I am sitting alone in the Levison Towers on a Sunday night. Yesterday was a great day for college football, today I have the media room television to myself to watch playoff baseball. I don’t even mind being cooped up indoors tonight, since I found a way to pry open one of the windows here on the 23rd floor and the cool fall air is all around me.
After the week I have had, the cool quiet is welcome. I noticed this week that my little firm has grown behind my back. What was once just a legal assistant and me is now three legal assistants, an associate lawyer and me. I spend more time doing administrative work in the office than I thought possible. Just getting through the mail is now a task that takes hours. I used to finish it in minutes. I am thinking I missed the day in law school when we discussed law firm management. When I am done with management and starting to actually practice law, the day is over. I would have been better off with an MBA than this ol JD.
Part of the administrative work may have been caused by you, Gentle Reader. After writing my column about technology last month, my office technology failed in a big way. One computer stopped computing. A printer got dirty and refused to print. My cell phone calendar and contact list played hide and seek. And so the weekend and the early part of the following week were spent out geeking the hardware and software. It will be a long time before I write about technology again, lest I re-anger the electron gods.
Electrons aren’t the only thing I angered. A simple phrase, one I have used on hundreds of occasions, led to the worst morning in recent memory. I intended to be respectful, but it didn’t work out that way. I was in court arguing a motion. The judge, a man of good humor before whom I have appeared many times over the years, asked me if I agreed with what he had just said. I responded, “With all due respect, your Honor, I disagree and here is why.” And that is where the trouble began.
I had never seen this judge irritated before. I never said “with all due respect” to him before, either. For the next few hours (it seemed) in open court, I was accused of calling the judge stupid, of thinking I was going to outwit the court, and of being insulting under the guise of a compliment. I can assure you that when he was done, I didn’t feel intelligent at all. In fact, all I wanted was a rock to crawl under. I couldn’t help notice the smirks from his court staff but I didn’t care. When he dismissed me, I left his court room as fast as I could, with the little bit of dignity I could muster.
When did this phrase become so odious? One sign of growing older is that you don’t know the latest lingo. Modern pop songs may as well be sung in Greek for me. But when I am losing track of the meaning of words I once knew, I don’t know that age alone can be blamed. Back at my office, I spent the next half hour doing research. Not legal research, but looking up the origins of this idiom. Most of the sources I checked supported my usage of the term- an indication of deference before disagreeing, typically with one of a superior station. It was very little comfort to find strength for my position after walking into a buzz saw, however. Not that this was foreign ground to me, having lost arguments with my lovely wife when I was certain I was right. But I digress.
Last week I was again in front of the judge. All I could think throughout the hearing was “don’t say that thing.” Kind of like the old game of “don’t think of an elephant.” My mouth tried to kill me at least four times by sneaking out the phrase. The judge, in the tradition of a wise jurist, never mentioned our previous meeting. Not that he needed to. I left his court room as though the prior meeting never happened, but as fast as my legs would carry me. When I showed up for court that day, I made a point of being early. No way was I going to compound my last disaster with tardiness. I chatted with the court clerk before anyone else got to the court room. It seemed another lawyer had uttered the forbidden phrase earlier that day, and met the same fate as had I. Misery may love company. I think a warning sign out front would have been better.
© 2011 under analysis llc. under analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this newspaper or directly to the Levison Group via email at comments@levisongroup.com. With all due respect, of course.