When I was first practicing I mistakenly accepted an appointed case when I had another case set. I was so stressed. I was in the floor, oh shit what am I gonna do, this is awful, I am so embarrassed I forgot I had the other case set- stressed.
MadDog laughed at me. He said that pretty soon I would become comfortable with being in two Courtrooms at the same time, and sometimes even three. "Its only hard," he said reassuringly "when you have to be in two Courtrooms in two different counties at the same time. Once I was in three Courts in three Counties and won all three cases."
So, if you have cases set in multiple Courtrooms you're supposed to write a letter to the Judge in each case and propose a solution. However, in practice, this is only done if you have two in differing counties because when they are in the same Courthouse, or at least the same town, it really is easy to manage, unless its specially set (I.E. the only one on the docket.) Usually, there are 40 to 70 cases on a docket. A docket is what we call the list of cases for the session. So, the Judge calls the docket at the appointed time, then steps off the bench to let everyone discuss and try to settle. (Except in Bankruptcy Court where the Judge demands that you settle first and be ready when he calls the docket. I love this because he can get through 60 cases in under an hour. We call this the Rocket Docket.) As long as people know where you are, and your client is there, you can fake it a little as to the exact time you come in to get the case settled or tried as the case may be. Now, when you have a jury trial it is much more time consuming, but these cases were all bench trials-- just the parties and the lawyers.
So, Wednesday I was in City Court at 8:30, District Court at 9, and had a 341 meeting in Federal Court at 11:30. So, I told MadDog to answer my docket in District Court and hit City Court. When I got there, one of my friends was doing a jury trial in Circuit Court and had a bunch of cases in City. I handled my case by 9:30, ran over to check on my District case, checked on friend in Circuit Court and ran back to City Court to tell the Judge where she was in her trial so he could figure out what to do with the rest of her cases. Then, I went back to District Court and decided to put that case off to the afternoon because the guy couldn't get a ride and I didn't want to issue a writ for his arrest because he's got a lot of health problems and it does no one any good to do that if we don't have to. Then, I ran to Federal Court, breezed through the 341 (I call the trustee the day before and fix any problems so my 341s are never a problem) and back to the office to answer messages and return calls, by 12. Then, back to District Court at 1:30 and wait for dude to show up. He's not there so I head back to the office and do some work until MadDog calls me at 3 to tell me dude is there so I run back over, handle his case and breeze back into the office at 4:15 for a last round of phone calls and work.
Whew.
I was freaking exhausted. That's the thing about Court-- you have to be ON. You have to know your case, know what you want, know the law, know your client and be ready to answer the question from the Judge that was not at all what you expected him to ask.
Today, I am catching up on all the work I did not do yesterday in the 2 hours I was in the office.
Oh and my friend who had the Jury case? I asked the Judge what it was about when I stopped to talk to her at one point and she said "Hate." It was an appeal from City court and the the "victim" in the case was arrested in the Courtroom yesterday on a warrant sworn out by the Defendant on the exact charges the Defendant was up on in Circuit Court that day. (I.E. she had had him arrested for harassing her and then in Court he had her arrested for harassing him or something like that...hate.) Oddly enough, after that the Victim and Defendant agreed to drop the charges against each other and everyone went home happy.
I wish people wouldn't call the police every time they got mad at someone. It just makes it harder on everyone because the police have trouble telling the difference between the garbage and the real cases.
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