I was hesitant to go on the interview. I knew nothing about appellate practice (except that it looked very boring and involved pages and pages of material), and the idea of replacing a woman who had been working with her boss for 17 years did not sound at all that appealing (forgive the pun). After working for several baby lawyers, was I ready to work for the #4 man in the firm??? With some hesitation, I interviewed with my current boss, Neil Norquest. It was an unusual interview, and I was an unusual applicant, to say the least. As a former music teacher who majored in Music Education in college, the majority of my resume listed various musical accomplishments. I had only been working in the legal field for three years, and had never even seen a legal brief. Little did I know that my potential boss was also an accomplished musician-having foregone what could have undoubtedly been a very successful musical career to become a lawyer. To this day I'm not sure whether it was my musical background or my job skills that got me the job.
My first week was a baptism by fire since my first task was working on my very first appellate brief. It didn't take long for me to become immersed in the world of documents full of S.W.2ds, Tex. App.s, and no writs. Due to an associate attorney's penchant for referring to the various courts of appeals through numbers rather than cities, I was immediately required to memorize the court numbers of the various courts in Texas.
Having been told that appellate briefs were "boring," I had been prepared for the worst. But I was happy to find that briefs were not boring. Appellate practitioners speak in a mysterious language all their own. Like a student learning a new language, I was at first hesitant to verbalize my newly acquired language, but before long I felt comfortable and could converse with my boss on some level of understanding about the comparative merits of a "cert. denied" case versus a "no writ" case.
My boss did not know what to expect of me either, having never had a "legal assistant." Throughout our first few months working together, our working relationship evolved into a smooth pattern of teamwork with the goal of producing a perfect product. Some 8 months after being hired, my boss confided that he had decided to go into solo practice and he wanted me to accompany him. I was pleased that he had confidence in my abilities to handle the day-to-day tasks involved in running an office and getting the job done.
Now, five years later, our practice has expanded to include an associate attorney and a part-time secretary. Our situation is unusual in that my boss limits his pre-judgment work to assisting in complex motion practice. His civil appellate practice includes every phase of the appeal, from filing post-judgment motions and perfection of the appeal through argument in the highest court. He also limits his clients to certain hand-picked firms with whom he has a comfortable working relationship. We never accept cases from individuals, and our "clients" are the attorneys who represented the parties at the trial court level. Our appeals are predominantly defense oriented, although we have handled a few plaintiff's cases as well.
My role in our practice is varied. Since I handle the office managerial matters, at least a portion of each day is devoted to managerial tasks. However, I am also responsible for preparing record designations and other pleadings related to the initial steps of each appeal. Because my boss is hired by our clients on the basis of his own personal ability to research issues and respond to opposing arguments, my role in legal research is limited. I do some Westlaw research, and it is always my job to check citations for accuracy and form prior to filing each brief. Of course, I am also responsible for calculating and docketing deadlines, and have had the opportunity to establish long-distance friendships with clerks in several of the appellate courts.
My favorite part of the job, though, has to be my role in learning the facts of each case. To accomplish this task, I read each trial court "Statement of Facts" and prepare a summary for the attorney. Since we do not usually obtain a Statement of Facts until the time for writing the appellate brief is upon us, I am generally learning the facts at the same time the attorneys are formulating their legal arguments. Quite often, my boss or his associate will call me in to ask whether the facts in the record will support a certain argument they wish to make. Just as often, they will insert a sentence they want substantiated into their brief with a notation "cite to the record." The task then falls to me to either support their statement with record citations, or alter the statement to fit the evidence presented.
Another facet of my job involves assisting with writing the Statement of Facts to be included in the brief. More and more frequently, my boss will instruct me to draft a Statement of Facts, including citations to the record, which he will incorporate into the finished product. This, to me, is the most exciting part of the entire appellate process. The Statement of Facts must convey to the court the "story" behind the appeal. While page limitations prohibit it from being very lengthy, it still must convey the essence of the characters involved in the story. A bad Statement of Facts can leave the court with many unanswered questions, while a good Statement of Facts can do a lot to impress the panel of justices with the parties involved in the appeal.
For example, several years ago, our firm was hired to defend an appeal of a judgment taken against a school district for its role in the death of a very young child who was attempting to board a school bus. My own daughter was the same age as the little girl who died, and so it was very easy for me to identify with the family and their loss. When it came time to prepare the Statement of Facts, I waited until I was all alone in the office before undertaking the task because I knew I was going to become emotional. Later, when my boss returned it to me with his revisions, I was pleased to see that he had changed very little of what I had written. Months later and after the case had been settled, one of the justices who had been on the panel commented to my boss that the Statement of Facts had nearly had the entire court in tears.
The process of becoming intimately familiar with the client solely through the medium of the written word does not always result in a favorable impression of the client. On a few occasions, I have found our client to appear unsympathetic based on the trial court's written record. It is on those occasions that the task of preparing a Statement of Facts becomes more difficult, and even more critical to the appeal. Through the creation of the "story" behind the appeal, I can indulge to some extent my secret desire to be a novelist!
The limited scope of our practice did provide some interesting hurdles to overcome when I sat for the CLA and TBLS examinations in 1994. First, I almost didn't qualify to sit for the TBLS exam. I was probably saved by several years of "moonlighting" for a "regular" litigator. Second, I had almost no experience in working with discovery, having only assisted in preparing discovery requests while moonlighting. Third, many of the questions on the TBLS exam dealt with concepts I had learned as a student, but had not put into practice in my day-to-day activities. But with a lot of woodshedding and several weeks of late-night studying, I was able to successfully complete both exams.
Did I make the right choice in 1989? I know that I did. Not only have I had an opportunity to learn about a very interesting area of the law, but by joining my boss in his solo practice I have had the opportunity to expand my daily activities into areas which would have been closed to me as just another employee of a large firm.