Opening Statement. Feeding the Hunger for Collegial Interaction

• Author: Beth L. Kaufman
• Pages: 4-5

Published in Litigation, Volume 48, Number 2, Winter 2022. © 2022 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not

be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association. 4

Opening Statement

BETH L. KAUFMAN

The author is chair of the Litigation Section and a partner with Schoeman Updike Kaufman & Gerber

LLP, New York City.

I remember vividly my first trip to a court-

room as a lawyer. I had been admitted to

the bar 30 days earlier and had worked at

my firm for 90. I helped prepare a set of

motion papers, which needed to be “sub-

mitted” in the Motion Part of the trial

court. I reported to a particular cavern-

ous courtroom and was among the first

to arrive, a half hour before the time the

motion had been noticed to be heard. I

sat down and then observed what went

on—lawyers trickled in; clerks started

to come into the courtroom from a back

room, one at a time, some with stacks of

off-white cardboard envelopes contain-

ing papers, some of which were quite

thick. About a half hour after the time

the motion was scheduled to be heard, a

judge entered, and a clerk began to call

out the names of cases from a pre-printed

calendar. I watched as the other lawyers

conducted their business—some with the

clerks, some with the judge, some just by

shouting things out from the back of the

courtroom.

Those observations taught me how to

proceed that day. When it got to the mo-

tion I was appearing on, I stood up and

shouted out, “Submit for,” and walked

to the well of the courtroom and handed

up an original set of reply papers. I am

sure my face was beet red. As I was doing

that, another lawyer called out, “Submit

in Opposition,” and walked up and hand-

ed up a set of his own papers. We walked

out of the courtroom and introduced our-

selves to each other. He left. I left, with a

big sigh of relief and pride that I had ac-

complished the goal of my first court ap-

pearance. It had taken an hour and a half,

and I only had to say two words.

That experience was my first look at

how a small part of the litigation busi-

ness at that courthouse was actually done.

Because it was a courthouse in which I

knew a lot of the firm’s cases were pending

and would be pending, I set out to learn,

thereafter, as much as I could about how

business—in the full sense—was actually

conducted there. This is not knowing cold

the procedural code (whether statutory

or by rule) that governed lawyers in that

courthouse. It was about how to actually

get something done in that vast building.

The Benefits of Being In-Person

Nothing was done electronically in those

days, and most everything required in-

person appearances before either a judge

or a clerk. Whenever I had to go to that

courthouse for any reason, I let others in

the firm know that I was going and that I

was happy to take papers down to file, or

make inquiries, or check on something in

a file in the expansive record room in the

basement. I met the clerks in all of the

various clerical departments; I met and

got to know the judges’ courtroom clerks

and law clerks. I extended these practices

to other courthouses around the state that

I appeared in, and to federal courts. The

result was a fairly thorough knowledge of

the people and the unwritten rules, how

to get a clerk’s or judge’s attention, with

untold benefits for the firm’s clients. Over

time, I helped the lawyers who came after

me at our firm absorb what I had learned

through the decades of my education

about how the courts really function.

There was a lot of sitting around and

waiting in those days, whether it was for

the submission of a motion, the argument

of a motion, or a conference. I used that

time to get to know a lot of other lawyers,

some of whom were regulars in a particular

courthouse. They provided me with even

more intelligence about what was going on

there. That knowledge propelled me into

bar association activities, where I was able

to help effectuate change in the courts and

how we practice law. When I was given the

honor of chairing a committee at the New

York City Bar Association, the mission of

which was to suggest innovations to state

court practice, I found lawyers and judges I

FEEDING THE HUNGER

FOR COLLEGIAL

INTERACTION