The Work Day

The Work Day

I find myself in full-on, task-oriented, deadline and goal-oriented mode. All it takes is a specific project like my latest expert assignment and a tight timeframe and I am at my desk first thing in the morning, working until my iPad runs low on juice (~4 hours), taking a break to check in on my other responsibilities ranging from my scientific R&D company to my teaching gig to the various projects I have underway at the house. After a few more hours for recharging the iPad and my own batteries with some lunch and some minor distractions, I get back to it. It only takes a few emails and calls to do my expert witness work. Most of the work is simple reading (900+ documents), complex thinking and analysis (there really is lots of strategy involved in crafting and staking out a sound rebuttal argument), and then structured writing. The reading is simple because businesspeople write their emails in succinct form and the witness statements are clear and purposeful. In fact, the witness statements do a good job of laying out the other teams strategy. The thinking happens all throughout the reading and note taking process, but it really gets into a pattern and clarity starts to take shape while reading the exact report you have to rebut.

The last assignment involved an expert report from an Oxford-trained physicist that went on for 230 pages of detailed mathematics proving that my client was full of shit and didn’t know what he was doing. In that situation you have to ask yourself if you can go head-to-head with a quant-jockey of Uber proportions. Since the answer is inevitably no, the task becomes one of finding an appropriate strategy to counter-punch him in a way and place that he can’t protect against the way he can if you challenge his math. In that case there was both lots of complex stuff to read, a very challenging and narrow strategy path to divine, and what amounted to over 130 pages of a rebuttal report to write with about another 100 pages of analytic appendices (done with the help of my able-bodied partner, Damiano, during his Sicilian COVID quarantine). That case consumed over 200 hours of my time.

So far, this gig has used over 37 hours and I have read the 900+ documents, done a lot of my strategic thinking (far easier to do in this case) and written about 12 pages of the rebuttal of what is a 30-page report from the opposing expert. There is, ostensibly, no appendices to this report. Furthermore, if I distilled the report down to meaningful opinions and arguments, I estimate it to be closer to fifteen pages in reality. My guess is that my rebuttal will exceed the length of the initial report by as much as 50%. I feel there is a lot to work with and his expert opinions are indefensible and not backed up by any evidence, only his opinion. I actually feel it might be the weakest expert report I have encountered. I think he must feel that his client is so strong (its the Goliath in this story) and that my client is David with his little slingshot, and perhaps there’s a broken window out there with a slingshot stone through it, suggesting that my client is no angel.

The cool thing is that what I have to do is prove that Goliath is so strong and omnipotent that there is no way a little pebble from David’s sling could possibly harm him. And here’s the thing, Goliath likes being Goliath and likes to portray himself as big and strong. The firm in question truly is a Leviathon in its space and few would question that. I have always been impressed by them and the reputation is very well deserved. The four witness statements from the partners of that firm can’t help themselves. While they feign the limp of the injured and wear the neck collar of the whiplashed, they can’t help but flex their muscles and declare loudly their imperviousness to mere slingshot pebbles. They hurt their own case with every other sentence and those are friendly witness statements, not cross-examination depositions. I feel good about the facts of what I need to opine on, but my client probably should never have thrown the first stone for sure. I am confident he realizes that as petulant as he is about his going forward with the case.

I have even uncovered a secret weapon in the documentation that I have explained to my attorneys. They seem to buy the theory and I get that it is the classic doomsday device that Goliath will have no interest in being deposed about, even in a private arbitration hearing. It’s a doozy that may or may not be what I theorize, but it is still not likely to be something under the kimono that they want to share with the world. It doesn’t have to do with a weakness per se of Goliath, but it does have to do with the type of underwear he may be wearing.

But enough about the case. What you can probably tell from my vivid descriptions, I’m having fun with this case. No one said that work can’t be fun. Expert work actually suits me very well. I am a reader and I’m an especially well-trained business reader (running an executive desk demands it and is why I have so little respect for old what’s-his-name in the White House). I have always considered my biggest strength to be the synthesis of large amounts of data into a logical and articulable argument and that is what strategy work is all about. And then there is the writing. So many people who can do the first two things get stuck on the whole writing part. I pride myself in my writing. Through this blog alone I have written what amounts to 3,000 pages in eighteen months. That’s like writing 10 books. I force myself to write each and every day and just do it….like this. This all suits me very nicely.

In a perfect world, I would have an interesting case to work on every month that would take me three weeks to complete. Experts really shouldn’t log much more than eight hours per day or it feels like you are giving your client low quality hours. So, if I work for three weeks at six-day weeks at an average of 50 hours a week, that comes to some spare change, some fun cases and keeps some of my best skills nice and sharp. Unfortunately, its never a perfect world and this business doesn’t lend itself to scheduling out a steady work load. You take it when it comes and enjoy the time off when it doesn’t. I’m learning how to budget my projects and free time for when the work load is lighter. That makes this a perfect retirement transition job for me. It’s more fun than teaching (having done that a lot over ten years) and its less stressful than being responsible for a team of people who want to keep their salaries flowing.

So let’s be blunt, I like my work day….right up until they come too fast and too furious… and then it starts to feel like…..work.