Gray Mountain: A Novel(103)

Anyway, Nick Spane and I envision a firm of about twenty associates working under the two of us. Compensation will be close to that of Big Law, and we have no plans to kill ourselves or our associates. We want a nice little boutique firm where the lawyers work hard but also manage to have some fun. I promise the associates will never work more than 80 hours a week. We think 50 is a nice target. The term “quality of life” is an industry joke, but we’re serious about it. I’m tired and I’m only 41.

I’m offering you a position. Izabelle is in. Ben has found something else—I’m afraid he’s wandered off the reservation. What about it? No pressure, but I need an answer by the end of the month. Needless to say, there are a lot of lawyers out on the street these days.

Your favorite boss, Andy



She read it again, closed her door, and read it for a third time. Andy was basically a nice person from Indiana who’d spent too much time in New York. He sent a thoughtful letter that conveyed a generous and tempting offer, but he simply couldn’t help himself by reminding her that there were plenty of lawyers begging for work. She turned off her computer and her office light, and sneaked out the back door without being heard. She got into her Ford and was a mile out of town before she asked herself where she might be headed. It didn’t matter.

January 31 was twenty-four days away.

As she drove she thought about her clients. Buddy Ryzer came first. She had not committed to pushing his case until it was finished, but she had promised Mattie she would file the claim and do the initial heavy lifting. And that was almost a nuisance action compared with the mammoth lawsuit someone should refile against Lonerock Coal and Casper Slate. There was the brewing mess over the last will of Francine Crump, which, to be honest, was a beautiful reason to immediately call Andy and take the job. There were the Merryweathers, a nice, simple couple who’d sunk their savings into a small home that was now being threatened by a sleazy sub-prime lender suing for the entire balance. Samantha was seeking an injunction to stop the foreclosure. There were two divorces, still uncontested but unlikely to remain so. Of course, there was the Hammer Valley litigation that wouldn’t leave her alone. Frankly, it was another reason to leave. She was helping Mattie with three bankruptcies and two employment discrimination cases. She was still waiting on a check for Pamela Booker, so that file had not been closed. She was helping Annette with two other divorces and Phoebe Fanning’s mess—both Mom and Dad were headed to prison and no one wanted the kids.

To summarize things, Attorney Kofer, you have too many people leaning on you right now to pack up and run. The decision to return to New York was not supposed to be due now, only three months into a twelve-month furlough. You were supposed to have more time than this, time to open a few files, help a few folks, keep mildly occupied with one eye on the calendar as the months clicked by, the recession went away, and jobs sprang up all over Manhattan. That was the plan, wasn’t it? Perhaps not a return to the drudgery of Big Law, but surely to a respectable job in something like a … boutique firm?

A small shop, a few happy lawyers, fifty hours a week, an impressive salary with all the usual goodies? In 2007, her last full year at Scully, she had billed three thousand hours. The math was easy—sixty billable hours a week for fifty weeks, though she had not been able to enjoy her two weeks of paid vacation. To bill sixty hours a week, she had to clock in at least seventy-five, often more. For those lucky enough to enjoy life without staring at a clock, seventy-five hours a week usually meant, for Samantha anyway, arriving at the office at 8:00 a.m. and leaving twelve hours later, Monday through Saturday, with a few spillover hours on the Sabbath. And that was normal. Toss in the pressure of a major deadline, one of Andy’s clients in crisis, and a ninety-hour week was not unusual.

And now he was promising only fifty?

She was in Kentucky, approaching the small town of Whitesburg, an hour from Brady. The roads were clear but lined with piles of dirty snow. She saw a coffee shop and parked near it. The waitress informed her that there were hot biscuits fresh from the oven. How could one say no? At a table in the front window, she buttered the biscuit and waited for it to cool. She sipped coffee and watched the languid traffic along Main Street. She sent a text to Mattie, said she had to run some errands.

She ate a biscuit with strawberry jam and scribbled notes on a pad. She would not say no to Andy’s offer, and she wouldn’t say yes. She needed time, a few days anyway, to collect her thoughts, analyze them, gather all the information possible, and wait for some phantom voice to tell her what to do. She composed a response she would send later in the afternoon from her desk. The first draft read:

Dear Andy: Happy New Year to you. I must admit I’m shocked by your e-mail and the offer of such a promising position. Frankly, nothing has happened in the past three months to prepare me for such a quick return to the city. I thought I had at least a year to contemplate life and my future; now, though, you’ve suddenly turned things upside down. I need some time to think this through.

I haven’t managed to save the world yet but I’m making progress. My clients are poor people who have no voice. They don’t expect me to work miracles and all efforts are greatly appreciated. I go to court occasionally—imagine that, Andy, I’ve actually seen the inside of a courtroom—and it’s far different from television. Though, as you know, I didn’t have time for television. Last Monday I won my first trial. $10,000 for my client, and it felt like a million. With some experience, I might learn to enjoy trial work.