CBA Record May-June 2025

He’ll Have Plenty of Time to Write Now by Jack Leyhane

T he judge took off her glasses and rubbed the lenses with her sleeve. It was something she did quite often, Ben had noticed during the course of the trial, when she gathered her thoughts. She put the glasses back on. “Mr. Allen, have you anything to say before the court pro nounces sentence?” Ben stood up, glancing at his attorney as he did. They had dis cussed what he would do next... Ben had listened carefully to his lawyer’s advice... and disregarded it entirely. Ben’s lawyer would be as surprised as anyone in the courtroom. Ben pulled several pages of notes from the bottom of the sheaf of papers he’d kept before him during the trial; he hadn’t shared these with anyone. Now he began reading from them. “Your Honor, I did not set out to be a murderer. I wanted to be a writer. I always had a way with words. My parents were not happy with my choice. My mother said I’d starve. My father said I’d wind up selling hardware at Sears. “I went to law school to please my parents. My father said I’d have lots of opportunities to write if I became a lawyer – motions and briefs, maybe learned articles. Actually, most of my early career was spent in document review. There was some writing: I learned to craft lengthy answers to interrogatories that did not disclose one single damn fact. “As I became more senior, I produced people for depositions

and took the depositions of others. They weren’t all liars, though some were. A lot of people thought themselves supremely clever, when their lies were astoundingly transparent. Some honest people got so turned around trying to answer questions that they came across as liars. Get a person nervous enough and they’ll say almost anything. I couldn’t rattle everyone, but, now and again, I found someone I could completely unnerve. And I did. Some times they may have even deserved it, but I wasn’t there to play God; I was there to advance the interests of my clients. Which I did zealously, to the best of my ability. “But the only writing I was really doing during this time was on my own timesheets. I still wanted to write fiction, but a timesheet is no place for prevarication or exaggeration or falsity of any kind. Bills are created from timesheets, Your Honor, and a falsehood on a bill, no matter how innocent, violates the sacred trust and duty that a lawyer owes a client. That had been drilled into me from Day One with the firm. “And then I was assigned to Mr. Martin. The decedent. The victim.” Ben tried not to spit that last word out; the audible gasp in the courtroom evidenced his failure. Ben tried not to notice. “It was an unhappy accident, really. Mr. Jones got elected to the bench – as you know, Your Honor – and left the firm. He had supervised me and Ms. Robinson. She got reassigned to Mr. Perkins and I got reassigned to Mr. Martin. Maybe none of this

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