Typical Day
Infamous Big Tobacco lawyer, Nick O'Teen, wakes up to an urgent text message from a colleague. "Check NY Times!!!!" it had said. Nick groaned, and rubbed a hand over his face. It was barely 6 a.m.
Rolling out of bed, Nick took a quick elevator ride from the fourth floor of his mansion to the first floor, where the kitchen was. That morning's edition of the NY Times was sitting out, along with Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Sun. Like most lawyers, especially the ones working in hot-button issues like tobacco litigation, Nick was a news junkie.
Sure enough, top right of the page was a story titled, "Big Tobacco's New Evil Emperor." Next to the photo was a close-up photo of Nick's face.
"Uggghhh," Nick groaned. "That's not even my best angle. Can these papers get nothing right?"
The article focused on the $74 billion merger that Nick and a few other colleagues on his team at Big Bucks LLP for their clients, the two biggest cigarette manufacturers in the country. It claimed to "expose" some of the underhanded details of the merger. Nick scoffed. Everyone knew how money changed hands. They'd never tried to hide it.
Nick walks into the conference room. The other members of the team, Jane Smoker and Toby Acco, are waiting there for him.
"Get a load of this," says Nick, tossing the paper onto the center of the table.
Jane reaches for it, and skims the first page.
"Cheap bastards, all of 'em," Jane says. "Nothing but journalistic digging. You can't take it seriously, Nick."
"It's the New York Times! Not just some pathetic left-wing blogger with gripes against the tobacco industry. They called me evil," Nick pauses, as this knowledge sinks in. "The New York Times called me evil."
"Listen, kid, we've all been there," Toby starts. "So you ruffled some feathers. Who cares? In this job, it means you're doing something really right."
"Yeah, yeah, you're so right," Nick says, sitting down in the giant leather chair. He searched for something in the inside lining of his suit. Pulling out a cigarette, Nick started to pat his pants pockets.
"Oh, err, could you not?" Jane looked slightly concerned.
"Huh?"
"Smoke. Could you not smoke in here?" she said, pointing to a sign above the door that Nick had missed in his rush. "NO SMOKING," it said.
"Oh. Wait. What?"
Jane and Toby laughed at the newbie. He'd get the hang eventually.
"Nick, those thing'll kill you," Toby explained. "You can go ahead and kill yourself if you want, but don't do it in the office. I'm planning to live to see my 100th birthday."
Nick was confused. He was working 90 hour weeks to defend people’s rights in exactly this situation. He’d put aside his liberal views—the consequence of working more than five years for the ACLU—in order to take this job with Sick Ciggo Corporation, where (he thought) he’d be defending the people, their civil liberties, and their right to smoke whenever and wherever they could. Now Jane and Toby were telling him not to smoke?
“Nick, can I ask you a somewhat personal question? Why do you spend fourteen hour days, alone in your office, reading briefs and researching class action lawsuits?” Jane leaned forward in her seat eagerly.
“I—well, I guess I just love it. I’m doing something I’m passionate about.”
Toby and Jane begin to giggle again, looking sidelong at one another.
“Wait, why do you guys do this job?”
“The money,” says Toby. “The paycheck of course,” Jane says at the exact same moment.
Nick sits quietly for a moment, processing. What had he gotten himself into? The New York freakin’ Times had declared him “evil,” and now he wasn’t allowed to participate in the very activity that he fought tooth and nail to defend for everyone else.
“Relax, kid. Stop taking yourself so seriously. For better or worse, you’ve signed on to this job, and now you gotta finish it. So,” Toby said, turning to look at Jane and then back at Nick. “I was thinking we need to play up the important economic role that Sick Ciggo Corporation plays in the lives of more than a quarter million families. We go out of business, they go out of business.”
“Okay, I like that,” Jane chimed in.
Gradually, as they continued to talk strategy for the next three hours before breaking for a late lunch, Nick began to feel better. These guys were good. The best, really. They weren’t just persuading future judges and juries. They were persuading Nick himself!
After lunch, Nick was able to plunge himself into his work. Nick loves these moments alone in his office, reading for hours and hours about the nuances of regulatory compliance with state laws. No one and nothing mattered except the pages of text in front of him. Though people have these images of lawyers in front of juries, gesticulating widely and speaking forcefully, life as a corporate lawyer is really just a lot of time spent alone, reading and writing.
Eventually, Nick looks up from the page. The cleaner is making the rounds in the office, emptying trash cans. Nick looks at the clock. 8:00 p.m. already. He packs up his briefcase for the evening, and heads home, stopping for a bite at an expensive French café. (He used to eat at greasy-spoon-type diners, but diners are out now that he has so much money he actually struggles to spend it.)
Though it’s 8:30 p.m., and he knows he should take a mental break, Nick is on a roll. He shovels food mechanically into his mouth without his eyes ever leaving the tiny screen of his Blackberry. Hailing a taxi (he used to take mass transit as a law student), he makes it back to his obscenely large mansion, takes the elevator up the floors to his bedroom and passes out reading.