The Muse

Most other lawyers find this hard to believe, but I love legal writing, particularly big briefs that analyze the whole case, pick apart all of the evidence, and present the big picture for the court. It's like a puzzle. It's incredibly satisfying to be struggling to respond to an argument the other side makes, and then suddenly you find that smoking gun, that document or that piece of testimony they've overlooked, that blows their theory out the water. Or a way to explain the law to the court in a way that makes it obvious that the other side is full of shit. It's a huge rush for me.

I'm very competitive by nature, and that level of competitiveness is fueled by the type of law practice I'm in. Special education litigation is, for obvious reasons, emotionally charged. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to have a disabled child. Parents and their lawyers tend to vilify the school side and their lawyers (I have been personally sued by a parent/attorney who felt that in representing my school district client, I was deliberately discriminating against her child), so their pleadings tend to be full of accusations about how evil and heartless the school districts and their counsel are. As if we sit around thinking of new and creative ways to screw poor little crippled children out of the educational services they're entitled to, as we cackle wildly and rub our hands with glee. Throw in the stress inherent in litigation, and you've got yourself a nice stew of contentiousness.

Earlier this week I was suffering from writer's block. I've been working on a big brief in a big case for work, and even though I knew exactly what the brief needed to say, I got mentally locked up. I couldn't decide how to organize the thing, whether to focus on one argument or another, and how to incorporate another part of the case that isn't the point of the brief but needs to be mentioned all the same.

It happens from time to time. My role in my firm is The Writer -- I do all of the appellate briefing and most of the trial briefing as well. And on bigger briefs that take a long time, sometimes I'll get so into it that I'm too close. I just need to step away for half a day or so and whatever it was that was confounding me resolves itself. And then The Muse is with me again.

The Muse is what makes lawyering fun. The Muse takes me effortlessly from argument to argument, helps me find just the right way to phrase things, to emphasize law and evidence, and to make it all accessible to a judge who will never understand special education law (which is complicated and difficult) as well as I do.

In typical fashion, the other side's pleadings in the case I'm working on have been full of vitriol and hyperbole, if not much substance. I knew exactly how to respond on the merits, but I was having trouble with the organization.

But then yesterday the smoke cleared, the Muse appeared, and all of a sudden I was rolling. The organizational issues resolved themselves with ease. New ways of demonstrating the inanity of the other side's arguments were popping into my brain almost faster than I could process them. I finished the brief, feeling fired up and ready to do battle.

Which is the one problem with The Muse. She appears when you need her, but then she doesn't leave. I'm still feeling fired up and ready to battle, wanting to write write write... but I'm done.

I guess I'll clean my office.