Oct. 30, 2009

            It has been a rough couple of weeks and being unemployed is difficult.  It’s not the financial aspect, or lack thereof, that makes it difficult, but it’s the feeling of uselessness that really eats away at you.  You don’t realize how much your identity is wrapped up in your job until you don’t have it anymore.  In Austin, I was an attorney and a musician…but I’m not really either of those things in Miami.  On top of all of that, last week my wallet was stolen from the gym.  It’s not really the lost cash that bothered me, but it is losing my driver’s license, my bar card, having to get new credit cards, having to cancel checks, and all the other annoyances.  The worst part about the entire situation was having to spend four hours in the DMV to get a Florida ID card because a replacement Texas license will take 45 days.  I did catch a couple of breaks though in that they didn’t take my ipod or my cell phone, and I had ordered copies of my birth certificate a few weeks earlier.  (Without a birth certificate I couldn’t get an ID and without an ID I couldn’t get a birth certificate.)  On top of that, my refrigerator broke and I was without one for about a week.

But my God is good and he is faithful.  It seems like he would give me just enough of whatever I needed to keep me from going insane…no more, but no less.  I saw a posting go up on craigslist for a temporary paralegal position and applied for that.  It was a ten week project and I figured that would give me a little income and a little time.  They set up an interview I went in and talked to them yesterday.  It turns out the firm is a large national law firm (Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C.).  The short story is that they told me I wasn’t a paralegal, but that they were looking to hire an associate attorney.  Then they bought me lunch and offered me a job this afternoon.  The deal is that I will go in working for the first month or two as a paralegal and if all goes well, they will transition me to an associate attorney within a couple of months.  I got an immediate sense of peace when I walked into the office and liked everyone immediately (that rarely happens).  I have walked in the doors of a lot of law firms that just made me feel like I couldn’t get out of there quick enough…something rotten in the state of Denmark.  But my feeling here was surprisingly peaceful.  There are three attorneys in the Miami office and I will eventually make the fourth.

The whole thing is really quite absurd on its face.  Ogletree is a large national employment and labor law firm with over 450 attorneys nationwide.  The thing about big law firms is that there really no way to get in there unless you work up through their system from law school.  Legal recruiters wouldn’t even take my resume because they told me firms never hire attorneys with their background in state government.  So I pretty much wandered in off the street, looking to work as a paralegal from a craigslist ad.  Instead of hiring me as a paralegal they offered me an attorney position after an hour or so even though (1) there are a LOT of unemployed attorneys in Miami looking for work, (2) I don’t have a Florida law license, (3) I have no experience doing employment and labor law, and (4) I really don’t have any private firm experience.  On top of that, it turns out that the partner there represents law enforcement officers in Section 1983 suits, which is what I did at the Attorney General’s Office.  The thing about that is no one in the private sector really does that type of work because there is no money in it and it is usually handled by government attorneys.

When I would pray about work and what would happen to me when I got to Miami, I prayed that God would do things in such a way that I couldn’t take credit for them.  And he was faithful to do that.  I hope this is not like the Israelites in the wilderness not trusting God and complaining that they had no meat resulting in God saying he will give them so many quail that they will choke on them.  To be honest, the thought of making that kind of a salary really scares me too.  I have always made just enough to have more than enough, never wanting for anything.  I just approach this fearfully that I may not become greedy and get sucked into a trap that I have seen many of my friends fall into.  But for the time being, life is good.  It’s not good because I have a job, but it’s good because God has once again let me see his goodness and boundless grace.

            I had an interview with a judge today at the Third Court of Appeals.  Overall I thought the interview went pretty well and lasted over three hours including lunch.  He assigned me homework in the form of three cases in which he had written opinions to be ready to “discuss.”  I though one was correct, one was correct but arguable either way, and the other was incorrect based on the facts.  When he asked, I pretty much told him just that and I think it was well received.  I really liked the judge and everything about the job, but right now I am feeling like I will probably withdraw my name from consideration because the pay is too low.  I had a false impression of how the pay scale worked based on a series of e-mails and it turns out that I would be starting at the base, as if I had just graduated from law school and hadn’t passed the bar.  If I decided to take the bar, I would receive a raise for being licensed in Florida, but the cost of taking the bar would pretty much consume the difference in the raise.  I don’t mean to be arrogant or act like I have an entitlement to a certain salary (because pretty much wherever I work, I am probably being overpaid), but he also wants a 2 year commitment.  Right now I feel that it is unwise because I think I could make that salary somewhere else without the commitment being attached.  Of course those are initial reactions and I will need a little time to think and pray about it.

            We went to the zoo this weekend and Miami really has a great zoo.  It wasn’t the biggest, but it was laid out well and really made for a great afternoon.  My observations from the zoo are as follows:

1)       The experience is better if you can discreetly follow an awkward family around with vocal children.

2)      Gorillas smell like a guys’ locker room that hasn’t been cleaned in several months.

3)      Two dollars is a reasonable price to feed the giraffes.  If the person you are with will let you put giraffe food in their hair, then I would pay twenty.

4)     Like when I was a kid, I still get excited to go in the gift shop even though there is nothing in there that I really want or need.

5)      Miami is hot and humid, even in October.

I have an interview next Monday for a job with a judge on the Third District Court of Appeal.  The down side is that it doesn’t start until December 1 and the pay in the Florida state system is surprisingly worse than Texas (I didn’t know that was really possible).  I have probably just been at the federal court too long now and gotten in my head what those clerks are paid.  At the end of the day, I would still be making more than I made at the Attorney General’s Office, though not a lot more.  Another position also opened up in one of the district judge's chambers at the federal court.  I was hoping that I might at least get interviewed for that position as well, but as each day passes it becomes less and less likely that I will be contacted.  I say that because he needs someone to start the last week of October, so I assume that he is going to be moving quickly.  The ridiculous thing is that what will probably keep me out of consideration for that job is the fact that my grades weren’t good enough in law school.  I guess they just follow you around and haunt you forever.

I went to the University of Miami Symphony concert on Friday night and heard them play Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto.  The pianist was fantastic, but I was really surprised at how weak the rest of the orchestra was.  The strings couldn’t put out any sound.  The woodwinds played out of tune the entire time, especially the double reeds.  The first clarinet stuck out any time she played because she was the only woodwind player that had a full-bodied tone.  The timpanist did not fundamentally understand (1) how to play Beethoven, (2) what timpani are supposed to sound like, (3) how to play as a member of an orchestra, and (4) how to play the instrument.  I know I am usually critical of percussion and I can’t always help it, but I have never been to a performance where I really left feeling like I disagreed with absolutely everything the performer played.  Usually there is at least something redeeming.  Hope he isn't reading this (but if you are, let's talk about a few things).

I spent Saturday at the beach and I had to remind myself that it was October.  While I'm sure I will love the weather down here this winter, I may have to move to Colorado when I am done with Miami just to regain an equilibrium of seasons.  I'm looking forward to heading back to Amarillo for Thanksgiving and getting a little bit of cool weather.  Fortunately, I left all of my coats up there before I left.

I guess I am starting to get settled in and into a routine since I haven’t written in a week.  I went to my men’s group on Tuesday night and then went to breakfast on Friday with a group of attorneys that Rick introduced me to.  Rick is one of the pastors at my church and this group of attorneys gets together every Friday morning for breakfast.  I met them last week and decided to just keep going on those Friday mornings.  I don’t particularly think it will lead to a job for me, but I enjoy the conversation.

On Friday, there was a party for one of the judges who was celebrating his tenth anniversary of his confirmation.  The judge introduced me to one of the attorneys from the US Attorney’s Office and she told me that right now they are on a hiring freeze until a new US Attorney is appointed and confirmed by the Senate.  At the present time, we only have an acting US Attorney.  So it could be some months before that changes.  I also met one of the guys who is on the short list for the US Attorney position (and by short list, I mean three people are on it).  I really enjoyed talking with him and he pretty much told me not to mess with taking the Florida bar.  He said that I couldn’t have landed in any better place than I did with the judge, but that has been the sentiment I have heard from pretty much everyone I have talked to.  I really enjoy working for her.  She is incredibly intelligent, but very humble and always a joy to be around.  I have met a couple of judges that I can tell I definitely would not like working for and every time I see them, I am thankful that I didn’t send my resume to them first.

Yesterday I went out to the Everglades and took an airboat tour to go see alligators.  It was amazing to be out there in the swamp and just think that there is about four million acres of this miserable stuff, with nothing but gators and snakes living there.  I had heard that alligators smell bad, but my experience is that the tour guides smell way worse than the alligators do.  There was the awkwardness too of this lady who was breast feeding her kid on the airboat.  I guess I don’t generally have a problem with that, but (1) we were on a crowded boat, (2) there wasn’t anything discreet about it when she just popped it out in the middle of everything, and (3) this kid was clearly too old to be breast feeding.  On the upside, it did make the kid stop crying.