Lawyers’ war stories typically revolve around raucous and sometimes hilarious exaggerations (or not) of tumult and upset: epic fits and crying jags … confusion or hysterical screaming, crying, or babbling … horrifying threats and recriminations. All the better when those are punctuated with an impossibly favorable result for the client. Or maybe that’s just the lawyers I run with.
In truth, most consequential work is done in the still of silence – surrounded by stacks of books (or their digital equivalent piled up under tabs on a monitor), yellow-lined notepads filled with scribblings, and Post-It notes flying around the room. These are the moments that produce epiphanies that fuel the fire of good war stories that occur later. Without the quiet work, there would be no war story. Not one worth telling anyway.