The law and Christmas.

Years and years ago, opposing council in a case, who was significantly older than me, remarked to me "remember when we used to all close down on Christmas and remain closed until January 2, we'd go duck hunting. . . "

Well, no, I didn't remember a time like that.  I asked an older partner if he remembered that, and he didn't either.

I don't think it really happened.

Quite frankly, the law has sort of ruined Christmas in some ways for me, or it conspires to do so most years.  Last year, 2023, was an exception as I did get a lot more time off than usual, and we went to Hawaii, coming back on December 24.  I think I took Boxing Day off as well, and some time later that week.

Most of the time I do try to take Boxing Day off.  I didn't this year.  I worked.  

For that matter, I worked December 28th and 29th as well.  Only the afternoon of the 29th was taken off, and part of that was spent running errands, some connected with work.

One of the things that happens at the end of the year is you try to get all of your end of the year projects done and end of the year bills.  It's frantic, quite frankly, and a big and tiring effort.  Yesterday reminded me of that.

To clients, every project is hugely important. But to civil litigators, who tend to also have civil practices, that's not really the case.  All projects for your regular clients are major projects. All big litigation is too. These take absolute priority, as they must.

Everyone, in contrast, has some small projects that come in the door. One off matters that are basically favors to somebody, or sometimes very tiny projects that come in as somebody asks to whom you cannot say no.

I had a tiny one towards the end of the year this year.  It evolved, as they always do, into a more complicated one than I initially thought it would be, involving me opening two court files to deal with it.  The parties were in a hurry, and we expedited it. There's no way for the clients to know how difficult this really is, and the extent to which a lot of lawyers, myself included, strive to make this as economic as possible for the clients.  Frankly, we lose money doing them, which is almost impossible for the actual clients to realize.

When it was completed, which was in December, the client started calling right away for a bill.  I get that, but in the scheme of things, reviewing the bill, and unlike the protagonist in The Firm, I review and correct every single one, takes time.  Briefs take time.  Answering complaints takes time.  Drafting complaints takes time. So I didn't finish it.

Yesterday (this was drafted on December 27) I was working on complaints, answering and prosecuting, in some extremely complicated matters.  The client dropped in.  "Where's the bill?".

This requires me to stop what I'm doing and try to mark it.  I.e., I'm going through hundreds of pages of contractual materials (think, if you'd like, of the paper review scene in Clueless), put some sort of marker on this in an electronic form, and turn my attention to this matter.

Which I did.

In fact, as it was small, I just told my bookkeeper to bill the cost, the rest is pro bono.

Work out great on Boxing Day?

No, not really.  The client didn't have the money to pay the costs and asked to make arrangements.

Oh well.

I'll note that the law intervenes in other ways as well, which it likely does in other professions.  If you work in a place for a period of years, particularly in a professional office, those you work with are with you more than other people and most firms have some sort of Christmas tradition, a part, and then usually a professionals gathering for a celebratory lunch or something.  I missed the party this year as I'd scheduled depositions that day.  I just forgot what day it was on.  And I was extremely sick by the time I came home.

The lunch of the professionals is on Christmas Eve, or rather the day before Christmas.  I've become more tense about such things as I've grown older, but we've all grown older.  We take the afternoon of the 24th off, but in my case, what that means is trying to get home in time for early Christmas Vigil Mass.  Christmas is, after all, "Christ's Mass", and that's very much how I view it.  Given that, I feel weird having a couple of drinks at noon.  I forget that for a lot of people, the connection with Christianity is muted and its a secular holiday to a large degree.