The Aftermath

Matin, if your trial finished on Friday, why have you not updated your blog to tell us what happened yet?

Because god hates me. This is evident on two bases: (1) He let Daniel Snyder buy the redskins and run them into the ground, single-handedly ruining my Sundays from September through January; and (2) I have to work on a post-hearing brief.

What's a post-hearing brief, and does it have anything to do with a pre-hearing brief or a bikini brief?

A post-hearing brief is a written argument to the court (or the arbitrator in this case) laying out your arguments, the legal bases therefor, and the factual support that shows why you should prevail on each claim. It's sort of like a written closing argument after the trial is over.

But I digress. Let's get back to last Friday. The day began with the cross examination of one of my clients, followed by the direct and cross-examination of my other client. So far, so good. Now the closing argument. Shit! The previous night I had made a crucial mistake. Against my intuition, I decided to go out to dinner with my legal assistant, since she had been craving steak. That was mistake number one, because I felt tired when I got home, and I should have just gone to sleep so that I could have woken up early to work on the closing. I didn't.

So of course I come home stuffed, and unable to do any work. At the same time, I wasn't tired enough to fall asleep yet. So I basically just wallowed around on my bed for a couple of hours before I finally dozed off at around midnight or 1am. Mistake number two came when I decided I could control my sleeping pattern. You see, when I want to sleep, I can't. Clearly, then, I should know that when I want to wake up at a certain time, I won't be able to do that either. Hah! I set my alarm for around 3 or 4 am. Long story short, I snoozed until after 6am. God, the irony of it all! Somewhere up there, someone must be having a freakin ball. Well eff you too, buddy!

No problem. I don't need to prepare my closing argument ahead of time. It's only the most important trial of my life. I can just prepare it on the drive to the hearing. Hah! While my witnesses are being cross-examined? Don't be stupid! How about during lunch break (when I stayed in the conference room and asked my clients to bring me back a turkey sandwich, which was surprisingly tasty considering I usually don't eat turkey sandwiches)? Not a chance. It just wasn't going to happen. No matter what I did, I couldn't, for the life of me, come up with any sort of outline or organization for my close. Yaaaaay, me!

So I ended up scribbling down notes as the other guy was doing his close (which, by the way, was absolute garbage ... the guy wouldn't get higher than a 6 if he closed against one of my students, and I couldn't believe he was charging more than $400 bucks an hour for it). And so he finished, and it was my turn. So I got up, and started talking, and it all just came pouring out. One thought after another, argument after argument, everything that had been shoved into my head for the past five months, just came busting out. And it was good. No, it was freakin great! I was moving around picking up exhibits and demonstratives, marking up evidence, pointing to maps and photographs ... I was doing everything I thought I should be doing, but hadn't planned out how to do. It all just came out at the right time in the right way. Afterward, one of my clients told me that my close was wonderful, and the other one told me it was amazing. He said he got goosebumps at one point. Goosebumps? Really? Ok.

But the performance is only half of the deal. What about the result?

After my close, there was a rebuttal, and the arbitrator started asking me and the other guy some questions. And that's when I started to get worried. He was asking all kinds of questions that led be to believe that he was inclined to rule against me on some issues. WTF??? And in the meantime, I had my client whispering nonsense into my ears and passing notes to me about things he wanted me to say. I swear I wanted to jab him in the thigh with a pen! At one point he shoved a note under my nose, I read it, turned to him and whispered something along the lines of "that's not what he's talking about." Gritting his teeth, he whispered back: "That IS what he's talking about." So now I'm screwed - if I don't say it, he's going to tell me that I should have said it, and if I do say it ... well, I said it. And the arbitrator responded with something along the lines of: "Counselor, you really do NOT want to be making THAT argument, considering ..." at which point I turned back toward my client and gave him the dirtiest look I could give under the circumstances.

And then, mercifully, it was all over. Perhaps the most exhausting week of my life was ready to come to an end, and I was finally done with it all. Hah! As he concluded his comments, the arbitrator advised us that we were welcome to submit post-hearing briefs due wednesday, and that he would give us a written opinion within a few weeks. Wait, what??? This wasn't part of the deal! I was this close to freedom, dammit! THIS CLOSE!!! Sigh. Hala begin nagoo FML. Khob FML dige! F M L! (Haha, those non-persians among you only get the FML part. Suckaaas! That's what you get!)

Anywho, for the past 4 days, I've been getting even MORE calls than usual. Anywhere from 9am to 10pm (on a saturday night!!!) my life has been consumed with my client's paranoia about losing the case. One second he's telling me to do one thing (that I know is the wrong thing to be doing) and the next he's berating me for doing the opposite of what I should be doing (when I did exactly what he asked me to do). I've written up tens of pages of legal arguments, all of which have been erased by now so that I can start again from scratch tonight. So with the submittal deadline looming tomorrow, I'm left with less than a day to write the legal argument that's going to save my case. Whoohooo!

As an idiot friend of mine recently pointed out, FML = F Matin's Life. Very nice.