Lethal Lawyers

by Dale E. Manolakas

  “Chet’s solution was to take it to the managing partners? What a joke! They weren't. . .”

  Paul was interrupted by Marla, who slid their plates of corned beef sandwiches with long pickle spears under their noses and deposited Paul’s potato salad near his elbow.

  Paul moved the potato salad toward the center. “Have some.”

  “Wow!” Sophia pulled her plate into position for a feast. “The sandwiches are huge. We could have ordered one and split it three ways.”

  “You always get your money’s worth here.” Paul took a bite of his potato salad.

  “Yeah.” Tricia took a big forkful of his potato salad as well.

  “Want some, Sophia?” Paul nudged the plate towards her and bit into his corned beef sandwich.

  “Sure.” Sophia felt comfortably “Greek’d” as they tasted each other’s dishes.

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  Chapter 20

  Blood Suckers, Pickle Spears, and Bread Pudding

  Paul broke the silence that had come with the food.

  “So, Chet was going to take the problem to the Management Committee? A fat lot of good that would have done. Those five are out for themselves. Or, correction, I guess it would be four now.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Marvin pushed that little blood sucker Judith down the stairs.” Tricia chuckled, flopped her pickle spear into her mouth, and took a crunchy bite.

  “I might do it, if she stole my client, but I don’t have a client,” Paul snickered. “Besides, I would have to line up behind a bunch of other associates and junior partners.”

  “Not Jim Henning, he’s dead,” Tricia mumbled through another bite of pickle spear.

  “Frank screwed him, not Judith.” Paul corrected Tricia.

  “Wait. You mean Jim Henning tried to kill Frank for stealing his clients?” Sophia asked. “Not because he was crazy, like the news said?”

  Paul hesitated and then shrugged his shoulders. “Obviously, a little of both.”

  “Tell her about Doug Henry and the others.” Tricia grabbed Sophia’s pickle spear off her plate. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

  Paul lowered his voice and leaned into the table.

  “Doug’s law school buddy was in-house counsel at North American Distributors and handed Doug all its legal business. Big money for Doug’s tape until the Management Committee assigned one of its own, Judith, to head the case. Like always, she took half the billing credit.”

  “Can they do that?” Sophia asked. “Even if you brought the client in all by yourself?”

  “Yes, they can,” Tricia interjected.

  “The Management Committee runs everything and can do anything they want.” Paul continued. “Their justification—or more accurately, pretense—is that a senior partner has to be in charge and, if they are in charge, they deserve fifty percent.”

  “But we need to bring in our own clients to go up in compensation and make full partner. It’s not fair that they take half the billing.” Sophia was concerned for her own future. “It’s a ‘Catch 22’!”

  “We know.” Paul swallowed a bite of his corned beef sandwich. “In fact, I have a good friend who owns a dot com he built from scratch. And I won’t bring his legal work into Thorne & Chase until I’m a full partner or I go to another firm. I’m not losing fifty percent to anyone.”

  “Paul’s smart,” Tricia chimed in. “Really smart.”

  “Anyway, Doug tried to keep control of his big client and the senior partners closed ranks. First, Judith screwed him by writing off the hours he billed for his own client. Worse yet, she called his client and told them how, thanks to her, she had reduced their fee because of Doug’s unnecessary work. These days, it’s a buyer’s market, and that was music to the client’s ears.”

  “They were happy and Doug was screwed,” Tricia added.

  “Then the rest of the partners closed ranks and wouldn’t let him work on any other cases.”

  “His hours dried up. That’s what happened to Jim also. And everyone knows without billable hours you are dead at a firm,” Tricia explained. “Especially in today’s legal market where clients are wary of billable hours. Then Doug . . .”

  Paul took back the floor. “With no hours and Judith in control of the client and the billing, Doug’s income was cut. He made so little that he lost his house. He had to leave Thorne & Chase to get a salary. He was lucky when Hartman & Schmidt on the Westside hired him. But the clincher was that he promised to bring that big client with him and Judith sabotaged that. She kept his client here.”

  “Now Doug is hanging on at his new firm by his fingernails because he has no client, courtesy of Judith,” Tricia concluded.

  “Look at it from Hartman & Schmidt’s perspective,” Paul explained. “He’s a junior partner with a high hourly billing rate which the partners can’t justify to their clients. And Doug hasn't brought in any other business. Firms either want low-billing rate associates because they are worker bees, or they want attorneys with their own client list.”

  “Poor guy.” Sophia thought back warmly to her experience at Bode and how happy she might have been there, even with less money, if she had known all this.

  “That is why this is the number one firm in the world,” Tricia said. “They play for keeps.”

  Marla put a large bowl of bread pudding in front of Paul. Paul pushed it to the center of the table, shoving the spent potato salad plate aside.

  “Share, girls? I’ll grab more spoons.”

  Paul took a couple of bites of his bread pudding and then went over to the counter to grab some spoons and a couple of doggy bags.

  “How does Paul put all this together?” Sophia asked Tricia.

  “His dad is a partner at a mid-sized firm in New York. Paul gets advice from him and knows a lot about the internal workings of firms. Besides, he worked with Jim Henning and keeps in touch with Doug Henry. Paul keeps in touch with everybody. Networking.”

  “I have to start.”

  “Yeah, it’s important. But the good news is, with Judith gone, the client billings she stole revert a hundred percent to the junior partners. That’s the rule here.”

  Paul returned and handed out the spoons and doggy bags. Tricia and Sophia doggy-bagged their untouched sandwich halves. Sophia picked up the spoon and took a small taste of the bread pudding. Tricia abstained.

  “Mmmm.” Sophia closed her eyes in bliss. “You’ve introduced me to another diet Armageddon.”

  “My pleasure.” Paul’s eyes twinkled as he took another bite and savored it.

  “Since we’re on the subject. Speaking of people getting screwed, you had dinner with Roger Morelock last night, didn’t you?” Tricia asked Sophia.

  “Yes, but he left early about some business stuff.”

  “Yeah, he’s desperate,” Tricia leaned into the table and whispered. “He’s the one the senior partners have on the rack now.”

  “He’s complained one too many times about Frank Cummings screwing him out of his clients,” Paul added.

  “Really?” Sophia kept the encounter with Roger in Carlisle’s office to herself for now. “But he’s the assigning partner. How can they squeeze him out? Why doesn’t he just assign himself something?”

  “That’s what Roger had counted on,” Paul explained. “Roger infiltrated firm management and became the assigning partner to control his cases and outwit the Management Committee. He figured when he started to fight to get his clients back, he couldn’t be stonewalled out of billables or credit for fees. He would assign himself to cases.”

  “The irony is that the senior partner in charge of any case can veto anyone Roger assigns, including himself and even on his own clients’ cases," Tricia remarked. “And the senior partners and some of the turncoat junior partners are sticking together. Roger’s billable hours have been dropping lower for months.”

  “And once you fall behind, it’s almost impossible to catch up,” Sophia said. “I know that from my summer time-keeping even at Bode.�
�

  “Roger shot himself in the foot by becoming assigning partner.” Paul polished off the bread pudding. “That position is a time-suck with no real power. He’s counting on bringing in his contingency fee case to survive.”

  “Yeah, like that’s going to happen . . . ever.” Tricia grabbed her doggy bag. “Bottom line? You had better suck up to anyone with clients, Sophia. They have the power. Let’s go.”

  As the three walked abreast back to the firm, Sophia thought about her strategy to survive in this viper pit to which she was now committed.

  She looked over at her new comrades-in-arms, who had taken her under their wings, and felt hope. She resisted shouting “All for one and one for all,” like the Three Musketeers in Alexander Dumas’s famous book depicting the essence and nobility of, among other things, comradeship. But then, in this cutthroat world, could she trust anybody?

  As they entered the lobby, there was no gauntlet of reporters to run. Although Sophia suspected a few were lingering about, no one approached them. Safety in numbers. And, there was no Ben Kowrilsky.

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  Chapter 21

  Into the Gathering Storm

  The three elevatored up and ensconced themselves in Sophia’s new office. Sophia luxuriated proudly in her very own desk chair. Paul and Tricia slumped comfortably in the two chestnut, leather-tufted chairs opposite. They all mutually ignored the elephant in the room; the fact that Sophia’s office was four doors away from Toak and his side dish of a secretary.

  “We’ll get a free salad in the cafeteria tomorrow,” Tricia planned.

  “Sounds good to me,” Sophia beamed.

  “Earth to Paul?” Tricia called. “Lunch tomorrow?”

  Paul was uncharacteristically silent as he gazed out the window.

  “Lunch? Tomorrow? Sure.” Paul took a long deep breath. “I was déjà vu-ing. This is . . .”

  “Don’t start.” Tricia shushed Paul. “Forget it.”

  “Start what? Forget what?” Sophia leaned forward eagerly.

  “This is Doug’s old office,” Paul replied. “You’re the first one to have it, besides a summer associate who camped out for awhile and couldn’t cut it.”

  “Oh,” Sophia mumbled, the wind knocked out of her sails.

  “I waited for Doug in this very chair the morning he was up giving his notice to Frank.” Paul paused. “Sorry, but the day is still so vivid. He was so empowered, so happy when he went into Frank’s office. Then he came back and actually cried right where you’re sitting. Like I said, that big client he had promised his new firm was staying here. Before we could talk, two goons swept in and muscled him out. Doug couldn’t even grab his kids’ pictures. Neither could I; they got me out, too.”

  “That was tough.” Sophia rationalized to herself that after the Jim Henning incident, Frank was probably afraid. “Well, now I have Toak as a neighbor and the ghost of Doug as a roommate.”

  “Double whammy.” Tricia shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t take it to heart. We all know now if you give notice . . . you’d better be packed.”

  “But he was a partner,” Sophia said.

  “No. He was a junior partner. Junior partners stay on probation, with no equity and reduced voting rights until they reach full partnership,” Paul clarified.

  “So full partners have all the power?”

  “Full partners with clients have it. You can’t just be a worker bee who bills on other partners’ clients. You have to get your own clients and get your personal billing machine going,” Paul explained.

  “And to stay an associate here, you have to bill over 2000 hours of work to anyone’s clients,” Tricia added. “But to be honest, they expect at least 2500.”

  “It’s symbiotic.” Sophia shook her head. “The associates are busy billing as many hours as they can and the partners are busy charging the client for as many hours as they can.”

  Paul qualified things further. “Until clients grumble, and then the partners have to write off billed hours to keep the clients happy, make them feel like they are getting a deal.”

  “Yeah, and, of course, the partners never write off their own hours. They write off yours!” Tricia interjected. “But client-engorged partners like Carlisle and Frank with a whole gaggle of big clients usually let you bill, bill, bill.”

  “Ordinarily, their clients don’t start squeezing like most clients do these days,” Paul clarified. “And if the clients do, Carlisle and Frank rotate you to another case to dump hours for a while. So for them, and for now, no write-offs. That’s why you want to work for them and do a good job. You’ll see. You’ll learn.”

  “I’ll have to,” Sophia said.

  “You will,” Paul said. “Write-offs count against a partner’s draw because the firm has expended those associates’ hours and not been paid for them. That’s why partners with small, cheap clients pressure you to do a ten-hour assignment and discount your own time by four hours. They want you to work for free, so they don’t have write-offs on their tally and the client has a low bill.”

  “And speaking of working for free, stay away from Toak,” Tricia cautioned. “Toak steals your hours and credits them to himself.”

  There was a knock at the door. The three sat up straight.

  “Come in.” Sophia called.

  Beth poked her head in.

  The three relaxed again.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but your meeting with Mr. Morelock for assignments is at two. Also, I need to introduce you to your assistant Marlene Valero on the way. She’ll do your work and input your hours into our billing software.”

  Beth’s cell rang. She put the box of things she had promised down on Sophia’s desk and stepped out to answer her phone.

  “A triple whammy,” Sophia moaned. “Now I have Marlene. She hates me.”

  “She hates everyone,” Tricia said closing the door. “You should learn how to input your own billables into the system. I do. Then you’ll get the $100 monthly bonus for getting them in weekly instead of Marlene.”

  “My secretary never misses a beat.” Paul got up to leave. “I give her the hundred bucks. She has calendared alerts in my calendar to ping me when the deadline for billables is approaching. I love it.”

  “Lucky you,” Tricia said with an edge born of envy. “You have a secretary who actually works.”

  “I’ll input my hours myself.” Not only did Sophia want the hundred dollars, but she also remembered the evil look Marlene had given her yesterday.

  As Paul and Tricia left, Tricia turned and whispered to Sophia, “Use the word-processing pool instead of Marlene. Sadly, you’ll be better off.”

  * * *

  Beth took Sophia up the hall to Marlene’s desk.

  “Marlene,” Beth said congenially, if not sweetly, “this is our new first-year associate Sophia Christopoulos. She’s assigned to you.”

  “Call me Sophia. I look forward to working with you.” She reached out to shake Marlene’s hand.

  Marlene eyed Sophia and then Beth. She smiled mechanically, stood, and then gripped Sophia’s outreached hand.

  “And I you. Welcome to the firm.”

  “Well, now to Mr. Morelock’s office,” Beth said cheerily and walked briskly toward the elevators.

  Marlene held tightly onto Sophia’s hand, looked directly in her eyes, and said in a low voice, “You can call me Ms. Valero.”

  Marlene released Sophia, strutted into Toak’s office with no knock, and disappeared, slamming the door behind her.

  Sophia had been thrown to the wolves or, more accurately, the hinterland of the word-processing pool.

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  Chapter 22

  Yellow Ties That Bind—or Choke

  Roger’s office was modern. It was full of chrome and glass like a condensed version of Taylor’s, but with no couch and no table. Sophia noted it was indeed a very condensed version. In a profession where your office often reflected your status, Roger had been relegated to a diminutive one. His office was bare
ly bigger than Sophia’s, with an alley-view window.

  He wore a yellow tie again, once more accentuating his yellowed teeth.

  “Hello.” Sophia sat in a chair opposite Roger. “It’s nice to see you again and I’m looking forward to getting started.”

  “Good,” Roger grunted with his distinctive, irritating rasp. “Several cases need manning. Or excuse me, I mean personing!”

  “Right.” Sophia noted Roger’s dry, in-charge demeanor and laughed appropriately at his attempt at humor.

  “Where’s your legal pad for notes?”

  “I don’t have one yet.”

  “First rule, always be prepared when you go to a partner’s office, particularly the assigning partner’s office. Get some supplies.”

  “Sorry,” Sophia was mentally rolling her eyes at Roger’s unconcealed glee at reprimanding her. “I knew that. I just wasn’t thinking.”

  “Second rule, we are always thinking.” He handed Sophia a legal pad and a Thorne & Chase gold lettered black pen, like the mugs.

  “Right.”

  Roger, like any degraded and desperate man, in turn subjugated any prey caught in his lair. Suddenly, Sophia didn’t care that Roger was being squeezed out.

  “I’d love to get to work. What do you have for me?” she asked, pointedly short-circuiting the abuse.

  Roger balked at Sophia taking control, but capitulated because he wanted her on her way also. She was of no use to him.

  “Frank Cummings wants you with me on Crondall Properties v. Gant Foods, a multi-million dollar breach of lease case. Then Chet Apel is letting you join his cast of thousands on Super Vacuums v. Vacuum Cities. Judith had requested you before the accident, but her cases are in transition now.”

  “I am so sorry about Judith.” Sophia offered her condolences to derail Roger’s train of thought more than anything.