A Better Lawyer Than Me
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
People send me things.
I don’t look at them as carefully as I maybe should. So when a local lawyer sent me some information about another local lawyer, I didn’t look at it as carefully as I should.
It described a person named Lee Isaacs as “one of Boulder’s top criminal defense attorneys,” and that description brought me up short. I’m one of Boulder’s criminal defense attorneys, though I call myself a criminal defense lawyer because attorneys have bigger heads than lawyers do.
I never heard of her, or maybe him, and I know, or know of, most of Boulder’s criminal defense lawyers, and accidentally most of its criminal defense attorneys.
The information said he, or maybe she, had been here for decades. Decades. How’d I miss her? How’d I miss him?
As I said, I sometimes don’t look at the things people send me as carefully as I should. Turns out Lee Isaacs actually isn’t any kind of a lawyer, or even an attorney.
She’s (and I know now she’s a she, because I’ve finally looked carefully) a fictional character. I’m a lot less jealous of lawyers who are better than me when the lawyers are fictional characters. I’m sure, if I tried really hard, I could come up with a fictional character who’s an even better lawyer than the one real lawyer Jeanne Winer came up with.
Maybe I wouldn’t even have to try very hard. I’d just have to write, “Ross Martin (a thinly disguised me) was the greatest criminal defense lawyer, and maybe even criminal defense attorney, in the history of Boulder, Colorado — certainly the greatest in the history of the world, and just possibly in the history of both the known and unknown universes.”
Fairly simple.
Lee Isaacs (the fictional lawyer) is the kind of lawyer who likes to position herself as being a little long in the tooth (though her teeth are actually pretty short), so as to emphasize her vast experience and instill confidence in her clients.
So she kvetches about the new pain in her neck when she tilts her head sideways. (I don’t think I’ve ever deliberately tilted my head sideways; that’s just looking for trouble.) Goes on and on about the new ache and how it’s here to stay. Time, she contradicts the Stones, is definitely not on my side.
Then you learn she’s eight months shy of sixty.
She’s just a kid!
It’s enough to make a (just barely) older lawyer a little grouchy.
I have to be careful here, though, because the real lawyer and real writer Jeanne Winer, according to my lesser lawyer friend, knows Tae Kwon Do, and I know I bruise easily.
So to avoid casting any shade on my peaches-and-cream complexion, I’m going to tell you that the lawyer who sent me the information about the book says it’s realistic, funny, intelligent, and interesting.
It’s called “Her Kind of Case,” and you can find out more about it here.
Gonna read it myself. You can learn from these kids.