Solo Contendere

By Michael Kemp

The Fort Snelling Military Museum is about to close; it recently had its last military expo. The FSMM is an organization “dedicated to the remembrance of veterans of all wars,” but it is finally being forced to close its doors, the same year as the last known veteran of World War I died. A bit of our institutional memory is dying away.

In other news, I had a fairly interesting case lately; one of the issues in the case involved the question of expansion of a traffic stop based on a single indicator of the driver’s intoxication. Though the driver (as it turned out) was not intoxicated, and had in fact not had even one drink that evening, the question revolved around an oft-quoted point of DUI law: a single objective indicator of intoxication is enough for probable cause to arrest for DUI. Somewhat in sympathy for a sympathetic client, or simply as a result of undiagnosed O.C.D. (“SQUIRREL!!!”), I went back to the case promulgating that language and read all the cases citing it. There were something like 65 of them. And I found that, despite the fact that this language was set forth by the Supreme Court, and the fact that it had been cited in something like 65 cases, it had never been applied on its terms.

Never. Not once. Not a single time has any court ever found probable cause for an arrest based on one single indicator of intoxication.

Proud and somewhat pleased that the hours I had invested, I prepared for the hearing, satisfied that I had gone the extra mile for my client in discovering the hole in the State’s case. On talking to a friend, though (who is more well-versed in DUI law than I am) I discovered that I had re-invented the wheel. The DUI defense bar was well aware that this was the case.

What do these two things have in common? Other than the fact that they both occurred to me in a train of thought that is really more like a roller coaster? (“SQUIRREL!!!”)

Mentorship. Or: the idea that it is important to pass on information from one generation to the next.

We all know that law school more often than not merely teaches us the tools to discover the answers to other people’s legal questions, without giving us the answers themselves. In a field as broad as “The Law,” that makes sense: there is no way a law school could teach us to memorize the answers to every possible legal question. Or, to paraphrase Vincent LaGuardia Gambini (a.k.a. Joey Gallow, a.k.a. Joey Callow), it’s the job of your first employer to teach you the real ins and outs of the law.

For solo and small-firm practitioners, those who open up their own offices right out of law school, however, having someone with more experience willing to help you is by no means a guarantee. A mentor is a safety net, a lifeline, an ear for dumb ideas. A mentor is someone who can tell you when you are re-inventing the wheel. Yet for many people in their own practice, they have nowhere to go for a mentor, because the idea of mentorship has gone the way of apprenticeship.

If you are a new attorney in solo or small-firm practice, where do you go for advice? If you are a more experienced attorney, do you have (I hate this word) protégés who come to you for your counsel? This blog is, more than anything else, about helping others who have started down this sometimes lonely road. Are we all doing our part?