Carreers and Earaches

I spent my day surfing the net. I do not have any work to do since a lawyer at the client I used to work for (a client I hated, to be sure, but my only source of work for a while now) decided that he does not want to "waste time" talking to anyone but a partner. The man who fired me, as it were, is a great example of what is wrong with the kind of lawyering that we do. He was a young partner at a sizable firm before becoming an in-house lawyer. This is fairly unusual so he was probably "pushed out" of his firm for not bringing in enough business. Now it is easy to see why someone like that - an experienced and probably expensive new employee - would have to prove himself and show at every step of the way that he was worth every penny in headhunter money. That is completely natural and understandable, but what is a man to do if most of the work has been done by others previously? If there is no "value to be added"? If he is "late in the game" to be "keeping new balls in the air"? He has no choice but to make it up. To create issues where there are none. To demand attention for those "issues" by people whose mere attention will validate their - an his - existence. In this case, those "people" are not me. They are "partners only." Perversely, this man also seems to take a pleasure out of humiliating my partner - his own lawyer - by withholding information and then "catching errors" made because of the withheld information. He also asks the partner to perform tasks that a good secretary could carry out. He is not bothered by the costs associated with this because he is not responsible for covering the attorney fees in this case - the other party is. My partner nervously responds to all of the client's demands because he in turn has to prove himself to the senior partners lest what happened to his client happens to him in this "unfavorable" market.

In a nutshell: I sit here idly while my partner does work (most of it unnecessary) that he is overqualified for wasting money and time because someone (the man - why is it always men?) needs a major ego massage.


So now I have to come up with a way not to waste my time, which is difficult when you have unlimited Internet access and your own office with nobody looking over your shoulder. I did an extensive research on otitis media, the latin name of the ear infection Eli has. The more I researched it, the more indecisive I got about whether to give him antibiotics or not. This is the google trap - too much information has a debilitating effect.

I then ended up on amazon.com and filled my "basket" with books like "The Lawyer's Carreer Change Handbook: More Than 300 Things You Can Do With a Law Degree," "Nonlegal Carreers for Lawyers," and the like (even tempted by such unflattering or outright hostile titles as "Lawyers and Other Reptiles" or "Kill all the Lawyers," both of which you can get used for 10 cents or less), but then I decided to go to the gym to air my head out instead. Perhaps Oprah will inspire me...god knows, she supposedly inspired millions before me.