Miami criminal defense lawyer and screw-top wine connoisseur, Brian Tannebaum, has a special tradition for Thanksgiving. He puts together a list of things he’s thankful for. It reads remarkably like a list of complaints, artfully phrased in the positive but leaving no doubt about his point.
I don’t blame Tannebaum. It’s always a good idea to work toward one’s strengths, and we generally find much more to complain about in this line of work than not. So I checked out Brian’s list to see whether he was “thankful” for the things that I complain about as well.
While his list has ten items on it, number 2 immediately struck me.
I was paired up with some old codgers once when I went out to play golf on my own. We eventually got around to talking about what we did for a living. When I told them that I was a lawyer, one responded that he was a reformed lawyer. By this, he meant that he was a judge. He was a lot of fun to play golf with, as he was one of the two or three that I was able to beat. This is why no one who knows me wants to play golf with me. I’m just awful.
The judges who come out of government offices don’t remember standing where I do. They never did. They’ve never had to deal with a scared and miserable client, or their spouse or children. They’ve never had to worry about where the next case was coming from, or how they were going to make it to the next courtroom before the judge blew a gasket. They never wondered, as they spent three days working on motion papers, whether anybody would even read them before denying the motion. Or being cut off three words into an argument by a judge who presumes to know every argument ever made and has long since decided the defense loses.
The bench looks very different when you’re first starting out, and the men and women sitting on high appear older, more dignified, scarier. Years later, they look like the men and women who got sloppy drunk at holiday parties, fudged the truth in responsive pleadings and couldn’t frame a rational argument if their life depended on it.
I remember sitting down with a dear old friend who had become a judge. It was during the 12 minutes that I considered it as a possibility, before the local political boss explained to me that fellating the party was expected. The judge hated being a judge. Nothing about the job was what was anticipated. There was no sense of power, no sense of the ability to do good. The institutional pressures were entirely different than expected. The job was far more administrative than judicial, and to the extent it was judicial, it was banal. The job sucked the life out of her.
I no longer wonder if a judge remembers standing where I do. I remember where they stood before they sat. Even if I didn’t know them back when, I know that they were once normal, human, regular. And I know that they have since taken on a job that very few people are capable of doing, and even fewer doing well. They don’t have the stamina or the guts, and if they did have the guts, they would be marked quickly as unjudicious and shunned by their brethren.
But they don’t fool me. I know there’s a person inside the judge. Somewhere. Whether they remember or not, I do. And when I look them in the eyes as they go through the routine of being judge, I know whether they remember when they used to be people. The ones who do avert their eyes, because they remember what it was like to be standing where I stand and looking up at the judge. They remember what it was like to need a judge to be a judge, and they know that they don’t have the heart for it.
Brian Tannebaum is thankful for those judges who remember. I’m thankful for those judges who, despite everything they’ve gone through, still care.
I don’t blame Tannebaum. It’s always a good idea to work toward one’s strengths, and we generally find much more to complain about in this line of work than not. So I checked out Brian’s list to see whether he was “thankful” for the things that I complain about as well.
While his list has ten items on it, number 2 immediately struck me.
[2] Judges who say “I remember standing where you are,” and actually do.This is one of those grand ironies of practicing law. All judges were lawyers once. That doesn’t mean they once stood where we do, in the well on the side opposite the jury (and before anybody says so, your mileage may vary, so don’t tell me that in your courtroom, you get the other side; that’s not the point). Many come to the bench straight from the a government office, more often than not the District Attorney’s or United States Attorney’s office. Many others served as law secretaries to a judge before “ascending”.
I was paired up with some old codgers once when I went out to play golf on my own. We eventually got around to talking about what we did for a living. When I told them that I was a lawyer, one responded that he was a reformed lawyer. By this, he meant that he was a judge. He was a lot of fun to play golf with, as he was one of the two or three that I was able to beat. This is why no one who knows me wants to play golf with me. I’m just awful.
The judges who come out of government offices don’t remember standing where I do. They never did. They’ve never had to deal with a scared and miserable client, or their spouse or children. They’ve never had to worry about where the next case was coming from, or how they were going to make it to the next courtroom before the judge blew a gasket. They never wondered, as they spent three days working on motion papers, whether anybody would even read them before denying the motion. Or being cut off three words into an argument by a judge who presumes to know every argument ever made and has long since decided the defense loses.
The bench looks very different when you’re first starting out, and the men and women sitting on high appear older, more dignified, scarier. Years later, they look like the men and women who got sloppy drunk at holiday parties, fudged the truth in responsive pleadings and couldn’t frame a rational argument if their life depended on it.
I remember sitting down with a dear old friend who had become a judge. It was during the 12 minutes that I considered it as a possibility, before the local political boss explained to me that fellating the party was expected. The judge hated being a judge. Nothing about the job was what was anticipated. There was no sense of power, no sense of the ability to do good. The institutional pressures were entirely different than expected. The job was far more administrative than judicial, and to the extent it was judicial, it was banal. The job sucked the life out of her.
I no longer wonder if a judge remembers standing where I do. I remember where they stood before they sat. Even if I didn’t know them back when, I know that they were once normal, human, regular. And I know that they have since taken on a job that very few people are capable of doing, and even fewer doing well. They don’t have the stamina or the guts, and if they did have the guts, they would be marked quickly as unjudicious and shunned by their brethren.
But they don’t fool me. I know there’s a person inside the judge. Somewhere. Whether they remember or not, I do. And when I look them in the eyes as they go through the routine of being judge, I know whether they remember when they used to be people. The ones who do avert their eyes, because they remember what it was like to be standing where I stand and looking up at the judge. They remember what it was like to need a judge to be a judge, and they know that they don’t have the heart for it.
Brian Tannebaum is thankful for those judges who remember. I’m thankful for those judges who, despite everything they’ve gone through, still care.
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I found it very effective to ask a judge who was really riding me during trial ‘Do you understand how hard it is to represent an injured person and their family during trial?’ or ‘Do you understand how hard it is to do what I am doing?’
The judge usually paused and looked at me without answering. The judge of course had no idea.
Judges in state court were elected officials. They built their name by being D.A. or through fund raisers put on the politically correct lawyers employed by corporate and insurance defense law firms. The same firms which employed future judges.
In all probability these judges had never had a real person as a client. They representened corporations and entitities. ‘They never had to deal with the human emotions involved in the ups and downs that came with representing the average Joe’s of our society.’ It was the judges loss.
Nice post Scott and Happy Thanksgiving.
What’s interesting is the different draw for civil and criminal judges. One of the scariest things to happen in criminal court is to have an unknown civil judge, who pissed someone off enough to get assigned to criminal, on the case. A complete blank slate, perhaps utterly clueless as to criminal law, deciding someone’s fate. Oddly, sometimes they make the best criminal judges.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Kev.
I am thankful that Scott keeps up a lively debate and discourse on law and that we live live in a country where this is possible. Best wishes for Thanksgiving to all.