An energising Wednesday

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the couple of days delay in updating the blog.  My only excuse is that Monday night I was up late watching the SuperBowl replay (yay Giants!), and last night I was stuck at the office rather late and, it being my birthday, when I got back here, I indulged myself in a whole apple pie from the supermarket and South Park.  It made for a late Tuesday night!  I got a birthday card from my brother-in-law yesterday too, as well as a swathe of Facebook greetings and an email from Joni with a picture of Rachel, so the day had a lot of awesome written into it!

Today was really energising.  In the morning I had to scurry off to Court to do a directions hearing.  I also had a hearing on this morning to attend to as well; my boss had suggested that instead of hanging around at Court to manage any negotiations, I come back to the office and steer the negotiations by phone.  It worked like a charm: we settled just before lunch, for about half of what we had instructions to settle for.  A great outcome!

In the afternoon I had a meeting.  And not just any meeting: I'm currently handling a matter where the claim is against the Australian branch of a major corporation (a Fortune 100 company).  They have surprisingly few workers compensation claims, so their internal advisors are taking a keen interest in this matter.  And they're a major client for the insurer we're getting our instructions from.  So, today I was meeting with two officers from that corporation, and the relevant national and state account managers from the insurer, and the corporation's relevant legal manager for the Asia-Pacific region on speaker phone from Shanghai.  So, no pressure!  Anyway, I think I can say I aced the meeting: I was able to answer all of their questions about the litigation strategy confidently, manage their particular concerns, and generally looked like I was competent, diligent and skilful.  I was pretty pumped about this I have to say!  Later in the afternoon I had a meeting with my boss who wanted to talk about my less-than-impressive billing figures.  The thing was, rather than sending me into a tailspin, this just energised me: I asked a few questions of the partner who manages our accounts and ensured I understood the figures I was seeing, then went back to my office and printed off the list of my current files and figured out the ones that are ripe for settling, which ones I can expect to finalise within a month, and which ones still have a long way to go, then began figuring out how I can actually make those figures look suitably improved by the end of March.  So, for the first time in my life I think I'm actually working smarter rather than just harder, and maybe I can be good at this law thing after all.  It feels good to feel like I can respect myself over my work!  I honestly can't recall when - if ever - I last felt like this.  Feels good!

OK, it's getting on for 1am, and I need to turn in.  Hope all your days are going well too.

See you tomorrow.