THE PLAYERS

After we finished a bottle of wine we ordered one big mountain of a chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce poured over it and whipped cream on top of that. The desert was far too much for one person so we requested three spoons and coffee to go with it. The brownie was so rich and moist and the chocolate sauce and whipped cream so sweet that I was done with it after the first mouthful. As we relaxed enjoying each others’ company, Freddie continued to explain Temp Town.

“To be fair, some people in Temp Town never really wanted to practice law or after doing it for a while they figured out that it wasn’t the thing for them. Regardless, we’re all mixed in it together working long hours doing the laborious dirty work for the small percentage of lawyers who have managed to snatch the golden ring that being a lawyer is storied to be all about: being a Real Lawyer. The Real Lawyers that we interact with around here are Associates and rarely, the Partners. They look down their noses at us and shiver at the thought that they could ever be associated with the gutter-dwellers of the legal profession. After they’ve been belittled, emasculated and stripped of all of their dignity by the Senior Associates and Partners who they report to, they come down from the top floors of their firm to the crowded conference room or unfinished basement level where the Contract Attorneys are and take it out on us.

There are two types of lawyers in Temp Town. There are the Lap Dogs who wish they were Real Lawyers and those who are trying to get away from the practice of law to work with whatever their Passion in life is. Which ever category they fall into, everybody’s got a story to tell. Actually, there’s a third type. These people are in Temp Town not because they couldn’t find work as traditional lawyers and not even because they realized that they don’t want to be lawyers but because they don’t have the social skills to survive in any work place for an extended period of time. The Socios need to be able to work short term because it’s just a matter of time before they do something socially unacceptable that gets them fired from a Real Job anyway.

Truth be told, most lawyers, even the successful ones, aren’t happy with their careers at all. But people in Temp Town don’t seem to care about that. They just want to be Real Lawyers.” “What about the agencies?” I asked her, yearning for more information about Temp Town.