Until Kate brought it up, Mairin hadn’t really thought too seriously about being offered a permanent job with Hadleigh. She wasn’t usually looking further than two weeks ahead, planning her class study schedule, law review work, and her job. It was all that she could do to manage the present. She had no time to plan the future.

That night, late, after class, she took her TV dinner into the living room where Harry was reading.

"I suppose," she said, "that I’d better start planning my future. Want to help?"

"You want me to find you a nice young man?"

"Well, I wasn’t particularly thinking of my marital future. Kate pointed out to me today that Hadleigh usually makes job offers in the spring. I hadn’t really thought about it. Am I supposed to resign graciously if I’m not offered something permanent?"

"You’ll be offered something."

"But if I’m not?"

"Yes, then you’d leave. That would be expected. You’d merely announce that you’d taken another position. But they’ll make you an offer."

"How do you know?"

"I’ve had a couple of talks with Bob when he’s been at the courthouse. He likes what you’re doing. He’s been very complimentary."

"The great experiment is working out."

"What?"

"Young law student from city’s not-so-prestigious law school startles everyone at Hadleigh by being able to chew gum and walk at the same time."

There were times when Harry still didn’t know when Mairin was being bitter or had her tongue in her cheek. He decided to wait this one out.

"They’ve already got their token women. But they don’t have anybody from the "other" law school. So I suppose I’m a shoo-in."

"Do you know anything about the other candidates?"

Mairin looked perplexed. "No, I don’t. I suppose that last summer’s clerks, at least the ones that are third year now, would be candidates. And who knows how many others."

"What did you think of last summer’s clerks? You never said much about them."

Mairin was chewing some cardboard mashed potatoes. When she stopped, she said, "God, these are awful. And so were they, in a way. Two Harvards, one Yalie, one Stanford. They were very bright. All guys. What is

that term that the psychologist uses-- he one who’s written about children, both poor and rich--entitlement. These guys were entitled. Do you know what I mean? They’ll all do very well, whether at Hadleigh or elsewhere."

"What was awful about them?"

"I can’t really be articulate about it. It’s almost a personal bias. I’m still so unclear about law that I’m very skeptical about people who are clear about it."

"You still don’t feel good about law?"

"When did you know that you wanted to be a lawyer?"

"Lord, child, that goes back lots and lots of years. I went to high school and college in the depression. I went to night law school, too, you know that. I was the first in my family to go to college. I knew someone in the neighborhood that went to law school. He was a year or two ahead of us in high school. We ware always friends. He saw the future and talked it up to me. I went. Then I was a police prosecutor. I was in city politics. But you know all that."

"And you never thought that maybe law wasn’t for you?"

"No. I liked it. I knew I’d be getting married and raising a family, and it looked good. It paid well."

"That’s kind of what I meant about planning my future, the mistake of falling into the woman trap."

Harry looked blank.

"I’ve never done real career planning. I went to social work school because I thought it was what I wanted to do. It was okay, but I got restless. Law seemed to be an answer. But when Kate talked to me today, I realized that I hadn’t been paying attention. I haven’t been looking ahead. I’ve been so busy treading water that I haven’t looked around for the lifeboat, if you know what I mean. . .

Harry thought he knew. At the very least, he knew that Mairin was extremely complex, and he didn’t always know what she meant. She had finished the TV dinner, put the container on the floor, and was leaning back in the blue chair.

"I don’t even know how many people Hadleigh is taking on. That’s certainly not the mark of a climber. But neither is it the mark of the prudent person we’re always hearing about in law. I have to get my ass in gear." She caught herself. "Get organized, I mean."

Harry laughed. "You think you’re the first person I ever heard talk street language? You think I went to Harvard?" They both laughed.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Not two weeks later, Mairin was summoned to Bob Jeffries office. It was late in the afternoon, and he was leaning back in his chair, tie loosened. "Sit down," he said. "So how are things going here?"

"You’re asking me?" Mairin grinned.

"Yes. You were the one who wanted to find out about law. What have you found? It’s been almost a year now."

Mairin was gathering her thoughts. She did that fast, she always had. "Well, I’ve worked in a number of different areas, and I have differing reactions, according to the area."

"Fine, let’s hear them."

"First, research. I like that. It’s very frustrating sometimes, but I basically like digging. And I like writing. I like the luxury of time to write well, but I do relatively well even when the time is tight. I get nervous, but I guess that goes with the territory. I’ve done a number of different projects--you know that. Mr. Clarkson has assigned some things to me, you’ve given me a few of your questions to draft memos on, and then there’s Kate’s stuff."

"How do you feel about that?"

"What do you mean?" Mairin didn’t know what Bob was asking.

"You’ve been puzzled about Kate’s stuff all along."

Mairin was wary. "Well, yes. It just didn’t seem very lawyerly--the drafts I worked on, I mean."

"You’re right. It wasn’t." Bob seemed to be enjoying this colloquy. He was leaning back in his chair, looking at her with a wry grin. When Mairin didn’t respond, he said, "What does that tell you?"

"That that isn’t why she’s here."

"Right." Bob grinned. "She has other talents."

Mairin started to say "Negotiating?" but stopped. She just looked at Bob.

"Someone, I name him not, wanted her here. He thought she was attractive. Apparently the two of them got along fairly well, but then he got a little competition. Our Kate is a thorough-going feminist. She prefers women to men. That discovery ended the affair." Bob was laughing.

"But she’s still here."

"For the present. She’s not a bad lawyer, really, in a limited sense. And she has developed some allies, people who think she shouldn’t be fired just because she’s a lesbian. But dishonesty, that law review mockery, no, that won’t go. It’s just a matter of time. She didn’t fool you, did she? You knew that something didn’t add up. But our point here is that you really like research yourself, no?"

"In a nutshell, yes, though it’s made me consider some issues. As a law clerk, my job is to do whatever task is assigned to me. That’s fine. But if I were a full-fledged lawyer, I’d at least want equal billing. Research is one full side of a two-sided coin. Sometimes Clarkson’s name goes on things he does, and sometimes it doesn’t. But that isn’t the big point. The big point is that I like research."

"Second family law. I’ve liked the juvenile cases. They’re tough, but the future is all ahead. The divorce cases I don’t like. Nothing is ahead but hassle. Those files never stay closed. No sooner is a journal entry cold than somebody wants to modify child support or visitation or alimony. I just don’t like those."

"You’re so good with people, though," said Bob. He’d been leaning back, with his eyes closed, listening to Mairin.

Here it comes, she thought, the hard sell. "I am fairly good with people. But that’s not how I choose to spend my life, working with people. If it were, I’d have stayed in social work."

"So you’ve made up your mind?" Bob’s eyes were wide open.

Mairin stopped. She looked quizzical. "Well…I said it, didn’t I? I hadn’t realized it consciously, but I’ve been sliding further away from social work. Maybe, just maybe, looking at it from a lawyer’s perspective makes it seem very frustrating."

"How so?" Bob’s eyes were closed again, but it was clear that he was paying careful attention.

"It’s a struggle to articulate it, but I think I can illustrate it this way. Let's say that I’ve spent all morning in the library working on a research project. My mind is organizing thoughts, working toward a conclusion. It’s all in my hands. Then in the afternoon, I go to talk to one of your divorce clients. I can see what the resolution should be, but it’s not in my hands at all. Insights take years. There’s something else. When I was doing social work per se, I never had a vested interest in what a client’s decision was. Whatever was best for the client. Now I’m impatient for them to get with it, to make a certain decision because it will resolve the legal process faster, not that it will necessarily be what’s right for them. Working with the books may not be easy, but I don’ t have to wear out my emotions dealing with them. And it’s not clean, but I said that."

"Not clean?"

"No. The client is involved in a legal problem, and his personal reaction complicates it. We’re supposed to resolve the legal problem fairly quickly, but the personal element lags. We have to shoehorn the person in. That’s where it’s not clean. We manipulate."

"Doesn't a good social worker manipulate?"

"It depends upon your theoretical framework, your approach, your client. But as a rule, no."

"You don’t like to manipulate?"

"Not as a rule, no."

"You’d rather do nice clean research work rather than direct client contact?"

"Yes."

Bob sighed. "I’ve got a Picasso here who would rather play the piano."

"I hope it’s not that glaring."

"Hmmm?"

"I don't think that I’m that bad at research. I also don’t think that I’m that good at social work."

"No, you’re not bad at research. But you’re damned good at people work. We need that here. We’ve got any number of people here who want desperately to do litigation. But they have lousy personalities. You’re a natural…"

Mairin sat for a few minutes. Bob didn’t finish his train of thought. Mairin began again. "If I were a natural, part of me would want to do litigation wouldn’t it?"

"Hmmm," said Bob and sat for a few more minutes. "Perhaps. But we don’t need to settle this now. The purpose of this conversation was to find out how you were feeling about law. We want you with us full-time after you pass the bar."

"I ‘d like to stay."

Bob named a figure, very handsome, that Mairin knew was the current starting salary. "We’ll work out your duties more fully later, but they’ll be along the same lines, split-time. The bar comes up at the end of July. You can have two weeks before with pay, as your vacation, to study."

"That takes a load off my mind," said Mairin, "I was beginning to wonder how I was going to handle that."

That night, after class, finishing up some of Bea’s beef stew, Mairin said to Harry and Bea, "Well, I was hired today. Full-time."

"Fantastic!" said Bea, coming around to give her a hug.

"I told you," said Harry, grinning. "You don’t sound enthralled."

"I’m puzzled," said Polly. "I didn’t know how I’d react. I wanted them to at least offer me the job. I would have felt crumby if I hadn’t even gotten an offer. But I kept putting it out of my mind because I didn’t really know what I’d say.

"And you said yes," Bea said.

"Yeah. I guess I like law better than social work so far. So much so that I really don’t want client contact--I’d rather do research. Bob wants me to do litigation, I know he does, but I really don’t think that’s my bag."

"You’re really sure about that, aren’t you?" Harry asked.

"Yes. They call it ‘burn out.’ I’ve got it. It’s just too much. Too much dealing with emotion. I want to work with legal theories, with writing."

"Maybe that will ‘burn out’ too, Mair. I’m with Bob. You shouldn’t be doing all research. Some, sure, but not all."

"I have a feeling that push will come to shove," said Mairin drily, "but I’ll worry about that when it does. One nice thing. Bob says they’ll give me two weeks off with pay, right before the bar, to study. That’s great."

"Time to think about that," said Harry.

"Yes. School is over at the end of May. Just a bit over a month. I’m not really worried about those finals. But I am about the bar. I don’t know where to begin."

"What bar review are the students taking these days?"

"Oh, mostly Ron Weber’s. There’s another that has cassette tapes, and some are taking that, but I’m going with the crowd to the live lectures."

"What’s the schedule?"

"Eight weeks of lectures. Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday of each week. Weber’s notes are supposed to be fantastic. So’s the cost, but so what. You know, for so long I’ve said that if I was lazy about a point of law, I’d catch that on the bar…I’ve got so much to catch it’s not funny."

"You’ll do fine."

"Sure, most of us do, but last February’s failure rate was twenty-five percent--and there were some sharp people in that twenty-five percent."

"There always are. Some just aren’t good test-takers. Some panic and blow it."

"And some are just unlucky."

"Yeah, that too."