Mentor

Nearly ten years ago, I started supervising the law clerks in my unit. I'm still in touch with many of the clerks, I think of them as "my" clerks, although they worked for the entire unit. Today I was talking with one who worked for me the first year I was supervising. He has various claims about my supervising. First, he claims that I said my standards were as follows: Show up on time, don't be drunk. I view this as a slight exaggeration. Second, he says that the first day he arrived, I told him I was glad he was there and to draft a motion in limine. Which was fine with him, except he didn't know what a motion in limine was.

He survived working with us during the first jury trial the unit had done in many years. Now he is a very important person in state government, and I have enjoyed watching him rise over the past ten years. He says I am his mentor. I think that is, once again, an exaggeration, for he was going to do well no matter what. I truly believe that. There are people you can drop to the bottom of the well, and they will be just fine. He is one of those people, but I enjoy the flattery nonetheless, and enjoy keeping up with him, and putting in my two cents whenever he is contemplating a change.

The first in his family to go to college, I'd like to see him consider the bench, but he has spent more and more of his time in administration. All of which is a rambling way of saying that I miss supervising law clerks, miss their youth and enthusiasm for the law, and wish that I could have some around on a regular basis again.

Guardianship Cases

Over time, lawyers develop specialties in their practice, and sometimes go for long periods doing only one sort of case. For some reason, for the last couple of years, my pro bono cases have all been guardianship cases. I like them fine, I guess. I try to focus very hard on getting everybody possible on board before I file an action to commence a guardianship, so that the needs of the ward are met, and the family is in agreement. When I can't get agreement from everybody, and sometimes you just can't, I try to be sure I'm on the right side of the argument. This process is particularly difficult when dealing with end of life issues for the parent of a disabled person.
I think it's often frustrating for siblings to come to terms with the fact that one of their number has special needs, and is going to get a special estate deal, and that deal might be better than their deal. Sort of the "Mom always liked you best" problem.
For the parents, it's not that they always liked "you" best, but that "you" needed them more, and will have greater needs after they die. But it doesn't mean the siblings have to like it, or be particularly happy about having to provide the moral and possibly economic and guardianship support to their sibling that their parents have provided. But they generally do it, often with extraordinary care and grace, sometimes grudgingly, but only occasionally not at all.

Chinese is Easy, Just like English

So says my Chinese instructor, anyway. He is teaching 8 adult students, there are two in their twenties, and two in their fifties and the rest of us are somewhere in between. The class is two hours long on Sunday afternoons. Mid-way through the class we take a ten minute break and do tai-chi. Because Chinese is a tonal language, and tai-chi has the same discipline of movement as ballet, I call it my singing and dancing class.

To say it is hard is an understatement. I feel ridiculous, knowing my Chinese is virtually incomprehensible to a native speaker. My writing is like a pre-schooler's. But the teacher, Mr. Li, is endlessly encouraging to all of us, and tells us that people in China will be pleased that we can say anything at all. Which is probably true, but I wish . . . well, some things are best done by the next generation. I went to school with plenty of kids whose parents had accents.

I have been so impressed with Mr. Li as a teacher that I have resolved to try to be as good a teacher of English as he is of Chinese. He comes to class carefully prepared, he has spoken with a friend who teaches Chinese at Georgia Tech and uses some materials from him, some materials he's gathered himself and a children's text book. He encourages us, corrects us sincerely, and is enthusiastic about our efforts.

This week we have homework of copying out a dialogue and studying the coming lesson. We also have to prepare to take dictation for body parts. In English, they pretend that you have phonetic rules for spelling, which are mostly notable for exceptions. In Chinese, they don't even waste time with that, and just tell you to memorize the pictogram for each word. So all I have to do is memorize 2000-3000 words and I can read a newspaper.