Double Standard

or another reason to hate lawyers.

I hit the trifecta yesterday, three, count them three letters from my lawyer. Well he was on vacation spending my money and when I sent an email about over a dozen things he was required to do and left hanging to my determent it must have woke him up, or maybe its because I copied the Senior Partner.

These guys are such lazy bums. I try to be nice, I try to let them do it their way in their time, not to nag or micromanage, but then they just let things slide and you have to give them a kick in the butt to wake them up. Then as if they were dumber than a farm animal (ass) they look at their sore ass and wonder why you did it.

So one letter is this big hoopla (a 2 pager, who hah) about what has to be done to split pension assets and how the opposition counsel hasn't got back to him yet. In the course of the letter he plays the confused farm animal (ass) and isn't sure if I want him to continue on these tasks ordered by the court a month ago. He offers that he may withdrawal (so as to prevent further pain in the ass?) and I can take care of them, but he warns:

"Be advised, these documents must be completed in a timely manner and the failure of that conclusion could subject either or both of you to contempt of court sanctions"

Then a second letter is to opposition counsel, trying to kick start her into gear for this same month old task. It is only three sentences ending with:

"Kindly advise as to when we can expect such responses"

Let's review, you went on an out of country vacation on my money before taking care of business putting it a month behind due to lack of your office following up on it and when I remind you of that you write a polite reminder to the opposition without using one word referring to "lateness" or "timely manner". At the same time you attempt to intimidate me with a very thinly veiled threat of contempt of court. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that bullshit, I could afford to pay you on time.

The third letter to my broker, also at my request, was to release my account to me as ordered by the court. But the court order is just an order, the second part is to "give notice", it gives notice to the parties. My divorce case has six defendants, my broker being one of them (#2), my son is one too (#6). But all the party orders were commingled (just like the screwed up accounting) so the only notifications went to my ex and I, not to the other 4 defendants.

My broker's involvement in financial forensics dating back to 1983 (9 years prior to marriage) necessitated getting both his corporate legal counsel in NYC and a special local counsel involved. They have made a formal "answer to the court" and "appeared as counsel of record" on behalf of the brokerage firm. A properly written order would recognize their status as "party to the case, D(2)" and as such the clerk of courts would be required to give them formal notice. But the order did not recognize the other parties, so they received no notice, so the restraining order freezing my funds is still in effect a month later.

So who screwed up the order? My lawyer wrote it. Oh you thought the judge wrote orders? No! A lawyer writes them and the other lawyer bickers about it and the judge signs them. The lawyers write the order as a courtesy to the busy judge (ass kissing). If our case went to a real trial, the judge told us it would take him 3 months to write the order. I guess he still uses some old fashioned ink hand squeezed from plants and a quill, but thats another post.

Moral of the story: Lawyers kiss each others asses, intimidate client's and the client's can wait, but they're still too fuckin dumb to know why they are hated.