[Klein Legal, Flatiron — October 4, 2012, 10:22 AM]
The four sheets were on the desk because I had pulled them out to look at something else and had ended up looking at all of them instead.
Client notes. Matter timelines. Two upcoming hearing dates. The billing summary Harold had put together for the quarter that showed Klein Legal's revenue at $96,000 — the highest quarterly number since the Palmer departure, which was partly Harlan Cross holding, partly the Soto CFIUS matter billing through at a useful rate, partly Sarah running Meridian Bio's accelerated FDA filing without requiring Don to be present for every step.
I had pulled out the Voss referral file to review before her 11 AM appointment. I had ended up with the other three files also on the desk, which had not been the plan.
The Library was at 0.2 LP, which meant it was offering nothing I had not asked for, which meant the review was mine alone.
Vaughn was interviewing former clients. The statistical fingerprint was real and not going away. Somewhere in Calder Associates' New York office there was a file with my name on it and seven documented preparation anomalies and a probability distribution that did not have a satisfactory innocent explanation. The 90-day window was running. Sixty-three days since I had scripted Yuen and started the Error-Bar Log.
Scottie's omission was growing. I could feel it in the coded texts — she was still responding, still showing up for the Friday arrangements, still reading as truthful when she said she wanted to be there. But the omission had a weight to it now that it hadn't had in April. The thing she was not telling me was bigger, or she was more certain of it, or both.
Meta-knowledge: 50%. The Hessington track had changed. The Error-Bar Log had sixteen entries. I had been wrong on nine of them in ways that were small and recoverable, and wrong on two of them in ways that had required adjustment.
LP: 0.2, personal savings $4,840, the conversion cycle was structural now. Every major Library call would cost me $100 per LP until the case wins started to replenish the reserve.
All of that was the honest accounting.
Here was the other honest accounting:
Harold had found the document date gap that Carver had left open, and had held a solo cross-examination, and had been praised directly by a client I had not been in the room for. Harold was not the person Louis Litt had fired in July 2011. Harold was, right now, a better litigation associate than any mid-level associate at Pearson Darby, because Harold had done his growing in a room that asked him to find things instead of citing them.
Harlan Cross was loyal at the level where loyalty became structural — the kind where a client will tell you when they're considering leaving rather than leaving while telling you they're staying.
Nesbitt had given me the billing intelligence, had sent the email about the finance team, had returned to his mug ritual without ever acknowledging that he had chosen a side. The back-channel held.
The firm was alive.
I put the other three sheets in the right folder and picked up the Voss file.
Elaine Voss was fifty-one and ran the compliance and regulatory function for Meridian Fund Partners, which managed approximately $800 million in mid-market assets and had two ongoing SEC matters and a fund restructuring that needed counsel who was not already representing one of their counterparties. The last point was the key one. Pearson Darby represented three companies in Meridian's investment portfolio — not directly conflicting on the restructuring, but adjacent enough that a careful CFO would want outside counsel without the relationship entanglement.
Victor Reyes had sent her to me. He had sent her with the specific imprimatur of a man who had decided my discretion was worth staking his own referral network on, which was itself information about how the CLE panel conversation had landed.
She sat across from my desk with the posture of someone who had prepared questions and was prepared to like the answers but was not prepared to be impressed by credentials.
"The obvious pitch," she said, "is that you're unconflicted."
"The obvious pitch is accurate."
"PD can say the same. They don't represent Meridian and they can wall off the portfolio companies."
"They can wall them off. Whether the wall fully holds when they're also managing the portfolio company's next round of regulatory filings is a question worth asking."
She looked at me. Not skeptically — assessingly. She was running the sentence against her own experience of how large firms' internal walls worked in practice, and the sentence had landed somewhere useful.
"You're saying the conflict isn't formal."
"I'm saying the conflict is cultural. When the attorney handling your restructuring passes his counterpart in the kitchen, their conversation is not prohibited by any ethical rule. It's also not nothing."
"And at Klein Legal there's no one to pass in the kitchen."
"At Klein Legal the work is done by me or Harold Gunderson, both of whom you'll meet if you sign. There is no institutional gravity pulling the advice toward a result that's better for someone else's client."
She was quiet for a moment. She turned the folder on her desk with two fingers — not a nervous gesture, a thinking gesture. The specific manual habit of someone who processed information tactilely.
"I have a call with Pearson Darby at four."
"I know." I said it the way I said things I was allowed to know. "The referral from Reyes came with context."
"That doesn't bother you."
"It means you're a person who does due diligence. That's the kind of client I want."
Detection on Elaine Voss: no active deception. She was genuinely evaluating. The 4 PM mention had been leverage, which was also honest — she was telling me she had options and watching to see if I performed insecurity. I had not.
"What's your rate structure for a regulatory retainer."
I told her.
She looked at the number. She looked at the Pearson Darby comparison she was running internally, which I could see in the quality of attention she gave the next two seconds.
"That's lower than I expected."
"I don't carry the overhead of a forty-floor building and a client entertainment budget."
"You could charge more."
"I charge what the work requires. If the rate goes up because the matter is more complex, I'll tell you in advance."
She was quiet for another moment.
"All right," she said. "Let me see the engagement letter."
I opened my desk drawer, pulled out the standard Klein Legal engagement letter, and pushed it across the desk. Harold had prepared it that morning. The fourth item on the client board was about to have a name.
The text from Reyes came at 12:47 PM: She canceled the PD call. Mentioned she'd already signed. Thanks, Klein.
I read it at the kitchenette while Harold was running the Breville. He looked at my expression — which was, I knew, the particular expression of someone receiving good news they had not expected to receive at quite this speed.
"Voss?" he said.
"Reyes says she canceled her PD meeting."
Harold turned back to the Breville. He said nothing. He poured both mugs and set mine on the counter at four o'clock.
He had not pointed out that it was the right handle position.
I picked it up from whatever side my hand landed on and drank it, and the coffee was good, and the client board had four names on it, and the Debt Ladder had come down one rung because the math had shifted slightly in the firm's favor.
One rung. Four clients. A Composite Strategy still locked at 25 LP. A Vaughn file with seven data points and a 90-day clock. A Scottie omission still growing. A meta-accuracy at 50%.
I carried the coffee back to my desk and picked up the next file.
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