As you know, if you read my prior blog, I was working on getting a brief in today. I can't believe that when I wrote it, I actually thought I'd get the document in within the hour. As it turned out, I worked on it all day. Now it is 6:00p.m. and I'm just now relaxing in a book store and writing this commentary. Unbelievable!
I'm not sure how it happens, but when you are working on court documents, it inevitably turns out to take double or triple the time I thought it would to get them done. First I had to edit some of my wording, which meant that I had to repaginate, which meant that I had to adjust the wording somewhere else which meant I had to repaginate (Yes, I was dumb. I put different parts of the brief in different documents on my computer so every time I made a change I had to repaginate and repaginate!).
Then there is the trip to Staples because when it comes to a brief you have to submit an original plus fifteen copies, plus I had a set of cases I wanted to submit to the court as well. Each of the copies had to be stapled on the left hand side three times, and the front cover had to be blue. So the brief, with the copies of the additional cases meant around 30 copies to be stapled. Then I had to have a copy of the transcript of the hearings which lasted two days. That's a whole lot of paper to xerox. Are you feeling tired yet?
Finally, a few hours later I'd gotten copies of everything I needed, so I drove into Hartford. When I arrived I found a very distinguished looking African American on his cell phone calling his insurance company for help. Apparently, while he was in court a vandal had smashed the windows of his car. That's the whole atmosphere near the courthouses in Hartford; there are all these dangerous looking people around who, every once in a while, will go and smash car windows, drive into traffic with their bicycles and cause an uproar, or come up to you and demand money. If you go to court as often as I do that all becomes part of the experience.
After commiserating with the guy, I went to the appellate clerk's office. The clerk took one look at my little booklets of cases, declared them to be appendices and said that I had to put page numbers on each page of every booklet, so that meant that by hand I had to write in pages 1 through 44 on 16 booklets. Plus I had to put special labels on each booklet saying "Appendix". I'm like, come on, they aren't that important, but apparently they were and the format for each was specifically dictated by the 2010 Practice book and I had to have it done properly or else they wouldn't accept it. So a few hours later with a very, very cramped right hand, I turned the appendices in--finally! That's the court system folks! EVErything is a big deal, and I mean everything, even the little group of court cases you included for everyone's convenience.
Next, I had to go back to Staples which must have the slowest fax machine on the face of this earth, and fax the document to all the parties involved in the case, and then go from Staples to the post office so I could mail the document plus the appendices to all the parties in the case (oh, and save the receipt and staple it to a copy of the fax cover sheet to prove I sent the documents in case I'm challenged about that. Details, details, it's all in the details!).
Man! And I don't even get paid for this! Well, maybe I do because I protect myself and my children and I make sure my enemies (i.e.) lawyers don't get every darned thing I have. But still--you know what I mean. Well, so it goes. Now on to the next document, which, by the way, is right here in my in box ready for me to start on.
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