Commentary: The uncompared life 

It was December 2010. The years already had passed. I was no longer the young avenger in the courtrooms or client boardrooms I frequented. I was older than the majority of attorneys I would run into in the courthouse. I had more years under my belt than those sitting across the closing tables from me. It was then that I first mused that my skill of vanquishing any thought that I may actually be “old” from my brain was being significantly challenged. I blamed the apparent breakdown of the law of comparisons.

As my mind wandered and pondered, I thought of all of the things that those of us who already remembered the “good old days” of the 1980s and ’90s thought took too long in 2010 — or involved too many obstacles or too many rules, but which newer practitioners accepted as the norm because it was all they had ever known. (Things such as e-discovery retention policies, dual-language court filings, redacting “sensitive” information about minors from federal filings – things that I admit I relied on younger attorneys to remember to do.) I thought of the then-new use of tablets (back then they were just called “iPads”), the pervasive iPods, and how computer research had become the substitute for — rather than an addition to — the “good old books” and key digests. 

It was then that my mind’s eye saw once again, this time with renewed understanding, the conversation I’d had with an “older” lawyer during my first year as an attorney. To today’s reader, he would sound like a fictional character, talking about things that most assuredly were fake news. No lawyer could ever have practiced the way he claimed he and his brethren had. The older lawyer had told me that, in his earlier days, he had worked in a world without central air conditioning and photocopiers. He swore that the invention of these two conveniences had increased the burdens on attorneys more than any other thing. Before air conditioning, he explained, you had to work with your windows open and the winds breezing through your office. If documents got too long, you couldn’t keep the pages from blowing around your office, so people would end their discourse sooner. Similarly, back in the days before photocopiers, anytime you had to change something you’d written, you’d have to rewrite the entire document and then use carbon paper or manual reproduction to make your copies — again, briefs and agreements stayed shorter 

I remember wondering if the older lawyer had been right to “blame” such machinery, and I had concluded he very well may have been right. I thought about the birth of the computer and word-processing software, and how those inventions had exacerbated the situation. I’d chuckled, as I returned to my office to continue drafting my 65-page memorandum in opposition to summary judgment. I knew what I knew, and I was fine with it.  

Today, with the practice of law inundated by even more documents, the proliferation of texting and messaging platforms, social media outlets, informational gathering and even more “documents,” the practice of law has evolved into keyword searches and agreed-upon protocols. With the pandemic, the trip to the courtroom has been replaced by a trip to the office or home Zoom studio. The coat and tie is now joined by a mask. Depositions by Zoom — in which an objection cannot be shouted over the question or the deponent’s answer begun too quickly because the software won’t allow two people to speak at the same time — are the infuriating norm. These things bother and confound me. When I speak to the newly minted lawyers, however, they look at me with the same patronizing gaze that I’d probably given that older lawyer in my first year of practice.

This week, it will be December 2020. A decade will have passed since my last contemplation of aging and the law of comparisons. Am I 10 years older? Do I have to admit it? As I think about today’s younger lawyers and the way they surf through the circumstances presented —  never even considering a day without Zoom, let alone one without air-conditioning — I realize the answer remains the same: The shortest road to happiness is simply having nothing with which to compare your life.

© 2020 Under Analysis distribution LLC. Charles Kramer is a principal of the St Louis law firm Riezman Berger PC. Under analysis is a syndicated column of the Levison Group. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this newspaper or directly to [email protected]