After the failed first attempt at a fellowship, I eventually found a place to run out the rest of the eligible fellowship time plus a bit more. It was again with a division of the state. Most of the attorneys were really quite nice, and on top of all that, the office had several interns and they were ALL PAID. Holy shit, I literally could not believe they were all paid hourly and I had been doing significantly more for free for the past 2 years. But bitterness aside, it was a nice place. I was given a whole office to myself as one of the prosecutors had recently left. Whenever someone mentioned this person, they always had that sad hesitation… “Yeah, Sally.. she was… she was a great person… (uncomfortable pause)… Anyway…” So for the longest time I thought they had died, especially considering the sheer amount of paperwork left over everywhere in the office. The office also had a slight ick factor in that it was very dirty, strangely almost every surface was covered with chocolate protein powder, but even beyond that, it was sorta nasty and I started wondering if the person had actually died in the office. A large chunk of my first two days was spent going through it all and cleaning the office out. Farther into my internship, while digging through the desk, I found one of their business cards and looked them up. It turns out the person had no arms or legs, and had quit their job to become a motivational speaker. (my imagination is not nearly good enough to make this stuff up)
The building itself was old, I have never been into a state office which wasn’t. But this one was old even by public building standards. Walking into the bathrooms was like walking into the 1930s. Other sections of the building may have been updated, but someone, somewhere had decided that those bathrooms were ‘classic’ and must be maintained. Truth be told, they looked pretty cool, it felt like you were time traveling every time you had to take a leak. But the building had other problems too, the office had heat / cold issues; basically the temperature was regulated by a heater which didn’t really work, and the windows which faced an enclosed courtyard (no breeze). Nothing horrible, just uncomfortable. One day while I was working at my desk, I heard this weird *thump* *chunk* *splat*. Suddenly a whole section of the wall developed a minor waterfall of black liquid running down it. At first I was frozen staring at what almost looked like several gallons of old oil running down the far wall, and then the smell hit me. I jumped up and grabbed everything I valued and bolted for the door. I had the foresight to open a window before shutting the door firmly behind me. And then I popped my head into the office of the most senior attorney I could find and told them that I think a sewage line had just broken in the ceiling of my office. This of course led to a small train of people bravely poking their head into my office to confirm what was running down the wall onto the floor. I think that was the fastest I’ve seen maintenance workers show up in a government building. It took a few days to fix whatever had happened to the plumbing above my office, and for good measure the office was closed off and ‘aired out’ for nearly a week.
One day well into working at the fellowship for about 2 months, I was talking to one of the senior attorneys there and they made a statement about the head attorney at the office and asked me something in reference to them. I mentioned casually that I knew their name but had never met them. There was an awkward pause and they looked at me and said “wait, you’ve been here every day for the last two months, writing and drafting things with their name on it and you’ve never met them once?” I could feel that I may have said something bad, but it was the truth, so “No.” The attorney ended up finishing the conversation with me and left. About an hour later, a person walked in who I had never seen before and introduced themselves as the head attorney. At that moment I realized they likely had no idea I was working there at all until about an hour ago and had been compelled to come speak to me. They stiltedly asked if I was getting on alright and thanked me for being there. At which point they seemed to have run out of anything to say, so they said if I ever needed anything to come find them, and then they left. For the rest of the fellowship I never saw them.
I found working at this office nice, but pretty much everyone in the office had a weird habit of popping in and saying they had a project for me in the works, and would tell me to brush up on fill-in-the-blank-massive-section-of-law. So an attorney might say, “oh hey, I have an idea for a project I want you to do, so make sure to brush up on collective bargaining agreements.” Now, the problem with this is that it is basically like saying ‘I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 10,000… start looking over the numbers.’ It tells you nothing about what to collect research on, it tells you nothing about the central issue they are considering. But the worst thing about it was not one of them ever came up with the supposed ‘project’ that each one referenced to me. I followed up and it was always just sorta nebulously on the horizon somewhere and they would get back to me, but you know… be ready.
There was one assignment I was given which spoke volumes about the legal community in this geographic area. The attorney handed me a file for a routine document production, which any other day would have probably been taken care of by a paralegal. Instead they told me, “Find some way to oppose this motion. The more obscure and time consuming for the other side the better.” This obviously didn’t quite seem like the normal assignment and I just sorta went “uhm.. ok. Will do. Is there a backstory here I should know before drafting anything?” The attorney didn’t even need to think about it, and he said “Because that attorney is an asshole, and it sucks for his client but nothing he files here goes unopposed.” Any non-attorneys reading this should note that this is what happens when you hire the wrong attorney. I still remember the motion I drafted. I handed it to the attorney, they started reading and a few sentences in they looked up at me and said “Wait… we can do this? Seriously?” I told them we could, but the office couldn’t use it often. The law specifically said it could only be used sparingly, and I said that I doubt the judge had ever run across the issue before so they would likely side with us for safety sake. The motion apparently had the desired effect of pissing off opposing counsel and making them waste a lot of time figuring out what I had just written.
At the end of the fellowship, I finished up the projects I had been working on, cleared out the office and said bye to the handful of attorneys I actually worked with. Strangely it seems that the memo didn’t make it around that I was gone. This speaks volumes to the communication within the office that I told a bunch of people it was my last day there and then apparently after I left there were a few people who came looking for me to do work, and couldn’t find me (imagine..). Anyway, about a month after I left I get what I can only describe as a separation letter from the office. It was as if they felt the need to officially fire me after the fellowship was done. I half think that someone decided I just randomly stopped showing up and so they ‘fired’ me from my free position. I’m still not quite sure what the intent of the letter was, it was just strange.