Reflecting on "Another Year in the Trenches"

This is short, and not even based on an original thought, but it is so fitting for this to be my last blog post of the year. I just read this article written by seasoned criminal defense attorney Norman Pattis. Please, take a minute (or ten) and read it.... It is profoundly insightful and even if you didn't spend an entire semester in college taking an English class on only Milton's Paradise Lost (did I mention I was an English major before lawyer-land?), and even if you're not a lawyer, it speaks to a basic deep-rooted fear that comes with being a human being: What I do may not matter.

And it's true, what I do, what we all do, may not matter. This is not a deep or profoundly original emotion for me to harbor. That possibility looms large over everything.  But in reflecting on this past year, and varying amounts of destruction I've witnessed throughout this year in my family cases, I least can leave the year knowing that the reason I am a lawyer, the reason I stay a lawyer, is because at some moment, I might matter.  I don't know Norman Pattis. He's a more experienced, wiser attorney, he's a blawgger I came across via a re-tweet on Twitter. He practices in a completely different field than I do (a field, which I might add, that I want nothing to do with).  But his observations, questions and fears are a common thread among any job where human lives are affected.  He struggles with losing a case and having to answer to a mother whose son has gone to jail. I struggle with losing a case and having to answer to a mother whose has had her rights as a parent stripped of her.  Same result, different courthouse.  And I've only been at this for a few years, I can only imagine the toll that consistently witnessesing the wrenching of families being torn apart will have on me in 20 years.  But I'm up for it. And when I'm not up for it, I'll pass it on to some fresh-faced attorney who likes Will Ferrell movies and filing lots of responses to motions for temporary orders. Oh, and the next time someone pisses and moans about the sad state of the legal profession, I'm shoving Norman's post in their face.

So with that, my New Year's Resolution, at the least overreaching one, is to keep up.  "The law is hard; I must, somehow, become harder than sorrow"- Norman Pattis