by Una Tiers
Reluctantly I admitted I answered the ad. My unceremonious ending at the job after six months was edited in my favor.
“Well the sooner you establish your own practice the better you are in terms of security. Listen Fiona, attorneys are snakes and insects. They won’t bat an eyelash before they take advantage of anyone.
I’m out of work because I didn’t know what kind of snake I worked for. I was there for three years. I thought of him as a friend and mentor. We never really had disagreements but I got screwed. On a Thursday we finished a trial. The rat suggested I take Friday off. When I went to the office on Monday, my keys didn’t work. Can you imagine that?”
“They locked you out?”
“Oh yes, Lydia, the secretary came down the hall when I was trying to open the door. She told me I didn’t work there anymore and that she would call the police if I tried to get into the office. She said the attorney was away. He didn’t have the nerve to tell me to my face.
I lost every file I worked on and all the rolodex cards I made. Even my diplomas and family pictures were gone until I filed a police report.”
“Nasty.” I commented, wondering if Steve was as innocent as he claimed. I made a mental note to put my name on everything in the office and to take a few pictures. Of course that wouldn’t help if I was locked out, I knew that.
Most of what Steve said after that was peppered with low whispered obscenities. For a man who exuded beige, his rage surprised me.
We agreed to have drinks at some bar that had complimentary snacks on Fridays. He had a list of places and what they served.
Considering my tenuous office position, I had better start to think defensively about building my own law practice, safe from marauders.
As I left the court house, I noticed the dead guys bunting in the lobby. It’s a length of material about a hundred feet wide, with two horizontal stripes, one purple and one black. It hangs on the wall like a valance over an imaginary window.
When I asked a sheriff working the security station in the lobby about the bunting, he looked up and shrugged.
“I guess somebody important met the grim reaper.”
Having completed my timesheets and my pretend research, I headed back to the office.
Timesheets are how a lawyer computes fees and how I document the time I work on firm matters. Waiting for the light to change I saw a copy shop and decided to make duplicate copies of everything off site. I mailed the copies to myself at my Aunt’s house, feeling stuck half-way between cunning and silly.
Next time I would just take them with me. Hopefully this wouldn’t lead to wearing trench coats and having a storage locker at the bus station any time soon. Making copies almost daily, I bought a volume discount card and it became part of my dirty little secret. It was clear to me that in a lock out dispute, my name was not on the office lease.
Another one of my responsibilities for the firm is filing court documents and setting things on the court calendar for motions (hearings). This is technically clerk stuff, but since it takes me into the Daley Center, I regard it as ‘going to court.’
On the weekends I work at the law library making a business plan. All the office management books say it’s important. My first draft said, make money, keep backup copies, trust few.
I read the Law Beagle, the daily lawyer newspaper faithfully and was about to sign up for a subscription until I saw the cost was for three months, not a year. The firm received one copy but it was at least a week before it was available to me.
Since my overhead is limited to pantyhose, carfare and coffee for now, I put in my own phone line and bought several five dollar law books at a garage sale. The books look magnificent on my desk. Dryer sheets mask the basement smell.
Ordering a thousand business cards I vowed to distribute them in under a year. When I handed out only seven in the first week, I revised my plan. Maybe I could stand on a corner and hand them out if I taped candy to them.
The announcements I bought resembled birthday party invitations right after I tore open the package, making them unreturnable. Who knew I had twenty-five friends? My dry cleaners was on the list with a few clerks at the library and a few names from my aunt.
I cleaned the office with window cleaner and furniture polish, hiding a potpourri in the back of the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. I had a filing plan and started on an accounting project to keep track of money and expenses. The office was looking great, I had my diplomas framed and already had an office supply stash courtesy of my last office. Oddly, Holadollar never contacted me.
Work came in, mostly contracts and wills. I did court appearances for friends. My dry cleaners gave me a huge stack of bounced checks to dun. My Aunt was handing out my business cards. I joined a bar group that sent me out once a month to do budget priced wills at senior centers.
My hours in the office sharing arrangement were quickly met and I asked Paul if the numbers were literal.
We agreed on a meager hourly rate for hours above the servitude number. I was exuberant and Paul was disgruntled. I knew he would find a way to limit my hours even though he probably charged the clients three times what I was worth hourly.
Steve reviewed my timesheets and edited them to include time walking over to court, but not thinking about client things in the shower.
The associate attorneys from the firm sent me notes with client interview forms to draft simple wills. Actually, they gave the file to Annette, who logged it in, stripped it of notes and fee agreements and then gave it to me. Although I offered to witness the wills, I was never allowed to get near their precious clients.
Being restricted in seeing the file, I felt like Cinderella, getting all the work, but being denied attending the ball, or client execution of documents. Still, it gave me more samples. On weekends I would poke around in the filing drawers.
The associates rarely lowered themselves to talk to me. In some ways this was okay because they both reminded me of Jack.
After hearing a lecture about the plight of low income clients, I committed one morning a week to volunteer at a domestic violence agency. The work was depressing more than rewarding but it was another chance to get into court.
Jack, my strange estranged husband, finally left the first message after we split. He called the office and mentioned the rent was due and since he heard I was working, he expected me to leave my half of the rent on the table.
He never apologized for being a lousy husband, he never begged me to come back. He never said why he thought I should pay rent subsidizing where he lived alone.
When he was at work, I went to the apartment, disassembled the table and put the pedestal legs on top of my car, wrapped in our shower curtain. The top fit into the trunk, wrapped in a quilt.
Packing my car with as much as it would hold I was happy and feeling independent. Shopping bags and loose pots and pans teetered and shifted in the trunk and back seat but made me feel productive. Some of it wasn’t technically mine, but that was okay. I wanted the bookcase he bought for my birthday, but it was too heavy to move. Therefore I made adjustments.
Wouldn’t he be surprised when he walked in and saw chairs without the table? My Aunt wouldn’t accept rent from me, and for the first time in my career, I wasn’t making weekly withdrawals from my previously dwindling bank account. The deal with my Aunt was I would take her out for a nice dinner once a week. However, we usually decided to get groceries and cook a nice meal together.
At the domestic violence agency, I took a class on divorce law and was able to do the paperwork for a no fault divorce, mine. After I finished, I put the papers away because I wasn’t sure how I would ask Jack to sign them.
Even though I didn’t have a lot of fee generating work, the pro bono work, bar group meetings, office time and hanging around the library filled my weekdays until seven PM. That left enough time to get my outfit ready for the next day and make a to-do list.
Somewhere at the back of my mind I realized I was creating a ship
s passing in the night scenario because I was embarrassed to be mooching off my Aunt. I started to take sandwiches for lunch and always made one for her, wrapped in plastic on a plate in the refrigerator with a note. It was the way we communicated most of the week.
In the midst of reassembling my life, I received a phone call that changed everything.
“Hello I would like to speak to Ms. Gavelle.”
“This is Fiona Gavelle.”
“My name is Rosie King. My father was the late Judge Laslo King.”
“Oh hello, I was sorry to hear he died.” My voice quavered a little, not so much from sympathy but from the inarticulateness I tend to display when I’m caught off guard. Apparently she didn’t remember meeting me.
“Judge Curie suggested we contact you about my father’s will.”
“Yes. How can I help?”
“Well so far we can’t locate it.”
I rattled off some ideas, straight from an article I read in a bar journal the day before. “You need to go through the house carefully. The original document sometimes has a piece of blue construction like paper attached to identify it as the original.”
“My father lived in a condominium downtown, and my brother went through the papers and didn’t find it. I called the probate clerk’s office, but they left me on hold.”
“I can check that for you when I’m in court.”
“Can you give me an estimate of what this will cost?”
“To check for the will, that’s on the house.”As soon as I said this, I wish I had set a minimal fee.
“I mean if we hire you for the probate case.”
My answer was not unlike that of any self respecting mechanic. “We won’t know until we open the case.” I was grateful that I didn’t say that we wouldn’t know until we lifted the hood or hoisted the car up on the hydraulic lift. I repeated a few phrases that I copied from another lawyer magazine about fees.
“Fees in a probate matter are billed by the hour. I can tell you that I try to be as efficient as I can.” Considering that I didn’t know what I was doing, I thought this was a particularly good answer. I was going to have to come up with my hourly fee real soon.
“We were referred by Judge Curie.”
“Yes he is terrific.” Was he supposed to be a human coupon? Would I need to discount my work to get the case? Did I really have a chance?
We talked about a few other general probate matters and I invited her to set up an appointment, not realizing she lived in New York.
A half hour later, Bob King, the judge’s son called and asked the same questions. My answers were a little more confident. He told me that he worked as an attorney for corporation counsel at City Hall in downtown Chicago. I valiantly offered to check the clerk’s office for the will, which was right across the street from where he worked. Neither Bob nor I mentioned his sisters.
“I’m going to court,” I proudly announced as I hustled out of the office.
Despite the emergence of the computer as a really neat way to store information, the clerk of the court had only started to put some of the court documents onto computers. They use microfiche and retired monks to back up the paperwork.
Wills filed with the clerk of the court are recorded in enormous primitive (handwritten) books that are 3” thick, 16” wide and 20” high. The books weigh about fifteen pounds and remind me of the books that Paul Bunyan might read in size.
I don’t know if they are so big so no one walks away with them or so they are not misplaced. The wills are listed more or less alphabetically with one book for each calendar year. Each entry lists the name of the testator (dead person), date of death, date of the will, number of pages in the will, and the name and telephone number of the person who filed the will. The books, like most court files are public records.
When I stopped at the wills counter, the clerk, Lesley, greeted me with her usual rabid snarl.
She was dressed in an unusually starched ruffled blouse that looked more appropriate for a Dave Clark Five concert than a clerk in court.
Ignoring her, I paged through the book for the current year until I came to the page tabbed as “KI.” The judge’s name wasn’t there. The page however, had a patina of fingerprints with only four wills listed. Didn’t lawyers wash their hands? Was this a coincidence? Was everyone looking for his will? Did the daughter call several attorneys?
As if she could read my mind, the clerk hissed, “You aren’t the first one to snoop, missy.” Although I would never tell her, I was impressed she could read upside down.
As a rule, I try to be polite. That wasn’t possible with this nasty little person. I have observed the clerks taking a lot of guff from other lawyers and I think it’s stupid. The clerks can help or hinder lawyers since they know a lot of secrets about the paperwork and the system in general. But my politeness toward this clerk was returned with an attitude when I filed wills (four of them) so now I aim for snotty.
Lesley is less than 5’ tall (although I have never measured her) and she can’t reach the counter easily, where much of her work is done, without a step stool. She resembles a cross between a munchkin and the wicked witch of the west, but without a broom. I am tempted to spit on her, which isn’t entirely related to testing my theory that she will melt.
I stopped on the probate court room floor just to walk around a little. Okay I was pretending that I had a case in court.
I ran into a few lawyers I met at the funeral and learned that we were at the waving or nodding stage. Stepping inside a few courtrooms, I pretended to be looking for a colleague to discuss an important new case hot off the press of the appeals court. I needed to learn some new names.
Eavesdropping on all conversations, I noticed a group reading a bulletin posted in the corridor. It announced Judge Dorothy Wizard was the new head of the probate department. I carried this gossip back to the office like a scientist carrying back the secret to kryptonite.
A few days later, I checked the wills books again, without luck but found the “KI” page more smudged with one corner worn away, or maybe taken as a souvenir.
Chapter Four
My phone was ringing as I walked into the office.
“Fiona Gavelle.”
“Hey Fi, I got your announcement,” Lou Che beamed.
Lou and I went to law school together. He works for his father-in-law in Lake County, twenty miles north of Chicago. Lou insists he was hired on merit from a large pool of lawyers that answered an ad. At least he didn’t make fun of my announcements.
“Did you hear that Judge Dorothy is the new presiding probate judge? A woman!” he added.
“Yes did you notice that we are allowed to vote now too?”
Lou missed my sarcasm. He was a sharp lawyer but short of the mark in other areas.
“Well after that Rush Street incident everyone was talking about I thought she was politically dead.”
“What incident?” I asked evenly while my blood boiled.
“Well she was spotted dancing in a bar on Rush Street in leather pants with a judge from law division.”
“So?”
“That’s not too dignified for a judge.”
Lou didn’t criticize the man judge. I would like to think he could understand he was belittling, but he is clueless in that area. His ideas about men and women are just a few years ahead of the caveman school of thought.
“Say, did you look up the judge’s will Fiona?”
My heart skipped two beats. “What?” Briefly I thought about pretending that I had a second line and that an important client was calling me.
“You know Judge King’s will, it’s a public record. Don’t you get to the court? You do know how to look up a will don’t you? I thought you went to probate court. Aren’t people talking about this?”
How did he know that I was looking? Was he at the courthouse? I decided to take the direct route, deceit mixed with ridiculous honesty.
“Sure I checked the clerk’s office for his will and n
o, it hasn’t been filed.”
This was safe because technically I didn’t represent anyone and the fact I had looked for his will could be chalked up to lawyer curiosity.
Then I decided to throw him a curve. “Did you check your will files?”
“You mean in Lake County?” His question was with utter surprise.
Sometimes I can be a stinker, which is probably an accumulation of all of the red herrings we studied in law school.
The rest of our conversation toyed with the idea that the judge placed all of his property in joint tenancy because he was too cheap to pay an attorney to prepare a will. We also speculated that he had embezzled millions of dollars from probate estates. The money was secreted away in an off shore trust. He wasn’t really dead, but recovering from plastic surgery on a beach under a coconut tree. We then guessed about the kind of drink he would enjoy.
My week was slow in terms of money generating business but productive in terms of the amount of time I was able to spend in the library reading about probate. It was more complex than I had gauged.
Undaunted, I bought a copy of the probate code. I carried it home and back to the office until I read it a few times. It made a little sense. It was organized well. The book would be impressive on my desk, along with the other two books in my “law library.” I needed to understand more law and fast. I told Paul that I did probate at my last firm. This was partially true; I typed many of the probate forms and went to court with the miser three times.
On Saturday morning I went to the office, surprised that I was the only one working. Unsupervised, I planned to copy to my heart’s delight. I noticed that someone, probably Paul, pulled the paper tray out a little. This made the machine inoperative. So, I also learned to push the tray in and to replace the paper to the same level, and pull the tray out before I left the office.
In the copy room, there was a muffled beeping sound that I traced to the facsimile machine. The message screen blinked, “Error Code 43.”
