In 2004 my law business was in a financial crisis and I had
decided that I badly needed to diversify and start doing some family law cases
which previously I hated the whole idea of doing. But I found myself fumbling
around late in my career trying out family law but I had no idea how to go
about doing it.Then one fine day I bumped into Larry at the courthouse. Larry was a lawyer I had met some 20 years earlier when we both worked at the same law firm and when we were fresh out of law school. Back then we were coworkers but not really friends however we gave each other nicknames just for fun. For some reason know only to Larry, he started calling me Giuseppe which is the Italian form of my name Joseph even though Larry is not Italian. My nickname for him was Saint Larry because he was such the opposite of a Saint and I found that amusing. Most people who knew him would agree that Larry was hard to get along with, cussed a lot, had a tendency to lose his temper and was rude to women and men alike but also, he was fun loving and mischievous. He also had a very mischievous smile that I thought was funny.
On that day when we bumped into each other at the courthouse,
Larry asked me how I was doing and I think I surprised us both by
answering very truthfully that my law business was failing, that I was going broke
and that I needed to try doing some family law cases to pick up new business. Then it was his
turn to surprise me! He warmly asked
me to come see him at his office and said
that he would help me get back on my feet. His offer was such a welcome surprise
because I was desperate and it made me feel so grateful that he would even say that
to me. We made an appointment for me to visit him and when I showed up, I
discovered that he had a thriving, high volume, family law practice.
During that first meeting we decided that he would become my mentor and I his protégé and he also asked me to do some work for him that he would pay me for which involved me handling some of his Family Court hearings.
Here are some of the other things Saint Larry did for me as
my mentor:
I would come by his office once a week on a Thursday or
Friday to pick up about 10 files for the coming week. When I finished the
hearings and dropped off the files he would pay me and then, he would
hand me another 10 files and he would brief me on each case. As it turned out, the cases I was handling for him involved just about every situation that was likely to come up in a family law case.
He was warm and respectful towards me although he would yell and cuss at his office staff.
Because I was handling so many court hearings for Saint Larry
I was becoming not only more confident
but I was learning a whole lot very quickly and gaining priceless experience. I soon discovered that I had a knack for this
type of work, born out by the fact that I had a high success rate on the hearings I was handling for him.
Larry didn’t stop by just helping me financially as a part-time employer. He also
spent time with me showing me how to run a family law business of my own.
He convinced me to change my law office location to a
freeway so that clients could find me more easily.
He showed me how to do my own yellow page ads and in
essence he just told me to imitate his ads, keep them simple and say the word
affordable or lower priced somewhere in there.
My association with Saint Larry lasted for a little over a year. By then my own law practice had made a financial come back and I needed to spend more and more of my time working with my own clients. I think that was Larry’s plan all along! Lastly, I believe that I Giuseppe helped Saint Larry to get a much-needed break from his heavy caseload. Also I suspect that being his protégé also changed him just a little bit. He started treating his staff much better and seemed calmer.
Larry turned out to be a very good mentor in spite of his having some character issues. He had all the positive traits that a mentor should have and we both benefited from the experience.
I will be forever grateful to Saint Larry’s for his help in my time
of crisis. He passed away in 2020 which I didn’t know about until a year later.
Belatedly, I have prayed for Larry to join the real saints in heaven through God’s mercy and grace.
