As you can imagine, it is a special event in the career of a lawyer when that lawyer brings in her first client. I remember mine: It was 1996, and I was flying from Dallas home to Houston after having attended a seminar, and I was exhausted. Someone on the Southwest flight bought drinks for everyone with his drink coupons, and I wondered aloud if he had just won a big case. Before my seatmate could guess otherwise, I started laughing aloud at myself for assuming he was a lawyer and that his celebration was law-related . . . he could have just become a father, or just won a lottery or just have been having a good day. My seatmate laughed and we began talking in the way that people do on a short Southwest flight home on a Friday evening. As it turned out, she was the president of her own company and had just flown to Dallas to get advice on an employment law issue, but didn't really click with the lawyer she had traveled to see.
I represented her in that matter and a number of others. When the day ultimately came that her business took a turn for the worse, I was the person she called at midnight at my home in Dallas, where I had moved, to talk through the hard decisions together.
She was a role model for me, my first client. She was in her 40's and was smart and brave and determined to follow her vision to do the work she enjoyed and make a living at it. I learned as much, if not more, from her as she learned from me.
We ultimately lost touch with each other, my client and I. Her business shut down and she did not need my advice, and then my father died and I basically checked out of the world for a few years. I have thought of her from time to time and wondered how she was doing, but no longer had a good phone number or email for her and wasn't able to find good contact information for her. I regretted having fallen out of touch.
So you can imagine my delight when I came home one night this week to find I had a voice mail from my client. The next day, we had a wonderful time catching up on our personal and professional lives for the last 10+ years, and I'm helping her with a new matter. Besides being happy to catch up with an old friend, it was immensely flattering to me that my client was determined to find me because it is my advice that she trusts.
Anyway, a cool thing.
30 May 2009
I can't sleep, so I may as well post.
Posted by Lisa at 1:57 AM
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3 comments:
Quadruple awesome! Thanks for sharing. I got through the first four paragraphs without guessing where the blog post was going. Fantastic opening to the fifth paragraph.
Glad I could surprise you, Phil!
That's a great story. It brings such a unique kind of joy when realize that something precious you thought was lost, isn't, and there are many more chapters to be added.
Another thing in your story jumped out at me: The part about how, after your dad's death, you "basically checked out of the world for a few years." I was thinking about this very thing today, which some would say is "odd" and others would call "no coincidence", but it's no less confusing to me...Mainly because I didn't even realize I had done it until now, 10 years later. Dads & daughters, man...Looking forward to having a chat about this someday.
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