Editorial |
Andra Hedrick
A Lawyer’s Recipe for 2020 Lemonade I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how different life is today for a lawyer versus life as we knew it a year ago. It’s 8:10am on a Friday. I am in my office, which is little more than a hallway nook upstairs at my house. There I keep a desk, chair, tablet computer, extra monitor, scanner, printer, and some office supply odds and ends. The Wi-Fi is adequate but could be better. I’m still in the clothes I wore to bed last night. There is a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from this morning’s breakfast. I’m thinking about brushing my teeth but waiting until the coffee cup is empty to actually go do it. The neighbor is firing up his lawnmower, yet again, for my listening enjoyment. My dog , Archie, is curled up in his bed under my desk, snoring away. The rest of the day, I will sit up here alone at this desk (well, actually with Archie, so I’m never technically alone). I will type, stop for a snack, type some more, stop for another snack, and then type a little more for good measure. I may get a call from someone who does not like to do email. And at 3:00pm, I’ll do a video conference with one of my oldest and dearest clients. I don’t remember exactly what I was doing a year ago
today, but I can imagine it must have been a very different scene. On a typical Friday morning at 8:10am, I would probably be at my office on the 17th floor of the Pinnacle building in downtown Nashville. I would be counting the construction cranes from my window, and maybe even complaining like an old curmudgeon about the noise blaring from the honky-tonks and pedal taverns below. Friday is motion day. So I’d probably be dressed in uncomfortable clothes, taking in final sips of coffee for inspiration, and looking over the paperwork for the motion I’d be arguing later that morning. Soon I would be slipping off my comfy shoes and squeezing into my not so comfy court shoes, a la my childhood hero Mister Rogers. It would be time to head up the hill to the courthouse to do some lawyering. That would burn half of the day at least, and after grabbing a bite to eat, I would return to the office to take some steps up the mountain of calls, emails, and draft documents that still need my attention. I might even have an in-person meeting scheduled with a client that afternoon. That’s what lawyering looked like to me back in 2019. (continued on page 12)
OCT/NOV 2020 | NASHVILLE BAR JOURNAL
9
