Thursday, September 20, 2012

Things I Never Thought I'd Say

This week I had my monthly lunch with a group of in house attorneys who also happen to be moms.  We try to meet once a month to give each other advice and support on work issues and family issues.  It's usually a very valuable lunch as a learn a lot from these ladies, and have a laugh here and there too.

While sharing stories of the incredible things are kids were doing, I was reminded of a list on Facebook I had seen earlier, "Things I Never Thought I'd Say" as a mom.  It was cute and included things like, "You can have a cupcake if you eat your hotdog" and "Let me smell your hands".  both things I've said relatively recently to Z, my oldest.  So we started talking about things we never thought we'd say as lawyers.

As a eager young first year law student I had an image of what practicing law would be like.  Not knowing any real lawyers before law school, it was an image shaped by tv, famous lawyers and pure imagination.  I expected a very professional environment with lots of respect for the position.
When I started my first day as a "real lawyer" at an internet company I had a very quick realization that my image was all wrong.  In reality, there are a bunch of things that we in house lawyers say on an almost daily basis that we never dreamed of saying when we're in law school.  Here's some of my favorites from our discussion this week.  Feel free to add yours to the comments.

"Put your shoes on."

"Please stop following me with the Justin Beiber cut out, it's creepy."

"No, we can't get a trademark on 'Email Services'."

"Beer Friday's is not permission to have Jack Daniel's Friday."

"No, it's not possible to have a complete review of this 120 page contract done in 2 hours.  Give me 6 and I'll have a redline for you."

"I know you think it's a great history lesson, but lecturing the staff on why Good Friday is a holiday is probably a bad idea."

"No shooting in the face!  Aim for the body or I'm taking your Nerf guns away!" -- okay I may have said that one to Z too.

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