Trying to get work done while you can

Sabrina was, understandably, a little distracted during the next few hours. That didn’t stop you, Gemma and Eric from encouraging her to take charge to try and help her out. Sabrina ended up assigning you the finalisation of the witness lists, while Gemma was directed to start taking the various notes that had been made for the opening statements and forming them into a cohesive speech. That left space for Eric to double-check the motions that needed to be filed to attempt to quash various elements of evidence or specific witnesses that would hurt the case and to challenge the validity of several of the initial case filings from the main package. Sabrina took on the brunt of forming the meat of the case you would be making, organising your defensive and offensive question lists for the witnesses and laying out which evidence you would bring in for each potential witness.

You noticed, about halfway through the afternoon, that none of the Associates or Junior Partners had dropped any interning work for you all - usually, Fridays were a ‘dump day’ when they were getting their work for the week finished and dropped off stuff for you all to work on. Instead, it seemed like word had gotten around about the mock trial and that you were to be left alone, which was definitely helpful.

“OK,” Eric sighed, rubbing at his face as he leaned back from his laptop. “All I’ve got left is the motion to suppress on the character witnesses, and then finalising the motion to dismiss.”

“Did you remember to include the citations I found for the motion to suppress on the traffic cam footage from earlier in the day?” Sabrina asked.

“Umm, yeah,” Eric nodded, clicking through his open tabs. “I got them.”

“OK,” Sabrina nodded, then turned to you. “How are you doing, John?”

“Good,” you said. “Unless we find something else over the weekend I think the list should be done. The last detail is whether we can come up with a way to mitigate the fact that the broker was the brother-in-law of the victim or not.”

“Mm,” Sabrina hummed and started flipping through papers. “I actually found something for that. I’ll try to find it.”

“I’m only about halfway through the opening statements,” Gemma said. “Honestly, my natural inclination is to be a little more… fiery than we decided to go. I’m going to need some help.”

“I’ll help,” you offered.

The four of you got back to work, and you slid your chair over to sit next to Gemma as you both murmured quietly and wordsmithed the opening statements. What she’d written was good, but after the advice from Garrison and witnessing his own case, you’d all decided to follow his methodology of methodical, passionless facts for whoever the judge ended up being. The two of you ended up doing a quick secondary rewrite of what she’d already gotten done, toning things down a little more, before piecing together the second half of the speech.

What you managed to put together was a comprehensive defence of your Insurance Company client’s decisions and actions regarding the decision not to pay out several of the claims made by the plaintiff. You had already done a round of ‘What if we were the plaintiff?’ earlier on in the process and had tried to head off as many of the avenues they had as possible upfront.

If you could get everything else ready, you would do that again over the weekend as you all went through every spec of information that came in the massive resource file now that you were immersed in it, looking for any last tidbits that would help either side.

The end of the work day passed without any of you noticing, and you were surprised when the conference room phone rang and the security guard asked someone to come down to pick up your dinner order. You ended up going with Gemma, wanting a quick break from the final paragraph of the opening statement and found out that the ‘mystery delivery’ was from the Taco truck that you and Gemma had gotten food from before. The reminder of your first date made you chuckle, and when you were in the elevator you set down the big paper bag you were holding and you took your girlfriend’s face in both your hands and kissed her.

“I love you, Gemma,” you said.

“I know,” she smiled back. “And I love you too. What made you want to say it like that, though?”

“Everything,” you sighed, picking the bag of food back up. “Just everything.”

“Just,” she smirked. Then she sighed. “I’m going to miss you so much, but I’m going to miss this, too.”

“Interning?”

“Working with you and Sabrina every day. And Eric, even. Feeling like we’re doing things and not just spinning my wheels in class,” she said. “I won’t miss the intern salary rate. But everything else has just been… My life changed this summer for the better, and you and Sabrina are like 85% of that. Becks, Tasha, Becca and Charlotte are maybe 5%. This job, working with you, getting mentored by Garrison, that’s the last 10%.”

“We’ll survive,” you said. “We’ll be together next summer, and live together at whatever school we go to.”

“We need to talk about that more,” Gemma sighed. “And I know. Three years of Law School together will be amazing. But after that, we might not all work together. Hell, more likely than not we won’t. We’ll be together, but it won’t be like this again. I’m just trying to really enjoy all of this, even the chaotic and hard parts.”

“Me too,” you said softly, leaning into her slightly. “Me too.”

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