Though I am retired from full time litigation practice, as the summer of 2022 enters the final week before Labor Day, I was caused to think of summer vacations past.
It started during a recent extended telephone mediation. Things had stalled. To move things along, I sent out a 2-day notice for a general conference call. The afternoon before the conference I received an email from a previously non-communicative lawyer, stating he was on a family vacation "with little or no workable cell service or internet. I get internet in the am when we drive into town for coffee, etc." Thus, he had created plausible deniability if he didn't respond to the conference call (he didn't), and if he didn't respond to the continuing, and reasonable requests for documents supporting his case. Bad reception. We had been warned.
Pure BS, of course. His firm is probably the most tech savvy in the state. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a dedicated satellite link. I'm sure the firm provided him with any number of methods to connect. This isn't 1995. And I can't think of any family whose children would survive being deprived of social media for 5 minutes.
On another level, I can sympathize. Assuming the lawyer was on vacation with the family, he owes it to them (and himself) to turn off work to the extent he can. Despite what we say on LinkedIn, we should be working to live, and not living to work.
Firms, clients, and courts expect attorneys to be available 24/7. We were probably at that point before the COVID/Zoom era. Now, you can go from the shower to a court appearance in 5 minutes, from your home office, basement, bedroom or kitchen. Phones and tablets turn attorneys into the obstetricians of the legal system-always on call. It is hard to relax-ever.
I was not raised during the Depression, but I feel like it when I recall communication, or the lack thereof, while on vacation during my legal career.
Shortly after we were married, my wife and I went to the same Lake Huron resort (I am sure the term was used ironically) cottages (the size of an average suburban family room) my family went to during my childhood. No TV, no phone, no AC, a barely working stove, and water of the same consistency, if not quite the same color and clarity of a pint of Guinness. The cell phone, the internet and the email had not been invented. No way to call the office and no way for the office to contact me. Well, there was one way.
The cottage was on the Lake Huron shore, just east of US23. On the west side of US23 was the Sunset Motel, shown below, in a photo that could have been taken at any time from the date of its construction up to the present.
What is not shown in the photo, is the south end of the parking lot, with accompanying utility pole. Attached to that pole was a pay phone. So, what I did, was walk to US23, cross the northbound lanes, the grass median, then the southbound lanes and try to call my office, collect, from that utility pole pay phone. It was tough trying to carry on a conversation with semis whizzing by. I felt like Eddie Albert in Green Acres.