Lawyers like to argue; when there aren’t opposing counsel or ornery clients to argue with, they argue amongst their own colleagues. Partners, especially– they get paid a lot to argue, so they argue a lot, to earn their salary.
Which would have been fine, except that they were arguing over punctuation, syntax, and word choice in a brief already approved by the client, that needed to be filed for the end of the day, or miss a very important deadline that would foreclose further appeal.
So, the argument over each i, t, comma, and semicolon was a little frustrating, for THREE HOURS. Agh. My hair will be grey by the end of the month.
But the case itself? Hella interesting, in the way that only extremely geeky federalism questions can be. I’ll tell you all about it when it’s resolved.
That by far is probably my worst pet peeves about law firms — Partners arguing with you just for the sake of it. As if a document can’t have just one correction. ARGHHHHH.
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I can picture it. Paralysis by analysis. Drives me nuts!
lol that would be my version of hell! It was nice to see you last night, look forward to getting together again
I am very type A and that stuff just drives me crazy…I am always like …“put it to rest already!” It was great to see you; thanks for coming last night. I will email soon with a plan to meet up for dinner!
I can only imagine how painful these sessions are– my parents and I nearly hurt each other many times when I was in middle and high school and they were proofing my work. Oh the fights.
Argue? Who? What? Never!
(Did you see my recent post “For Argument’s Sake”?)
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lol — attorneys arguing. can’t wait to hear about the case.
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I hear you. When I was freelance editing, I had a dissertation client who wanted me to explain and justify every change I made — every semicolon, every word choice, etc. She was on a tight deadline and we spent about an hour talking about every four pages of her 100-page dissertation. Blech. Good luck to you and your imminently gray hair. ;^)
I am a partner and I had a team of associates working on a mongo brief (125pp) a few months ago. Even after a couple all nighters, I had to PULL the brief from the associates who were cite and substance checking it because — AND I KID YOU NOT — they were arguing over:
1. Whether there are spaces between the “F.”, the “Supp.” and the “2d”;
2. Whether the period goes on the inside or the outside of the parens;
3. whether the footnote number goes on the inside or outside of the period
(among other things)
I literally grabbed the brief from them and said, “I am putting a stop to this. We are filing it. Now.”
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