Page 432 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
could have been filled out without the benefit of having sat on George’s couch and listened to George’s phone calls.)
Junior litigation associates rarely, if ever, spoke to clients or adver- saries, much less got to see them. But here, in the context of the purchase and sale of one-family homes, the real estate associate soon learned to deal with the vast panoply of clients and adversaries (and brokers, who might or might not have been adversaries, pretending to be friends).
Of the clients, in addition to those who were appreciative, there were, among others, those who didn’t return calls, those who faulted you for calling too often, those who called you at home at odd hours for next to no reason, those who said, “We’re not on the clock, are we?” (meaning “You could not possibly be billing me for this useless waste of your time”), those who were quick to criticize you (either to your face or behind your back), those who couldn’t follow instructions and then blamed you, those who would not speak to you but insisted upon speak- ing only to the partner who was nominally in charge, those who would give up their own ship with your adversary before you had a chance to consult with them, those (particularly those who were not paying) who insisted that you spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about petty things with your adversary (“Watch the pennies, and the dollars will follow. . . .”), etc., etc.
Then there were the adversaries (attorneys and their clients alike): those who were eminently reasonable, those who affected reasonable- ness as a ploy, those who were downright dishonest in their dealings, those (usually the dishonest ones) who accused you of dishonesty, those who claimed that their clients were crazy (so your very reasonable posi- tions would nevertheless would have to go unheeded), those who told you that their clients had all the leverage3 (something that was needless
3. In this use of the word leverage, the client who has it is the one in the more powerful bargaining position: The other person needs the transaction more than he or she does (or believes so) or lacks the economic or legal power to fight successfully. In the more technical, commercial use of the word leverage, we have a real estate investor who has borrowed lots of money. The more that he or she has borrowed, the higher that the ratio of his or her income from operations to his or her capital investment will be after the payment of operating expenses and debt service (princi-
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