Falling up.

Sometimes, the client is the reason.

I attended an arbitration. And, to say it went south – well, it did.

There was clearly TOO much familiarity between and with the arbitrator and the opposing counsel; The bias was palpable in a way that I have only been witness to more than 20 plus years ago in my legal practice when I knew I entered a room where others were part of a club I didn’t know existed, let alone could have thought to belong to. From the conversations overheard, to the evidentiary exclusions on the one hand, and the willingness to consider evidence remote in time on the other, I was distraught half way through the process at the uneven application of the rules.   

I hope I hid it well.

Answers on cross exam could continue by opposing counsel’s client beyond the yes or no the question called for. My client had to confine their answers and could not expound. One narrative was told - the other restrained.

Life’s not fair. And, though we’d like to imagine the legal process is - newsflash: I do not originate the idea that anything but evenhandedness happens.  It did.

I had agreed to this arbitrator and this process; smack damn, that was in retrospect a poor choice.  

Trigger: that application of less than evenhandedness was leaning heavily in favor of one who had been incredibly abusive of my client, just as their counsel had, in that arbitration, been heavily abusive of me. I entered the arbitration to minimize the abusive behavior, not be witness to it sanctified.  Mind you: I am no lilting flower – I am unafraid of personal or professional attacks, but today, perhaps in the climate of the world, they hit different.  

My client certainly noticed at the lunchtime break.  

Climb, I thought to myself.

Just keep going.  Mask the bias I witnessed in the hopes of recovery into the realm of a fair outcome. Mask the desire to call out the counsel’s frankly outrageous behavior as given wide latitude by the arbitrator, while my every objection was not provided near to the same.

I did, as I have been trained to do, and have the soul to do.  Until day’s end.

I must say that then- I got home and fell apart. Fell apart because I did what I could – to no avail and no reception; Reminded, I was of certain days in Danbury before a certain judge when, with many millions of dollars at stake for my client, I drew a judge to hear our matter that my very soul seemed to aggrieve no matter what method of persuasion I attempted: Clearly, there was less at stake this time but wholly and absolutely the same sentiment on behalf of this arbitrator.

Home and with loud Sting and U2 and other 80s radio on Pandora, I failed to regroup.

And, then the client sends me a message consoling me. Telling me that the conduct can’t continue forever. And, even if today was not a success, the arc of justice is long and it bends toward justice.  

I do this work for people like them - people that know, at heart, that my best attempt to seek justice for them may fail to land.

I fell up.