The Neon Lawyer

by Victor Methos

  “Um, well, I’ve never actually done it. But I’d like to.”

  “Excellent. Come outside with me.”

  Brigham rose and followed him. The people he saw on the way through the office were an odd assortment. Several men in short sleeves with wrinkled ties, a couple of young staff, and one woman he noticed, blonde and dressed far too elegantly for her surroundings, sitting in the largest office other than Tommy’s. She glanced at him and then away again.

  “Come on outside,” Tommy repeated.

  Once outside, Tommy sucked on his cigar and let the smoke whirl around him.

  “See that there?” Tommy said, pointing to the building next door. “What do you see?”

  “Um, a bail bonds agency.”

  “It’s a gold mine is what it is, Brigham. That’s how I make my bread. You see, all them uptight sonsabitches at the Bar don’t know nothin’ about what it’s like to actually practice law. That’s why they got all them ethical rules. Lawyers weren’t even allowed to advertise until twenty years ago—we had to take it all the way to the fucking Supreme Court. So now they bind our hands to try and limit us.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “Take personal solicitation. According to the Bar’s ethical rules, a lawyer can’t personally solicit business. Can’t walk up to some poor bastard that’s been in an accident and give him a card. I been reprimanded by the Bar sixteen times for that shit and nothing has stuck—not a one. But it takes time to fight ’em and earn a living. But now I got this,” he said, looking over to the bail bonds agency. “I have them do all the soliciting and they only send clients to one law firm. You see what I’m saying? If you’re gonna make it in this business, it’s all about gettin’ creative. You wanna fuck the government, but you also wanna hide from the Bar. Don’t appear on their radar. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” He stood staring at Brigham, drawing in a large mouthful of smoke, then blowing it out. “Go talk to Scotty. He’ll get you set up. I get fifty percent of any case you bring in. Any case I give you, you get twenty-five percent. Fair?”

  “Yes,” he said. It certainly wasn’t anything near fair, but he wasn’t about to argue with the first job he’d gotten as an attorney.

  Tommy headed back into the building. He stopped and looked at Brigham. “Welcome to the fire, kid.”

  Six

  Brigham stood awkwardly in the middle of the office, people passing him without saying hello. He looked for the blonde woman he’d seen earlier, but he couldn’t find her. There were probably a dozen lawyers; no one noticed that he was new.

  Finally, a man as round as a basketball and wearing thick glasses stepped out of an office. He shuffled over and put out his hand, which still had chocolate stains on it—or at least what Brigham hoped were chocolate stains.

  “You’re Brigham, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Scotty. Everyone calls me that ’cause my name’s Scott and I’m from Scotland. ’Cause o’ Star Trek.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “Lemme show you around.”

  They began the tour at reception. Scotty had a nervous tic and every once in a while his shoulder would twitch as he pointed people out and shouted their names. When they were out of earshot again, he’d tell Brigham something awful about them.

  She had an abortion last year.

  He likes to cheat on his wife with transsexuals.

  He shoplifts for fun.

  She got drunk once and blew a guy who turned out to be her uncle.

  Brigham’s initial impression of chaos and a disjointed staff vanished. He could see the theme now: All of these people were there because they didn’t have better offers. Only the staff were salaried. Scotty told him the lawyers all had the same deal Brigham had been given.

  Near the end, they’d reached the corner office where the blonde woman was drafting a document. Brigham’s heart raced. He tried to appear as cool as he could by leaning against the wall, but his shoulder slipped, and he nearly fell over. The woman grinned.

  “Hi, Brigham Theodore.”

  “Molly,” she said.

  “He’s the new guy,” Scotty chimed in.

  “Well, welcome to the firm.”

  Scotty walked away but Brigham stood there, racking his brain for something, anything, to say. He noticed a collection of basketball trophies, and photographs on the wall.

  “You played?” Brigham said.

  “In college. You?”

  “No, running was my sport.”

  She glanced back to her old photos. “If women had an even shot with men, I would have been able to go pro. But I abandoned it for law school because I thought that’s what would lead me to the glamorous life.”

  “Has it?”

  She chuckled. “I’m here, aren’t I? But I can’t complain. My class had a hundred and ten graduates and less than half of them have full-time employment. Take out the ones that aren’t doing anything related to law and you’ve got a quarter of a law school class that are actually lawyers.”

  “Same with mine.” He glanced down the hall at Scotty, who hadn’t noticed Brigham wasn’t there and was talking to himself. “Tommy seems . . . interesting,” Brigham said. “Why is it the ‘Law Offices of TTB’?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  Brigham shook his head.

  “TTB stands for Tommy Two-Balls.”

  Brigham chuckled but stopped when he saw she was serious. “Why would he ever call his law firm that?”

  “You’ll have to ask him. A lot of rumors, but I doubt any of them are true.”

  Scotty yelled out, “Brigham, you comin’?”

  “I’d better go,” Brigham said to Molly. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too.”

  Brigham followed Scotty past the break room and to what looked like a utility closet.

  “Your office,” Scotty said. “Hang out for a minute and we’ll get some work to you. Just drafting documents and stuff.”

  “Can I ask you something—do people here make good money?”

  Scotty shifted from one foot to the other and Brigham got the impression he was uncomfortable. “Depends on them. If you hustle and get clients you’ll do fine.”

  And with that, Brigham was left alone. The office had a desk and chair, but the desk appeared to be from an elementary school. He sat behind it and looked out the only window in the room to the parking lot. His view was of the last car in the row and a Dumpster.

  He sighed, wondering why he’d chosen to go to law school in the first place. His degree was in biology. His college counselor had kept trying to talk him out of law school, saying that someone with a scientific mind wouldn’t enjoy the work—unless he were to go into patent law, which Brigham had no interest in.

  He stood up again and peeked outside the office. People were shouting into phones and others were speaking in hushed tones, recounting cases either won or lost. He went outside and turned around. He stared at the neon sign, then glanced over to the bail bonds place. A man who looked like the Terminator stepped out, got onto a Harley, and sped away.

  Brigham strolled into the bail bonds office. A woman with a small dog sat behind the counter.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Brigham. I just got hired next door.”

  “Oh, another lawyer. You a young kid.”

  “Yes ma’am. Twenty-six.”

  “Why you wanna work for Tommy Two-Balls?”

  “It’s a job.”

  “You wanna know why he calls himself that, don’t ya?” She shook her head. “The only person who knows is Scotty and he don’t tell no one.” She took out a stack of business cards and slid them to him. “You get a client that needs bail, you send ’em to me. For every client that you send me, I send one that needs a lawyer to yo
u.”

  “Isn’t that . . . I mean, don’t the Bar ethics rules prohibit a mutual-referral plan with a non-lawyer?”

  She stared at him for a moment in silence, and then burst out laughing.

  “Thanks for the cards.”

  As he left, she was still laughing.

  Seven

  Brigham called Rick to let him know he’d found a job and would have to quit. Rick, rather than being upset, told him he was proud of him. They chatted a few minutes, and then said good-bye.

  Brigham strolled around the office and talked with everyone. He figured they might have some extra work here and there to throw his way.

  There was Mark, a former cop who said he’d gotten sick of lawyers yelling at him on the stand, so he’d quit and gone to law school. And Ryan, who struck Brigham as a psychopath—he was glib and trying much too hard to seem friendly and normal. He had been a trucker, but had become a lawyer because he didn’t know what else to do. He specialized in small claims court and said he enjoyed it because most of the judges didn’t know the laws and he could get away with anything. Sandy was a civil rights lawyer who sued businesses on behalf of minorities, and then kept a percentage of any recovery. Harold couldn’t look Brigham in the eyes and kept his head down over his desk for the entire conversation, although Brigham did learn that he was a bankruptcy attorney.

  And there was Molly. He couldn’t figure out why she was there. She was beautiful, appeared smart but not so smart that she was weird, and probably could’ve used those two traits to land a job at a real law firm.

  Brigham did one more round through the office, but no one mentioned any work so he went and sat at his desk and waited.

  Scotty shuffled into Brigham’s office toward the end of the day. He put a manila folder on Brigham’s desk.

  “Your first case. Tommy said to give it to you. Thousand-dollar fee so you’d get two fifty.”

  “What is it?”

  “Speeding ticket.” Scotty turned to leave. “Trial’s tomorrow.”

  “Wait, I can’t prepare for a trial in one night!”

  Scotty stood awkwardly at the door and stared at his feet. “You did an internship, right? Where you tried cases?”

  “Yeah, but I was supervised.”

  “It’s just speeding—an infraction. The prosecutors knock stuff down to infractions ’cause you don’t get a jury trial if it’s an infraction. There’s no jail time possible, so they do that with every case they can to save time. Bench trials only take a few minutes. You’ll do fine.”

  Scotty left, and Brigham stared down at the manila folder. He opened it. Inside was an information sheet on the client. A one-page citation was attached naming the client as Jake Dolls, and saying he had been doing sixty-seven in a thirty. His wife had been the only passenger. The third page was a signed representation agreement . . . and that was it. There were no other notes. Brigham closed the file and turned to the desktop computer. It was at least fifteen years too old. He flipped it on and it took almost ten minutes of deep grinding noises to boot up. He went to the Internet Explorer icon and double-clicked. That took another few minutes to open. He turned the computer off and pulled out his iPhone. He googled “how to handle speeding tickets,” found a few sites, and began reading.

  The next morning, Brigham dressed in his suit again, and brought Jake Dolls’s folder with him to the Salt Lake City Justice Court.

  A line of people were waiting to go through a metal detector to get in, and belts, rings, and watches had to be removed. When people set the machine off, a bailiff pulled them aside and checked them with a wand. When it was his turn, Brigham’s shoes set off the machine, and the bailiff took him aside and wanded him for a solid minute.

  “I’m a lawyer,” he said. “Can’t I just go in?”

  “No, we check you guys extra carefully.”

  Once he was cleared, he could see the sheer mass of humanity from every walk of life hurrying into the building. The courtroom he needed to be in, upstairs, was another zoo. At least ten defense lawyers were discussing their cases, with the prosecutors up front, and the audience benches were full. Brigham looked at the name on the file again and said loudly, “Jake Dolls?”

  A man raised his hand and stood up. Brigham took him outside the courtroom.

  “Jake, I’m Brigham Theodore. I’ll be representing you today.”

  “Where’s Tommy? I thought he was gonna be here.”

  “He sent me. I don’t have any notes, so is there anything I should know?”

  The man eyed him with his arms folded. “I told Tommy everything. He should be here.”

  Brigham put on his best smile. “Well, why don’t you tell me? Let’s start with your wife—she was in the car with you?”

  “Yeah. She seen it, too. She was pregnant. Don’t know if that matters but she was. We was just drivin’, and then this cop come up behind me goin’ really fast. So I go faster ’cause I think he’s gonna hit me. Then he flashed his lights and pulled us over.”

  “Did you tell him you sped up because of him?”

  “Yeah, and he didn’t believe me. Made me wait the whole time with my wife screamin’ at me while he gave me the ticket. That’s really why I’m fightin’ it—it ain’t the money; I just don’t think government should be able to do things like that and just get away with it.”

  Brigham nodded, making some quick notes on the back of the file with a pen that was running out of ink. “Okay. Let’s go in.”

  Brigham moved past the bar—the actual physical barrier separating the crowd from the lawyers—to stand in the well before the judge’s bench. If the judge had been on the bench, the bailiffs would have been required to tackle Brigham just for being there. As it was, he waited there with the other defense attorneys for his turn to talk to the prosecutor.

  The prosecutor, a woman with black hair that came to her shoulders, was sitting at a table. Brigham smiled at her and said, “Hi, Brigham Theodore.”

  “What do you need?” she said curtly, not removing her eyes from the file in front of her.

  “Um, I’m here for Jake Dolls. It’s a—”

  “There’s no offer. He can plead guilty and pay the fine.”

  “Well, his wife was pregnant and—”

  “He can plead guilty or we can have the trial.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Next.”

  Brigham felt someone gently pushing him out of the way, and another lawyer took his spot and tried convincing the prosecutor to give him a deal on a prostitution case. Brigham looked at Jake and could feel himself blushing. He went back to the defense table and sat on the bench behind it. Another lawyer sat there, a man in a suit with sneakers on. He was looking at his iPod, the earbuds dangling against his chest.

  “She’s a real ballbreaker,” the man said.

  “Seems like it.”

  “She won’t give you anything. You gotta set everything for trial in here. But you get a free appeal.”

  “What’dya mean?”

  “This is justice court—you get to appeal anything that happens to the district court. Starts the whole case over, so you get two bites at the apple. But when you appeal it, the judge can lock your client up. Still, Judge Bolson ain’t so bad.”

  The bailiff said, “All rise. The Honorable Judge Zandra Bolson now presiding.”

  The judge was a middle-aged woman with curly hair. She sat, moved her files in front of her, and said, “You may be seated. Who’s first?”

  Every lawyer scrambled for the podium, fighting for a spot up there. The man with the iPod elbowed another lawyer in the chest, laughing, but Brigham could tell he meant it.

  Brigham sat there for two and a half hours while the other lawyers handled their cases. Finally, his turn came at the podium. His heart felt as if it might rip out of his chest, and he was worried everyone was staring
at how badly he was sweating. He gripped the podium hard to stop his hands from trembling.

  “Matter of Jake Dolls, please, Your Honor.”

  Jake joined him at the podium. Brigham thought Jake must be the only person there more nervous than he was.

  The judge opened a file. “Are you Jacob Ray Dolls, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is the address we have on the citation correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, Counsel, what’s anticipated?”

  Brigham was staring at the charge sheet when the prosecutor cleared her throat. He glanced to her and she pointed to the judge.

  “Oh, sorry, Your Honor. Um, what was that?”

  “I said, what’s anticipated?”

  “We’ll be going forward with the trial.”

  “Well, by all means, proceed,” she said mockingly.

  Brigham sat at the defense table, as did Jake. He wasn’t sure which one it was until the bailiff pointed to it: the one farthest away from the jury box. He waited for the prosecutor to offer her opening statement, but she was busy on her phone. He thought maybe it was customary to let the defense go first at a bench trial.

  Brigham had spent at least three hours preparing his opening statement. It couldn’t be too long—judges probably hated that—but it couldn’t be so short that it didn’t seem like he cared about the case. So he’d written it, and then cut and trimmed until it was down to about five minutes.

  “Your Honor, when our Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers sought to protect—”

  “Mr. Theodore,” the judge interrupted, “what’re you doing?”

  “Um, opening statement.”

  “We usually waive opening statements. It’s a speeding ticket. I know what speeding is and what to expect.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry, Your Honor.”

  “Your Honor,” the prosecutor said, “the City calls Officer Walbot to the stand.”

  An officer in full uniform took the stand. He held up his right hand, and the clerk made him put his other hand on a Bible.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”