Lawyer Poets and that World We Call Law

LAWYER POETS AND THAT

WORLD WE CALL LAW

an anthology of poems about the practice of law

James R. Elkins

editor

Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press

New York

Copyright © 2013 by James R. Elkins

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or part, in any form, except by reviewers, without the written permission of the publisher.

Lawyer Poets and That World We Call Law

edited by James R. Elkins

ISBN 978-1-929355-97-6

ePub ISBN 978-1-5457-2210-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907039

First U.S. Printing

Design and cover by Laura Tolkow

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Table Of Contents

Editor’s Foreword

Dedication

Tim Nolan, Lawyer Poets and the Practice of Law

A Lawyer’s Education

Lee Warner Brooks, What the Law Is

James McKenna, Law School

Hadley v. Baxendale (1854)

Ace Boggess, Law School

Charles Williams, Herr Doktor

After 60 Days of Snow on the Ground

Discovery in Law School

We Are All Born Lawless as Dogs

James Clarke, Law

All in a Day’s Work

David Bristol, White Shirt

Richard Bank, The Tie I Never Wore to Work

David Leightty, In the Office of an Attorney

Specializing in Accident Cases Off the Record

Jesse Mountjoy, The Lawyer’s Daily Time Log

Driving to a Tax Seminar, Notre Dame, Indiana

Last Day of the Year

Tim Nolan, Work

Oklahoma

Lee Warner Brooks, Silences

Lee Robinson, The Rules of Evidence

Grounds for Divorce

Kristen Roedell, Family Law

What Persists in Rising

Carl Reisman, Slip and Fall Lawyer

Rachel Contreni Flynn, Slip & Fall

Poem on the Road to Depose

Richard Bank, Felony Waivers

Doing Lineups on My Birthday

John Levy, My Client

Richard Krech, Premeditated, Deliberated & Intentional

M.C. Bruce, Plea Bargain, June 29

Joyce Meyers, Settling on the Eve of Trial

Susan Holahan, Legal Aid

Lawrence Russ, Found Objects

Steven M. Richman, The Eagle

The Fifth Watch of the Night

Bruce Laxalt, The Thrill of the Hunt, the Moment of the Kill

Laura Chalar, Midnight at the Law Firm

Those Who Come Our Way

James McKenna, Pro Bono Client

James Clarke, Rush to Judgment

Wintry Portents

M.C. Bruce, Booking

Judgment

Abogado!

Miracles

Good Morning

Richard Bank, Public Defender—Poem #34

Public Defender—Poem #21

Public Defender—Poem #102

Lee Wm. Atkinson, Pattern Killer Ensnared

Katya Giritsky, On Teaching Gang Law Seminars

Ann Tweedy, underfoot

John Crouch, The Madmen and the Law

No Singing in the Courtroom

Warren Wolfson, Eleventh Floor Lies

Misplaced Blame

James Clarke, Holy Thursday

M.C. Bruce, The Jury Returns

Charles Reynard, Juvenile Day

Conspiracy of Rivers

Barbara B. Rollins, The Man Child

Bruce Laxalt, A Late Afternoon Breach in Their Ranks

Martín Espada, Offerings to an Ulcerated God

Tires Stacked in the Hallways of Civilization

Sing in the Voice of a God Even Atheists Can Hear

Steven M. Richman, The Old Judge

James Clarke, Monday Morning Blues

A Certain Image

White Feather

Buried in the Snow

There Are Courtrooms

M.C. Bruce, Singing in the Courtroom

What Logic There Is

David Leightty, Constitutionals

Charles Reynard, Economics for Judges

Long Arm

James Clarke, Drawing Lines

Caught in the Net

Sun Shower

Toward a Definition of Law

Simon Perchik, [untitled]

Richard Krech, In Chambers

Paul Homer, Summary Judgment

The Lease

Draft of a Lease

Kenneth King, Lawyer Dog

Greg McBride, After Memo-Writing

An Office with a View

Bruce Laxalt, The Establishment Man

John Charles Kleefeld, Boilerplate

David Leightty, Two Epigrams

Martín Espada, The Prisoners of Saint Lawrence

Betsy McKenzie, In the House of the Law

Michael Blumenthal, This Is It

The Ravages of the Work

Joyce Meyers, Escape

Kathleen Winter, In the Clutch

Steven M. Richman, Safari

Letters of Credit

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

Nancy A. Henry, Wax

Baby’s First Bath

Our Fortieth Year

Bruce Laxalt, Widow’s Weeds

Work in Progress

Lawrence Joseph, The Game Changed

Charle Reynard, In the House of Law

James Clarke, Show Time

Respite

Susan Holahan, In the Easy Dream

Michael Blumenthal, Letter of Resignation

The Metamorphosis

Michael Sowder, Former Attorney Offers Prayer of Thanksgiving For His New Job

Lee Warner Brooks, In Answer to the Student Who Asked If I Still Practice Law, and Why Not?

Lawyers Do Grow Old

Barbara B. Rollins, The Lawyers

Richard Bank, Testation

End of an Era

Paul Homer, A Statutorily Protected Class

Jesse Mountjoy, Among the Perennials

Howard Gofreed, Apostrophe

Lee Robinson, Work

Lawrence Joseph, Curriculum Vitae

Michael Blumenthal, The Man Who Needed No One

James Clarke, Memories

Warren Wolfson, At This Point

Going Home

Paul Homer, Lament

James Clarke, Night Moth

Michael Blumenthal, Learning by Doing

Richard Krech, Life on Appeal

James Clarke, Going Home

End Papers

The Compilation of the Anthology

Acknowledgements

The Poets

Index to Poets and Poems

Editor’s Foreword

There are poets and there are lawyers. We think of them as residents of different worlds. In the bright light of day, the work of the lawyer seems to have absolutely nothing to do with that of the poet. The poet returns the favor: there is little need to try to imagine what it is lawyers do and how they do it. Two worlds, different enterprises, different ways of putting language to use.

Then, lo and behold, we learn that lawyers, in numbers more than astounding, turn out to be poets. Our poets are lawyers! Yes, some of them scribble doggerel, visited by a grey-robed muse of sentiment and sanctimony. Then, a bigger surprise: a surprising number of lawyers turn out to be excellent poets, taking their place in a history that can be traced to the first arrival of lawyers in America.

Most of the lawyer poets represented in this anthology are practicing lawyers (and judges); a few abandoned the legal profession to take up teaching and literary work. Unlike most lawyer poets who do not, in their poetry, lay claim to being lawyers and maintain a wall of separation between law and poetry, the poets in this anthology have been unable to remain silent in their poetry about the world in which they work. The lawyer poet who would disguise his tracks as a lawyer is one kind of poet. This anthology represents that rarer specimen, a poet who finds a place for the world of law in his poetry. For this rare species of poet lawyer, there’s simply no walking away, no pretended separation, no divorce, and no compartmentalization of the world of the poem and the world of law. The poet knows both worlds, and thus is borne—legal verse.

Dedication

To the poets who know law—we now know there have been many,

to those who have chased the muse and abandoned the profession,

to those who stayed with the law and wrote poems at night,

to the poems we remember and the poets who made them,

to the poets whose poems will inevitably be forgotten,

to all, your poetry, fine and fumbling,

for it, and for you, these poems . . .

—James R. Elkins

Lawyer Poets and the Practice of Law

Tim Nolan

I write poetry and, from time to time, publish it. I also practice law. The two occupations are not always mutually exclusive. There are interesting moments when one discipline seeps into the other. There are other times when my dual interests could not seem further apart. During a prolonged and boring deposition a few months ago, my attention wandered out the window of the conference room to a hawk spiraling above the river bluffs with perfect grace and intention—making our lawyers’ squabbles over construction change orders and contract interpretation seem remote and intensely silly. The poetry of the hawk’s flight was obvious. The poetry of the stock phrase in an answer to a complaint—Defendant is without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the matter, and, therefore, denies the same—is less apparent.

Yet at the same time, I have come to value the precision and sense of a good legal argument—it is not unlike the argument of a good poem—quick, irrefutable and pressured by precedent. Lawyers cite to court opinions. Poets turn to Walt Whitman or Rainer Maria Rilke for precedent. The mind—sorting through history, memory, emotion, personal experience—ought to inform both poetry and the practice of law.

I have come to believe that there should be artfulness in the practice of law. Much of what a lawyer does involves creating something—an argument, a contract—where nothing existed before. The way in which a legal task is accomplished almost always involves compositional choices—how will the case be presented; how will the deal be structured? A lawyer is effective when he or she makes good compositional choices in a case and for a particular client. In litigating a lawsuit, a lawyer is often overwhelmed with facts, documents, statements, memories (good and bad), emotions, a hovering concept of justice (good and bad), time lines and time limits, bullet points and visual aids, practical and legal precedents, clients, judges, jurors. From all of this, the lawyer must draw out a story, with a cast of characters (sometimes stock characters), themes, compromises, and final outcomes. The good lawyer is able to not only marshal these various resources, but also draw out and suggest a final conclusion that serves his client. The poet, facing a blank piece of paper, has a similar task. From endless possibilities, what must be said? What words will be used to say it? What images will lend force to the words that are used? What kind of insight and mind will the music and sounds evoke?

For a lawyer or a poet, there are endless diversions, wrong ways, dead ends. Choices are innumerable. Possibilities, within the context of