{"id":3726,"date":"2011-07-16T15:11:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-16T19:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=3726"},"modified":"2012-03-27T13:31:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T17:31:13","slug":"managing-your-lawyer-communications-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=3726","title":{"rendered":"Communicating with lawyers: in court"},"content":{"rendered":"

… On such an afternoon, the various solicitors….ought to be…ranged in a line, in a long matted well…between the registrar\u2019s red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters\u2019 reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them \u2014 Charles Dickens, Bleak House<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

If you’ve never been in a contemporary civil courtroom during a day and time when status conferences (a\/k\/a compliance conferences) are scheduled, read that Dickens quote above. Minus silk, high colors, other 19th century appurtenances and English haberdashery, it’s precisely the same ambiance and throb.<\/p>\n

So if you don’t know what your lawyer looks like \u2014 and as I said the other day, I didn’t \u2014 you become, as I did, part of the judicial throng, peering intently into faces, raising eyebrows, calling out, “Are you from Foot Lawyers, PC?”<\/p>\n

I found Nick on my second try. He looked like a “Nick.” At first, he thought I was opposing counsel. Only after a few minutes did we get it straightened out that I was his actual client.<\/p>\n

Then we caught up on a lot of things: Rupert Murdoch, the proposed secession of southern California from California\u00a0\u2014 and the erstwhile secession of New York City from New York State during which, a number of years ago when the hope once again swelled in our downstate bosoms, and Staten Island decided it didn’t want to join the other four boroughs, most of us thought about that for about two seconds and said, “Who cares?” and a wit remarked, “Staten Island announcing it wants to leave NYC is like Gummo announcing he’s going to leave the Marx Brothers.”<\/p>\n

Oh, yeah, we did cover matters concerning my case. I learned that:<\/p>\n