No Wonder He Wasn't Feeling Well

The junior partner, Oscar, went home early yesterday. Today, when I came in, I found out that he'd been taken to the hospital overnight and had an emergency appendectomy. He's doing well and is likely to be back at work (at least for partial days) on Tuesday.

However, he keeps his own appointments. And that meant that all day today, we had people coming in to see him. Felix was trying to take care of everything and he's already a little on the high-strung side about this stuff, so he was completely manic all day.

Most people who called for him were understanding. However, there were a few people who got very upset that Oscar was not in the office taking care of their green card application/ travel documents/ visa renewal. They were not happy with having someone call them back or with waiting for Oscar to return on Tuesday (even though, realistically, there was nothing that couldn't wait the two additional business days, and if there was, then they really waited too late to call us for help anyway). It was one of the more hectic days I've spent in the office so far.

My big motion on that case that's probably headed to the Court of Appeals went in yesterday and that was a huge relief. I'd been having a recurring nightmare wherein Felix forced me to argue the case in front of the Court of Appeals. I kept saying "But I'm not allowed to argue in front of the court!" and he kept saying "Oh, you'll be fine. I've been practicing for 35 years and I have every confidence that you can do it." Hopefully, having the motion in and pending will give me a respite from that dream.

And in the meantime, I've picked up five more clients. One of them came in today. He was none too happy to have a mere law student handling his paperwork. I can understand to a certain extent, but at the same time, I was thinking All I'm doing is reviewing your file and editing your written statements to polish the English! It also didn't help that this wunderkind was younger than I am. Then I turned on my "Bossy Broad" mode and started telling him exactly what to do. Amazingly, he responded to it.

Thrilled with my success, I then spent the afternoon bossing Felix around, much to his delight. I think he thinks I'm cute-- not in the sense that I'm attractive physically, but in the way a precocious child is cute. I bullied him into defrosting the fridge and cleaning the kitchen. And told him his jokes were corny. He was eating it up-- what a strange man. While doing all of this, I worked on editing the wunderkind's writing.

I am consistently shocked and appalled by the poor writing that comes from some of these high-level scientists and researchers. Some of the documents I worked with today were written by a Ph.D. economist whose introduction bragged that he had published over 200 articles. I can't imagine how he got anything accepted for publication in anything other than a middle school newspaper.

And I couldn't get a job after college to save my life.