I read Bob Woodward’s The Secret Man this weekend and was struck by the following description of his lawyer Robert Barnett:
When he is your lawyer, he devotes himself entirely to your interest. He has a framework for analyzing any problem: Everyone else has real or potential interests other than yours. His job is to identify your interests and yours alone. I wanted him to contemplate the question because I knew his mind would be circling around and around the issues during his non billable, off-duty hours.
When Amy first started to work with me, I often emphasized that it was as important to figure out how to win a case, as the relevant case law.
Commercial collections cases can raise interesting points of law, and Amy is a whiz at honing the legal arguments for our clients. But at least half the time, the sole issue is figuring out how to win.
I’ve had an old habit since my early lawyer days of taking a problem I’m working on, framing it, and symbolically putting it under my pillow when I go to sleep. Often when I wake up in the morning, the solution will have emerged.
My client’s interests, very often require an understanding of the defendant’s interests given my goal of getting my client’s debt at the top of the debtor’s pile of payables. There is a jigsaw puzzle worth of information that sometimes must be sifted through to get where we need to be. Like Barnett, I do some of my best work when I’m not working.