TNJ............. Some Legal Hope.............

Part One

After I got off the phone with the equine attorney, I did not follow my first reaction to curl up into a ball although I certainly felt like it. Instead I called and talked to a couple of my friends and we went over my conversation with this new attorney. They agreed as much as he had tried to discourage me, he hadn't said "no" either so they thought I shouldn't give up until I knew for sure.

By this time I had bought a copy of the NOLO publication Represent Yourself in Court -- How to Prepare & Try a Winning Case and I'd read a lot about the new trend of hiring a legal coach if you can't afford an attorney. I'd read enough and done enough with the case myself to see the benefits a legal coach could be if this attorney didn't want to represent me. I decided if he told me "no" I would see if he would be interested in doing that or maybe even just working for me at trials. Ideas I had not even thought possible before reading that book.

I thought about it most of the day. I ran the scenarios I thought possible over in my head. What I would say to him. How I would ask about legal coaching or a role of partial counsel. I just kept running it over in my mind until I felt I was prepared enough to make the call.

I got up my nerve and called the attorney back that evening after 6 as he'd suggested. When I reached him the man was on his tractor haying his fields. I have to admit knowing that made him all the more "real" to me. He seemed like a down to earth kind of guy and I really hoped he would come through for me.

I had decided I was going to beat around the bush when I talked to him. Now that I had him on the phone I asked him straight out.

"Have you decided whether you can help me or not?" I questioned.

His answer was immediate, "Yes, actually, I've thought about you a lot today and I had decided if I didn't hear from you, then I was going to call you."

I knew when I heard those words, "I was going to call you" this man had decided to help me. I didn't really know "how" he was going to help me yet, but I knew he was going to be there for me in some fashion.

To be honest, that really wasn't the answer I expected. I was really prepared for an outright "No" followed by a "I'd like to but this case will just be too expensive."

From there the man went on to say something like this , "I realize this is a matter of principle to you. You're the kind of person that would do this even knowing it might take you the rest of your life to pay the bill. "

Then he added, "and you would follow through and pay the bill even if it really did take you the rest of your life whether you won or lost."

As I heard his words, I realized he really did understand what this case meant to me and he had a pretty good picture of me too. I would pay whatever it took and I would honor my commitment to pay the bill no matter how long it took or how the case turned out so I told him he was absolutely right about me and my principles.

From there he proceeded to tell me what he needed me to do. He wanted me to send him everything I had on the case. He wanted copies of all of the documents I'd received from their attorney,
all of the documents I'd filed, and all of the evidence I'd gathered. Every last thing I thought relevant to the case, he wanted to see as soon as possible.

This attorney's office is two counties away from me. Because of the distance involved he wanted to be sure neither one of us spent time commuting we didn't have to. There was no point in running up billing hours that weren't really going to be all that productive. We would make sure we got as much bang as possible for our buck by corresponding through emails and not meeting until we had real strategy to decide.

The documents he wanted I I could either send him hard copies or I could scan it all in and send it to him email. Whichever way worked best for me was fine for him. Once that was done and he had the opportunity to look it over, we would talk again and see about formulating some kind of plan.

In the meantime I wasn't supposed to do anything with the courts. I told him about my concern about deadlines for discovery and he told me a decision about that could wait until he'd looked over all the documents. I asked about my amend complaint and the admission and he told me not to do anything until he'd had a chance to look those over as well. I was to sit tight and wait to see what OUR next step was going to be.

We did not talk about retainers or fees or anything like that. After our phone call was over all I knew for sure was I had help. Just exactly what that help was, I really didn't know yet BUT for the first time, I had a real live equine attorney on my side. To me it really didn't matter what the capacity was. Just knowing he was there gave me hope.

To be continued....................

Transmitting Court Documents.....

With the foals we've seen so far, which one do you think this is?


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