A Morning in the Life of a Lawyer

By Jeffrey Koenig
New York Personal Injury Attorney, The Law Offices of Spar & Bernstein

Okay, my day started today at about 5:00 am.

The coffee is on, the caffeinated air is floating like a haze around my head, and my computer is humming.

Considering that I didn’t leave my office until about 8:00 pm the night before, I guess it seems a little early. But, hey, what can you do…when you have little ones relying on you? I mean, duty calls.

I”m getting ready for court, reviewing my documents and knowing that when I get there I’ll have to wait for some insurance company attorney who care less about his profession than most people care about cleaning up garbage sitting next to the can in a subway station. To him it’s a job – he has to bill his hours, go through the motions and work as hard as possible to make life for me and my client miserable.

Now, listen, don’t get me wrong. There are some great defense attorneys out there. I’m just writing about those people who merely punch a clock and go through their job like zombies without any feeling a thing whatsoever, except maybe the sizeable chip on their shoulder for their plaintiff-attorney counterparts.

So I get to court for the 9:30 am opening, hoping that by some miracle I will be out of there by 10 am.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

11:20 am. – just before the default calendar is called he finally shows up.

My adversary says sorry; he’s in four different parts this morning and that he needs to get this done quickly.

I show him the order I’ve drafted for the judge’s signature. We haggle over minor details but this order says nothing more than the defendant must provide all outstanding discovery as demanded in our prior demands by a date certain and gives dates for depositions.

I know what will happen next…the defendant won’t comply and I’ll end up making a motion to compel their response and/or strike his answer for failing to provide discovery.

The truth is, the defendant knows this too.

It’s nothing but a charade.

But if all goes well, the defendant will respond to our demands, appear for all depositions, and in a year we can say we’ve completed discovery and are ready to place the case on the trial calendar.

We’re ready to see the clerk to finalize the order. Of course, we have five cases in front of us.

Waiting, waiting waiting.

I figure I’ve spent at least a decade waiting for things in my career.

Finally we get to the law clerk. If we have issues, the clerk tries to resolve them.

None today.

The clerk separates the antiquated carbon form that we filled out, handing me the yellow copy and the defendant the pink, while keeping the white/top original.

We’re done.

I leave court around 12 noon and head back to the office with a pile of work waiting for me.

That’s it.

That was my entire morning.

The entire morning was spent on a single case.

People ask why I work so late, and why I don’t leave until 8:00 pm. It is because of this.

I can spend the entire morning waiting for my adversary on a single case. I’m in court just about every day which takes time away from work that needs to be done in the office.

This is my morning.This is my day. This is my life.