text: “Accounting tells me you haven’t docketed any pro bono hours,” the Partner said. He was one of the law firm’s most senior partners, and he occupied a vast corner office down the hall from the shitty cubicle where I worked. The Partner only summoned me to his office when I’d done something wrong or pissed someone off. I spent a lot of time in the corner office, getting chewed out by the Partner. “Do I get any credit for all the dockets that my boss deletes? Those have to count for something, at least.” My boss, a three-year associate, docketed more time than any other junior at the firm, and I docketed the least, mainly because my boss deleted my dockets, and re-entered the time as his own. I’d complained about this before, but no one cared. I was a nobody, but my boss wore bespoke suits from Surmesur and shoes from Leone. He golfed with the partners at a private club and ate with them in places too expensive for me to even order an appetizer. So far as the firm was concerned, my boss owned me and my dockets, and could dispose of either as he saw fit. “Your sarcasm isn’t doing you any favors,” he said. For a moment I thought I’d pushed the Partner into one of his meltdowns, but he’d decided that I wasn’t worth yelling at. I wasn’t a keeper. “Do you have any pro bono files for me?” I thought I might as well try; my boss wasn’t giving me any. “Ask your boss. You only need to docket four hours. How hard can that be? You draft an agreement, or give an opinion. It’s not hard, Calledinthe90s.” I started to ask a question, but then the Partner’s phone rang. He waved a hand at me. “That’ll be from a new client we’ve unboarding. Talk to me later. Or better yet, don’t talk to me. Talk to your boss.” I slunk back to my desk and returned to the stack of work that always awaited me. It didn’t help that I did more than my share of court appearances. I was doing three or four motions a week, spending a lot of time in court, and then working late at night to catch up. When I sat down at my desk, I saw there was a piece of paper on top of one of the stacks that hadn’t been there earlier that morning. I picked up the paper, and then my phone rang. It was the firm’s bookkeeper slash office manager. “You haven’t docketed for any pro bono work,” she said. “That’s true,” I said. “I left a form on your desk. You can’t docket any pro bono work unless a partner signs off on the work you did. So do the work, fill out the form, get a Partner’s signature, and then hand it in.” She hung up before I could reply. The office manager didn’t like me very much; she blamed me for the fun people made of her after the office Christmas party. She’d been the butt of some jokes, jokes that I’d told. I looked at the Pro Bono Work Assessment and Docketing Permission form with its various boxes and lines and questions and bullshit. I had nothing to put on that form. I’d asked my boss for some pro bono work, many times, but he had no pro bono work for me. The firm had a few charities run by this or that spouse of a partner, and the juniors competed to do whatever pro bono work was available. I didn’t even get a nibble. But I had to try. “You gotta give me some pro bono files,” I said to my boss again a few minutes later, “I’m getting heat from the Partner.” “Please fuck off,” my boss said. He didn’t use those exact words, of course. What he actually said was “yeah, ok, sure, I’ll find something.” But in downtown law firm speak, his words meant “please fuck off,” so I headed back to my desk, glad that for a change I had no court that day, so that I could catch up on stacks of files that grew like mushrooms on all the flat surfaces of the shitty little cubicle where I worked. I opened one at random, and started to work on a routine motion. I had been at it for less than ten minutes when I got interrupted. “I forgot to mention that I need you to go to court for me,” my boss said, standing over me. “For what?” “Refusals motion. I just don’t have time today.” He tossed the motion record on my desk, and walked away. I grabbed the papers and my jacket and headed out almost at a run. I made it to court just in time to sign in. The list wasn’t too bad that day, and I sat in the body of the court as the judge vetted the list. I listened as he granted or refused adjournments, tossed a motion for lack of jurisdiction, and another for citing the wrong rule. I was listening with half an ear, reading my boss’s motion record, trying to make sense of my boss’s shitty drafting, when I heard the voice of a young woman. “I need an adjournment, Your Honour,” she said, “I need more time to find a lawyer.” “It’s a simple debt collection case,” her opponent said, “and it’s already been adjourned twice.” I looked up. The lawyer I ignored, but the young woman was different. She was not someone that could be ignored. The only thing about her that was average, was her height. In a room full of dark suited lawyers, she stood out like a bright jewel. “It’s hard to find a lawyer I can afford,” she said, “and the legal aid clinic downstairs won’t take it on.” “The clinic can only give advice,” the judge said, “they can’t argue a case for you. If they won’t do it pro bono, you’ll have to argue it yourself.” “How am I going to argue a case?” she said, “I don’t make enough to pay a lawyer, but I make too much for legal aid, and I can’t get someone to do it pro bono.” I sensed an opportunity. “I’ll do it pro bono,” I said. “Really?” said the young woman, and the judge, and opposing counsel all at the same time. “Sure,” I said, “but I’ll need an adjournment, just a short adjournment. A week at most, just to read the file--” “No adjournment,” said the judge, “but I’ll take you up on that pro bono offer.” “But--” “That was very generous of you to offer,” continued the judge as I started to sweat, “very generous indeed.” I sat there feeling like an idiot. I felt my face turning red, certain that I’d embarrassed myself, and I was sure that I would embarrass myself even more when I argued the case. It got even more embarrassing when the case my boss sent me on got adjourned, because my boss had forgotten to file his legal argument. I stepped outside, and gestured to the young woman to follow me. “I saw your case isn’t going ahead,” the young woman said in the hallway, “and if you want to go, I won’t hold you to helping me out.” “Too late,” I said, “now I gotta do it.” Judging from her expression, I sensed that this perhaps wasn’t quite the right thing to say to the woman that was to become the love of my life. This was more than thirty years ago, and I still say the wrong thing around her sometimes, or rather, a lot of times. I asked to see the paperwork for the court case she had that day. “I’m getting sued on a credit card,” she said. I nodded. “I’m being sued by a bank,” she added. I nodded again. I’d learned that at a glance. She was being sued by Evil Bank, a lender that was so subprime, that it was barely above payday loan level. They had a big book of business, and it was growing. They were the go to card for people with bad credit, so I had one of their cards, too. I heard their ads all the time on the radio. I hardly ever listen to the radio now, but back then, back in the 90s when everything was shit because we had no internet, we listened to the radio a lot. We watched a lot of shitty t.v., too. It sucked back in those days, before the internet. “How do I say your name,” I said. Her name was on the papers before me, spelled out in black and white, but her first and last names had so many syllables that I didn’t even want to guess how to say it. “Just call me Angela. That’s what everyone calls me.” Her English was perfect, a native speaker’s English, but the sounds came with the tint of her home country, a slight and beautiful lilt. I was attracted to her from the start, but it was her voice that I fell in love with. She continued to talk, just like clients always do, explaining all about her case, and I mm-hmm’ed and h-huh’ed and nodded, the polite part of my brain maintaining the pretense of a conversation, while my fledgling lawyer brain read the file. “Are you even listening to me?” Angela said. “Yes,” I said. “Then what did I tell you?” she said, wanting proof. You’d think she was the one doing me a favor, by letting me work for free. She was even worse than my firm. At least my firm paid me. “You said that upon the bank's lending you money at a high interest rate, you defaulted when you failed to manage your money properly, and--” “It’s not my fault a cheque bounced!” “--and then the bank pursued legal action against you. You offered the arrears, but Evil Bank declined reinstatement and refused to engage in settlement negotiations. Instead, the bank unilaterally chose to increase the interest rate and imposed additional fees, charges, and expenses." “Oh. I guess you were listening.” She sounded apologetic. But I hadn’t been listening to her words, only the sound of her voice, and what I told her was info that I’d easily gleaned from Evil Bank’s claim against her. “Can you negotiate a deal for me?” She spoke in a tone of entreaty, and looked up at me like she needed rescue. “Just one sec,” I said, as I flipped through the affidavit from an Evil Bank employee. I stood up. “Gotta go to the library.” “Should I wait here?” “You can come along,” I said, and she did. I headed for the law library at my usual pace, striding along, the young woman’s shoes clack clacking behind me, but before long she said, “Can you slow down? I’m in heels.” I looked at her shoes, and saw the high heels, and realized that she wasn’t of average height, not without heels to help her. “Sorry,” I said. I slowed down to what for me was a slow crawl, and eventually we reached the law library. I walked up to the librarian. “I’m in a rush,” I said, “where’s the Criminal Code?” The librarian pointed, and I took off. Angela tugged at my sleeve. “Slow down” she said again, and I did, but by then we were in the stacks, and I reached out my hand for the bible, for the holiest of holy legal writ: Martin’s Annotated Canadian Criminal Code, a book I first read when I was fifteen years old. It had been a constant companion since then, but I never needed it for work, because our firm only did civil cases, not criminal. I gently pulled the book from the shelves, slowly and with reverence. I carried it with me to a table. “Have a seat,” I said, and Angela sat, while I opened Martin’s and started flipping the pages. “Am I in trouble?” she said. “I thought I was only being sued. Could I go to jail?” “What?” She pointed at the book. “You’re reading a criminal law book,” she said. She spoke loudly, and heads turned. The librarian issued a low ‘sshhhhh’. “I just needed to check something,” I said. It wasn’t the statute itself that I needed to read; I knew the Code inside out. But it was the annotations I had to double check, and as Angela sat there looking beautiful and a bit confused, my eyes scanned the book's annotations, each of them a tiny summary of a legal case, explaining how judges had interpreted the words of the Code. “You don’t happen to have a calculator, do you?” I said. She looked at me like I was an idiot. Nowadays, everyone has a smartphone, and smartphones always have a calculator, but that was another thing that sucked back in the nineties, not always having a calculator on you when you needed one. “S’ok,” I said. I pulled a pad and pen from my briefcase, and the Pro Bono Work Assessment and Docketing Permission fell out. I’d snatched it up with the court papers when I ran out of the office. I shoved it back into my briefcase, and then opened the motion record, and went again to the affidavit sworn by Evil Bank’s employee, setting out the interest rate they’d charged, and which they’d increased after default, and the fees they’d added and the expenses they claimed. When I’d read the numbers the first time back in the courtroom, I’d given them a quick run through in my head, but I needed to double check. I wrote out some numbers on the pad. “First you start looking in criminal books, and now you’re doing math. Are you like an actual lawyer? Is this going to help me?” It was something that my boss might say, but my boss didn’t look like Angela. “We gotta get back to court,” I said, picking up my note and my briefcase and the bible, the holy of holy writs, Martin's Annotated Criminal Code. “You’re walking too fast again,” Angela said as we headed back to the courtroom. I slowed, and explained to her why I’d been looking at the Criminal Code, and why I’d been doing math. “No way,” she said. “Yes way,” I said. “No way,” she said again. “Just watch.” “You’re gonna embarrass me. I just know it. I come to court to throw myself on the judge’s mercy, to try to catch a break--” “You can still try that,” I said. Angela’s looks could get her only so far, and I was starting to get pissed off. “You can try throwing yourself on the mercy of Evil Bank, too.” “I already tried that,” she said, “but it didn’t work.” “Then let me do my job.” We were outside the courtroom, and I looked through the small window. I saw a lawyer on her feet arguing a case, so we still had some time. “Have you ever argued a case like this before?” “Nope.” “Well, at least it will be interesting to watch,” she said. \* \* \* “I need an adjournment,” I said, not needing an adjournment, not wanting one. I was just baiting the hook. “I have an argument I want to make, something that I think is a good argument, but I just need a little time to--” Opposing counsel was on his feet in an instant, but before he could open his mouth, the judge shut him down. “No adjournment,” the judge said, “I already ruled on that. This case is going ahead, no matter what.” The lawyer for Evil Bank, a junior lawyer like myself, smiled with satisfaction and sat down, and he smiled even more at the judge’s next words. “Mr. Calledinthe90s, I have to tell you that I’ve read Evil Bank’s materials, and your client has filed nothing in reply. It’s good of you to take this case on at the last minute, but there’s not much you can do here, so if you have trump, you’d better lead it.” I got to my feet, and I led trump. “Evil Bank is charging an illegal rate of interest,” I said, pulling Martin’s Annotated Criminal Code out of my briefcase. I pulled the book out slowly, and watched Evil Bank’s lawyer from the corner of my eye. He started at the book, taking in its title. He sensed trouble, and stood up. “The defendant never raised an issue about the interest rate before now,” he said. “I’ll hear it,” the judge said, “ex turpi causa and all that. Go on, counsel,” he said, motioning me to continue. “The maximum interest on a loan is sixty percent,” I said, “and when the loan default, the interest popped. It jumped to four percent a month--.” “That’s only forty-eight percent,” my opponent said. “--and to that we add the fees and charges and expenses,” I said, setting them out for the judge, slowly so that he could write them down, and Evil Bank’s lawyer did the same. There was an extension fee and a default charge, and a charge for this and a fee for that, and it took a while before I finished. When I finished, Evil Bank’s lawyer stood. “Counsel’s numbers don’t add up to more than sixty percent,” he said, “I added them up while he was talking, and they reach” “Fifty-nine point nine nine percent,” the judge said, “at least, that’s what I got.” Evil Bank’s lawyer’s head bobbed up and down gratefully. He looked at me angrily, annoyed at the bad scare I’d given. “Sorry, counsel,” the judge said to me, “I know you did your best, and I wish I could help. I really do. The interest rate is horrible, rapacious really, but unfortunately it’s still legal.” He reached for a pen to write his decision on the back of the motion record, but I stopped him. “There’s one more thing,” I said. The judge’s pen stopped moving, and opposing counsel looked up again. The fear was back in his face. “The interest rate is compounding,” I said. “Compounding?” the judge said. “Compounding,” I said, “as in Evil Bank is charging interest on overdue interest. It says so right in the contract. Each month it adds the overdue interest to the principle, and charges interest on the new balance.” “But that hardly makes any difference,” said Evil Bank’s lawyer. “It makes enough of a difference to put the rate over sixty percent,” I said, explaining that four percent a month compounded was not forty-eight percent per year, but instead, but just a fraction more than that, which together with all the fees and charges and expenses and bullshit, was just enough to-- “I need an adjournment,” Evil Bank’s lawyer said, “I need to speak to the client, or the partner. I need to speak to someone about this. I need to speak to someone about the numbers, about the math, about how everything’s calculated.” The judge looked down at him from the bench, and grinned. “You can add, just like I can, and the interest rate is over sixty percent.” “Only by a tiny fraction of a percent,” he said. “It’s either over the legal limit, or it’s not,” I said. “De minimis,” Evil Bank’s lawyer said, but it was a desperate argument, and I could see from the judge’s face that I didn’t need to respond. The judge told us to sit down while he wrote his reasons, and we sat in the silence of an almost empty courtroom and listened to the judge’s pen as it scratched across the back of the motion record, which is where judges in those days wrote their decisions back in those days, in hand. He flipped over the page, and wrote some more, and then to the back of another page, and continued writing. He wrote, and wrote, and the longer he wrote, the worse Evil Bank’s lawyer looked. If the judge had been writing a decision in his favor, it would have taken him only a few strokes of the pen to write a decision granting judgment on a credit card debt. But a lengthy decision meant that bad tidings were coming Evil Bank’s way, and the lawyer looked like he was a prisoner awaiting execution, which the judge soon delivered, reading his decision out for us. We listened as the judge talked about the contract, and set out my arguments, and quoted the Criminal Code, and mentioned the evils of usury, and the importance of protecting the public from rapacious, unsavory lenders. “The debt is uncollectible,” he concluded, “not just the interest and fees and charges, but I have the discretion to disallow the principal as well, and I do disallow it. Ex turpi causa non oritur actio,” meaning that Evil Bank’s case was dishonorable, and that the court would not hear their complaint, due to the whole breaking the Criminal Code thing, committing a crime when they gave my client a credit card with illegal interest attached to it. The judge stood, and so did counsel. “That was an excellent argument,” he said to me. He asked who my principal was. I gave him the partner’s name. “He’s lucky to have you,” he said, and then he exited the courtroom. The clerk gave me a copy of the decision, and another to Evil Bank’s lawyer. His face was white and he looked crushed when he took the document into his hands. If the boss he reported to was anything like mine, he was in for a serious talking to. I pitied him, actually. But me? I was heading back to the office with a big win, a win I could brag about. Sure, it was only a little credit card case, but to me, it felt like I’d hit a home run and scored a touchdown at the same time. I’d really stuck it to Evil Bank, plus I’d hit my pro bono quote as well. My boss would be pleased. The bookkeeper would be off my back. And the Partner would be impressed. I stepped out of the courtroom with Angela, and we watched Evil Bank’s lawyer slink off into the sunset. She started to thank me, but my brain got in the way. “My pro bono sheet!” I opened up my briefcase and pulled out the Pro Bono Work Assessment and Docketing Permission Form. It was creased and crumpled. I straightened it out. “You were amazing,” Angela said. She was beautiful and grateful and impressed and happy, but my brain had temporarily become attached to another task. “You gotta sign my pro bono sheet,” I said. “What?” “I need to get credit for this,” I said, “you gotta sign my sheet.” I passed her the crinkled paper, and a pen. I pointed to where she was to sign. She looked at me strangely, took the pen, and signed. “Thanks,” she said. She turned, and started to walk away. “But--” She didn’t look grateful or impressed any more. She didn’t look happy either. Instead, she looked a bit disappointed. But she still looked beautiful, and I was beginning to realize that I’d said the wrong thing, or looked the wrong way or done something stupid. “But,” I said. She kept on walking. I walked after her, and caught up with her as she reached the elevator. She pushed the button, then turned, and said, “I signed your form.” Then the doors opened and the elevator took her away. \* \* \* I walked back to the office feeling down. It was the same thing that always seemed to happen whenever I got a good result. I always said or did something that ruined the win, that turned it into a loss, and I was feeling like the biggest loser on earth when I got back to the office. I’m pretty good with numbers, but women were another thing altogether. I’d been wrong to mention the pro bono thing to Angela. Angela had wanted me to win the case not for me, but for her. It wasn’t just the result Angela cared about; it was my motive. Angela had liked me, and I’d pissed her off. But at least I’d done well in court. I still had that. I’d done well; the judge had said so himself. My firm was lucky to have me, the judge said, the first words of praise I’d heard since the firm had hired me. The elevator opened to the office where I worked but before I could get to my desk I heard a door down the hall burst open. “Calledinthe90s, get your ass in here,” the Partner cried from his corner office. I’d heard him angry before, but he was at a whole new level of mad. I got my ass down to his office in a hurry. “Just what the fucking fuck were you doing in court today?” he said. He was seated behind his enormous mahogany desk. I was facing him, standing, because he had not invited me to sit. “I was doing a refusals motion for my boss,” I said. “And anything else?” he said. “A pro bono case, just a little pro bono case. I even have the Pro Bono Work Assessment and Docketing Permission Form.” I pulled the ragged paper from my briefcase. I started to hand it to him, and he snatched it from my hand. He read the form, with the names of the parties and the nature of the case and Angela’s signature at the bottom. “Evil Bank,” he said, “just like the judge said.” He looked up at me, his face a mask of rage. “The judge?” “He called me to say what a great job you’d done, what a wonderful thing you did.” That sounded good, and I didn’t understand why the Partner was so angry. “You idiot,” he shouted, “the firm spent months trying to land Evil Bank. We wined them and dined and schmoozed them. We golfed with them and got them hockey tickets. We bought them booze and laughed at their jokes, and we signed them today, at lunch, a couple of hours after you left my office.” “But I didn’t know--” “And what did you do? You fucked them. You fucked them, Calledinthe90s, that’s what you did.” “It’s only one case,” I said, and then he really exploded. “You destroyed their standard agreement,” he said, “a contract that hundreds of thousands of their customers have signed. This case is going to be reported. It will be in the DLRs. Do you have any idea what will happen, once the word gets out?” I was starting to get the idea, but I shook my head as if I didn’t understand. “Everyone with an Evil Bank credit card is going to refuse to pay them back, if they have half a brain in their head. A superior court judge has ruled that their contract is unenforceable, and that their paper is worthless.” I opened my mouth to say something, but he ordered me out of his office. That night when I got home, I opened my briefcase and called a phone number. Angela picked up. “I need to give back your legal papers,” I said. “You can keep them,” she said. “They’re originals. You need the originals.” “You can mail them to me. Maybe you can claim pro bono time for that, too.” “I’m sorry about that,” I said. That's the thing about beautiful women; you do them a favor, and they still get pissed off, and then you have to apologize. Or maybe that’s just Angela. “Can I buy you dinner?” There was a long pause, and for a change I had the sense to keep my mouth shut. “It better be a nice place,” she said. “It will, I promise,” I said. I was going to take her to the most expensive place I could find. I had an Evil Bank credit card, too, and I would not be paying the balance on that card. Evil Bank would be paying for the dinner, and that made me feel good. “Ok,” she said, and when I heard her say that, I didn't care about my boss or the Partner or the firm that paid me badly while treating me like shit. Everything had turned out just fine in the end.