Frazzled
On Wednesday I think I pushed Handy Brad too far. He had worked through the weekend to get necessary things done in the garage. This included painting the walls now that the epoxy floor was in and, as a last-minute, but logical, addition to the to do list, the laying of industrial rubber baseboards to finish off the intersection of new floor and newly painted walls. I must admit, what started as a practical improvement to the slightly cracked concrete garage floor, became so much more. A new floor caused a reconsideration of the cabinetry, which was a cast-off set of old and almost dysfunctional cabinets for my tools and household supplies and an old homemade table for Kim’s wrapping station. We splurged on two weight-foot opposing sections of new grey and black cabinets with Slatwall backsplashes and far more storage and drawer space than we had imagined.
Monday and Tuesday were cabinet installation days and Handy Brad had to work around them to finish the baseboard and to start moving the chrome racks and all our garage stuff back in. The new cabinets required a redesign of the placement of the chrome shelving units. They had been bought at various times, so, while they are the same basic style, they are all of different dimensions. We have three of these and two of those and it all required some forethought, which I put into this in the form of a floorplan. Naturally, it was less easy to orchestrate than I had imagined, but by breaking down one extra unit, we managed to have the right number and more or less the right sizes. Handy Brad had 75% of the garage stuff back in the garage by Tuesday night, the idea being to wrap up on Wednesday morning and letting Handy Brad make up for his lost weekend.
But on Wednesday, when the garage was finally cleared of the cabinet folks and the garden was finished with Jason and his wall mural project, Handy Brad was set to have a quick morning when Kim went outside and decided that would be a fine day to organize her half of the garage with the benefit of Brad’s strong back and willing demeanor. Kim is one of Handy Brad’s biggest fans since he does things very much unlike what I do, which is to say he is so thorough and diligent as to verge on OCD. There is nothing slapdash about Handy Brad, and Kim appreciates that and let’s Handy Brad know that. So, Handy Brad will pretty much do anything for Kim where he is a bit more circumspect with my whims by this time.
By the end of Wednesday, Handy Brad was frazzled. Between the heat of the week and all the doings around the house and garage, he just needed time off. I suggested he take a four-day weekend and he seemed to like that idea. Handy Brad likes the work, but I now know he has his limits and the phenomenon of feast of famine is clearly at play, especially in the heat of the summer. In the world of expert witnessing, I have just experienced the same phenomenon. In January, February and March I was Uber busy on two cases and loving it. April was half-occupied and then things came to a halt in May. I did have a few weeks of work on one of the cases, and I felt like it was nice to get a break and live off the hard-won gains of the early part of the year. By July I had a few new cases on the hoof, but between COVID and summer, things were slow. Then, while on vacation in Oregon, I landed a case that needed getting done in August.
This seemed like a less intensive project than the big international case from earlier in the year, but after the first download of over 900 documents, it became clear there was plenty to do. I felt the case was very straightforward and relatively easy to make, especially since the opposing expert’s report seemed less than well-crafted and not very compelling. That report is thirty pages long with no analysis or exhibits. After three weeks of hard work and almost 100 hours of billable hours (plus another 75 from my partners), I produced a 43-page rebuttal report with seven detailed spreadsheet exhibits. I think we nailed it.
But if that were the whole story, I would handle call it a frazzling experience. I like the expert witness process of reading, analyzing and writing. It suits me. The way the expert witness game gets played is that it is very hard for lawyers (who are the old pros of timesheet inflation) to be sure about how much time it takes for an expert to produce the high quality report they seek. What they do know is that there are only 24 hours in a day. That way, if they wait until they have a nearby deadline to order up an expert report, they can better manage the cost. It’s a trick that gets exacerbated by being vague about deadlines until the last minute. If you have a particularly thinly-staffed and OCD law firm, this problem gets a lot worse. That is what happened to us yesterday and today.
We produced the first draft over the weekend and didn’t get comments back until Tuesday. If I were cynical, I would say that slow turnaround was intentional. If I am more open-minded I think maybe its summer and it took time to get input from the client. Either way, the changes to the first draft were consequential and required a rewrite. They liked the tone of the report, but wanted it to compliment their pleadings more directly and that required a certain structure. The client is always right, so I never mind doing a rewrite. This is a job more than an issue of pride of authorship. In the meantime, as always happens (again, I will assume it is not planned by the lawyers, but just the way things evolve), there is more information and data made available. It doesn’t change the gist of the report, but it does require revision of the exhibits and then the prose. My partners are professional expert witnesses and they take accuracy and perfect citations and references very seriously.
So we proudly submitted our final draft yesterday on the new knowledge that they needed a day to have the client review it and then submit it to the court today. Naturally, this morning we got a “light” revision from the lawyers that had hours of work ahead for us to modify our report. Most of these adjustments could have been done several days ago, but they got left for the last minute. My partners and I ran the three-legged sack race to the finish line this afternoon/evening and just barely made the deadline of Midnight on Friday (Eastern Daylight Time). My partner had put in two European all-nighters and it was a toss up which of the two of us was happier to be done with this report.
I felt like Handy Brad this evening. I was a hired gun being asked to work like a madman right to the wire. I liked the work and I will like the payday, but enough is enough at some point. Now I am happy to have a long weekend to rest…sort of…at least from expert witness work. My own frazzlement helps me be more sympathetic to Handy Brad and his frazzling week.