There is certainly tech-savvy blood in my family. I have one cousin who is a television photojournalist and another cousin who is a news director, both of whom work with complicated cameras, satellite trucks, editing equipment, and who knows what other sorts of high-tech gadgets and gizmos on a daily basis. I have an uncle who was a radar intercept officer on an F-4 Phantom jet, where he dealt with a jaw-dropping array of dials, gauges, buttons and switches, at supersonic speeds, no less. I have a brother in law who is a master plumber and carpenter, and could probably give MacGyver a run for his money.
I, however, generally need to enlist the help of my teenaged daughter in order to get the remote on the DVD player to work. I could have used her (or one of my cousins, or my uncle, or my brother-in-law, or somebody) today when I found myself trying without success to assert an air of technical confidence and competence as I fiddled with the cables connecting a computer, projector, DVD player, PA system and other assorted hardware, trying to figure out where the sound had gone. Oh, and did I mention that I was doing so in front of a room full of lawyers, all of whom had paid a significant sum to attend the seminar that had just come to a screeching halt due to the aforesaid technical difficulties? Good times….
As I begin this post, it’s 11:17 p.m. and in order to remain on the “Blawger Survivor” island, I have to get it posted in the next 43 minutes. Actually, make that 41 minutes.
Technically, I suppose I could go ahead and hit “Publish” now and stay within the letter of the Blawger law. But, in the interest of fair play, to stay within the spirit as well as the letter of the law, and with the realization that I will probably cross paths with Sean Carter at the next ACLEA meeting, I’d better do a bit more than 3 sentences.
Deadlines. When I was in school it was getting the papers turned in on time. Several of my upper-level English courses in college did not have any exams at all, just a requirement that we turn in a specified number of pages by the end of the semester. It was great for someone like me, who enjoys writing but has never been a particularly good test taker. Great at least until the end of the semester rolled around and I heard the clock ticking louder and louder.
A few years later I entered law practice, an extraordinarily deadline-driven profession, particularly for trial lawyers. Whether the deadlines are set by the rules, by the court, or by opposing counsel’s demand letter, a good bit of the day-to-day routine of a litigation practice is simply meeting one deadline after another. Usually, I’d find myself working until the 11th hour to meet a deadline. While procrastination might have occasionally entered into the picture, far more often the primary culprit was Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
If the rules allowed 30 days to compile discovery responses, it was remarkable how often it would be a 30-day project. If a judge gave me a week to file a motion, it would take me a week to get it just right.
And, if I have 43 minutes to write up a blog post, you can be sure it’ll take 42.
Posted by wagsoutside 
Posted by wagsoutside 
How did I ever get so lucky?
Posted by wagsoutside 
