“There you go again. I am right,” she said, pounding her desk. “You don’t guess anything. I! AM! RIGHT!” Effective litigators also knew when not to speak, so I silently awaited her next move, awkwardly folding and unfolding my arms. “Now, get out and shut my door.” She secured her grip on the opinion. “I need some time to read this,” she said, smiling coyly. “The last thing we’d want is to create a circuit split on this issue of sleeping lawyers and the like. I have a feeling I can convince my colleagues that not giving Nelson a new sentencing hearing would do just that.”

“So, if there’s a circuit split,” I began excitedly, “then—”

“I am not one of your law professors and this is not office hours. I am rilly rilly busy and have lots of calls to make,” she said, clapping.

Walking out of the torture chamber, I prayed that these phone calls would be more successful than the ones she made to Bob. Judge Helga Friedman held the fates of Dell Nelson and countless other death row inmates in her gnarled hands.

Chapter Ten

Our incoming class of first-year associates takes the Bar Exam tomorrow. There’s usually one or two who fail. Pathetic. Most people here pretend it’s OK, but it’s all for show. You can’t really expect to fail the bar exam and then be respected around the office. They’re mercilessly mocked, to their faces and behind their backs. They have two months with nothing else to do but study. If they can’t pass an exam on the first try, how are they going to do the cutting-edge work our clients demand? You don’t get a second chance to file a motion.

Well, you can amend the motion. So you sort of do get a second chance.

Usually, failing the bar is a sign of things to come. No work ethic, lazy intellect, unprepared for life at a big firm. More suited to another line of work. Maybe another service industry. Maybe a paperboy.

“I just know I didn’t pass and that’s heinous enough but when she finds out, my life will be over!”

It was early November—the season of discontent for anyone who’d taken any state’s bar exam in July. It was the time when you’d discover whether you’d wasted three years and a hundred twenty thousand dollars with no chance of ever being able to pay any of it back. It determined whether you’d be at Thanksgiving dinner or in debtor’s prison.

James listened as I launched into my bar angst for the zillionth time. Unfortunately for him, my plans to spend the weekend in Reston were dashed when the chief of radiology invited Sanjay’s group to his McMansion for an impromptu dinner, sans guests, Saturday night. According to Sanjay, the equivalent of getting invited to the White House.