How It All Began, Part 1

In 1986, I was a rarity ‑ someone who actually know how to operate the already obsolete Xerox 860 word processor, a stand-alone behemoth that could only do word processing. I had learned the 860 system in 1982 in preparation for re-entering the workplace. To my horror, the one place in town that owned hundreds of them was Standard Toil.

Broke, desperate, and close to the end of the unemployment I had lived on from October 1981 through July 1983 (thanks to the 1981 recession; I received six month unemployment extensions for over a year and a half and thought of it as my Reaganomics NEA grant), I took the job only job I was offered – at Standard Toil. I lasted just over a year before I quit and went to work as a temp for several downtown temp agencies.

A year and a half into my temp career, my agency called one day and asked if I’d like to work in a law office for a change? “It will pay more!" said Julie. But I had never worked in a law office before I told her. No problem! My Xerox 860 skills – the fact that I could actually make the dinosaur spit out an actual document– outweighed my lack of legal experience. Twelve dollars an hour instead of nine? I’d be rich! I said yes. Under the tyranny of capitalism, it’s easy to be a dupe when you’re desperately broke. None of us should blame ourselves.

This particular firm had two offices, one in San Francisco, one in Oakland. Being lucky in all matters work-related, I was needed in the unlovely Oakland office and would have to commute on BART from San Francisco. Would the law office cover my extra commuting costs? Well, said my agency, you will be getting that extra three dollars an hour! And that legal experience!

After working only a short time at this particular firm, I concluded it would have been better named Dumb, Splayed and Bezerkle than its actual name. In the Oakland office I was lucky enough to work for a young attorney, Jack, most of whose documents involved setting up partnership agreements. For him and me this meant a lot of red marks all over lengthy legal documents for budding capitalist ventures, mergers, acquisitions, whatever. Later I would learn this kind of legal work was called “fill-in-the-blanks” law by the more contemptuous litigation crowd who preferred the gladiator-style high dramas of summons and complaint ad nauseum, dragged out for years on end.

In time I would learn the only real winners in a lawsuit are the lawyers who charge their outrageous fees even for taking a piss on your time. In the end it all comes down to billable hours and pity the poor client who has to trust that their fees are based on actual hours worked; as opposed to the actual dilemma of some young, frantic associate attorney trying to meet the crushing demands of producing enough billable hours to keep her or his job.

Jack was actually decent, for a lawyer, and he gladly showed me the ropes. He also took all my errors with humor, such as the draft letter I brought him which I had addressed to “Mr. John Doe, Esq.” I thought he had forgotten the “Mr.” added it for him ‑ wasn’t I a sharp secretary? When Jack saw my change he burst out laughing and explained that an attorney is addressed as either Mr. or Esq. but not both. Ah, the education of the high-tech fool in legal land.

Though I have often asked what the “Esq.” or “Esquire” stands for, few in the law offices I have worked in have ever known. My guess is that it was some vestigial tail left over from Merry Olde England, from the days when a lawyer (or solicitor in British English) was some kind of a squire of the shire perhaps?

Better yet, let me quote one of my current, cynical co-workers about the meaning of esquire: “Oh it’s probably just some kind of title that means nothing! It’s just to make them seem more important than they already think they are!” Obviously a descendent of the same people who participated in the Peasants’ Revolt in Olde England in the late 14th Century, one of whose main wrathful targets were solicitors, lawyers, attorneys-in short, scumbags by any other name.