No One Gives Me the Work I Want

I Admit My Wife Says I Tend to Be Over Dramatic

If it was up to me. I’d do five, 4-6 hour cases per week. In other words, each day, I’d have an assignment, I’d address it. I’d move on. And yes, I’m being a bit dramatic. I do occasionally get the min-case*. Some people do say poke around but just a little. For most of 2020, however, it’s been stretching my legs. Long reports. Long lists of data compiled.

Long explanations. What a lot of my work so far this year shares in common is a lot of time explaining things. The research is easy. It’s the explanations that’s hard. Take the asset search. I’ve done a lot of public record research to support a client looking to enforce a very large arbitration award. I’ve done a lot of calls, not on all the findings, but on what to do with the findings, where to go next. Figuring out how to figure out how to budget things. See, not only do we have to decide where to look, we have to decide how much we look. For instance, there are affiliated businesses in this matter that have publicly filed financial statements. Theses statements contain a wealth of information, but they take a long time to review. Is it better to scan 30 company filings or look at some in depth. If you think you know the answer, you have that rare client with an unlimited budget.

In another situation, after I sent out way more findings than anyone expected, I had to explain that the four subjects we started out with morphed into over 20 subjects. The subjects ran companies and these companies bought companies and the companies got loans from other companies, and there were companies not disclosed on fact sheets, and companies not disclosed on fact sheets had bankruptcies, and there were other weird associated companies picked up on Google searches and weird companies had associations with even weirder companies. So, yes, I had to explain why it cost more than I estimated.

In an ideal world, the questions would be simple and direct. The answers readily obtainable from solid public record resources. I’d pick up the assignment by nine, turn it in before dinner. Make myself a very tall gin and tonic and settle into an old episode of Rockford.