Jobs I've Had Part VII: The ambulance chaser

(We're now at the boring part of my work history, i.e. the legal jobs. Sorry in advance.)

In Spring of 1997 I went back to school full time to finish my BA and decided I should try to get another job as a part time legal secretary to get some additional legal experience. A personal injury and worker's comp attorney in Tallahassee had placed an ad with FSU's career development office for a part time legal secretary, and I applied and was hired on the spot thanks to being the only applicant he had who still knew how to run MS-DOS. Yes, I managed to find someone who was clinging to old school technology like a life raft, and luckily thanks to my parents' outdated computers in their business I was uniquely qualified to help him. I worked 20 hours per week, mostly afternoons, transcribing tapes and handling the phones and scheduling. Quickly I progressed from menial secretarial tasks to actually taking first crack at drafting motions, petitions, discovery, etc. I was even allowed to take calls from potential clients and decide which should be passed on to the attorney and which should be advised to call elsewhere.

In this job, I really saw the inside of a plaintiff's personal injury practice for the first time. The attorney I worked for had the largest payout on record in the state of Florida for a worker's comp case, and he only handled premium cases. I spent much of that semester working on a case for a man who had been injured in a terrible car accident while on the job that left him profoundly brain-injured. My boss was trying to negotiate a large settlement and was on the brink when the client unexpectedly died in the middle of the night from a diabetic episode. I took the distraught call from our client's wife that morning, and I will never forget it.

I also made one mistake in that job that I will never live down: I scheduled a hearing and then put it in the calendar for the wrong time. I don't think I have ever seen someone as mad as my boss was that day, but thankfully I had made the appointment earlier rather than later, so he had simply shown up in the courtroom an hour early. Still, it taught me the importance of double and triple checking everything that involves interaction with the judge.

I also gave my first deposition right before I left for law school, in a case my boss filed against an FSU student who had rented the apartment behind our office building and left the place in a shambles when she moved out. I had been the first person into the apartment after she vacated, and my boss was worried that because I would be in Boston he needed to preserve my testimony about what I saw before I left. He coached me on the importance of giving short answers, only answering the question asked, and to always remember that if I found myself talking and I didn't know why, to shut up immediately. It is advice that I still give to every person I prepare for deposition even today, and I tell them this story: despite that extensive coaching, and despite the opposing party not even sending someone to the deposition, I still found myself responding to a question halfway through the deposition when I looked up and saw my boss glaring at me. I realized that I had gone on to answer the question I thought he would ask next, without waiting for him to ask it, despite his explicit instructions. I still use that experience today to illustrate my preparation suggestions for my clients.

I left that office when I moved to Boston in the fall of 1997, and did not work at all my first year of law school because it is generally prohibited by the school. I did get a little blast from the past the next summer in the form of a subpoena to give a deposition about this attorney's billing practices. In worker's comp cases in Florida, where a claimant's attorney is successful he can have his attorney's fees paid by the insurance company of the employer. He has to submit a bill detailing the hours spent on the case and a reasonable hourly fee, and then there is a fee hearing to determine whether the hours were actually spent and were reasonable, and whether the hourly rate is reasonable. One of the insurance companies was fighting my boss's fee for a particular case, and wanted me to testify about how he recorded his time. I had typed the dictation he prepared of all his work on the case, based upon his review of the extensive file and his estimate of how long each task took. I managed to call up the attorney who subpoenaed me, convince him I would not be helpful, and get him to agree not to try and depose me. Afterwards I called my boss to fill him in, and it was the last time I ever spoke to him. When I go to football games in Tallahassee, I drive by the old mansion converted into an office building where he practiced and wonder if he is still there.