I have been working as a freelance writer for a long time but last April I took a part-time job as a paralegal, using my other skill set. I had not held a regular paralegal position in 6 years. If you had told me when I moved to Atlanta in 1993 that one day I would be able to work from home as a paralegal I would have laughed.
I spent a lot of money on pantyhose and hair care products during those paralegal years [1985-2009]. I'm not bitter. Much.
My work situation now is quite interesting. I work for an attorney who decided some years ago to quit the big law firm he was with and work from home, as a sole practitioner. His reasons for doing that were personal, and not for me to reveal here. Suffice to say, he was able to manage the transition and grow a very successful practice and that's pretty remarkable. Lots of plaintiff's lawyers are sole practitioners but few defense lawyers.
Anyway, The Boss keeps everything in a cloud so we can all work remotely. The Boss lives in Sandy Springs. The associate lives in Johns Creek and has 3 small boys. The secretary lives in Snellville and is basically retired from the big law firm life, but still sharp and capable. I live basically in Tucker. In order to get to all our homes, in a circuit, you'd be in the car probably close to three hours, depending on traffic. We all have computers and phones, though, so it works out.
We had our annual team luncheon yesterday, at a very nice restaurant in Buckhead, Bones. I had never been there. Elegant place. (I doubt they get many vegetarians eating there, however.)
Everyone looked very nice, except me. However, in my defense, I did take a shower and wear a bra and earrings. I don't do any of those things on a daily basis any more, since I am something of a hermit.
It felt kind of surreal, being in a crowded restaurant among a lot of people wearing business clothes.
It felt weird being in a place where there were no TVs in the corners.
A few observations about Bones. You can valet your car and there's no grungy asphalt lot behind the place. There's a multi-story parking garage next door. You walk in, and there are plenty of couches and comfy chairs to sit in while waiting for a table -- not just a hard bench and some pimply-faced kid with an attitude handing you a plastic beeper and telling you to get lost until your table is ready. The plates and bowls are incredibly heavy. You could take a bread plate and kill someone with it. There were two forks, three spoons, and two knives at my place. Took me a minute to remember the rule -- eat from the outside in. (I am more accustomed to restaurants that give you a plastic spork.) The server took a little scraper and scraped crumbs off the tabletop periodically.
I told everyone a story I've always thought was pretty amusing, about me going to New York City as a college senior and being taken to lunch at a very elegant restaurant by a friend of my father's. I ordered fish and green beans. When they brought the plate of green beans they were hard and barely warm. I called the waiter and said "Hey, these didn't get cooked. Please take them back to the kitchen and tell the cook to really boil them hard for a few minutes and I'll try to get them down." The woman sitting opposite me had a look of absolute horror on her face. I'm sure she was wondering if I was actually Tony Thompson's child.
I had never seen someone eat hard crunchy green beans. In my experience, green beans were always cooked all day with fatback until they were so soft a totally toothless person could easily eat them.
Telling that little anecdote produced a few smiles among my team members but no guffaws. Within a short time I had ordered trout stuffed with crabmeat and haricort vert.
FYI -- haricort vert is French for hard crunchy green beans. I had forgotten that. No matter. I was so full of lobster bisque I could only eat my fish and had no room for sides.
I badly wanted a dessert and they had a very elegant dessert menu. However, I was so full I could hardly move, much less consume an entire dessert. So The Boss ordered a piece of key lime pie and a piece of pecan pie and we all had some. I had a tiny bite of each piece of pie. Not to be rude, but I make better pecan pie, and the key lime pie was not as good as the pie at my fave local place, Fork in the Road.
The Boss ordered a steak, and when it arrived it looked very delicious, if one likes steaks. I don't. Unfortunately he wrestled with it for quite a while before finally giving up. It was gristly and super yucko, he said. The waiter took it off the bill, which was fortunate. The associate and the secretary also got steaks but theirs were excellent.
My steak aversion is because we had steaks about once a week when I was a kid in Knoxville. Dad was good friends with a guy who owned a meat company that supplied steaks to restaurants and we always had steaks, like once or twice a week. Dad got really angry one day when he said "We're having steak tonight, kids!" and my brother and I immediately started whining "Really? Steak AGAIN?! Can we have hamburgers instead?!"
Dad, raised during the Depression, was livid.
My brother and I still never order steaks in restaurants.
Here's a really interesting one. My colleague wanted a half sweet half unsweet tea concoction. Instead, the waiter brought three unsweet teas and a small jar of Simple Syrup so everyone could sweeten their own tea to their liking. (I drank water.)
I was surprised there was only a tiny one-potty bathroom just off the lobby, but I used it several times. It had elegant cloth napkins for drying hands, and a huge jar of mouthwash with little plastic cups. (Right before we left I learned there was another ladies room.)
After the bill was paid everyone at the table got a complimentary chocolate in a little paper envelope. Allrighty then.
I truly had a fun lunch and I enjoyed getting out of the house and spending time with my colleagues immensely.
Things sure have changed since I got my first paralegal job.
At my very first job, the firm had a luncheon. All the ladies made side dishes and desserts. The firm bought a pre-cooked turkey. The ladies set out and served the food, and cleaned everything up afterwards, then went back to work. Lots of work for us staffers. The attorneys all sat at one end of the big conference table and nobody said much. There was exactly one hour allotted for the consumption of food. Everyone was tense. Normally, on weekday lunches the attorneys went out to lunch at local restaurants and staffers stayed in and ate sandwiches or leftovers brought from home, in the tiny break room. I quit that job when I decided to go back to school and get my master's degree in English.
At my second job, same deal, except after lunch [and after the staffers cleaned everything up, of course] we got to all go home. Huge improvement. I usually had to go home and nap, after hitting the spiked eggnog. I was at that firm for 5 years.
Third law firm job, first one here in Atlanta, same deal. Staff served a Christmas lunch for everyone. However, we did get to go home afterwards, and there were names drawn for Christmas presents so everyone got a Secret Santa present. Plus the attorneys paid for the office manager to buy a nice present for each staffer, in addition to a Christmas bonus. I got some very nice luggage that way. My boss also gave me presents at Christmas. I stayed there 6 years.
Fourth law firm job, at a very elegant firm in midtown, the Christmas lunch was catered and there was also a big firm holiday party at a hotel. I never went to the fancy parties. I was so stressed out at that job that I cried most days in the car. I only stayed there 2 years.
There followed 8 years at two different corporations in their legal departments. Catered Christmas luncheons, but nobody had much fun.
My legal career never turned out the way Dad envisioned it when he paid for me to go to paralegal school. I didn't ever express a desire to go to law school, nor have I ever married a lawyer. My paralegal skills have, however, enabled me to support myself nicely for the majority of my adult life, and I've gotten to do some really interesting work.
I have a lot of "war stories" about interesting lawsuits I've worked on over the years and wacky lawyers I've worked for, but I can't tell those stories publicly without winding up at the bottom of the Chattahoochee River.
No worries. The tell-all manuscript will be published after my death.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah!
the photo is me holding my cousin's baby -- I was in college and the baby is now grown and married and a successful doctor with three children! Wow, I am old...
