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