Ask Harry Wilson

speaking of which, has anyone heard from Tara recently? @thebestlieisthetruth

Learning the law is learning a theory of power. Law can’t change everything, humanity will always spill around the corners, but law is the gardener who fertilizes and trims and tries to root out the weeds. I don’t think I fully understood that I was learning how to wield power in law school, because the details of how to do it are in rigorous analysis and historical context, things you have to understand and memorize and then apply to new situations. But what you’re getting is an education on the paradigms that power follows and has historically followed. You’re learning how to take historical and traditional forms of power and use them on modern situations.

And when you get into actual practice, that’s when you learn how to put that power into everyday life. You learn how to write the stupid little special forms and find how Susan the judge’s secretary likes to set cases and how to tease out good outcomes from people who are supposed to oppose you.

And your power is reinforced in so many ways. If a client complains in court about your incompetence, truly, truly, the best response is not to say a word. Because here’s what will happen: the judge will assume the client is a huge pain in the ass who didn’t listen, and you not defending yourself will be taken as a gesture of courtesy and classiness, on top of a preservation of attorney/client confidentiality when the client has effectively waived that confidentiality in open court.

You can even send signals to the judge regarding this without saying anything at all — if you say “I’m not asking to be removed from this case, but my client would like to make a request” it’s the strongest possible signal that you want the judge to ignore them because you think you’re doing a good job and you don’t want to be relieved. If you say “Per my client’s request, I’m asking that I be removed from this case” you’re softening it a little but still signaling that you’re good to go whatever the judge decides, that maybe you let your client criticize you in court because you think they need to get it out of their system, or even that you want the judge to straighten them out on a few points of law. “Unfortunately, judge, there has been an irreparable breakdown of the attorney/client relationship” = fucking get me OUT of here.

Notice in none of these scenarios is there a possibility of me being reprimanded because the client thinks I did a bad job. Even if I outright say “this is my fault, judge, I did a bad job here” the judge will nod and thank me for my honesty and say that I’m a great attorney and that sometimes shit happens.

That’s just the smallest example of how attorneys affirm each other. It’s unprofessional to shittalk other lawyers, so we don’t do that in front of our clients; I make an exception about prosecutors, usually geared towards making the client laugh with how I describe them, but if a client is complaining about an attorney I know I’ll most often compliment that attorney with something I know they do well. “He may have a hard time answering the phone but that guy will find any technicality. He loves loopholes.” “She might be stiff and distant, but you haven’t seen her argue a motion; she’s got your back.” Etc. it’s just how it’s done.

I’ve kind of swerved from my original point. This week I sent a letter to a hospital saying they have to bring me video footage of something or give a damn good reason why or be charged/fined: a subpoena duces tecum. No judge has to approve this. A judge could stop me, but the judge probably won’t even review it until the court date. And at that point, if the judge thinks my request is frivolous, he’s still going to hold the hospital to it, because subpoenas are serious business and that’s the power of the court they would be disobeying if they didn’t do it. The hospital can file to quash, but they better get an attorney on the line, or else they won’t say the right magic words.

I just… did this. Because I thought it was the right move for my client. I even barely did anything: I sent a request to our investigators and paralegals, and the investigator found out exactly who to send it to, and the paralegal wrote the SDT, and the investigator took it by hand and served it on the hospital. All I did was sign to cast the spell that they had written up and prepared.

This ends up translating to a level of confidence in daily life. I’m way more likely to know when technically nobody can stop me from doing x or y, and I know enough police officers to know exactly how to talk to them to make them go away. I know I have personal power in the situation that may be greater than theirs over the long term, even in the short term their guns can win. If anyone committed a crime against me in my old jurisdiction, which was small, I would have an insane advantage in any court hearing.

It’s not hard for me personally to remember that my power over people REQUIRES me to approach them with courtesy and grace, and I establish first thing in every client meeting that my job is to respect them and their priorities. My conscience is extraordinarily strong. This whole process has cultivated my conscience and refined it. I would not be able to live within my skin if I didn’t exercise power for the benefit of people who have no voice.

(Maybe this is why I’m so comfortable talking about and challenging my personal privilege as a white person — like, yeah, that’s also part of it, and the correct response is to use it to elevate the voices and stories of those who don’t have that privilege. I have so much practice doing that as an attorney that it’s a learned skill by this point.)

I have a hard time remembering what I was like before all this. I think more uncomfortable confronting privilege. I think impatient to stop learning and start Doing.

I wonder how much of my confidence now is from doing a lot of failing, losing, and embarrassing myself (all true) and having to pick myself up out of the trash and go in to work again the next day, and how much is that due to my position and my power there were extremely minimal consequences to me personally as a result of those failures. It’s shocking to start to understand how bullet-resistant you are in particular contexts. As long as you move within the rules. As long as you don’t push the wrong way.

God, and I can’t forget soft power skills. How to small talk someone into doing what I want. I’m so good at persuasion now that I talked my ass into a house seller choosing me over a full cash offer. I thought, hell I’m always asking people to let criminals onto the streets, this is easy — and it WAS.

She’s retired now, but she still loves wizards. I’m giving her a Gandalf-themed fountain pen for Christmas this year. It matches her beautiful flowing silver hair.

- @fuckyeahspiritsruse (Breanna)

Well, I don't know if you can relate to this at all, but before Leverage came along, I didn't exactly have very many chances to exercise the more frivolous side of my personality. There's a lot of pressure involved in corporate law. Up and coming evil lawyers sometimes adopt a sort of "work hard, play hard," strategy to deal with it. Not me so much, but some of the people that I knew. And if you're going to party hard in NOLA, Mardi Gras is the time to do it. I used to go down to the big parade every year with a pack of other law students, dress up, have a bit too much to drink, compete to see who could fit the largest collection of beads around our necks, be loud and young and silly and generally let off some steam.

Wow, I was young back then. And those shorts are a little bit shorter than what I remembered!

@crimeisfun are you hearing this shit

- @fuckyeahspiritsruse (Breanna)

Well, I don't know if you can relate to this at all, but before Leverage came along, I didn't exactly have very many chances to exercise the more frivolous side of my personality. There's a lot of pressure involved in corporate law. Up and coming evil lawyers sometimes adopt a sort of "work hard, play hard," strategy to deal with it. Not me so much, but some of the people that I knew. And if you're going to party hard in NOLA, Mardi Gras is the time to do it. I used to go down to the big parade every year with a pack of other law students, dress up, have a bit too much to drink, compete to see who could fit the largest collection of beads around our necks, be loud and young and silly and generally let off some steam.

Wow, I was young back then. And those shorts are a little bit shorter than what I remembered!

- @fuckyeahspiritsruse (Breanna)

Well, I don't know if you can relate to this at all, but before Leverage came along, I didn't exactly have very many chances to exercise the more frivolous side of my personality. There's a lot of pressure involved in corporate law. Up and coming evil lawyers sometimes adopt a sort of "work hard, play hard," strategy to deal with it. Not me so much, but some of the people that I knew. And if you're going to party hard in NOLA, Mardi Gras is the time to do it. I used to go down to the big parade every year with a pack of other law students, dress up, have a bit too much to drink, compete to see who could fit the largest collection of beads around our necks, be loud and young and silly and generally let off some steam.

Wow, I was young back then. And those shorts are a little bit shorter than what I remembered!