Vox Lucens

Last Sunday, I was delighted when Pastor read an excerpt from one of my all time favorite children’s books: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Today, my life is giving me excellent opportunity for a parody.

I knew it was going to be a bad day when I found out that my bank is discontinuing one of the best things they ever did. I’ve used One Stop to track all of my online accounts for a long time, and they’re quitting it. I could have used One Stop in Australia.

I could use One Stop any time my internet was working. But that’s not a big deal at the moment because I don’t have internet at home. I get a great signal and my computer tells me it’s on, until I try to use it. Makes research hard from the comfort of my room. I bet they have better internet in Australia.

And my computer hates me. I really try to be nice to it–even spilled ice cream on it!–but it is still mean. This morning it ate a UCC assignment. I hope my prof doesn’t make me do it all over again. Maybe he will move to Australia. Australia starts with “A,” which would be a good thing.

And when I came to Panera for lunch, they didn’t put any chicken on my chicken ceasar salad. I hope that next time they order a chicken ceasar salad the chicken falls off and lands in Australia.

About two weeks ago, I was given the biggest single legal project of my “career” to date. I am the point man on a mortgage foreclosure proceeding. Not incredibly exciting stuff, and I obviously can’t sign pleadings or anything like that, but still, for being my first start-to-finish project it’s kind of cool.

And there is also something to be said for the feeling of competence that comes when you can research a project, write a pleading, and begin litigation. I call the feeling “assisted competence”–competence that comes when I ask lots of questions.

With the boss going on vacation for next week, and me being out of the office the week after that, it hit me at about 10 this morning that I needed to file the complaint today. So I pulled it up, added a cause of action, made some final changes. I added the final lis pendens, made sure the caption number was right, and took the docs to the attorney. When my boss signed the complaint, I felt like I had arrived. My job was done, the pleading was ready, and I could sit back and watch the client grin.

Such is what law school teaches. I did the research, knew the elements of the prima facie case, and rolled them all into a crisply worded, beautifully formatted 19-point complaint. In short, I had the theory down. And when the theory gave way to practicality, my feeling of competence came to an abrupt halt.

For I had to file it. And when you file it, I discovered, you have to add all sorts of stuff that could as well have been written in Greek, for all I understood them. A coversheet…a summons…a letter…a filing fee…a certificate of service…all things that I was familiar with in principle, but when asked to put them into a package that conformed to SC Rules of Civil Procedure, I felt like somebody had handed me a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and given me an hour to do it.

And I would have failed, but for the truly competent people that were willing to give me their time to see that it was done right. At least, I hope it was done right! If I get a call from the Clerk of Courts next week I’m going to duck and cover.

At any rate, I was given a nice dose of the limits of law school training. There’s a lot more learning to go.

I’m naught but a highly amateur theologian, but every once in a while a verse will grab my attention and hold it for a long series of thoughts. Revelation 12:11 has long been one of my favorite verses, but it caught my attention over the past couple of weeks.

I wrote about the three elements of overcoming in the last three weeks of The Weekly Reminder. I hope they are a blessing.

The Blood of the Lamb

The Word of Their Testimony

They Loved Not Their Lives

You can also check the Resources page for more Country Focus bulletin inserts, if you are so inclined…