Hardest Part

Yesterday in the clinic I experienced first-hand some of the hard parts of being a lawyer.

The first involves someone I've been calling about an intake interview, which is an interview we do to decide if we'll take the person on as a client.  I have been calling this person for I think 3 weeks now. I finally got an answer on the phone early last week, and we scheduled the interview for this afternoon. I had the interpreter booked and an extra parking pass for her and everything. Yesterday afternoon I call to confirm the appointment and he said his work asked him on Wednesday if he could work Friday and he said yes.  I got rather frustrated. He's the one with the immigration problem and I'm putting forth so much effort to try to meet with him, and he cancels on me, without even calling me to let me know plans had changed.  We have the interview rescheduled for next Thursday (he suggested Friday, but there's no way I'm giving up my Friday afternoon for this guy), so I hope it goes through this time. Professor Young knows I'm very frustrated with him. I think if we do accept him as  client, I'll have to pass him to someone else because I already have a negative view of him.

The second hard part of being a lawyer is when you have to tell people you can't accept them as clients. I don't think it's as tough in other aspects of the law as it is in Immigration. I had to make a phone call telling someone we couldn't take them on and I was kind of depressed about making it, even though I knew we couldn't do anything to help them. Anyway, I got Maria (our clinic interpreter) to read my script for the phone call because they speak only Spanish. Maria and I were talking about how sad the call was going to be, when Remington said, "It's not that bad you guys....it's not like they're dying."  Except that's exactly what this phone call meant, due to the nature of this person's situation. It was a hard phone call for me to sit through, and I wasn't even the person really speaking. Poor Maria!