Kiddy Porn - When the Constitution Just Ain't Enough

My interview skills have always been lackluster. I tend to project an image of smart-assed sarcasm. This does not go over well with potential employers. It also has not made me rich. What it has done is forced me to become more resourceful in my attempts at earning a living. I take what I can get.

Halfway through law school, as my miniscule funds dwindled, I realized that I had two choices, take out another loan or get a job. The former was not practical since I already owed various lending institutions more money than I'd made in my life. The latter of course was not appealing due to my interview skills, already mentioned, supra.

Like all important decisions, this one was resolved with the flip of a coin, an old silver dollar being the tool of choice. They're hard to flip but when that coin comes down by god you've got your decision. Solid, certain, unquestionable, and final. Heads. Time to job hunt.

I won't bore you with the endless stream of resumes out and rejection letters in. The occasional invitation for an interview ended in the usual disaster. One partner took it upon himself to tell me my hair was messy. I have curly hair, it's not messy, it's just not straight. Maybe he'd never seen curly hair before. Maybe this was some secret joke for him. He was bald.

I had completely given up and already written my dad for an "emergency loan" when fate batted her fake lashes in my direction. A classmate I'd rarely spoken to, Nancy came up to me in the hall and told me she'd recently taken a job doing research for a criminal defense attorney. What had begun as a few hours here and there had turned part time and she couldn't keep up. Nancy asked if I wanted to do some work for him so he'd get off her back and she could catch up on her school work. I got his phone number and called him from the pay phone down the hall. His office was a few blocks away and I went there after class ended.

Harris Townshend was a big man. His head was huge, with big cheeks, big ears, and big bulging eyes. The impression was of a giant ogre being pumped full of water. His office was tiny and crammed with overly ornate furniture, adding to the impression of his inordinate size.

There was no interview, thank god. I apparently already had the job. After a frighteningly firm handshake he handed me a bulging brown folder and told me his client was a child pornographer who'd been busted taking nasty pictures of his 7 year old daughter and her friend. He'd already been found guilty and sentencing was in a week. I was to write a brief that argued for probation with counseling rather than prison, or in the alternative a shorter prison term with probation. Mr. Townshend had a few theories in support of this result, none of which made sense to me. He told me to do all the research I needed, the kiddy porn guy had already paid a handsome retainer and it would be a shame not to use it. Although we didn't discuss my pay, Nancy had mentioned getting $10 an hour and I assumed the terms were the same for me. After another firm handshake I was on my way to the law library at my school.

I pulled the contents of the over-stuffed brown folder out and looked through them. There were police reports, some research Nancy had already done on the case - most of it useless - copies of the fee agreement and some court documents, and then the shocker. Page after page after page of grainy copies of the photos in question. While I considered shoving these back in the folder, my curiosity has never been controllable.

The pictures started out pretty tame. Two girls in swim suits jumping and playing on a ratty looking bed. Then the suits came off. Then the poses became more suggestive. I made it halfway though the stack and couldn't look any more. I shoved the whole thing back into the brown folder and set it next to the computer in front of me. I looked around to make sure no one had been watching me. The thought crossed my mind that I might be breaking the law just by having these pictures, or by looking at them. I logged on to the computer and looked up the child pornography statute. There was an exception for attorneys working on cases involving child pornography. Whether this exception applied to their research assistants it did not say. I did some general research on sentencing, the relevant considerations, standards, and rules. A lot of cases quoted the State Constitution which expressed a preference for rehabilitation over imprisonment. I decided to make this section the cornerstone of my memo, and proceeded to synthesize the arguments made in cases citing the Constitution.

Five hours later I trudged home with the results of my research shoved sideways into the fat brown folder, now bursting at the seams. The next few days I worked sporadically on various drafts of the brief. Once it was in fairly polished form I took it over to Townshend's office. He wasn't in so I left the brief and the brown folder with his secretary. I considered warning her not to pick through the folder but decided there was no good way to do so without offending her and implicating myself. When I got home after class there was a message from Townshend telling me the brief was fine but could I rewrite it taking out the state constitutional argument. He felt it was too high brow. Since this was the entirety of my argument, and removing it would leave nothing but blank pages, I wasn't sure what he meant. Had he read the whole thing? Was he kidding? Was he nuts?

I stopped by Townshend's office the next day just as he was leaving for court. I tried to talk to him about the brief but he said he didn't have time. "Just make it simpler," he told me, "this judge isn't going to go for that policy stuff." With that he was gone. On my way out I saw my brief sitting on Townshend's desk with hand written notes. I moved closer to his enormous mahogany desk to see that the whole front page was covered with red question marks. I turned to leave and found his secretary standing in doorway. "I was just seeing if he had any suggestions written on the brief" I told her. She just stood there glaring, then went back to her little desk by the tiny waiting room. When I passed her on my way out I saw the big brown folder still sitting on her desk. I tried not to look at it, or her, as I left.

I spent the next two days trying to dumb down my brief. I tried to remember the theories Townshend had mentioned the first time we talked, but they still made no sense. I decided to do the opposite of my legal training and just make emotional arguments without citation to authority. I wrote that if the kiddy porn guy went to jail his wife would lose her house and go on welfare, draining the system of money. Society would lose the tax dollars the porn guy had been paying, and instead have to pay for his incarceration. He'd probably end up in solitary confinement since the other inmates would want to kill him, making it even more expensive for the poor taxpayers. And in prison he'd get no counseling so that once he was released he'd still be a danger to society.

The brief went on for pages in like manner. Every argument I could think of went in. No mention of cases or statutes, and especially no mention of the constitution. When I was done I knew I had truly created the great turd of all briefs. This paper was the undoing of all I'd studied and learned up to that point. I printed out a copy, ran it over to Townshend's office and slipped it through the mail slot.

The next day I stopped by his office and he was on his way out again. I walked with him to his car as he told me the memo was great, perfect, wonderful.

"So do you think we'll win?" I asked naively.

"What?!?" He stopped abruptly and turned to face me full on. "Of course not. He's a child pornographer. They'll stick him in jail for two decades."

I was taken aback. "But, then, why change the memo?"

"Well, no point in pissing off the judge."

With that Townshend crammed his bulk into a tiny black Porsche and sped off. The sun was setting and there was a nice buzz in the air, so I walked home rather than taking the train. I needed the air.

A week later I came home from class to find an envelope from Townshend mixed in with the mail. No letter inside, just a check for $200. I hadn't even told him my hours, which was just as well since I'd done a lousy job of keeping track of them. $200 seemed high but I wasn't about to complain. I cashed it at the currency exchange, stuck $40 in my wallet, and hid the rest in my hollowed out law dictionary when I got home.

From time to time I did other research assignments for Townshend, all at the same low level as the first. I'd sneak in a little case law where I could, but usually only in footnotes. For the most part my briefs became more like editorials than legal writing.

When I finished law school Townshend took me to lunch to discuss the possibility of my working for him full time. I wasn't excited by the prospect, but it was the only offer I'd gotten. The previous night I'd been out drinking, and at lunch I had to suppress a few yawns as Townshend droned on about his theory on everything and nothing. I was suppressing a particularly large yawn when he stopped mid-sentence and said, "I hope I'm not boring you." That was it. I knew it was over. I'd blown yet another interview. I apologized and tried to get him talking again but he seemed distracted. When our food came he didn't touch his and sat quietly watching me eat mine. It was maddening. I ate as fast as I could just to get out of there.

That evening I went home with a killer stomach ache and a headache to match. There was a letter from one of the many student loan companies explaining how much I would have to pay each month to keep from defaulting, when the payments would start, and when they would end if I stayed on schedule. The start date was about a year off. The end date was twenty years away.

I fired up my computer and pulled up my resume. I added "Research Assistant - Harris Townshend & Assoc." to the top with relevant info, saved it, and hit print. The job hunt was back on.

Excerpt from the novel "Fault -or- The Man Who Made Earthquakes"

The following is an excerpt from the new novel Fault: or The Man Who Made Earthquakes, adapted slightly for Legal Tilt:

     No one seemed to notice him walking into the office late. He sat down at his computer and started working on a file, but soon switched to the browser and did more research on earthquakes. Then on sound waves, and waves in general. When the phone rang he let it go to voicemail. He ignored his email. Eventually his boss Murray came by on his daily saunter down the hall and parked himself across from Travis.
     “So, what are you working on?”
     “Just some research.”
     “I can’t stand doing research, I don’t know how you have the patience. Well, I guess it’s a good thing that you do.”
     “I enjoy it. You can get lost in research.”
     “There are other things I’d rather get lost in. You know, I’m seeing a new girl.”
     “Oh?”
     “Yeah, she’s good looking considering she’s in her 40s. She laughs at my jokes, so that’s a plus.”
     “A shared sense of humor is a good thing.”
     Travis tried to think back to any time that Murray had actually told a joke, but he came up blank. Murray sat staring at him in his slightly unfocused but expectant way. He stretched his legs out, creeping into Travis’s space. Travis tried to look like he was returning to his work, but Murray wasn’t getting up to leave. Apparently he still wanted to talk, but just couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. Travis turned back to him.
     “So how did you meet her?”
     “Online dating service. It’s amazing, there are so many girls out there. The ones I end up with all seem to be divorced and in their 40s. But then I’m divorced and in my 50s so I guess I can’t complain.”
     “Yeah, well . . . sure.”
     Another awkward pause. Murray farted. Then more painful silence with the addition of the foul odor floating by. A mixture of egg salad and old age. Murray pointed to the picture on Travis’s desk.
     “That your wife?”
     “Yes.”
     “She’s a looker.”
     “Yes, I seem to have a weakness for good looking women.”
     “Good man.”

     Murray sat a while longer, then finally got up and left. Travis got back to his research. He took some notes on a legal pad and sketched some diagrams. The voicemails and emails piled up. He continued working until 7, then took the train home.

From the nostalgia file, the home page of Issue 1

Here is it in all its glory, the home page from Issue 1 of Legal Tilt from 1998

Professor Smirnoff - A Glass, A Window, and Some Snow

My first year Property professor had a bit of a drinking problem. One of my classmates, Lara, worked at the restaurant across the street from our law school, and would report to me each day how many vodka martinis our professor had downed at lunch before ambling back to teach class. The lectures tended to stray from the subject at hand in direct proportion to the alcohol consumed. At its peak, the professor's buzz would manifest itself in his leering interest in a few of the better looking female students, who he would ply with irrelevant and suggestive questions, much to the uncomfortable displeasure of all present.

One particular lecture stands out as the most bizarre. Our property professor had tied a good one on at lunch and was now working his way through the nuances of the rule against perpetuities. It was the beginning of winter and the sky turned strangely dark outside. As the professor was boxing himself into a logical corner, he happened to glance out the window just as a few snow flurries drifted past. Then a few more. And soon, we all followed his gaze out the window to watch the first gentle snowfall of the winter. The darkened sky added a surreal touch to what is always a lovely sight; one felt as though we were trapped inside a souvenir snow globe. The room was silent and as the minutes rolled past the professor continued to stare out the window, motionless and deep in meditation. This continued till the end of class, at which time we all quietly filed out of the room to leave the professor in his reverie.

The next day in class no mention was made of the event, I'm not sure if he remembered it. The rest of the semester continued without any more staring out the window, but the memory of that day lingered on. Many is the time I've returned to that empty classroom to stand where he stood, hoping to find what it was that had caught his eye and captured his interest. All I could see were the tops of buildings leading off to the horizon, where a tiny sliver of the lake was trapped between two skyscrapers. Fire escapes, chimneys, street lights, who knows what it was. Or maybe it was just the beauty of the first snow against the blue black sky, a nostalgic memory of winters past, and a simple desire to be out there rather than in here.

Welcome back

After, oh, about a decade hiatus, Legal Tilt is back. We'll be re-publishing some of the old favorite stories, and publishing some new stories. For those who are new here, here's the concept. True stories about the lives of real lawyers. Stop by again soon as we build this puppy into the greatest blog ever.