Pissant says "Hello!"

Hello. I am a lawyer. I work on small matters. I work alone. I have no buffer between the world and me. I answer my own phone. I read faxes as they arrive. I return calls promptly. I do a good job, but there is stress. The majority of my work is with others who are not lawyers. Accordingly, I have to talk to people from all walks of life. Some are sophisticated, some are not. Some are smart, some are not. Some are what we would refer to as...fill in your own euphemism. There are so many that fit.

The title of this blog comes from my prediction that sooner or later I will be in the process of explaining something to someone who will respond by calling me a "pissant lawyer." I have to explain a lot of things that are trivial, arcane, don't make sense in the common, every day world. But these things are important to the people doing the transaction, so they have to be done correctly. Here is an example: I represented the home seller. The buyer said that the seller was going to give him back $20,000.00 after the buyer bought the house. The purchase and sales agreement does not address this matter. I tell the buyer that we cannot do that. He says, "But that is the agreement." I say, "Not in the copy I have." He says, "Yeah, but that is the agreement." I tell him that the agreement is the written agreement, the one I have in my hand, and it says nothing about a rebate. He responds, "Yeah, but that is the agreement." Then his lender calls me and says, "Why are you causing a problem?" I say, "Your guy thinks he's getting back $20,000.00, but the purchase and sales agreement does not say that. " And the lender says, "Yeah, but that is the agreement." I remind the lender that what he wants them to do is illegal and unethical. He says, "I don't want to know nothing about their side deals." I say, "There is no side deal." The lender's lawyer says the same thing, that I am holding up the deal, when in fact, I am making it happen per the agreement, on time, and legally. But to all these people, I am the problem.

I thought of calling this blog "Fixing Toasters". When one of the justices on our state supreme court was nominated, someone dragged out an old speech of his in which he said that lawyers who went to a certain well known law school should not be doing work with legal services agencies that help the poor. After all, he said, "MIT graduates don't fix toasters", or words to that effect. Well, I fix legal toasters. Small, not cutting edge, not end of the world legal matters that are important to the individuals, but not to the rest of the world. If you like "Fixing Toasters" better than "Pissant Lawyer", let me know, and I might change it.