I think lawyers convince themselves that the stories they tell - the possibilities they spin as. yarns - are not lies. The manipulation of reality by altering the way and manner an event is understood with the aim to achieve a victory is lying. It's like inventing all sorts of nonsense about a specific type of briar and then propagating the story about it until the truth of it is lost in the nonsense. A magician uses distraction to deflect the audiences eyes away from what he is actually doing; a lawyer uses stories and conjectures to confuse the truth and have the judge or jury arrive at a conclusion that the lawyer promotes. The difference is the magician is honest that what you are seeing is an illusion, the lawyer is dishonest in that the lie is promoted as a possible truth with the intent of denying the truth. Which makes the lawyer a liar. Anyway, we've side tracked this thread long enough. I promise no more motorcycle talk or lawyer jokes. How about you Mr. Lee?
Once upon a golden time long ago, I took a disability case in Bentonville Arkansas.
This was at a time when my wife looked like that girl on the genetics blue Jeans ad only taller, and we had a bright red convertible.
We drove down once to her home near Arkansas, for preparation, and the lady looked to me like a worn out dishrag. Her husband was an ex felon with tats all over him and was just about as vile, and nasty, and repulsive as a man could ever be.
Doing social security cases is much like making Kentucky Straight Bourbon. The average waiting time over the years is just over a year to three or even four years, and in recent years about 18 months.
In the two or so years since I’d taken her case she’d graduated college with a degree in criminal justice from a little satellite college in some shithole of a little poverty striken town right next to Arkansas, and her only medical appointments were for getting beaten by her husband. She’d get restraining orders and drop them.
Social Security called and wanted to set her hearing and I set it at 2 pm on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.
On the way down my wife said, what chance do you possibly have? She graduated college last week?
I said she has two felony bad check convictions on her record and she will never get a job in law enforcement.
She said all of her medical records show she has a husband who needs to be locked up. What medical condition does she have?
I replied loser lover syndrome. And her chances to make a recovery to ride shotgun with a lawyer in a red convertible are below zero. She claims several things wrong with her physically, too. Who are we to judge?
She said what strategy do you have?
I said look around. This is Memorial Day weekend in Bentonville Arkansas.
The judge has a pleasant sounding lady as his assistant. We are the last case before they get to go home for a long weekend.
I told my client to be there at one and make sure and take her entire family. The judge and his assistant will have to let them in after they get back from lunch.
We are going to roll up at a quarter to two on the dot and you are going to carry my briefcase in your skirt and high heels into the courthouse.
And if I know Arkansawyers, that judge will ask exactly where we came from, and if we mind to change our date of onset to a new date, and I’ve already told our client she should expect that, and he’ll say let’s all have a nice weekend.
He’ll grant her disability on the record, two years back pay.
Babe Ruth and me felt, about the same.
My client and her children all gathered around my wife like she was Snow White at Disneyland afterwards and the judge’s assistant asked where she bought her skirt and then we headed north in our red convertible.
My wife said, do you have a conscience?
That lady has a college degree. She will never work again.
J said, my dear, we can’t afford for me, to have a conscience over these matters.
Besides, I’m a paid champion.
If I didn’t do it, somebody else not as good at it might try it.
There were days, when I knew of the eight billion people on this earth nobody alive was better at what I did best.
Forty five minutes of that judge watching that lady, with her nasty husband, waiting for her lawyer with a super model beautiful wife who was as sweet and down to earth as an old grandmother, was exactly the right call.
Who would have ever remembered Porter, without Dolly?
The Right Combination
