Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Me, I Thought He Was An Asshole

I entered the classroom on the first day of my second year of law school and scanned the room for a familiar face. The class was comprised of predominantly 3Ls, and I saw only a handful of people from my class, none of whom I was particularly eager to sit with. I spied an empty chair at the end of an aisle and sat down. In the seat next to mine was a 3L guy, who busily typed away at his laptop. As I unpacked my own laptop, he started chatting.

“Hey,” he said in a booming voice. “You must be a 2L. Congrats on making it back for another round of this shit. Me, this is my third year.” He spoke louder than he needed to, with an East Coast accent that he made no attempt to conceal, and possibly was even trying to accentuate.

“Yeah, well, I’m not too pleased about it,” I responded, trying to give off the vibe that I was not interested in a conversation.

“Tell me about it,” he chortled, taking my unenthusiastic response as an invitation to open up to me. “I just got back in town last night. I sure do miss home…” He trailed off, expecting me to ask him a follow up. I didn’t, so he continued. “Yeah, I really wish I was still home…” He trailed off again, clearly setting me up to ask where home was. Against my better judgment, I took the bait. “Where are you from?” I halfheartedly asked.

His face lit up. “Me, I’m from Philly. Lived in Philly most of my life. Spent my summer working there, in downtown Philly. I love that place.” He paused, and added, “Yeah, I love Philly.”

I found it odd that he said the word “Philly” four times in his brief answer, but before I could ponder it further, he continued. “Yeah, I worked for a firm in Philly. The work was okay, but at the end of the day, I don’t know if it’s what I would want to do permanently. It was mostly tax stuff I did. Tax is okay and everything, but at the end of the day, it’s not for me.”

I was about to ask why not, but as if anticipating my question, he kept talking. “Me, I want to do litigation. Now I know, a job is a job in this market, but at the end of the day, there isn’t much litigation in tax work. I want to be in the courtroom, trying cases. I don’t care if it’s criminal or civil, defense or prosecution, at the end of the day, I want to be in the courtroom.”

By now, I was both perplexed and trying to keep from laughing. He had this odd habit of repeating a word or a phrase over and over in a short period of time. It was irritating, but also laughable because he spoke so loudly with a rather thick accent. I could only imagine how a jury would react to this. My mind pictured him in a nice suit inside of a courtroom, delivering an opening statement.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, at the end of the day there are two things I am certain of: Me, I love Philly, and at the end of the day, my client is innocent…”

He snapped me back from my fantasy world with a question. “Did you do the reading for today?” Before I could tell him that I had yet to purchase the book, he started talking again. “Me, I read it. Well, not all of it, but for all intensive purposes, I read it.” My ears burned, and he continued. “I have a system for reading for class. I read the main cases, and nothing else. For all intensive purposes, the main cases are what matter.” He said this as though he was on to something no one else knew.

“Say that again,” I directed him.

“Say what? For all intensive purposes, the main cases are what matter.”

“Look,” I said. “I hate to be the guy correcting how people speak, but the phrase is ‘for all intents and purposes,’ not ‘for all intensive purposes’. I would hate to have you mispronounce this in front of a jury.”

Instead of thanking me for my speech lesson, he got defensive. “Hey! I say things how I want to say them, and I don’t need you coming in here and correcting me. Get out of here with this ‘intents and purposes’ shit.” With that, he snorted and said something under his breath.

During class, he continued to give me menacingly dirty looks, and the professor passed around a seating chart that bound me to the seat next to him for the rest of the semester. So what did I do? I went home and dropped the class.

I know it seems drastic, but the last thing I needed was my new friend from Philly bothering me all semester, and for all “intensive purposes”, moving to a new seat wasn’t an option since the class was full. Besides, I didn’t really want to take the class to begin with, so at the end of the day, it was the right thing to do.