So for a couple of days there I was getting little post-it notes left in my desk or in the middle of a stack of papers, one even on the door to my office, that said "BeckyTurtle, I know your secret" or "BeckyTurtle, you look cute today," or "BeckyTurtle, I know what you're thinking."

They used the name "BeckyTurtle" not my real name. Which means only one thing.

Anyway the notes have stopped but I am not sure who it was, or who else knows, or who else might have seen the notes, or what is going on.

If you're the person who was leaving the notes, please email me. I want to talk to you.
- posted by Blogger @ 7:25 AM (2) comments

 
Things are getting pretty weird here. I am not sure what I should say about it.

I get the feeling someone has been reading this, is about all I should say. Maybe I take it down.

Work is in a funny stressful phase where we all have to pretend not to be stressed because the summer associates are here and we need to let them think the whole profession is fun and games.


One of the summer associates paid for his first two years of tuition at a top 10 law school through online gambling. He makes a ton of money betting on these offshore casino sites, like on the WNBA and ice hockey and things. Not baseball or football though. He's either going to be a lawyer or do this professionally. Interesting.
- posted by Blogger @ 7:43 PM (0) comments

 
When I first started at the firm, I'd been here maybe six or seven months and I got sent to do a closing for a small business that I didn't know anything about. The seller was a tennis buddy of one of the partners here -- actually, the guy who keeled over at my desk a couple of weeks ago. He's doing much better, and has even come in a couple of times, escorted by his worried wife. He's not working though -- it was just to visit, and to divvy up a bunch of work. Anyway. It was his wife's tennis buddy, and it was just a little sale, and the deal was pretty easy and so the partner's approach was pretty laid back, and on the morning of the closing he got called into a crisis with the financing of this very very very big supermarket deal he was on. So he kind of ran into my office and handed me a redwell and told me to show up at a firm I'd never heard of for a 2:30 closing.

Of course I panicked because I didn't know what I was doing. I ended up calling a fifth-year associate about four times during the closing itself, because the buyers counsel kept asking me questions I didn't know the answer to. I would excuse myself as professionally as I could, walk out into the hall, and call him on the cell, trying really hard to remember exactly what I needed to ask. It was very embarrassing. Everyone knew I was an inexperienced idiot, but I was trying so hard not to let anyone know that I hadn't done this before. I mean, looking back on it it's pretty embarrassing. There really wasn't much for me to do at all. But the partner's file was a mess, and there were a couple of documents he didn't have, and of course I had no common sense or experience or judgment so I would panic every time the buyer's counsel asked for something that wasn't clearly labeled with the exact words he would ask for it in. (Like, he asked for the "noncompete" and I didn't feel completely confident that the "Agreement of Nonsolicitation and Noncompetition" was the right one.)

The seller got sort of stressed out because of how serious and nervous I was. Buyer's counsel was pretty nice, though -- an experienced lawyer from a small firm. I should have loosened up and joked around with him, but I didn't know if that would be really bad to do. Anyway, he sort of calmed the seller down whenever I would leave the room. And the Buyer himself was so excited to do the deal. He brought shiny silver dollars for everyone in the room -- Seller, Bank, Bank's counsel, his attorney, and me. That was pretty cool.

I've lost count of how many closings I've been to since then, but that one was so fresh and terrifying, and I was so relieved when it was over, and the silver dollar made it all feel like a big deal, that it will always seem important. Even though it was just a rinkydink little franchise.
- posted by Blogger @ 6:34 PM (0) comments

 
Hmmmm. I'm not really sure what to do about this. I was playing around with this site counter thing and you can tell what websites people were looking at you from. One person found me by looking at Google and searching "pale flabby belly" which doesn't really sound like me, although I'm not as tan as I'd like to be right now. But you try working inside as much as I do and looking better, and then we'll talk. Anyway, I discovered a guy who has linked to my site, which is nice, but he's also linked to my boss's site, which I've been reading on the sly with much amusement. Which means it's not going to be long before someone, like my boss, figures out that I'm here blogging too.

Which I don't know if he can say anything about it, since he's doing it too. And I know some of the skeletons in his closet, let's just leave it at that, so if I had to I guess I could offer up some threats of my own. But still it makes me nervous.
- posted by Blogger @ 9:58 AM (0) comments

 
Attention summer associates:

If you don't know how to dress, you should really ask someone who does before you show up at your summer job. And it shouldn't be your mom, because she doesn't know.

Or you should go work in Boston or DC, where it seems like you can get away with, well, looking a lot less put together. It doesn't fly here, that's for sure.
- posted by Blogger @ 9:51 AM (0) comments

 
Here's another test post. I was surfing around some law blogs and found one called Memory's Outbox and noticed that he said you can let people leave comments so I looked and lo and behold I found a button that seems to do so. I don't know if it will work or not but it's worth a try.

Now I know there are people reading what I write you can actually talk back if you want. Be nice though, or I'm not going to tell you anything interesting. Maybe it's not that interesting even now. I don't care, I'm telling this stuff because it's just about all I've got to tell, these days.
- posted by Blogger @ 3:39 PM (0) comments

 
There's this great rumor at the firm that I am proud to have helped start, a couple of years ago, with one of the associates (now a partner) in Tax. (Isn't it wierd how tax folks, who should be the geekiest ones, turn out to be really fun? IP lawyers too -- way cooler than you'd initially think. It's the ERISA and the environmental lawyers who are a lot less interesting. And health care people seem more uptight than the rest. I don't know if it's universally true but its definitely true here, and a couple of my law school classmates confirm it at their firms.) Anyway, back to the rumor. There's a legend of "the blackball" that I started at a summer associates cocktail party two or three summers ago, that's kind of taken on a life of its own. I don't remember how it originated, but I ended up telling one of the summers that they didn't have to worry about getting the blackball and over the course of the next week three of them separately came to me and asked me about the blackball, and one came to my buddy in Tax and asked him, and we got a gleam in our eyes over lunch one day and the whole thing sprouted. I embellished the story over time so now this is our story:

After your first year, every year you're at the firm you get one "blackball point" per year. So second years have one point, third years have two points, etc. Partners, any partner, get 10 points, and that's a blackball. We tell the summers (or occasionally a real wanker of a lateral, I can think of one who actually believes in the blackball system) that in any year you have the choice of using your blackball points on anyone who is being considered for a job here, or who is having an annual review done. Since all of that takes place around August or September, we can use blackball points on summer associates or regular associates. We tell the summers, as if to comfort them, that it's rare that people waste their blackball points on a summer, because it's better to save up another year and hit them harder after they start as an associate, when you've got an extra blackball point to count in the vote. Plus, we tell them, it's hard, though not impossible, to annoy anyone in a summer that much more than some of the annoying folks who are here all the time. The partners might get more than 10 points with seniority, but all partners definitely get 10 points, and (we're fuzzy about this part) we think, but can't confirm, that 10 is definitely enough to get rid of someone. So if three fourth-years have it in for you, well, you'd better hope there's not anyone else willing to cast a blackball vote. Enough people are in on the blackball thing that it's got reasonable credibility among some of the first and second year associates, plus the lateral that a bunch of us don't like. And of course if someone asks about it and gets an "I don't know what you're talking about" response they think it just means they've been blackballed or they're being fed a line.

These little games get us through some of the really late nights. If you're not working at a big firm you probably think this is wacko, but trust me. It makes the time pass, and it's innocent fun.

- posted by Blogger @ 2:50 PM (0) comments

 
Okay, now that I know people are reading this with my handy new site counter I guess I should tell you what my deal is: I am a sixth year corporate lawyer somewhere in California. I am thirty three years old, single, no kids (yet. Maybe ever, although my mom is badgering me). There's a guy in the firm I sometimes fool around with but it's not like a steady thing, especially since he's married. Which is usually just fine with me -- I get the fun part without having to deal with his dry cleaning and all that crap. I used to be a runner but not so much these days. I like my job okay but sometimes it gets to me. This blog is where I vent. My name is not really Becky. From now on I won't use anyone's real names or even real initials on this blog because I don't want to be found out. I might go back and change people's names just in case. Please don't try to figure out who I am or where I work.

There's a partner in my firm who has a blog, and nobody but me knows its him. He does NOT know that I have a blog, and I am not going to link to him in case he figures it out. Not that he could do anything, I mean, it seems like we would cancel each other out, right? But it just sounds like a controversy I do not want in my career just now. I'm doing pretty good, and I haven't gotten any signals that partnership is a long shot for me and I don't want to screw that up. Mostly I don't think people here even know what blogs are. I didn't until a couple of months ago. They're pretty cool and now I check up on a handful a couple of times a week or so. It's kind of addictive. So is writing in it, although sometimes things get too crazy here and I sort of forget about it or just want to stare out the window instead of writing. I'm on the city side of the building not the ocean side but it's still a pretty nice view.
- posted by Blogger @ 1:49 PM (0) comments

 
I don't think it worked.

Wow -- it did work. It's the next day. And 15 people have visited. Cool!! Hi guys. I wonder who you are? I wonder if you're lawyers? I wonder if I know any of you? If I do, I wonder if you know me?

I guess I better watch what I say a little more.
- posted by Blogger @ 7:35 PM (0) comments

 
This is a test post. Ethan is here in the office killing time before a date and promised me he would install the site counter. Which he said would be easy but which has taken a pretty long time for something easy. Now let's see if it works.
- posted by Blogger @ 7:32 PM (1) comments

 
The first batch of summer associates are getting here next week, and then I guess we'll be getting another bunch of them a couple of weeks after that. I can't really remember. There are the usual office scrambles in preparation for their arrival. L from human resources stuck her head in my office this afternoon trying to see if I needed my second chair. Yes, I need my second chair. Even if it's covered up with a stack of papers. I'm a sixth year associate, I'm not giving up my second chair just to cover the butts of the recruiting team who didn't bother to count up the right number of chairs for the summer class they've been working on bringing in for the past six months. It's ridiculous. Somehow there's always this sudden realization that we have more or fewer summers than we'd planned offices for and this frantic shuffling around of desks and rearranging of a corner of the library and I wonder, you know, why does it happen every year and why is it always such a scramble? And don't the recruiters know these summers won't know the difference, and won't care?

There's the usual griping by the assistants about who's assigned to support summers and who isn't (and how come they are never told what the deal is going to be until a day or two before the summers arrive) and whether it's fair and whether the summers are guys or girls and whether they're cute and whether they're the smart ones or the dumb ones. (The dumb ones are actually much easier to support than the smart ones, is the word in the assistant pool.) Helen's in the midst of all this so I get the rundown on how these summers act to the staff, which I will occasionally make sure the hiring partner knows, if it's egregious or extra sweet or something. Actually I'm not sure anyone cares except the staff if you're extra sweet to the staff. And actually I'm not sure if the hiring partner cares that much if you're egregiously obnoxious to the staff -- everyone has gotten an offer here for at least the past few summers, I think, unless I'm forgetting someone. But trust me, I know who from the last two or three summer classes Helen and her posse of support staff friends think is a total asshole, and I'll give Helen a wink and call them up if I have an especially boring and nitpicky rush assignment for an especially jerky client. So even though it probably won't affect your offer, it'll affect your life to be a jerk to the staff. I also take no pity, though, on the summers who are insincerely, ass-kissingly, ingratiatingly nice to the staff. That gets you less respect and more abuse from me and Helen and her pals than just being a straightforward asshole.

I didn't go to very many of our recruiting parties this year so I can't remember if there's anyone particularly good looking showing up for the summer. A couple of the tax guys and one of the other corporate junior partners and two of the coolest of the paralegals and take bets on which summer associate a certain estate planning partner is going to end up dirty dancing with at the midsummer party, and which summer associate is going to cause the most gossip, and which one is going to be the one we're most outraged about if they get an offer. And for those of us who are single, which of us will be the first to kiss a summer associate. We have to place our bets in the first week they get here, and it's funny because it's not that easy to predict. But it makes the summer pretty entertaining because we act all friendly and we go out to lunch with them and try to instigate things to make the betting pool go our way.
- posted by Blogger @ 4:59 PM (0) comments

 
This firm pays 3/4 of the cost of a pretty swanky gym membership. It starts out at half and for partners the firm pays the whole cost. It's a pretty nice perk -- when I've thought about backing off and going to a bank or a VC firm it's not just the pay cut that makes me think twice about it, it's the gym membership. Because I've gotten pretty used to the place -- an ordinary gym just wouldn't compare -- but there's no way I'd ever step up and pay the whole cost myself, especially if I was working on a lower salary. Anyway, I manage to go only a couple of times during the week and usually one weekend day I take a class: yoga or Pilates or sometimes spinning. I was hooked on spinning for a while but haven't done it in a bit.

Usually I go mid to late afternoon, if I've passed along a set of drafts to a partner who is going to review them and get them back to me on his way out of the office around seven or so, I know I have a couple of hours to kill before they're ready for me. Today I went earlier because I had a lag and I knew my afternoon would be a mess. Anyway it's not unusual to see a celebrity or two there, this being LA and all, but today I was on the elliptical trainer next to Calista Flockhart. !! She really is tiny. She asked me what time it was, but otherwise I didn't talk to her. I should have told her how much I used to love Ally McBeal.
- posted by Blogger @ 12:34 PM (0) comments

 
Coming in after a weekday out of the office is why I don't take weekdays off very often. Like, never. And why in the last four years I've not taken more than three days in a row off, and only then to go to weddings. It's just too hard to recover.

Four of us girlfriends from college made a vow we'd take a trip at least once a year to stay in touch. I've missed the last two; they came out to California to be with me last year, but I was working on a deal so I only got to spend a day and a half with them.
- posted by Blogger @ 9:51 AM (0) comments

 
I didn't go into work today. I woke up this morning with a migraine, which might have been because I ate nuts last night. I don't get migraines as much as I used to -- thank God! I don't know if nuts are what triggers them -- I went through all these tests a few years ago and got really inconclusive and unsatisfying answers, or non-answers, from the doctor. But I sort of have my own hypothesis that nuts might be one of the triggers.

Anyway I started feeling human around 10 AM so I decided I would play hooky and take myself to the beach. But while I was driving to the beach I decided to go shopping instead and took myself to Bloomingdale's. I'm not liking my butt right now so I skipped the clothing section and went right for shoes and got a couple of good pairs. Check these out, just for fun. And these, which I think I'll enjoy wearing to work. And I had to have these. There's nothing like shoes to make a girl feel good again.

So then I was heading to the jewelry counter and lo and behold who did I see there but S. And he does look noticeably better after his little bit surgery, let me tell you. He grinned when he saw me because he knew he'd caught me at hooky, which I didn't even try to hide. It's not like I don't have anything to hang over his head. He was buying jewelry for his wife. HA. Guilty conscience. The ironic thing is he asked me to help him pick something out for her. I picked out a sort of ugly bracelet, and convinced him that she would love it. And I batted my eyelashes and told him what a good job the plastic surgeon had done and he bought me a pair of earrings. Nice ones. Nicer than the bracelet, that's for sure.

So now I'm home, with a pretty good haul from Bloomie's and I'm going to go for a run and then maybe to the beach after all.
- posted by Blogger @ 1:41 PM (0) comments

 
Finally I'm breathing again. We closed two deals last week and it was madness. I tried to post a couple of times but the screen kept freezing -- I could see what I had written but it didn't publish. And then when I went back to screw around with it those posts got deleted. It wasn't very interesting -- just complaining about work. Helen's not being transferred but her friend is, so she was kind of pissy to me for a couple of days, which when there is a deal about to close is not very cool.

Anyway things are a bit quieter right now. I've got a million little things on my desk that I pushed aside last week to push through the deals but my hours are way up and none of these little things are urgent so I'm playing around a bit.

Been reading the blog of the partner here. He says he got elective surgery over the weekend. I haven't seen him yet today but I wonder what he had done. Maybe love handles tucked. He's not too bad looking as far as partners go, actually. A lot of them get to be decidedly pear shaped the longer they work here, like their chest kind of slid down into their belly. This guy's chest is still a chest. I try to keep in shape by running at least 10 miles a week, although last week I only got six in because it was so hectic. When I was in law school I did a couple of marathons a year. I used to be in great shape, but if you look around here the people who are the best looking are definitely the assistants or maybe the associates right out of law school who haven't gained their 15 pounds and gotten the sleep-deprived pale flabby look of a seasoned lawyer.

Maybe I'll start tanning a little bit.
- posted by Blogger @ 11:42 AM (0) comments