Gorilla and the Bird by Zack McDermott

Author:Zack McDermott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Toward the end of my first week back, Barry came ’round to fetch me for the come-to-Jesus talk I knew was coming. He was borderline sheepish as he informed me that I’d been “away” when they’d done performance evaluations. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my geographic location, my state of mind, or both. From there, we proceeded to a completely nonconfrontational stare down. I assumed he was thinking Come on—do I really have to say anything? That’s pretty much where I was at too: sympathetic that he actually had to address my indiscretions in measured, middle-management speak. I thought about his possible lead-ins: So, uh, don’t strip at happy hour, please—we all got wind of that one. Show up to work, please, preferably not two hours late every day. Please consider how you’d feel if you were a seventy-one-year-old first-time criminal defendant and your twenty-six-year-old attorney came to court in a fucking Mohawk. Oh, and don’t email me to ask if you can use my Yankees tickets after you’ve been AWOL for two weeks.

Barry’s approach was soberer. Like any good dressing down, he started with some compliments. “You have the potential to be a great trial lawyer. You’re good on your feet. You read people well, you have good instincts on cross, and you’re charismatic. But—and this is one of those scenarios in which everything before the ‘but’ doesn’t carry much weight—you are underprepared, you mail it in, your files are a mess, your voicemail box was full and had been for months. You’re late every day. You wrote one motion all year. It was good, but it was one motion. It’s great that you tried a case and it’s great that you won. But, honestly, it was an easy case. You had no idea what you were doing, you had a great judge, and you nailed the guy once when it mattered. This is not a knockout punch business, though. We win by working the body. Look through the transcript. You probably missed ten objections that would have been a big deal in an important case.”

All true.

I had a solid insanity defense and a sympathetic jury, but I wasn’t going to try to defend “my” conduct. Barry knew what happened. He’s a Legal Aid lifer. For more than thirty-five years, he’d made his butter begging for mercy for tens of thousands of people who’d done bad things they wouldn’t have otherwise done but for drugs, poverty, and mental illness. Barry understood that sometimes there’s a Bellevue pit stop on life’s itinerary.

I pled to the docket—guilty on all counts—and tried to own it. I told Barry that I knew I’d let everyone down. That I was embarrassed. That I knew I was lucky to have a job and to work with folks who understand a DSM-IV code. That I’d been sick. Really sick. And that I was better now.

“Listen,” he said, “this isn’t Skadden, Arps, LLP, or some other white-shoe fart factory. This is Legal Aid. We’re all a little bit nuts.

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