mediocre female lawyer

a story about a good caesar salad

“Are you here yet?” The text from my boss took me by surprise. The hearing wasn’t for another 40 minutes. Oh god, had I read the start time wrong? Was I late? Panicked, I dug through my bag for a copy of the agenda and plucked it from inside the giant, 10-pound binder. A wave of relief washed over me: I wasn’t late, he was early. And bored. I shifted the bag to my other shoulder to give myself some relief, and leaned against the doors of the crowded E train.

My boss had left his house—a new build in one of the most expensive suburbs of the city—early to account for the unpredictable margin of city traffic. His driver, a courtesy paid for by the firm, dropped him off curbside at the courthouse nearly a hour before the hearing. I thought he would have found a dank bar to rot in for a while before it started. Certainly there was no shortage of watering holes near the demented lawyer capital of the Manhattan, and certainly 40 minutes was enough for him to cover at least two drinks, particularly without the distraction of live company. But instead he had decided to sit idly in the courtroom by himself.

“No. 10 min.” I texted back.

I was early too, a good habit I developed after being embarrassingly late for a hearing after a bang-up night in my 20s. I flashed my business card and made it through security in less than 30 seconds. I found my boss casually sprawled out alone in the courtroom, legs akimbo, splayed out across two full chairs. “Did you catch the Vanderpump Rules reunion?” was the first thing out of his mouth. “No, was it crazy?” I hadn’t watched that nonsense in over a year, but we had at least 20 minutes to kill until someone more important that he could talk to came along.

“All rise,” everyone stood, and the judge appeared from behind the Chambers door. A small, erudite-looking man in his 70s, still handsome. I always thought he looked a bit like the New York version of George A. Romero. I could tell he had a sunny disposition today, unlike the last time I was before him.

I wasn’t nervous because I wasn’t arguing today. My client was simply joining arguments made by another party. In lawyer speak “joining” is probably the most amazing, low-effort thing you can do. You let another party spend the time, effort, and money to do the research, write the papers, and make the argument, and when all is said and done, you file a single piece of paper that says “we agree with those guys” and then stand up in front of the judge at the end and say “ditto” and sit down. On this particular occasion, I was “ditto”-ing defense counsel: some bright young thing from a prestigious firm. It was an easy thing for my boss to let me handle. Any argument of import he’d insist on handling himself. There was a time I cared about that, but it had long passed.

The plaintiff’s attorney took the podium. A man in his early 30s, he was tall, lanky, ambiguously ethnic with a high-pitched voice.

He opened with an impressive confidence that I could tell was not natural, but had been painstakingly developed over the years: “Your honor, this is a routine matter of…”

The judge cut him off immediately: “There’s nothing routine about this matter, counselor.”

My boss grinned. He leaned into my ear and said “Welp, we’re done here.” He then completely disengaged, unlocked his phone and started aimlessly scrolling thru the NY Post website. He was right. I had done this enough to know that the judge had already made up his mind. Defense counsel could take the podium and make muffled fart noises into the microphone and it wouldn’t change the outcome.

The plaintiff’s attorney was rattled but recovered quickly. “Your honor, it actually is routine, this case presents incredibly similar facts to your honor’s ruling in…”

The boss leaned in to me again: “The judge doesn’t respect him because he’s wearing a cheap suit.”

Hm. I hadn’t scrutinized the suit. But now that I was paying attention, yes. The blazer was too short for this tall man, and the wrinkles were plentiful. One particularly deep crease in the back made me wince a bit. I couldn’t unsee it. This man was wearing 1-ply paper towels, something that had been purchased from a Joseph A. Bank buy 1-get-6 free sale. When he took his seat, his pant legs rose so high I saw not only his the cheap novelty socks (patterned with Corgi dogs), but 2-3 inches of skin and hair. He argued his position well, but whatever he said and, at least in my opinion, whatever he wore were both totally irrelevant.

I scanned the courtroom for some comps. It had filled with roughly 30 people, 25 of which were men. For the most part, their suits were sleek, impeccably tailored, meticulously ironed. The loafers looked expensive, interesting patinas of French or Italian origin. Slim ankles were fully covered with silk and cashmere socks in respectfully muted colors. If I squinted, I could even make out some monograms on the cuff sleeves and an occasional sock. Such a luxury was never possible for myself because my mother lacked the foresight to realize that my initials spelled something obscene. And who was I anyways? The thought of my clothes having a monogram was laughable.

Defense counsel was brief; he knew he was winning and, after few quick remarks, rested on his papers. My boss nudged me and with feigned drama said: “Are you ready…TO JOIN?” The impish smirk on his face said what I had known for years: “None of this matters. You don’t matter. This is all a joke.”

I took the podium, made some meek remarks, the Judge nodded, I sat down.

Instead of issuing a bench ruling on the spot, the judge took the matter under advisement, meaning he wanted more time to issue a decision. It’s really something they do to pretend that they’re fully considering both sides’ arguments, even if they aren’t, and protect themselves from the pain of an appeal.

My boss yawned. “So are we drinking?”

I didn’t particularly feel like drinking on an empty stomach on a Tuesday at 3 p.m. but I knew better than to say no to an alcoholic that controlled my paychecks. Plus, I was starving, so much so even some empty calories might do me some good.

“Yeah, we’re drinking.”

We ducked into a nearby bar, an upscale British pub that took advantage of its proximity to the courthouse. I sat down at the bar and immediately ordered a Guinness. Other than some coffee and a couple propranolol, I hadn’t eaten since 6 p.m. the day prior, which had been my late lunch. My eating schedule had been all fucked up by a bunch of bullshit work, including this case. Maybe misguided, but I always viewed Guinness as the most healthy alcoholic meal replacement after having read some 2013 clickbait article espousing its health benefits, vitamins, minerals, etc.

He ordered his usual: a dirty vodka martini with Tito’s. In our early days, when we were just starting out together at our new firm, I would watch in amazement as he tossed back three or even four of these at lunch multiple times a week. The final one he would swirl and swish violently as he cackled menacingly about our future hypothetical success, the downfall of our enemies, and the most petty junior high gossip of the Manhattan’s corporate lawyer bar.

The reason for his departure from our prior, reputable firm depended on who you asked. Some would say he had been secretly ousted for bad behavior, which was allegedly naughty enough to warrant the administrative hassle of the departure of an equity partner with a fat book of business. Others just framed it as a logical lateral move to a new firm that had less red-tape and a more appetizing compensation structure for rainmakers.

As with most things, the truth was somewhere in the middle.

“Wait, you haven’t eaten, right? Let’s get food menus.” Music to my ears. The boss was always obsessed with his weight, more than any middle-aged straight man should be in my opinion. In the 10+ years I had known him, he had fluctuated wildly. In his darkest days, I saw him chain-smoking on the street outside our firm, 20 pounds too heavy, all of which he carried in his stomach. At times, he looked like a restaurant line cook, dark circles weighing down his sad eyes. 5 months later he would randomly lose it all and get absolutely shredded. In one heartwarming memory from years ago, I recall he had rage-thrown a “shit brief “I had written on the floor of his office. When I bent over to collect the leaves I spied a CostCo-sized tub of Creatine under his desk, an event that resulted in my routinely singing “Maybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s Creatine” to the tune of the old 1990s “maybe it’s Maybelline” commercial to cheer myself up. Over the past few years though, he had stabilized at an impressive 13% body fat and I rarely saw him eat anything other than pure protein and martini olives.

He ordered a poke bowl, no rice. I ordered a caesar salad. The menu allowed me the option to add a branzino filet for an extra $10, which I did without second thought.

“You can’t wear a suit like that in front of a 70 year old judge.” He shook his head in disgust. “It’s disrespectful.” Oh, we’re back to the suit again, he still wants to talk about the suit. I chuckled a bit, I didn’t mind. Truth was, most of the time I enjoyed listening to his deranged ramblings over a drink. I liked feeling the absolute conviction of his batshit beliefs. Sometimes I thought he might be actually evil, but he always had a sense of humor about it which made it all palatable to me. No, I didn’t trust him, but his saving grace was that he cared so deeply about what others, including myself, thought of him. He wanted so badly for me to say nice things about him at his retirement party in 20 years, so much so that he often went out of his way to bat for me professionally, even though I had long lost interest in this entire disgusting, sordid profession. Everything nice thing he did for me was actually for him. And it was only when I finally came to terms with the motive could I appreciate it for what it was.

My old mentor was his old mentor, a prehistoric Sheryl Sandberg girl boss type of woman. They had an uncanny, surrogate mommy-son relationship. Every year, I would inadvertently learn some new fucked-up detail that would make me go “wait, what the fuck?” Someone’s loose lips would leak something absolutely unhinged and unprofessional that should have been kept private. In effort to snuff the gossip torch instead of pass it, I would never discuss it with coworkers. I did this for my own benefit, and not theirs.

She and he had a falling out towards the end about the one thing that causes 99% of arguments amongst lawyers: power. When he left the firm, she had explicitly warned me about leaving to go work for him. “He has a blackness in his heart. He’ll never be happy.” were her exact words, delivered so seriously that I laughed when I heard them. Psychopaths, both of you, I remembered thinking. I respected so many things about her, but she was just as far gone as him. The woman had a hard professional life, having weathered the storm of the now comical corporate misogyny of the ‘80s and ‘90s with a smile on her face. But she licked the right boots, stabbed the right backs, and made a name for herself in a field that is, to this day, still mostly dominated by incredibly off-putting men.

Sadly, her husband had taken his own life in the years before I knew her, and she let her career consume too much of her world to be healthy. So, naturally, she was spiteful and bitter when the prodigal son stole her empire out from underneath her simply because he was charming, handsome, and great with a 9-iron. Her clients were mostly men, and no matter how skilled or likeable she was, when given the choice they would always opt for a day of golf, boozing, and womanizing with him over a “cool grandma dinner” with her. After a few particularly fun boys’ nights, all these old-school, white-collared CFOs, CEOs, and principals eventually began to buzz him with new business over her. It wasn’t fair, but it was entirely predictable, and I was always a bit amused by how it blindsided such a savvy woman in the end.

The bartender brought us the food. The long 10” inch branzino filet was draped across my bowl like a lovely lady reclining on a fainting sofa. The way its edges upturned, I could tell the skin was crispy.

“It’s different for women.” He eyeballed me. “I can’t tell if what you’re wearing is expensive, it’s…women’s clothes.” He gestured dismissively at my outfit. Or me. It’s womens clothes. The line made me smile. I nodded at the bartender for his attention—I needed to switch to something stronger. “One of these, please.” I thumbed at my boss’s second martini.

“And certainly that ancient judge can’t tell if what you’re wearing is expensive.” He said in between mouthfuls of raw, pink fish. “All he’s thinking is: ‘would I fuck her?’”

“Damn.” I said. The hard F in the way he said “fuck” gobsmacked me. I chugged the rest of my beer and fell into the trap of reflection. I stared at the button on my pants…the single connecting thread had become dangerously loose. The button hung there like a little impotent dick. A strong gust of wind might have blown it away. I had tossed the outfit on without a second thought this morning. Maybe if I was doing something more important I’d have worn something more important. The whole thing was probably $300 all in: the sad pants from Banana Republic, a long grey herringbone Zara blazer (permanent collection), the fake Gucci Sam Edelman loafers with the heel worn down enough to reveal some of the cheap polyethylene underneath. The elegantly draped black silk Theory shell the only beacon of light in the darkness of my pathetic ensemble.

It definitely wasn’t a real suit. The blazer was casual and open, no button in sight, and the pants weren’t tailored. In my optimistic, naive days, I had bit the bullet on one of my first big girl paychecks and spent the money on five high-end, tailored suits that cost more than my last car. But, as the job slowly sucked the lifeforce out of my body, they got less and less wear, eventually being relegated to the back of my closet near the now dusty slut dresses of my 20s. The last time I wore one of them was with a see-through shirt to some seedy disco club. I never got around to having it dry cleaned and it still smells like cigarette smoke and pussy.

My brain reassured me: don’t worry, that judge absolutely wanted to fuck you. Yes, that’s right. I had just had my hair highlighted a week prior and it looked good. Wait. I shouldn’t be thinking that. It’s so fucking stupid, drink your martini, idiot. Fair price for that branzino filet huh.

I shoveled more salad into my face. It was such a good salad. All chopped up and tossed with an appropriate amount of creamy dressing that perfectly enveloped everything. It even filled the little pockets in the toasty homemade croutons.