Work Gets Busy

The work day started without a hitch. Eric showed up a few minutes after Sabrina, and Andy rolled in 15 minutes before the usual start of the day, which made him late for his mandated early start but early for a regular start. You took that as a win for him.

While the rest of you got to work, and Andy drifted in and out of consciousness, Sabrina started to get to work on the Mock Trial. Garrison had emailed her an entire package of documents she would need to go through, and she gave you the brief rundown. It was a civil suit featuring a multi-car pileup that led to the injury of multiple people - the details of the case contained multiple layers of culpability, several insurance policies, and a ton of backstory and environmental data to parse through. Not to mention the fact that Sabrina would need to be researching the actual legal points as well.

She, or all of you, had been assigned the Defense role for the case, representing the trucking company that was being sued. The opposite side would be representing one of the families that was injured - but, as you, Gemma, Eric and Sabrina all quickly clued in on with your various experiences with Debate and Mock Trial clubs in the past, it was likely to become a class action case involving all of the allegedly injured parties. It was a classic Mock Trial move.

As the morning wore on the Associates started dropping more work than normal on your plate, knowing that you would be out for at least part of the next week. That led to you forcing Andy into wakefulness by insisting he drink a coffee and start helping.

Garrison called you and Gemma into quick mentor meetings that afternoon, not giving you a moment to settle into the extra workflow without assigning his own little bonus research to accomplish.

With everything going on, at the end of the day all five of you ended up staying late. Andy because he had to, but the rest of you were just feeling overwhelmed with the amount of stuff on your plates and not wanting to let it stack up. Sabrina swapped back to prepping for the Mock Trial.

Then, at six, a couple of pizzas arrived. None of you had ordered it, but the security guard who worked in the building after Becks left for the day called for you to come pick it up. You went down to figure out what was going on but discovered it was already paid for so you accepted them.

As you were stepping back off the elevator and rounded the corner to head back to the conference room, you were stopped by Allison Tranch - she was one of the Associates, a reedy-looking blonde who had been with the firm for several years and was supposedly on the Partner-track and would make Junior Partner in another year or two.

“Oh, hey,” you said, not having realized any of the Associates were still around. “Did you order these? Security called up but none of us put in the order.”

“Garrison finally has you guys staying late, huh?” Allison said with a little smirk.

“Uh, well, he didn’t ask us to,” you said.

“If he did he’d need to pay your overtime,” Allison chuckled. She flipped open the top pizza box and took a smell of the steaming pie and groaned before peeling off a gooey slice. “Looks like he’s getting back into his groove though.”

“He bought us the pizzas?”

“‘No,’” Allison said, air-quoting the word around her slice of pizza. “But, I’ll just say that when I went through the internship program back when he was running it before, whenever we had a ton of work and stayed late, dinner would show up. Honestly, I think I ate more dinners here than at home during the week.”

“You were an intern before Garrison had all of his personal stuff?” you asked. “What was it like?”

“Hard work,” Allison said, then bit the tip off of her slice. “Lots of hard work. But worth it. If you really engage with it, you’ll learn a lot, but Garrison won’t chase you. Do well and he’ll write you a killer recommendation letter, and he’ll get at least one other partner to do that as well. Sometimes he’ll even get a Partner at another firm to do it.”

“Well, we’re trying,” you said. “Feels like an uphill battle though.”

“Maybe. But look at it this way - you’re the guy who skunked Joy out of here,” Allison said. “And you got Garrison back in the game with you interns. Over the last few years, he’s never been a bad lawyer but he has been a kind of background figure in the firm. Way different than I remember him when I was in your shoes. You’re doing the firm a big favour, and the other Partners will remember that. Get through law school and you’ll probably have a job offer here if you want it. If you don’t fuck up, obviously.”

“I feel like we fuck up constantly,” you chuckled.

“Yeah, well, you get leeway,” Allison said. “Oh, and if he offers you a mock trial case, don’t settle.”

“Isn’t that the cheat code for Mock Trials?” you asked. “If you can convince the other side to settle, you both look like winners?”

“Maybe in a college competition,” Allison said. “And lots of lawyers look at it that way in the real world. But Garrison picks Mock cases that have lots of loopholes for both sides to work with. He doesn’t want to see you settle, he wants to see you win.”

“Ever see a Mock case with a truck and a multi-car pileup?” you asked.

Allison snorted and shook her head. “I wouldn’t tell you if I had,” she said. “And you’ve gotten more than enough out of me. Actually, you owe me another slice.” She pulled a second slice of pizza out of the box and headed back into her office. “Now get back to your cave, intern. You’ve got work to do!”

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