Page 60 of Partner Pursuit
“That’s clever. It reminds me of an argument I once made and won. Let me find my files and see if you can buttress it,” he said. The two of them flipped through the cases in his file and discussed various ideas.
“I’ll miss this,” he said. “The brainstorming and satisfying,chills-down-your-spinemoment when you realize you’ve got the winningargument.”
She nodded. She loved this part too, and it was even more satisfying workingas ateam.
“You should propose it to the client and let them decide,” hesaid.
“Malaburn doesn’t invite me to the clientmeetings.”
Whitaker shook his head. “Just show up. He can’t cut you out ofmeetings.”
She hadn’t minded when Malaburn hadn’t included her in the pitch meeting because she was hoping not to join the team. But when he’d insisted she work on this case but still didn’t invite her to client meetings, she’d been upset. She’d tried to rationalize the exclusion: at least she could use that time to work on other cases. But now he refused to make a winning argument, and if they lost the motion to dismiss, she would have to continue working with him. And she definitely did not want to dothat.
“He’s meeting them today at four,”shesaid.
“It’s almost four. In the office?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. I’ll ask my assistant to find out where. We’ll run into them.” He chuckled.Who knew that retiring partners wereso feisty?
His assistant called back with the meeting location, and they walked to the conference room. Itwas empty.
“I can stand here and text you when they come, and then you can appear,” hesaid.
“Or we can pretend we’re meeting in the conference room, and they’ll walk in on us,”shesaid.
“That’s even better,” he said, his blue eyesgleaming.
They entered the room and sat down at the conference table.
“You need to look more relaxed so it doesn’t look like we’re expecting them. You keep looking at the door, and you’re sitting on the edge of your seat. Try sitting back,” hesaid.
She leaned back in her chair. “Now you’re checking outthedoor.”
Whitaker chuckled. “We used to play pranks when I was an associate, before it became serious business to be a law firm partner.” He pulled a legal pad from the center of the table towards him. “Back in the days when you left the office to eat dinner at home. Before the practice of lawchanged.”
The door opened. Malaburn, accompanied by two men, entered and stopped short. “Audrey.Gene.”
“Lawrence, good to see you. We’re just finishing up here,” Whitaker said. “Audrey was just telling me all about your case. Fascinating. Particularly that new argument she’s come up with that could win the caseforyou.”
Malaburn opened and closedhis mouth.
“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” Audrey said, standing up to shake the clients’ hands. “I’m Audrey Willems. I’ve been working on yourcase.”
“Great to meet you. We’ve seen your name on the memos and wondered when we’d meet you in person. You have a newargument?”
As they sat down, Audrey explained her latest argument. Whitaker didn’t leave, even though Malaburn looked pointedly at him. Whitaker was like a craggy eagle presiding over the meeting. The clients loved her argument and wanted to use it. Malaburn sank lower intohis chair.
“Did you just come up with this?” the client asked. Malaburn’s head whipped around tofaceher.
“I just refined it with Gene,” Audreysaid.
Malaburn lookeddown.
The meeting ended, and Audrey slipped off to her office to revise the brief, excited to add the argument. When she finally finished writing the revised brief, she emailed it off to Malaburn and called the car service. Another late night, butworth it.
As the black sedan sped up Madison Avenue, Audrey looked up from her iPhone out the window. The shops were closed, but their windows were brightly lit. Some stores still displayed bright summer fashions, but others were showcasing clothes with the more muted tones of green, gray, black, red and orange as they shifted to the upcoming fall season. Summer was coming to an end, and she had spent most of it in the office.
