Sunday, March 17, 2013

Life's too Short!! (part 2)

A recent duke-up between a very-junior-lawyer in a very-large-firm and Mine Host has apparently made it to the desk of one of the firm's National Partners.

This escalation may have been precipitated by a progressively sterner exchange of emails between Mine Host & said junior lawyer (she of the still-with-wet-ink-on-her-degree).

When combative (and extremely junior) female lawyers are coming out second-best in a legal argument with a client who didn't even finish high school, they tend to not take it real well.

The National Partner, a very experienced litigator but a very busy man, in Mine Host's opinion made the following mistakes:
  • He listened (likely quite briefly) to his subordinate's (emotive) opinion of how she was being bullied by a dumb client.
  • He judged Mine Host by his occupation (publican, well they're all drongos).
  • He judged Mine Host by postcode (from the country? well he's gotta be stoopid).
  • He skimmed the email exchange without actually reading any of it.
  • He then put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard actually) and put in writing something into which his nose will be rubbed by Mine Host:
(this excerpt from his brief-but-snappy email is paraphrased here for blog-legible brevity)

"Life's too short for us to bother giving accurate advice"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Life's too short for paraphrases - they don't do the job. Give us what he actually wrote. You can bowdlerise any bits which compromise your pseudonymity.

JeffS said...

That's a lawyer who got his degree from a diploma mill.

Steve at the Pub said...

Marcellous, he actually said a little more in real life, conceding (in not so many words) that I had a point, but the ego on the prick prevented him from coming out & saying so.

JeffS: Sad to say, but he is a national partner, in a national firm. The man is a very skilled, very experienced, and very senior litigator.
He just didn't slow down enough to pay attention to what he was saying. He made the error of assuming his junior was savvy, and that the cliet (me) was wrong.

Belief that the client is always in the wrong is actually quite common, especially among the senior end of corporate law.