“I Don’t Think I Like Lawyers”

by Mitch Rothenberg

 

            This article is really hard for me to be writing right now. Less than 24 hours ago, I was on spring break in Key West , Florida , and now I’ve returned to my fabulous Lombard street apartment in Baltimore . It’s a nice apartment, don’t get me wrong, but right now it makes me want to cry. I have my Chinese food, my DVDs, and my Jack Daniels, which are usually more than enough to comfort me during lonely nights – but tonight, none of those things help. Key West beckons with its sunny beaches, laid back mentality, copious amounts of alcohol and lack of serious gang problems. But before I get away from myself, let me backtrack some.

            The Key West dream began several months ago, when I once again had the sudden compulsive urge to leave Baltimore and law school and go as far away as possible. Although this time, school wasn’t the problem. I was enjoying my classes and taking it semi-easy. Then my grandmother called. If you haven’t met her yet, she’s lovingly referred to as “Ma,” and has a wonderfully authentic Jewish/New York Grandmother accent. The conversation went something like this.

            “Miitchy.”

            “Hi Ma. How’s it going?”

            “I want you to meet a man. (pause). He’s a lawyer. (pause). In DC. He’s my friend’s son, and he’s a very sweet man. I met him over Rosh Hashanah. (pause). He’s very sweet, and he wants to meet you.”

            Now, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of sitting down with a family friend to talk about your law career, I can only stress that it’s the worst idea humanly possible. They usually give such advice as “you should write a cover letter when you apply for jobs,” or “I like ivory colored envelopes.” But this experience went well beyond anything of that nature.

            He made me meet him at 9:00 a.m. at a Starbucks in DC, which meant I got to leave my house some time around 7 a.m. He was a short man, about 5’4”, which is always a bad combination with being a partner in a firm. We chatted pleasantly for a whole of thirty seconds before he asked me if I had read his law review articles. I confessed that I hadn’t had a chance yet.

            “Big mistake,” he said with emphasis. “You go to meet a man, you read his work, you find out what he’s all about.”

            The morning quickly went from a mild tropical storm to a tsunami. He asked me where I saw myself in a few years, and I told him I think I’d be happy in a small firm, working 40-50 hours a week, with people I enjoyed.

            “You know,” he said. “You make more money working in a big firm. I mean, you work more hours, probably 6-7 days a week, but you end up making a lot more money per hour.”

            As nice as it was for him to point out this glaringly obvious point, I tried to explain to him that my girlfriend was also going to be a lawyer, at a big firm nonetheless, and I doubted we’d be in the poor house.

            “So what, are you going to be a kept man? Is that what you want?”

            I tried to explain that I really cared more about lifestyle than money, and I just wanted to find a job that I enjoyed. He didn’t seem to understand, and quickly came back to the money argument.

            “You know, guys with more money get prettier girls.”

            Was he really, to my face, insinuating that my girlfriend wasn’t pretty? Another fun moment came when I slipped and accidentally referred to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals as the Maryland Special Court of Appeals.

            “You know,” he responded, “you have three options when you open your mouth. You can either say the right thing, say the wrong thing, or keep your mouth closed so I don’t know that you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

            If you can imagine a more pleasant way to spend the morning, please enlighten me. And on top of everything, I couldn’t splash my espresso on his $200 tie and leave, because this was the son of my grandmother’s friend, and he assumed that he was doing a favor for my grandmother. It was like in middle school when a bully sits on you, grabs your arm, punches you in the face with it, and asks you, “why are you hitting yourself.”

            The showstopper came at the end though, when he gave me various instructions on how I might be able to find a job and then told me exactly which bottle of scotch I was to buy for him. (“I don’t want the crap you and your friends used to drink in high school.”) It was a moment. But somehow I managed to smile, shake his hand and leave the Starbucks without getting my first felony. And then I got to drive back to Baltimore in time for school and work.

            The best part of the whole experience was that he thought he had been doing me a favor. It was one of those odd moments where you just can’t understand what happened to the world. But it was also the perfect time to buy a plane ticket to Key West . Which is without a doubt the greatest place on earth. And it might have just about saved my soul. So, if law school is getting you down, and you’re tempted to burn your JD upon graduation day, I highly recommend that you book a trip down there over the summer with about 11-12 of your closest law school friends. Bring a handle of bourbon. No sun block. A ukulele. A pair of aviator sunglasses. And you all have to rent motorized scooters. That should fix you.