When they were done, Rick had begun to cry, a strangled, sad sound she’d never heard from him. She’d raised herself up on her elbow and kissed the tears on his cheek. “What, Rick?” And he’d told her. He was in love with Will Larson. “Will?” She swallowed hard and sat up, pulling the cover over her naked body. “Will?”
Marilee had crawled out from under the covers where she’d hidden for a week – claiming to have the flu – and she and Rick focused on Ellie, on what was best for Ellie, on how to make the transition work for Ellie. Rick moved to Washington, DC, when the semester ended.
Those first few weeks after Rick moved Marilee had felt tired and nauseated. Who wouldn’t? As it turned out though, her broken heart wasn’t the cause, she was pregnant. The first person she’d shared the news with, unsure if she was sharing good or bad news, was Dede, who worried that Marilee would be taking on too much with another child, or worse, that this unborn child was a substitute for the husband she’d lost. She offered to fly home and take her to the clinic in Mobile where a bunch of their friends had been at one time or another in high school and college. Marilee decided not to take Dede up on her offer, worried Ellie would never have a brother or sister otherwise and just plain too worn out to make a different decision. The status quo had been the path of least resistance.
Now, back in her office, Marilee locked her door and sat down at her desk. Thanks to Sue Scanlon, she had just two months to produce a polished law review article or she’d lose the job she loved. When Sue arrived, Marilee had hoped they’d be friends. Sue was a woman in her late twenties, like Marilee, but Sue had quickly made it clear that she wasn’t interested in a friendship, that she didn’t respect Clinical Law, and that she was out for herself, no matter who she had to stab in the back to get ahead.
Marilee flipped through the stack of papers on her desk: rough drafts of articles about Clinical Law that she’d drafted over the last two years. Unfortunately, her thoughts about Clinical teaching, based on her own experience as well as discussions with other Clinicians and students over the years, did not constitute publishable law review articles. Not even close. The average law review was fifty to seventy pages long and included hundreds of footnotes. Each of her humorously titled draft articles ran a mere twenty to thirty pages and there wasn’t a footnote in sight. To convert any one of her essays into a publishable article could require months of painstaking research and rewriting. If she had nothing else to do it might be possible to meet the deadline, but she had a class to teach, students to supervise, and last but not least, a baby to deliver in the next few weeks.
She knew she should pick up the essay on the top of the pile and dive right in, she knew she had to make the effort, but instead she had an overwhelming urge to throw the whole stack of papers out the window, forget about the looming publication deadline, and walk away, the wind in her hair, a smile on her face, laughing and free. But she didn’t. She called Dede’s cell.
“Did you talk to the Dean?” Dede asked.
“Yeah. Not good; I’ll tell you about it later. What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Going for a run, helping Mama with invitations for some event, and then going out.” Since she’d come home, she exercised hours each day, then spent the rest of her time smoking and partying.
“What time are you going out?”
“Seven-ish. Scott’s band is playing in Montgomery.” Scott, one of Dede’s best friends in high school, was a member of a Ska punk band that played in bars across the southeast. Although Dede hung out with him whenever she visited, since arriving in town, she’d spent almost every evening with him. Was there more to their relationship than friendship? Maybe Scott, rather than Nikolai, was behind her prolonged visit home.
“Could you pick Ellie up at her Montessori school at 5:00? I need to stay here and get some work done, but I’ll be home by 6:30.”
“Sure.”
“Great. Remember her car seat. And remember to buckle her in. And tell her I’ll be home soon and…”
“I know, I know, M’lee.”
Marilee took the essay that happened to be on the top of the pile, grabbed a red pen, and turned on her desk lamp. The title: IF YOU PRICK THEM, DO THEY NOT BLEED? HOW TO TREAT YOUR CLIENT AS A PERSON, NOT A LEGAL PROBLEM. She would have to devote every spare moment and every free evening, work hard early mornings and late nights and weekends until the end of the semester to keep her job. The baby? Some women were back at work hours after the doctor cut the umbilical cord. Why not her? Could she meet the deadline Sue had set for her? She had to try.
Someone knocked on Marilee’s office door, immediately turned the knob, and pushed. It was never locked, except today.
“Just a minute,” Marilee called. She looked at her calendar. Damn. Two of the Clinic students, Lance and Paula, Mr. Hallowell’s student attorneys, were scheduled to meet with her three minutes from now. She pulled the compact out of her desktop to check her tear-streaked face. Ugh. She touched it up as best she could with a little powder, then grabbed her office comb and ran it through her hair. She moved slowly from behind her desk to the door, trying to come up with a good excuse to cancel the supervision meeting so she could work on an article. But the weekly meetings between each student lawyer team and their faculty supervisor were a critical part of the Clinical program, and she couldn’t throw the students under the bus to get her article done; she’d have to find time somewhere else.
She opened the door. “Sorry.”
Lance, a tall, curly haired guy in his late twenties, balanced a cup of coffee and a Twix candy bar in one hand as he waited for Paula to enter before him.
Paula, who looked sixteen but was actually twenty-four, pulled her backpack on wheels behind her.
Like most of their law school classmates, both were dressed in worn-out jeans, likely purchased new but in a scruffy “distressed” condition, and T-shirts.
They came in and sat across from Marilee.
“Ready for the joke of the day?” Lance, who bartended weekend nights, liked to begin almost any encounter with a joke and tried to associate the jokes with either current events or something else happening to him or those around him.
“Sure.” Marilee enjoyed his jokes most of the time, viewing them as good practice for the narrative skills he’d need to be a trial lawyer; seasoned litigators swore by the maxim that whoever told the best story in court won the case. Today though she doubted she could enjoy anything.
Paula rolled her eyes, waiting to start the meeting until the joke played out. An assertive, stubborn young woman, she reminded Marilee of herself at that age.
Lance began: “A small-town prosecuting attorney calls his first witness to the stand. She’s an elderly woman. He approaches her and asks, ‘Mrs. Saunders, do you know me?’
She responds, ‘Why yes, I know you. I’ve known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a big shot but you haven’t got the brains to realize you’ll never amount to anything more than a two-bit small-town paper pusher.’
The lawyer’s stunned. ‘Mrs. Saunders, do you know the defense attorney?’
‘Yes, I do,’ she says. ‘I’ve known Mr. Hammer since he was a youngster. I used to babysit for him. And he, too, has been a big disappointment. He’s lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. His law practice is one of the shoddiest in the state.’
At this point the judge raps his gavel and calls both attorneys to the bench. In a quiet, menacing voice, he says, ‘If either of you asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt before you can say another word!’”
Lance smiled broadly.
“Funny,” Paula said, feigning enthusiasm. As Lance’s Clinic partner, she’d heard more than her share of jokes.
Marilee laughed, for a moment distracted from her problems, only to stop suddenly, as though she’d been slapped. Standing
in her doorway was Dwight Hurley. He smiled his most engaging smile, held up his hand, and gave her a little wave.
The students turned around to see what had diverted her attention from them. When they saw a man they didn’t know, they turned back to her, expectantly.
Marilee cleared her throat. “Lance Ford, Paula Scott, this is our newest faculty member, Dwight Hurley.” She tried to sound welcoming, but even she could hear that her tone sounded fake-cheerful, like a doctor explaining how you’d learn to love life without whatever part he was about to surgically remove.
Nevertheless, Dwight took her words as an invitation to enter her office. As he shook each student’s hand and looked each right in the eyes, they basked in the light of his attention. “Morning, Lance, Paula. It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” he said.
“What will you be teaching?” Paula’s mouth parted slightly, in awe of Dwight’s easy charm and striking good looks. Women! Although Marilee wasn’t interested in dating anyone right now, especially Dwight, she couldn’t help but notice what Dede had told her earlier: he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But even if she’d been looking for love, she wouldn’t look in the direction of Dwight Hurley, a cocky interloper. As her students so often said: been there, done that.
“Clinic,” he said.
“Great!” Paula replied. “With Professor Cooper!”
“He’s the recipient of the Bailey Clinical Chair,” Marilee said before Dwight had a chance to toot his own horn. She looked at her watch. “And I’m sure he understands how busy we all are, and that we need to get back to our supervision meeting.”
“Oh,” Dwight said. “Of course. Sorry.” He sounded disappointed. “Can we meet afterward, Marilee?” His eyes locked onto Marilee’s.
No we can’t. But she kept the smile plastered on her face. “My afternoon’s pretty busy. Maybe tomorrow?” Although she couldn’t dodge him forever, she could postpone the meeting, for days, maybe weeks.
“I’ll be around all day meeting the students and the faculty, so if you have any time, I’m here.” He turned his attention back to Lance and Paula. “I look forward to working with both of you.” He nodded at them and left.
Paula watched him walk away, her attention on Dwight.
Marilee cleared her throat. “Your client?” She prodded. “Mr. Hallowell?”
“Right, right.” Paula swiveled her head back to face Marilee.
“I saw him in the stairwell earlier,” Marilee explained.
“Oh no! We have an appointment tomorrow morning with him, not today.” Lance shook his head, worried.
Paula sighed. “Maybe he was confused about the time. We can call and make sure he knows the appointment is tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow, if he shows up?” Marilee asked.
“A counseling session about his options for getting his kids back,” Lance answered. “I have an outline all typed up for what we have to discuss with him.” He pulled his backpack into his lap, unzipped it, and searched for the counseling notes, dropping his three-ring binder as soon as he removed it from his backpack. “I’m just a little nervous. Helping someone who hasn’t seen his kids in two years get custody is a big responsibility.”
The student lawyers in the ASU Clinic sometimes got cold feet before they interviewed or counseled a client or made a court appearance. As part of the nondirective pedagogy of the Clinic, the student lawyers were primarily responsible for the clients while the “real attorneys” supervised their work from a distance. The purpose of the supervision meeting was to discuss how the students planned to conduct the counseling of Mr. Hallowell, as well as how they planned to address any issues likely to arise. After the counseling session, they’d meet with Marilee again to discuss what they did, how successful it was, and what might have worked better.
The independence Marilee gave the students with her nondirective, hands-off approach provided them with a unique opportunity to experience lawyering first hand. If Marilee attended the client counseling the next morning with Lance and Paula, they would defer to her, and Mr. Hallowell likely would look to her as the “real attorney,” undermining the students’ ability to take on the serious responsibility of representing a client, to own the work. Nothing took away ownership more quickly than the presence of a senior lawyer at every important juncture.
Among clinics in the U.S., there were varying degrees of senior staff involvement in student attorneys’ work, ranging from the nondirective clinics, like ASU’s, to the directive clinics, like the Redmont Law School Clinic where Dwight last taught. There, the supervising attorneys represented the clients while the students served as glorified law clerks. The battle between the various models of clinical teaching was being waged in the annals of every Clinical Law Journal in the country, if not the world.
One of Marilee’s draft essays in the pile of papers on her desk addressed the different supervision methodologies and made the case for the nondirective model employed at ASU: PREPARING OUR STUDENTS FOR PRACTICE – WHY SUPERVISING ATTORNEYS SHOULD STAY OUT OF THE WAY.
Lance picked up the binder and flipped through it for his outline. “Here it is,” he said, sounding relieved.
“You could do the counseling without the notes, Lance,” Paula assured him. “You drafted most of it from memory, for goodness sake.”
“Don’t want to leave anything out.” He studied the outline. “So, first, we want to review the case law on custody, and then we want to summarize the history of the case.”
“Based on what?” Marilee asked.
“All the court filings from his divorce and the custody battle. A lot happened before he retained us.”
“Mr. Hallowell brought the court documents in when we first met him,” Paula said, holding one hand up as far as it could reach and the other at her lap, signifying a pile of papers a few feet deep.
“Did he have a lawyer then?” Marilee asked.
The students shook their heads. “He represented himself.”
“Not a good idea,” Paula said.
“After reviewing the history of the case and the law, we’re going to recommend he sees a psychiatrist to try to get his behavior a little more normalized so he’ll have a chance with custody,” Paula explained, her hands flying as she talked. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to discuss with him, hopefully, because he’s well aware of his mental health issues. We found him someone at the hospital who will treat him pro bono.”
“That’s great,” Marilee said. “One thing. Did you – ?” Before she could ask them if they’d gone to court to take a look at Mr. Hallowell’s court files, her phone rang. The caller ID showed the number for Ellie’s preschool. Her heart flip-flopped and she raised a finger and picked up.
“Everything’s fine, Marilee,” Jo Ellen, the preschool receptionist began, “but I just wondered if you’re gonna have time to bring over the healthy snacks. You signed up for today at back to school night. Remember?”
Damn. That morning she’d been so focused on her hair and clothes and the excitement of getting the Chair that she’d forgotten all about the snacks. “Right, right. I just need to finish a few quick things and I’ll be right over.” After she stopped by the Piggly Wiggly and bought the snacks, that is, something she should have done yesterday.
Lance and Paula looked at her, wondering, she was sure, whether some client crisis required her to leave the law school in the middle of the day. Or perhaps a news producer was asking her to appear on a nightly news show, as she did from time to time, to decipher some obscure legal issue.
But she didn’t dare tell them who had actually called or why. She knew from her own and other women’s experiences that sharing personal details about children caused students and colleagues to view you as less than a full-fledged professional and more as a mom. For that reason, she didn’t have pictures of Ellie in her office. Some of the male professors’ office walls and shelves were covered with photos of their children and wives, and no one doubted their professionalism becaus
e everyone assumed someone else (guess who?) took care of the kids while the male professor devoted every waking minute to the attainment of intellectual nirvana at the law school.
She hung up and looked at the students. “Sorry about the interruption. Anything else we need to discuss?”
Lance shook his head, though he grimaced as well. “We’re prepared; I’m just nervous!” He looked at Marilee anxiously, his mouth partly open, as though he might change his tune, but he didn’t.
“Great. Good luck tomorrow. I’ll talk with you after your counseling session.”
They packed up their stuff and left, chattering about the case, excited at the prospect of counseling their client. Like the majority of the students, they treasured Clinic work. They were delighted to get out of the classroom, where they focused on hundred-year-old cases that often had no relevance to the type of law they intended to practice, and actually represent clients, which was the reason they had gone to law school in the first place. After a few weeks of Clinic, they often viewed their substantive classes as irrelevant drivel. Real clients! Real cases! Real lawyers at last!
Marilee loved working with the students during their transition from student to lawyer and helping them along the sometimes difficult but always exciting way. Their enthusiasm was catching and contrasted dramatically with the attitude of the associates in the law firm where she’d worked in Atlanta, Wooten and Payne. There, the associates billed and billed, their only goal more billable hours than the other associates vying for partnership. Many had gone to law school to help others, some to save the world, but some had exorbitant educational debts, while others just became addicted to the finer things of life, whether it was a BMW, a club membership, or a steady supply of designer shoes. The dream of becoming an attorney whose job was to help clients with difficult problems was often lost in the race for partnership.
Chair or no Chair, Marilee loved teaching Clinic and she would be damned if she’d let Sue Scanlon run her out of there.
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