Community Post: Simplicity Under Trial

For fourteen years I have served as an assistant district attorney. In many ways the work was simple as far as lawyer-jobs go. I was paid by the county every two weeks no matter what. I knew what time our office opened (8:00 a.m.) and what time we called it a day (5:00, unless I was in trial, in which case all bets were off and it could be midnight.)

If the defendant was willing to plead guilty, the options were probation or pen time. How long the term of years? How large a fine should be imposed? Procedurally and logistically, it was fairly simple.

The difficulty came with the emotional toll involved with victims of violent crime -- the mothers who lost their children to violence or drug overdose or a family violence ; the children who weren’t old enough to know what the world had done to them; the innocent who had no voice.

These days, I work in a small boutique civil trial firm. The hours are longer and much less predictable. My salary depends solely on how much work I do and how many cases I can settle.

There are far more ways for people to wrong each other beyond criminal statutes. And I still worry over my clients' challenges. But the gruesome, earth-shattering facts have been replaced with mere challenges and difficulties. Money can't fix it, but it certainly helps. I no longer have images of violence and gore at the center of my attention, which frees me to give my attention to my own small children.

One friend chided me. “You didn't spend all that time in law school to handle car-wrecks!" But I reply, “but they are so SIMPLE and easily addressed compared to the horrors of what I knew before!"

Simplifying my work is an emotional survival strategy for me as I build a professional and personal life from the ground-up following a sad divorce.

Simpler work, that doesn't involve peering into the blackness of the human heart, is necessary for the good of my own soul and it directly benefits my little family.

Whether taking on the insurance companies is the highest calling there is, I have no idea. Probably not. But people injured in car accidents or whose houses were flooded or burned down need help, too, and I am much more able to save the world when I serve those who are closest to me and stop stretching beyond what I can competently sustain.

Claire is a mother of three, practicing civil trial law, after a long career as a prosecutor of violent crimes and other felonies. She enjoys reading, walking the family dog, watching little league baseball games, looking for the moral of the story and living the good life in Austin, Texas. She blogs at www.brightenthecorner.wordpress.com.

Photo by Tim Miller. Design by Jennifer Dukes Lee.