Where I've Been

Literally since the day I returned to work from my illness, I have been crazy busy. Within 20 minutes of walking in the door, I was told by two separate people that an emergency had walked in the door the day before and that I was the person who had to fix it. By noon, I was sitting in a 3 hour long meeting, discussing the emergency and devising a plan to tackle it.  Two weeks later, the emergency is no longer an emergency, but I'm still tackling it.

And while I have refused to work the weekends in order to rest since I'm still ill, I have still billed numerous hours over the last couple of weeks. Last night was the only weeknight I was able to see the kids before they went to bed and that only happened because I went to get a hair cut (I look like a ragamuffin; it's been about 2 months or more since my last cut!) and my stylist had gone home sick. (Yes, they had called to let me know numerous times, but my phone was at home).

Needless to say, my content here has been kinda lacking lately and I haven't had time to read all of my favorite blogs. I feel so out of the loop! And my game requests in Facebook have hit record numbers. I don't think I've played Bejeweled Blitz in over a week. The horror!!!

The good thing is that I am putting in hours and trying to make up for the whole scatter brain thing. I've been feeling pretty good working like this again. I definitely work better under pressure. It's one of the reasons I love what I do. And what exactly is that I do? That was asked yesterday by the kindly Donkeys to College (totally one of my favorite blogs), who chose to help me out when I asked for questions to give me blog post ideas. (I'm still open to more ideas any time. Ask away!)

So, here it is: I'm a commercial litigator. I usually represent businesses, but have represented individuals, governmental entities, and others. My normal case load includes breach of contracts, business torts, unfair competition, and malpractice (mostly defending lawyers), but I've handled construction disputes, employment matters, and foreclosures, along with other things that come my way. I work in a boutique firm with a reputation for taking on complex cases and I tend to be placed on the large trial teams. Accordingly, I rarely go to court despite being a litigator. I do write a lot though because one of my strengths is legal research. And I tend to be the one called on to lead document review teams because I'm very good at taking a large volume of information and quickly distilling it to the relevant portions.

My niche is electronic discovery and evidence. I had no thought of going into that upon graduating. But I was quickly labeled the attorney to go to for technological and computer questions and problems because I went to an engineering school for undergrad and have my bachelor degree in mathematics. It helps that I intuitively understand computers. Anyway, I enjoy that area of the law and it is constantly changing, so my expertise is always needed. (It also teaches me to be careful what I post because nothing on the internet is private and nothing on the internet is ever deleted.)

And that is what I do.