advice and I know I can go to them when I need some help or assurance. I had a great "mentor" there from last summer who was really smart and friendly and his opinion held some weight with the partners.

I feel all kinds of jitters. It's almost like the feeling you get the night before the first day of school- except after 6 years of being a student, first days of school are very familiar territory while first days as a "pretend" lawyer are still extremely daunting (I still haven't gotten my bar results or been sworn in- so what am I? A pretend lawyer?).

I just hope I picked out an appropriate outfit for my first day. I hope my alarm goes off. I hope it doesn't down pour during my walk to the office. I hope I can remember how to function at 8am in the morning. And I hope all the kids are nice to me.