Steve Jobs

By now, the entire world knows that Steven Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple.  It was a really sad day for computer geeks, but an even sadder day for those of us who aren't.  I don't know about you, and maybe I'm showing my age, but I was in high school when computers were new.  In fact, I even had a class in high school to learn how to write dos commands and programs.  It was the one class I almost failed.  None of the programming language made any sense to me.  It wasn't until I was in law school that computers started to become common in the workplace, and a few years after that before people started to have them in their homes.  Computers were useful, but they weren't fun.  Frankly, they intimidated me, just like they had in high school.  Until Steven Jobs.  He made computing fun.  No longer did you have to understand how the darn machine worked in order to use it.  His computers freed us all to explore the online world, while he went on to open up the world of online music to us all.  Then tablet computing and now streaming TV.  Even my father, who can't turn on a computer, uses an iPad - and enjoys it.  Steven Jobs revolutionized computing for us all.  Thank you, Steve, and G_d bless.

TGIF

Erin created our office Facebook page

(Thank you, Erin!)

The Collaborative Girls met for cocktails

Waiting for Hurricane Irene

It's All a Matter of Perspective

Don't you remember your parents telling you that what you saw was a matter of how you looked at it?  Mine sure did.  Did you see the glass half empty or half full?  Was it a flat tire or an ability to learn how to change a tire?  This week, here in Maryland, there's been a lot of talk about perspective.  You see, we had an earthquake - 5.8 on the Richter Scale.  For everyone who lives out West, that's a big nothing; for those of us here, it was massive.  The last time an earthquake even approached that intensity out here was over 100 years ago.  We were scared, we didn't know what to do, and it felt unsettling.  Now, we're waiting for Hurricane Irene, a category 3 storm.  Folks are freaking out up here - water and toilet paper flying off the shelves like there's no tomorrow.  Well, heck folks, I'm from coastal South Florida.  A category 3 when you're well inland is a nothing, a speed bump.
What does all this mean for those of us in the Trenches?  It's a teaching moment for us.  First, the reactions to these natural disasters teach us that, like the frog in the gradually heating pan of water, when you get used to something, it doesn't seem so bad.  We need to remember that when we're dealing with our domestic abuse clients and wondering why they stayed.  To them, it was a category 3 storm in Florida, not in Maryland.  We need to remember it also when our divorce clients overreact (at least it seems to us) to normal divorcing spouse bad behavior.  To us, it's business as usual; to them it's an earthquake in Maryland.
Second, just as the sun came up today, the day after the earthquake, and will come up the morning after the hurricane, even bad weather passes and the days are sunny again.  It's hard for our clients to remember this when all they feel is pain and turmoil.  Sometimes, we need to remind them and help them gain a little perspective.

What Price a Dedicated Military?

Here in the Trenches, we handle a fair number of divorces for members of our Armed Forces.  Sometimes we represent the servicemember, and sometimes their spouse.  For these families, sometimes the only asset they have of any value is the military pension.  Now, I'm not going to get into a debate about whether that pension should be divided upon divorce (I think it should, and I know that can be a controversial position). That's not what this post is about.  There is a move afoot to abolish the military pension as we know it in favor of a defined contribution type of plan (that's a plan like a 401k or IRA).  This would be a cost saving measure for the military, and it would provide for those individuals who do not stay in the military until retirement some retirement savings for their military service.  It's an interesting debate.  On the one hand, the reason our military personnel are paid less than the general public, like our federal government civil servants, is that they have a pension waiting for them at the end of their 20 years.  That way, while these folks are still relatively young, they can collect a pension that supplements the lesser earnings they will command coming into the civilian workforce for the first time.  It also ensures our military retains experienced soldiers by shackling them with golden handcuffs.  Without that pension, most enlisted personnel, at least, wouldn't stay in the military for their full 20 years.  On the other hand, there are a lot of soldiers, who for whatever reason, don't stay in the full 20 years.  As the system is now, they get nothing toward retirement for their service, and for the most part, they don't earn enough to put anything aside on their own.  Is that really fair, considering everyone else, including civil servants, have some form of retirement savings, especially as they risk their lives to keep us safe?  We'll be following this debate carefully here in the Trenches.

A Monday Riddle

How is life in the Trenches like training for a marathon?  It's not, you say?  Well, you'd be wrong.  In so many ways, it is exactly the same, both for those of us working in the Trenches and for our clients.  You see, when you train for a marathon, you work backward from the race date to organize your training.  Your taper runs are a week or two before the race, and your mileage increases until it reaches the maximum right before the taper starts.   When you prepare for trial, everything is calculated back from the trial date.  Discovery closes a month or so before trial, custody evaluators start to work 90 days pre-trial, giving their reports 3 weeks pretrial, and court ordered settlement conferences are also just after discovery closes.  The trial is the marathon, and everything is calculated to lead up to that moment.
Clients also have to deal with the marathon timetable.  Most of them are first time marathoners, so they are working up their mileage without any prior experience of what it takes to train for the race, much less run it.  Training for a marathon takes place over a long period of time, at least 3 months, if the runner is used to running, longer if the runner is inexperienced.  Most divorce clients are inexperienced runners, so training, the period leading up to trial, takes longer than they realize.  It's also much harder.  There is always a time during any period of marathon training where you're tired, when all of a sudden, even running a medium run is difficult.  It's the time when the inexperienced runner begins to wonder whether they'll be able to make it the distance.  And so it is with the family law client.  There is always a point in the case where nothing is moving forward, when it feels like the pain will not end, that the divorce/custody/support trial will never come, much less be finished.   That moment, however, is usually the turning point, from which the training/preparation builds steam.  The client doesn't know this, however, and despairs, and without an experienced attorney/trainer to guide them, might give up.  Those of us in the Trenches not only provide legal advice and representation, but also the voice of experience that helps our clients get through to the finish line and on with their lives.

Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility (James Thurber)

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you might have guessed that I deal with a lot of high conflict people on a daily basis.  Some of them are my clients, some of them are their spouses, some of them are opposing counsel, and some of them are friends and loved ones.  The fact is that we all deal with high conflict people regularly.  I have a confession - as much as these folks are in my life, I struggle with the best ways to deal with them.  A large part of that struggle is keeping up the energy level.  It takes a lot of work and thought to interact with the high conflict folks.  To do it successfully means that you are constantly paying attention to verbal and non-verbal cues, both theirs and yours, and watching what you say and how you say it.  Any unguarded moment or communication can undo weeks of careful work to build rapport.  It's physically tiring, emotionally draining and intellectually taxing. 
All of these high conflict folks would pull us under water here in the Trenches - if we let them.  We don't.  Sometimes it's hard, because they do get to us.  What we have to remember is to respect our own boundaries, take time for ourselves, remember that it's not about us, and find the humour.

TGIF

Attorneys who are so out of line

Friends who answer the phone when you need advice

Clients we like!