“Well,” Paul said. “Ha, ha. Jack, Nina. Nina, Jack.”
“Hello, Nina,” Jack said. He raised his eyebrows, shrugged, smiled slightly. “Believe me, although I should have suspected he was up to something, I didn’t.”
“Hello.” She sat down on the couch, keeping her legs together, and crossed her arms. “What’re you doing here?”
“I was invited,” Jack said. “It’s been a couple of years now, hasn’t it? Amazing. I meant to call Bob more often.”
“He’s been busy. Like you, I’m sure.”
“You always did fit into a T-shirt just right,” Jack said.
Nina crossed her arms.
Jack broke into a broad smile. “Paul, you old fox.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, buddy. This is business,” Paul said.
Jack ignored him. He did look fine, if pale from the years in high-rise San Francisco and away from the beaches. Shorter than Paul, he was brawny, although leaner than he looked, something you only saw when he took his shirt off. He had reminded her of a teddy bear when they met, a hairy Big Sur guy who brooked no shit but had a ready smile and a kind word for everyone.
Nina was remembering her last phone conversation with Jack. He had urged her to hurry up and sign the papers so he could marry his girlfriend. She had reacted, well, with a certain lack of gentility. The old anger hadn’t had time to rise up yet and all she felt was nervous and curious. She looked again at Paul, who cleared his throat, stalling, as if waiting to see how she would react.
“He’s the state bar defense lawyer?”
“I hear he’s good,” Paul said. “Of course, I hear that from him.”
Jack said, “Ah ha. The pieces begin to come together.”
Odd, to be in a room with two men she had slept with. She had no urge to compare them, then suddenly found herself doing exactly that. Apples and oranges, she thought. Onions and leeks. Cucumbers and bananas. She giggled. Nerves.
“What’s so funny?” Jack asked.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
“I haven’t even started my song and dance yet, and you’re smiling.” He turned to Paul. “Did you tell her about Eva? Is that why she’s smiling?”
“Tell me what?”
“She dumped my ass,” Jack said. “Two months ago.” He looked hurt when he said it.
“Really,” Nina said.
“I didn’t even see it coming. She moved out and served me the next day.”
“She does move fast,” Nina said. Jack’s new wife had also been the attorney who represented Jack in his divorce from Nina.
“Go ahead. Tell me I deserved it.” After a pause pregnant with Nina’s silence, Jack said, “Well. You get a gold star for restraint. Here I am, battered and blue. So, Paul, you going to tell me what’s up?”
Paul got up. “Let’s save that until we’re on the deck at Nepenthe. It’s a forty-five-minute drive and I’m already hungry.”
Jack and Nina continued to sneak looks at each other. She decided he was as intense and brash as ever but he had a new aspect today. He looked wounded, maybe. Chastened.
Improved. Definitely improved.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Sure.”
They took Jack’s green Chrysler Sebring, top down. Paul sat in the rear seat, his legs digging into Nina’s back. The fog had drifted out to sea around the Highlands Inn and the twisting road revealed glimpses of deep blue sea on their right around every turn. Vacationers blew past them as Jack stuck to the speed limit. When the houses grew sparse, the road hugged a cliff that stretched high above them on their left and down a thousand feet, to the crashing surf far below.
“Awesome!” Jack shouted over the noise of the engine. “I always forget.”
As they crossed the Bixby Creek Bridge, Paul leaned forward to touch Nina’s shoulder, because she had a very bad memory of that place that had to do with her mother’s death many years before. They swerved past the Point Sur Lighthouse, where the navy was on the lookout for terrorists these days. The world had changed since Nina’s childhood, when VW vans full of bell-bottomed kids had traveled this beautiful road.
At the thick redwood forests of Pfeiffer Big Sur they dipped into shadow. Jack told them about how his wife had taken their hamster with her and how he had seriously considered filing for custody. Solemnly, he laid out his legal strategy, even citing some cases, probably invented but nevertheless credible and detailed. Some people in trouble turned to counseling; Jack turned to storytelling. His disasters always evolved into deadpan comedy skits, which was his way of controlling and reshaping his psychic traumas.
They parked in the driveway at the foot of the concrete staircase that led to the Phoenix Shop and Nepenthe. “Haven’t been here in years,” Jack said. “Lots of good times here. Remember that Halloween party in, let’s see, I forget the year. Who was it wore the pumpkin head? Probably Paul.”
Paul took Nina’s arm as they went up. They both puffed, but the hike was worth the wait because Nepenthe possessed a spectacular view. Under the enormous, shifting sky, miles and miles of ragged cliffs collided with the ocean.
“There are seven wonders, but are there seven wonderful views?” Jack said as they arrived at the top. “There ought to be. Put this one at number one.”
They sat on the outside deck and ordered burgers and margaritas. Paul and Jack had fallen into the old banter Nina remembered from years ago when she had first met them. She had been a law student clerking at Jack’s firm in Carmel, and Paul-incredible! Paul had still been a cop. Bob was a toddler then. Her mother was alive.
So much had happened since, too much too fast. Another marriage, another loss…
“I was sorry to hear about your husband, Nina. What a sad way to die. How terrible for you and Bob.”
Jack had wormed his way into her heart, just like old times. She never knew what to say. “Thank you.”
“How’s the law practice up there in the mountains? I look east sometimes outside my window on the thirtieth floor in the Financial District and I think of you in your cozy town and I think, you finally figured it all out-”
Nina gave a short laugh. “Right.”
“She needs to talk to you professionally,” Paul said. “So straighten up. Go ahead, Nina, dive in.”
“I’m still thinking about it,” Nina said. “Jack, are you really a certified specialist in state bar matters?”
“At your service, fair lady,” Jack said. He stood up suddenly and pretended to sweep a cap off his head and bowed. “I’ve been hoping Paul dragged me down here just to get us talking again, actually.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” Paul said. “Actually.” He put his hand over Nina’s.
“So you guys are lovers?” Jack said, Jack-style, no pussyfooting around. “She’s with you?”
Paul pulled Nina close. Jack’s eyes flickered.
She felt vaguely like a sack of flour being weighed by two merchants. “Paul and I aren’t your business,” she said.
“Maybe. Still, I find myself absorbed by the implications, and just a little aggravated. Paul, you could have said something. I’ve talked to you on the phone many times. We went climbing this summer at Pinnacles. We hit Vegas last month. You never once mentioned Nina.”
“No time like the present.”
“Well, well, well,” Jack said. “Coffee for me,” he told the waitress. “Nina? Anything?”
“I’ll have the chocolate mousse,” Nina said.
“That’s right. Chocolate in times of stress. I remember that. You have need of my services, I take it,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear it. That’s the first thing I always tell my clients. I also tell them it’s inevitable. Happens to every one of us sooner or later. Complaint from a client. Ceiling caving in. It’s the grand old practice of law these days.”
“I’m looking for some advice. Some information. About malpractice,” Nina said.
“Okay,” Jack said. He folded his hands. “You get a complaint against you? Malpractice?”
“Not yet.”
“‘Not yet.’ A wallop awaits behind those two little words. What happened?”
Nina told him. She didn’t spare herself, telling about the missing key, her stolen truck, her sleepiness, the fact that she often brought files home. Jack shook his head and Paul narrowed his eyes. Then she got to the worst part.
She talked about Jeff Riesner’s new witness in the Cruz case and her fear that Kevin’s file had been read. “These particular files-they are seriously confidential. The ones where-the clients could suffer severe harm if the files are read by the wrong people. That may already have happened in the Cruz case. I don’t know for sure.”
“Hard luck,” Jack said. Putting his hands behind his head, he expelled a long breath.
“Well?” Nina said.
“You want to know, are you going to get into trouble with the California State Bar? You could get sued, too, in a civil action, but let’s put that aside right now. It’s your license you’re worried about right now, not your fortune. Or have you got a fortune these days?”
“I’m paying the bills. I put a down payment on the cabin where Bob and I live. I’m not rich.”
“You talked to your malpractice insurer?”
“Couldn’t reach them. Monday.”
“Talked to the clients?”
“Not in the other two cases. Monday.”
“Current status of the police investigation?”
“I called this morning before I even got out of bed. No Bronco, no files, no progress. They’re already tired of hearing from me, and I wasn’t popular before.”
“Hmm. First. Paul did right, coming to me. I do this stuff all day long.”
“Thanks for listening.”
“No problem. Pick up the tab and you can write the whole dinner off. It’s a legal consult now. Hire me.”
“What?”
“Okay, I’m hired. Pay to be worked out later. This is now an unassailably privileged conversation.”
“What about Paul?” Nina said. “He’s not a lawyer.”
“You’re not here, buddy. Never forget that.”
Paul nodded.
“Okay. Second thing. I have never heard of anybody getting disbarred for losing some files, for a single act of carelessness. You have to work at it to get disbarred. A pattern of dipping into the trust funds, sure. Conviction of a felony. Taking off, address unknown, with the retainers and leaving the clients twisting in the wind. Mostly it’s money stuff.”
“There was-a complaint some time back.”
“Oh?”
“Jeffrey Riesner got annoyed with how I was handling a case. The bar slapped me on the wrist, verbally, of course.”
“No harm done, then. Tell you a big secret.” He leaned his head close to Nina’s. “They’ll reinstate just about anybody after a few years. There’s no such thing as disbarment for life. You can always lay low and do community work and try again later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“I can’t imagine that happening to me. I’ve been a lawyer for years, Jack, and for that privilege I slaved for four years in night law school, working days at Klaus’s firm. It’s all I know and all I ever wanted.” There was a catch in her throat.
“So you’ve never heard of a disbarment for lost files,” Paul said, prodding him.
“I’ll tell you what concerns me. The state bar prioritizes, you know. They get more complaints from the public than they could ever start to handle. So they look at the complaint, and the main thing they want to know in almost every case where it isn’t just summary disbarment, where you killed your wife and you’re out, buddy, the main thing is the extent of the harm to the client. That’s the criterion. And that’s my concern here. It’s not just, ah shit, I lost some paperwork, I’ll just run down to the courthouse and get duplicates. Or incorporation documents or even a contract dispute. Right?”
“Not these cases, no,” Nina said.
“These are people who have something privileged they have told you, and it’s gonna shake their world if somebody reads your notes and talks to the right people?”
“Exactly.”
“Anybody gonna commit suicide if the story comes out?”
“Oh God, I hope not!”
“There’s that potential?”
“I can’t say.”
“Extortion?”
“Could be.”
He tilted his head. “How bad is it? Is it possible one or more of these people might be physically harmed by someone else if the news gets out?”
She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“So, you feel seriously compromised. If the worst happens, that one innocently careless act might result in irreparable harm,” Jack said slowly. He thought for a while, scratching his thumb back and forth along the wooden table. “My advice to you is, when you get back think about what you can do to prevent the clients from getting hurt.”
“The first thing I’m going to do is disclose everything to them,” Nina said. “My indefensible carelessness. The whole thing.”
“No, no, no. No sackcloth and ashes. They don’t need that. Just tell them somebody stole your truck with the files in there, and definitely tell them immediately.”
“I might be able to maneuver better if you don’t tell them right away, Nina,” Paul said. “Tiptoe in there and find a few things out before they’re warned.”
Jack didn’t get it at first, then he said, “I don’t know, Paul.”
“What’s not to understand?”
“Looks to me like you’re personally involved here,” Jack told him, frowning.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
“A job like this requires extreme subtlety, quiet smarts. Maybe-”
“I’ll quietly smart you,” Paul said, grinning. “I’m on to you. You’re jealous.”
“Well, she is my wife.”
Nina interrupted. “I was your wife, Jack. Past tense, over, and let’s not forget it because so far, that has worked for me.”
Paul’s smile grew.
“Of course I want your help, Paul,” Nina said. “Thanks.”
“Obviously,” Paul said.
“But I plan to take Jack’s expert advice. I’ll tell them tomorrow, if possible.”
Now Jack smiled.
Paul shrugged. “I can live with that.”
Jack steamed forward. “Okay. That was the good news. It’s not the usual disbarment situation. Also on the plus side, Nina, your truck might still be found with files intact. Or nothing comes of this for whatever reason, and nobody complains to the state bar, so no process gets initiated. Now let’s talk about the bad news. Let’s assume a client does complain.”
“Okay,” Nina said, bracing herself.
“Let me lay some startling statistics on you. Solo practitioners are about twenty-three percent of the lawyers in California. That’s sizable. About one out of four out of one hundred seventy thousand lawyers. Now. Fifty-four percent of complaints, which are called inquiries, are filed against solos. You get twice as many complaints filed against you, you solos, proportionately. You get that?”
“Yes. Why’s that? It doesn’t seem fair.”
“I’ll get to that in a minute. You think that’s unfair, listen to this-seventy-eight percent of the cases the state bar takes through the disciplinary-hearing process to completion are solos. Damn near four out of five, although solos only constitute a quarter of the lawyers. What does that tell you?”
“It tells me something’s wrong with this picture,” Nina said.
“Now. Let’s skip the small-firm practitioners with fewer than ten lawyers in the firm. They don’t get off easy, but don’t do nearly as badly as the solos. Let’s compare what I just said about solos to the big-firm lawyers. Lawyers in firms with more than ten people. About forty-four percent of the lawyers in California are big-firm lawyers. But guess what percentage of inquiries concern them.”
“I won’t even try,” Nina said.
“On
ly twenty-eight percent. And guess what percent of the cases the state bar prosecutes to completion are big-firm lawyers.”
“What?”
“Two point eight percent. Less than three percent, compared to seventy-eight percent for the solos.”
“No,” Paul said. “You’re kidding.”
“No lie. Of you solos, four out of five are going all the way. If you’re big-firm, one out of forty is going all the way.”
“That’s got to be illegal,” Paul said. “Targeting the little guys.”
Nina sat there, stunned.
“So you don’t, repeat, don’t, want to get close to the system. It’s a whale. Sucks in the little krill, avoids the sharks.”
Nina gathered her wits. “But that’s discrimination. Deliberate or institutional, I can’t believe my colleagues would allow it.”
“Who knew?” Jack said. “There were rumors for years, and we finally got a law passed to force the bar to keep the statistics and make a public report. It’s called the State Bar Report under Senate Bill 143. Read it and weep.”
“But what are they going to do about it?” Nina said.
“Not a goddamn thing. They report the stats because they have to, then they apply a thick coat of whitewash. The whitewash goes like this: It’s the fault of the solos because they don’t make as much money, don’t have lots of clerks, don’t have other lawyers around to make appearances when they’re down, operate under more stressful conditions. They say the solos are more dishonest, basically, more likely to dip into the trust account. I say bullshit to that. I don’t think that’s what happens. I’ve represented enough lawyers in these proceedings that I’ve got the real picture.”
“And?” Nina said.
“It’s two things,” Jack said. “First, when one of their own gets in trouble, the big firms pay off the client. Poof, the problem goes away. And second, the state bar disciplinary procedure is totally different from regular courtroom procedure. The mines are buried in different places. The solos in trouble often can’t afford a lawyer. They start thinking well, shit, I’m a lawyer, I’ll represent myself. Boom, they make a minor technical mistake and they’ve lost their profession and their livelihood and incidentally their reputation and often their marriages and they don’t even know what hit them. It’s ironic. They’re babes in the woods just like the pro pers who get slammed around all day in regular court because they don’t have lawyers.”
Unfit to Practice Page 9