Rainy day

Good at what ails you

My firm has a rotation system for first year associates, and today, although I'm still more than 2 weeks away from exiting my current practice group, I had an exit interview with the partner of the group.

A number of people in the group had told me that The Big Guy liked my work, but still, I was mildly surprised to hear him say, "I have nothing bad to tell you. I have no criticisms." He went on to say that he had thrown me to the wolves with that deal in December, and that I had done very well. That I was a quick study, and very smart. That I was pleasant to work with. That my enthusiasm and passion for the work was "endearing." (By that, he was referring to my excitement over visiting a power plant last month, after which he said it was like watching a kindergartener on a field trip.) And that I would be welcome back to the practice group after the rotations.

I told my career shrink back at Crimson once, "Why did the law school even accept me? I'm totally not lawyer material! Shouldn't they have known?" He said, quite reasonably, "hk, like most people at Crimson, you're very good at showing people what they want to see. It's not the law school's job to sort you out, when you've shown them an excellent candidate. It's your job to sort yourself out of the pile."

There are things I like about this job. Thanks to the down market, hours haven't been long, most of the time, and when they are long, like this week, I'm grateful, because it beats surfing the web for 9 hours a day. My colleagues are nicer and more interesting than I thought they would be. I discovered that the average billables at my firm are about 200 hours less per year than the other firms I was considering. Contact with clients and other counsel can be surprisingly rewarding. And figuring things out, learning things that help me understand the front page of the Times, is satisfying.

But it's still deeply weird to me that my Type A compulsion to work hard at whatever I'm doing can be translated by others as "passion" for the work. Really? There's a deep satisfaction in doing a job well. In this job, it's particularly satisfying because good work is recognized and praised. But being inspired by a sense of purpose and duty is a far cry from passion.

Well. I suspect, in two years, all will come out. I started law school with a bang, getting an A-minus in almost every class my first semester. I think being older and being used to responsibility for myself gave me an edge my 1L year. But as time wore on, the people who really enjoyed the law, had a true aptitude for it matched by their interest, got used to the demanding format of law school classes and did much better than I did. It might be the same here. I am not interested in corporate law, in the business of finessing and documenting the movement of money from one place to another. I have done well so far because I brought focus and work experience with me to Day 1. But you watch. It will all out, in the end.
(170/730)

Stages of Rubbernecking

The Story

A crane in my neighborhood fell on Saturday.

My Story

I was at the office -- one of those marathon days where everything seems to take much longer than it should -- and didn't know about it until a colleague emailed me from his home: "Check local news, a crane near your building collapsed on 50th btw 2 and 3rd."

In fact, it was on 51st, between 1st and 2nd, and as I checked out the news reports, I realized with a chill that it was the crane that I walked past or even directly under every single morning and every single night. Yesterday morning, in fact, I walked by it on the way to the office, noted the construction workers in their leather jackets standing on the sidewalk, and thought, "Huh. Working on Saturday. You and me both, boys."

Like 9/11, I didn't realize the seriousness of it until an hour or two after the fact, when the newspapers started calling it one of the worst construction accidents in New York history.

I worked until 10:30 pm Saturday night, almost purposely avoiding going home. A block or two away from the office and I could already hear the helicopters circling. I headed down 50th Street and got directed by a police officer to head over to 1st Avenue via 52nd Street. When I got to my block, it was cordoned off. A handful of people were standing there. I told the police officer on the other side of the gates that I lived on this block. "You need to wait until someone can escort you to your building," she said.

A woman behind me with impeccable blonde hair and chic black coat complained loudly to a friend, "I just want to go home, and those cops over there are standing around chit-chatting. They're like, eating donuts or something."

About five minutes later, one of those officers came over and a handful of people headed toward her, calling out their building numbers. I did too, and we all crossed over.

The blonde woman took the female police officer's arm in a friendly way. "I'm sorry about earlier, but it's not like you can help me if a brick comes flying our way," she said. The officer could not have cared less.

The night doorman greeted me solemnly. He had been there when the crane came down, and we both shook our heads over the four construction workers who had died. The thought came to me that I might have seen one of them this morning.

When I got into my apartment and was able to charge my phone, I found four voice mails, three from my dad and one from my mom. Having run out of battery earlier in the afternoon, I hadn't gotten any of them, and I hastened to call them back. My dad, who had visited a few weeks ago, remembered walking past that crane as well. He sounded relieved when we talked. I'm standing at my window, I told him, and I can see the vertical part of the crane still resting against the apartment building across the street. (My mom? I think she turned off her phone. I left a message. Thanks, mom! Glad to know you care.)

I talked to the Ringleted One and Joiner after that, repeating how strange it was to see the crane from my window. I took a few pictures from my 5th floor window:



The Random Thought

Looking at the pictures (which are weirdly and awesomely clear despite the filthy glass of my apartment windows), the crane almost looks like it could belong there, couldn't it? Part of some work, purposely angled against a building across the street. It was more surreal seeing it from the street, like some giant, careless child had left his toy ladder haphazardly lying about.

But the worst part of the damage isn't in these photos. That would be the townhouse on 50th Street that was pulverized by the flying jib (the arm of the crane), which was knocked off by the impact of the boom (the vertical part) tipping over and hitting the apartment building now shoring it up. The side of the apartment building next to the townhouse was partly shorn off by the jib on its way down.

And worse still is the fact that four members of the engineers union are dead. They went out of their front doors yesterday morning into the promising, warmish air, sipped their coffee with the guys, laughed about this or that, got down to the business of jacking that crane up so they could finish building the second half of condo building, and then -- something so terribly wrong. The unbelievable sight of a several-ton steel lattice column falling ever so slowly over. The brain catching up and saying no no no, irrationally thinking bring it back, bring it back. Do over. Do over.

What does it all mean? What was it all for? I ask because I've been thinking about this a lot this winter. You know when you drive past those cemeteries by the highway, and you think for a fleeting moment about all those people in the ground, marked by this gravestone or that, and you wonder: Who were you? How did you live? What were you like? Does anyone remember you? Does anyone mourn? Whether anyone does or not, what difference did you make? Did your life make any mark? What was it all for? What does it all mean?

Spin Control

As a minor but personally fascinating side note, it's been very, very interesting to read a Times story from the first rough call-in draft to the final polished version. I kept coming back to it every few minutes as I sat in my office, so I read all (roughly 8, I think) versions of the story.

The first few versions were straightforward, almost simplistic -- the crane was described as "a big, white crane, about 20 stories high." Now there's a helpful graphic and diagram of the crane, with the proper names, and a visual of how it fell. At one point, the exposed apartments in the building with the side partly shorn away were described as something one would expect to see in Baghdad, what with the poignant pink suitcase falling out of a closet, and bookcases and shelves disarrayed. Now that sentence is gone. At some point, the simple style gave way to almost sensationalist phrasing, complete with the words "raining death and destruction" in the first sentence.

At one point too, the governor-to-be was quoted in the article as describing the scene thusly: “very gory,” with “blood in the street.” Those quotes are no longer in the article, instead relegated back to a Cityroom blog post. (Incidentally -- and forgive my ignorance, but -- isn't the lieutenant governor legally blind? How did he see the "gory" "blood in the street"? Also, isn't that a bit much? And what's with the mayor calling it "carnage"? As far as we know, four people were killed and 13 injured. A tragic accident, yes, but -- "carnage"?)

Lastly

I'll never get to sleep with those firetrucks and searchlights out there.

100 Days Later
(Okay, 102 days later. But that just doesn't sound as good.)

December was rough. I took no days off and worked on Christmas morning on a pro bono deal with many, many side-splitting moments, like when the the senior lender's counsel said in a conference call (from her hotel room in the Caribbean): "This is in PLAIN. ENGLISH. We are DONE negotiating. We are DONE. DONE. DONE. That's in PLAIN. ENGLISH," and a few minutes later said to me: "You're, like, a first year, hk. Where's [Partner]? Where's [Senior Associate]?"

I replied, "They're out of the office." (And on vacation, I silently added, leaving me to close the deal by myself.)

January slowed down considerably. For everyone. Except the bankruptcy lawyers, I guess. Banks are hurting, ergo, the bankers' bitches (that would be moi) hurt too. A firm or two laid off lawyers in the same field I'm currently rotating through.

February was also pretty slow. As a junior associate, I got put on some corporate support deals as a "specialist," which means that the corporate people don't tell me what's going on and then all of a sudden demand comments and reports by, like, yesterday. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. The way people complain in my group sometimes, you'd think we were being asked to move a mountain with a teaspoon. Sometimes the corporate peeps are pushy and demanding, but sometimes the clients are too. Hey. That's why they pay us the big bucks, yo.

Overall, life at my firm ain't so bad. It's stressful when the partner reviews your shit and says you need to do this and you need to that. But as long as he doesn't hold it against me, I don't hold it against him -- I need to learn and he needs to teach me. It's stressful when you don't know what the hell you're doing and you're the last one in the office and there's no one to ask. But I'm a baby lawyer, and I can't be expected to do things perfectly. I just do the best I can with the resources I have.

It's strange knowing that I have started my legal career in a market downturn. Mathgirl tells me of associates at her firm who were coming in at 11 and leaving at 3 in the fall, because there wasn't any work to do. I wonder about job security. So far, my firm has chosen to move people to different offices rather than let anyone go. Having offices and clients that are not exclusive to the U.S. is an advantage.

Today, I'm working at home (the first weekend in three that I've worked at all), in my pajamas, trying to keep hydrated (head cold). Back to work, then.
(153/730)