The Associate

"You had to quit?"

"Yep. I was drinking too much, so I quit."

"Rehab, AA, all that stuff?" Everett asked.

"No. I saw a counselor, and he convinced me that the drinking would only get worse. I went cold turkey and have never looked back."

"That’s awesome," Tim said as he drained the pint of ale.

"I don’t drink either," Dale said. "But after today, I’m hitting the bottle." From someone with absolutely no sense of humor, this declaration was quite funny. After a good laugh, they settled into a rehash of their first day. Tim had billed 8.6 hours reading the legislative history of an old New York law aimed at discouraging class action lawsuits. Everett had billed 9 hours reading leases. But Kyle and Dale won the game with their descriptions of the dungeon and its thirty-five thousand files.

When their drinks arrived, they toasted Placid Mortgage and the 400,000 foreclosures it had precipitated. They toasted Tabor, who had vowed to stay at his desk until midnight. They toasted Scully & Pershing and its wonderful beginning salaries. Halfway through the martini, the gin hit Dale’s mushy brain and she began giggling. When she ordered a second, Kyle excused himself and walked home.

AT 5:30 ON Tuesday, Kyle was wrapping up his second day in the dungeon and mentally drafting his letter of resignation. He would happily tell Bennie to go to hell, and he would happily face Elaine and her rape claim in a courtroom in Pittsburgh. Anything would be better than what he was enduring.

He had survived the day by continually repeating the mantra "But they’re paying me $200,000 a year."

But by 5:30, he didn’t care what they were paying him. His FirmFone pinged with an e-mail, from Doug Peckham, and it read, "Kyle, need some help. My office. Now if possible."

He forgot his letter of resignation, jumped to his feet, and bolted for the door. To Dale he said as he dashed by, "Gotta run see Doug Peckham, a litigation partner. He’s got a project." If this sounded cruel, then so be it. If it was boasting, he didn’t care. She looked shocked and wounded, but he left her there, all alone in the Placid dungeon. He ran down two flights of stairs and was out of breath when he walked through Peckham’s open door. The partner was on the phone, standing, fidgeting, and he waved Kyle into a fine leather chair across from his desk. When he signed off with a "You’re a moron, Slade, a true moron," he looked at Kyle, forced a smile, and said, "So how’s it going so far?"

"Document Review." Nothing else needed to be said.

"Sorry about that, but we all suffered through it. Look, I need a hand here. You up to it?" Peckham fell violently into his chair and began rocking, thrusting himself back and forth without taking his eyes off Kyle.

"Anything. Right now I’ll shine your shoes."

"They’re shined. Gotta case here in the Southern District of New York, a big one. We’re defending Barx in a class action filed by some folks who took their heartworm pills and eventually croaked. Big, messy, complicated case that’s raging in a number of states. We go before Judge Cafferty on Thursday morning. You know him?"

I’ve been here two days, Kyle almost blurted. I don’t know anybody. "No."

"Caffeine Cafferty. He’s got some chemical imbalance that keeps him up all night and all day, and when he’s off his meds, he calls up lawyers and screams at them because the cases are moving so slowly. When he’s on his meds, he yells, too, but doesn’t swear as much. Anyway, his schedule is called the Rocket Docket because he moves things along. Good judge, but a real pain in the ass. Anyway, this case has dragged on, and now he’s threatening to send it to another jurisdiction."

Kyle was scribbling notes as fast as possible. At the first break in the narrative, he said, "Heartworms?"

"Actually, it’s a drug that eats away plaque in the major blood vessels, including the left and right ventricles. From a medical point of view, it’s complicated and nothing you should worry about. We have two partners with medical degrees handling that aspect of the case. Four partners total, as well as ten associates. I’m lead counsel." He said this with far too much smugness. Then he jumped to his feet and lumbered over to the window for a quick look at the city. His white starched shirt was oversized and did a nice job of hiding his bulbous physique.

Bennie’s summary had been typically to the point. Peckham’s first marriage broke up thirteen months after he joined Scully & Pershing fresh out of Yale. His current wife was a lawyer who was a partner in a firm down the street. She, too, worked long hours. There were two small children. Their apartment on the Upper West Side was appraised for $3.5 million, and they owned the obligatory house in the Hamptons.

Last year Doug earned $1.3 million; his wife, $1.2 million. He was regarded as a top litigator whose specialty was defending big pharmaceuticals, though he rarely went to trial. Six years earlier he was on the losing end of a major case involving a painkiller that caused suicides, at least in the opinion of the jury. Scully & Pershing sent him to a spa in Italy for a two-week treatment.

"Cafferty wants to get rid of the case," he said, stretching a sore back. "We, of course, will fight that. But, truthfully, I would rather see it in another jurisdiction. There are four possibilities  –  Duval County, Florida; downtown Memphis; a rural county in Nebraska called Fillmore; or Des Plaines, Illinois. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to research these four jurisdictions." He fell into his chair again and began rocking. "I need to know what juries do there. What are the verdicts? How do big companies fare in these places? Now, there are several jury research outfits that sell their data, and we subscribe to all of it, but it’s not always accurate. Lots of numbers but not a lot of useful info. You gotta dig and dig. You gotta call lawyers in these four places and find the dirt. Are you in, Kyle?"

As if he had a choice. "Sure. Sounds great."

"I wouldn’t call it great. I need this by 7:30 Thursday morning. Have you pulled an all-nighter yet?"

"No. I’ve only been here for – "

"Right, right. Well, get to work. Memo form, but nothing fancy. We’ll meet here at 7:30 on Thursday with two other associates. You’ll have ten minutes to do your summary. Anything else?"

"Not right now."

"I’ll be here until ten tonight, so zip me a note if you need something."

"Thanks, and thanks for getting me out of Document Review."

"What a waste."

The desk phone was ringing as Kyle hustled out of the office. He went straight to the cube, grabbed his laptop, and raced off to the firm’s cavernous main library on the thirty-ninth floor. There were at least four smaller libraries scattered throughout, but Kyle had yet to find them.

He could not remember being so excited over a research project. It was a real case, with deadlines and an angry judge and strategic decisions in the air. The memo he was about to prepare would be read and relied on by real lawyers in the heat of battle.

Kyle almost felt sorry for the poor rookies left behind in Document Review. But he knew he’d be back there soon enough. He forgot dinner until almost 10:00 p.m., when he ate a cold sandwich from a machine while reading jury research. With no sleeping bag at hand, he left the library at midnight  –  there were at least twenty associates still there  –  and took a cab to his apartment. He slept four hours, then made the thirty-minute walk back to Broad Street in only twenty-two minutes. He was not about to start gaining weight. The firm’s private gym on the fortieth floor was a joke because it was eternally empty. A few of the secretaries used it during lunch, but no lawyer would be caught dead there.