Susan Cartier Leibel has started a new contest!  Unlike the beauty pageants that we’ve grown to used to (and bored of), this is an essay contest.  The prize is a 2 hour “consultation” with Susan, a value too high to state publicly.  There is no mention of whether Susan’s consultation  includes cocktails.

The contest is requires one to answer the following question:  “I want to open my own solo legal practice because___________.” 

Don’t you bother thinking about, because I’ve got this nailed.  Here’s the winning essay:

       I want to open my own solo legal practice because I enjoy sitting at my desk on a slow day, making sure none of my paper clips escaped, while waiting for the phone to ring so that I know that I will have at least one more new paying client to feed my family for the coming week.  I want to deal with the copy machine man, the telephone man, the computer woman, the supply guy, and elevator man, the building manager, whenever they need to talk to somebody.  When it’s my practice, I’m finally somebody.  At least to them.

        I want to hear about how one secretary does all the work, and how the receptionist hates her, and how the para talks on the phone all day.  I want to hear about how the associates are mean to them, and about their children’s illnesses, and why the consequences of every bad decision they ever made is mine to fix.  I care deeply about people, and people care deeply that I prove it to them day after day.

        I want to explain to the judge why I’m not happy sitting around her courtroom for hours while waiting for the 30 seconds of face time before being told to come back some other day, all the while having another client and judge in another courtroom across the city waiting for me impatiently, because there aren’t two of me to be everywhere whenever a judge demands.  I want to return to my office to spend the night doing a brief on an obvious issue so that the judge could shut me down for having been so rude as to raise another problem for her to deal with.  I want to speak with my Lexis representative to find out why my bill is higher than the gross national product of smallish countries.

        I want to answer the telephone when no one else does, because it may be important and I’m the only one who cares.  I want to turn off the lights alone every night, after searching for health plans, cutting checks and trying to figure out why my telephone bills never add up, while other people who live off my flesh keep sticking their heads into my office to ask why I’m still here.   I want to know why I either get 10 new cases in a day, far too many for me to handle, or not a single new case in a month, even though bills keep coming in the mail.

        When the phone is ringing off the hook, and the clients are paying their bills on time and everybody is filled with love and admiration for me because I’m such a terrific guy, I want to still be able to worry that it could all end at any moment, with the phone silent and the verdict guilty and the client angry and the staff at war.  I want to wake up in the middle of the night and remember how it felt to only have to be a lawyer, without being the chief financial officer and toilet cleaner because no one else would even consider doing it.  I want to watch as staff tosses out redwelds, at $3.59 apiece, because they keep messing up the names on the labels.

        I want to open my own solo legal practice because, no matter how much work, aggravation and anxiety it will cause, it will be mine.  It will be done my way.  It will survive or fail because of the lawyer I am.  And when I shut the lights off as the last one out at night, I will say goodnight to my practice, for better or worse.