I passed the bar just over one year ago, and today was the first day I entered a courtroom on real, lawyerly business. I realize some lawyers never go before a judge. My father, an M&A lawyer, was one such attorney.  Everyone else in my family who is a lawyer, however (and most of them are*), has spent a a lot of time in court as a criminal or civil attorney. My aunt shepherded major women’s civil rights litigation through the appellate courts, my uncle has argued in front of the New Jersey Supreme Court, and my mother and stepdad were career prosecutors.

I was nervous and clueless. I wore my black maternity suit. I got to the courthouse way too early. My clients and I were the first ones in the courtroom at the appointed time of 9 a.m. I knew that I was supposed to check in with the judge’s clerk up at the bar, and I did that promptly. But then it was another 45 minutes until the judge even took the bench. Case after case was called. At 11 a.m. my clients were restless — they had to get back to work. I asked the clerk if my clients needed to be in the courtroom for the hearing of our petition. Not only did they not need to be there, but our case file was lost. “Don’t worry,” said the clerk. “It’s on someone’s desk somewhere. We’re recreating it.” (I later learned that this is not atypical…) My clients left. I stayed. The bailiff woke up a snorer in the back row (I’m not making this up) and shooed out people who were talking, standing, or trying to drink coffee in the courtroom. As I grimaced at every cough and sneeze (the H1N1 vaccine supposedly needs two weeks to become fully effective), I texted my assistant-district-attorney mother with my questions and observations. “So the judge just takes the bench whenever she feels like it?” “She is reading each file just before she hears the case?” “Why do all the attorneys know each other?” “Why do they keep coming and going out of the courtroom?” Was I supposed to be coming and going?

I spend my days so so isolated and sheltered up in my glimmering office building, surrounded by the tax code. Once again, the contrast between my relatively easy position (yes, we work long hours, but we’re not exposed daily to murders, drugs, and abuse, not to mention decaying courthouses…) and the “real” justice system inbues in me a deep admiration for my mother and for Henry, both of whom commuted daily from our tony suburb into an entirely different world at the county courthouse in Elizabeth, N.J. I felt kind of like a fraud sitting in that courtroom in my expensive maternity jacket and Kate Spade heels: I’m not really an attorney, I just go into work with over-educated, over-paid people and pretend to be.

Finally, my docket number was called. I had met my client through one of our firm’s pro bono initiatives.  She was seeking legal guardianship of her 18-year-old daughter, who is severely mentally disabled and unable to make decisions for herself. Not only are the guardianship rules new and tediously complicated, but the process of getting a petition filed in Probate Court is equally so. I explained the daughter’s condition to the judge. My guardianship petition was granted.

Maybe a small burden was lifted from the shoulders of a Dorchester family. But does my paltry 60 seconds in front of a judge legitimize my role as a lawyer? Perhaps in the context of my litigation-experienced family, but perhaps not so much in the grand scheme of things.

*Only one, however (I believe), has the distinction of having passed two state bar exams! Congrats to my aunt, namesake (no, wait, I am her namesake?), and godmother, who, after practicing law in New York state for 30+ years, moved to one of only four states into whose bar you cannot ever waive, and today received her victorious NJ bar results! Not that she was ever not going to  — but that great feeling of relief is still fresh in my memory. It just cannot be underestimated.

Too gorgeous out to write a long post — need to get my work done and get outside! But please click on this link to see the “Opinion” column — a fusion of art and photos and observation — in today’s Times. It is a subtly provoking and lovely musing on women and the law.

Well, I didn’t go running yesterday. I went in to the bathroom at work and changed — running tights and all — in anticipation of a quick run past South Station and down through Southie, but by the time I emerged it was 5:30. And my mind was elsewhere: we had no diapers, no milk, no dish soap, no bananas, no paper towels — all things you can not do without when you have a baby. I also had spent about 45 minutes total with the Little Bug since Monday. So, I went to Whole Foods and CVS and went home and played with my baby. And didn’t feel guilty at all.

Today, however, at 3 p.m., I was sitting at my desk feeling anxious. My chest felt tight. I couldn’t concentrate. I was getting cranky. I already had rescheduled my pro bono tax preparation work (I have been going to Chelsea on Thursday nights from 4-6 p.m. to help low-income tax payers complete their forms) in anticipation of a late night at work (I had a 6 p.m. phone call with a client in California). I don’t know who at work might be reading this so maybe I shouldn’t be writing it, but . . . I went home. And I went for a run.

The run felt kind of horrible at the time — my 2:30 p.m. Starbucks was giving me side stitches and I felt like I was running 12-minute miles. But the weather was warm, and I quickly broke a sweat (probably because I over-dressed for the 40-degree afternoon). And, now, I’m a new person. I took the 6 p.m. call at home, Little Buggy splashing away in the bathtub in the background and am, for the record, still working away at 9:30 p.m., but perhaps the lesson learned is: my body will let me know when I need to work out and I will make the time, even if it involves “sneaking” out of work (though I would argue that it was for both my personal sanity and professional concentration — I have accomplished more in the past three hours than I did all day…)? So maybe I shouldn’t stress on a consistent basis? (Ha.)

Are you on Facebook? No? Then you are missing the internet craze of the month, the viral “25 Random Things About Me.” It’s wonderfully self-indulgent.

The instructions: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

My list:

1. Waiting nine years after to college to go to law school — and then going to law school — was the best decision I have ever made.

2. Don’t think I’m crazy: I also loved law school, even when I missed five weeks of classes because I was too nauseous with morning sickness to drive to school.

3. I’m a far, far better (happier) person today than I was 5, 10, 15 years ago. As my mother would say (quoting “The Velveteen Rabbit”) I’ve been “rubbed real.”

4. In high school I wanted to be a U.S. Senator. Now I would like to someday be a speechwriter for a U.S. Senator.

5. This is probably because I have career ADD: I am currently on my 10th job since I graduated from college.

6. My daughter is named after my mother.

7. Speaking of my mother, she is the shining inspiration of my life.

8. I talk on the phone, or email, or both with my mother and my sisters every day.

9. And speaking of my sisters, they are without a doubt my best friends. I wish Erin would move back to Boston already.

10. My husband is one of nine children — he and his twin sister are #s 7 and 8.

11. Here is where I have lived since 1996: New York City; Ketchum, Idaho (Sun Valley); Los Angeles; Paris; Princeton, NJ; Boston.

12. Of the places listed above, I would move back to Ketchum, Paris, or LA in a heartbeat.

13. I am obsessed with interior design — blogs, magazines, etc. I fall asleep at night redecorating the rooms of my apartment in my head.

14. On average (even counting the three months or so I had to give them up while I was pregnant, meaning that there has been many a day when two were consumed), I most likely have had a Starbucks soy chai latte every day since the year 2000. I am, in fact, drinking one right now. (Oh, the money! The calories!)

15. I am a certified yoga instructor.

16. Sundays make me slightly blue, but I love our Sunday family dinners with just Tim, Little Buggy, and me eating spaghetti at meatballs at 5:30 p.m.

17. I don’t drink hard alcohol but make up for it in the amount of red wine I consume.

18. Oh yeah, when I lived in L.A. I worked at a wine store and took classes at UCLA to become a sommelier (did I mention my career ADD?)

19. I have run one marathon and two half-marathons.

20. I used to be a rather intense ashtanga practitioner (every morning at 6 a.m. for 2 years) and almost-vegan.

21. I have been to 29 countries and have: trekked in the Himalayas, visited Ankgor Wat and the Taj Mahal, sailed down the Mekong, seen the wailing wall in Jerusalem and Palmyra in Syria, sunned on the beaches of Rio, hiked the Swiss alps, watched the sun set over the Bosphorus in Istanbul. Those days are long gone, and I’m quite okay with it.

22. That being said, my dream is to live with my family abroad someday, preferably in Paris or London. Do you think they need tax lawyers there?

23. Despite my newest career, I still want to publish a novel. Maybe that will get me back to Paris.

24. I am in absolute awe of the fact that I found my husband, and that we made our incredible child.

25. I truly, truly believe in karma and that everything that happens to you in life — good or bad — leads you to where you are supposed to be.

The first two weeks of 2009 have been frigid and snowy. I feel a bit guilty for not writing, but I’ll now do my best to catch up. Here’s a short list of 2009’s milestones thus far:

1. New Year’s in the Country

Little Buggy and her friend, August, check out the snowplows on a snowy New Year’s Eve night.

We woke up New Year’s Eve day to a veritable blizzard but wouldn’t let that keep us from heading out to Tim and Isabella’s newly renovated farmhouse in Concord. (In any event, I was in charge of the wine for the dinner party, so I couldn’t let everyone else down, right?) We took the T to North Station and then the commuter rail out to Concord, and I have to say, when we stepped off the train and Tim, our host, was waving to us on the snowy platform in his Barbour coat and wellies, I felt as if we had arrived for a weekend in the English countryside. (However, note to self: in the future do not take a toddler on a train without adequate snacks.)

From this…

There were four couples for dinner, exquisitely prepared by Isabella and her friend Lisanne (both of them true gourmets). We started with prune gnocchi (with a fruity and sweet Dolcetto d’ Alba that perfectly balanced the prunes — by far the best wine pairing of the night), then salad, then a pork tenderloin roasted with fennel and rosemary (with a Chateauneuf du Pape, which I picked really only because it’s my favorite wine, although it did go well with the pork…) I also had brought some cool dessert wines — a Bonny Doon framboise, a sparkling Shiraz from Australia, and some port to go with the chocolate fondue we were to have for dessert. However, we didn’t quite make it to the last course, as the evening devolved (evolved?) into a spontaneous dance party in the home’s detached studio, where we rang in the New Year as Little Buggy and little August slept away in the main house, peacefully oblivious.

…to this

2. I bought a Kitchen Aid Mixer

I woke up New Year’s day to the sun sparkling on the snowy fields and low stone walls of Concord — picture perfect New England. Isabella already had baked banana bread; Little Buggy and August had pulled chairs up to the kitchen island to “help” her. I resolved right then to finally purchase the Kitchen Aid I’d been craving for years, justifying it with cozy thoughts of Little Buggy helping me bake over the years. And, indeed, in just two weeks I’ve made chocolate chip cookies and my own banana bread — more baking than occurred in all of 2008.

Just as fun as baking: hiding in the box

3. Detox

Before all this baking happened, however, starting January 5 (a Monday — the real beginning of 2009) I went on a 5.5 day cleanse: no dairy, caffeine, soy, alcohol (duh), sugar, or grains. The first two days were rather painful only in that I was hungry. But I made myself a rash of healthy things in advance — soups, smoothies — and by Friday I felt great. My skin was clear, and I had lost about seven pounds (for real!) I’m back on the sauce: caffeine, alcohol, dairy, but I feel good about dropping that holiday weight, even if some of it creeps back on. I do sort of wish I could eat like that all the time, but frankly, it’s boring. Interestingly, I didn’t miss the cheese or wine all that much, and the hardest part for me was not stopping in the Starbucks in the lobby on my way up to my office. There is something innately comforting to me (Pavlovian?) about the routine of standing in line, grabbing that cardboard cup, and settling in at my desk to begin the day.

4. Yoga!

I’ve been to yoga six times! I’ve been getting up at 5:45 a.m. to get to the 6:15 class at Prana Power Yoga in Central Square. Even though it makes the mornings a bit more hectic, my days are so much better. I’d like to try to do it every morning — maybe that can be my next goal.

5. Running Club

The 2009 running club was inaugurated by Ellen and me last Saturday on an icy cold morning on the Charles. It was more like “adventure ice running” over large unplowed sections of the path on the river, but we felt rather proud afterwards. This morning’s running club has been cancelled due to the six degree cold outside.

6. Lots of snowstorms.

Helping Daddy dig out the cars

7. Little Buggy is 18 months!

She had her 18 month doctor’s appointment on Thursday. She’s a healthy little girl. Weight: 24 lbs, 11 oz (50th %); Height: 33 1/4 inches (quite literally off the charts for height percentile — greater than 100%).  Both Tim and I were early growers, so that’s not surprising. Still, I wonder if she’ll end up being over six feet, like her Aunt Stephanie. She’s talking almost incessantly these days (wonder where that came from?). I can pretty much understand what she wants, and she can parrot back almost anything, making me realize I really do have to start curtailing my use of four-letter words.

Cooking away…

8. Work

I’ve been a BigLaw attorney for four months. I feel a little bit like I did when arrived at Princeton and was surrounded by people who, like me, legitimately loved school, and books, and asking questions, and learning. In the tax department, I’m also surrounded by people who are unabashed about their nerdy love of the tax code and the problem-solving it presents. I think this is what makes practicing tax law a bit different from corporate or litigation. In corporate, some people love that rush of the deadline, of staying up late, of making huge transactions happen (well, to the extent that they do anymore…). In litigation, people love doing the case research, writing briefs, looking for that one clue that will turn their case. In tax, people like to sit around and discuss the freaking TAX CODE, inventing scenario after scenario of possible outcomes.

More to my specific interests, however, each time I have the chance to do the college and university tax-exempt work (that I went to my particular firm with the hopes of specializing in), I am reminded of my real passion for education-related issues. This week I attended a conference for college and university practitioners, as well as a firm-sponsored lunch on topics in this area. Many of the issues in this area are far from tax related — admissions, labor, etc. — and I do hope to get some exposure to these areas as well. I also was assigned a pro-bono case in which I’m going to represent the mother of an autistic child against the Department of Education to help extend the girl’s education-related benefits after she turns 21. I’m nervous, as I am going to be the lawyer — but this is the benefit (indeed, the point, I think) of doing pro bono work as a young attorney. You have client exposure and responsibility that you’d never have in your normal place at the very bottom of the pecking order (to wit: I will be spending part of my vacation day on Monday transcribing , word-for-word, a two- to three-hour conference call. Not really using my, um, legal skills…)

Oh, yawn! Was that so boring? (Told you I was a dork.)

Anyway, one more thought about work: if you click on that link to the right to “Above the Law” you’ll see that this must-read legal blog has been listing almost daily firms that are laying off workers or freezing salaries. My firm, while halving bonuses like all the other firms, is not freezing salaries, which is encouraging. Nevertheless, things are nerve-wracking, as they are for everyone in the country. If I have a job in 2010 — bonuses, salary increases or not — I will be truly grateful.

And with that, I embark upon the latter half of the month, promising to update a bit more regularly.

Mark Bittman in his tiny kitchen. His appliances, however, are still nicer than mine!

This is the time of year when I want to cook. I want a Kitchen Aid mixer on permanent standby on my counter for cookies (see this great article in today’s Times about the perfect temperature for butter. I suppose Kara and my habit of tossing the butter in the microwave before making cookies or fruit crisps is not all that great for the final product); I want an orange Creuset dutch oven permanently bubbling with stew on the stove top. (Alas, my tiny city kitchen is big enough for neither — I can’t even store them as the cabinets are too narrow, the counter space too scarce! Although Mark Bittman’s recent article on his own tiny kitchen has quelled my whining, somewhat — I’ll just pretend I’m in Paris, no? Where people make five course meals on two burners?) 

Somehow I have found myself throwing a dinner party for 10 (four couples who are “Tim’s” friends, graciously trekking in from the ‘burbs…) this Saturday and am currently obsessed with the menu. I’m not a big meat eater nor, as a consequence, cooker, so while the Barefoot Contessa’s leg of lamb on potatoes (throw it in the oven for two hours with some rosemary) seems easy, it also calls for a meat thermometer, which kind of scares me. Several friends have recommended a pork tenderloin, which I’m not sure I’ve ever even eaten (so how could I cook it?) Risotto is always a good standby for me — the proscuitto and the butternut squash in the recipe I’m contemplating might be an acceptable replacement for real “meat,” but will it be enough for my meat-loving husband and his friends? And can one really pull off risotto for 10? So here are my two menu options for now (in both cases, dessert will be mini cupcakes ordered from Sweet Cupcakes, just down the street):

Menu 1:
Smoked salmon & black bread
Shrimp cocktail (the seafood in lieu of a real meat main course)
Butternut squash risotto
Roasted tomatoes
Wilted spinach with lemon
Cheese plate

Menu 2:
D’Avignon cheese with fig spread and rosemary crackers
Endive with caramelized onion spread
Rosemary leg of lamb on potatoes
Roasted tomatoes and/or wilted spinach with lemon

Fortunately, to help me through my dinner party crisis, I have found a new blog for my Google reader — “Three Clever Sisters.” Of course, I have a soft spot for families of three sisters.  These three not only knit and crochet amazing things, but are also quite formidable amateur cooks. And since I know for a hard fact that one is a tax lawyer with a baby, I feel a new resolve to reignite my former recipe obsession.

Also, Three-L and Fortune’s Feast have merged into a new blog by another lawyer-cook, here at Letters to a Young Attorney, a brilliant and poignant idea for a blog.

Anyway, any and all comments are most welcome!

It’s 5 p.m. on a bitterly cold, dark Saturday, and I am at work. (This is in part because our data servers and email shut down yesterday due to an ice storm somewhere west of here, and in part because by Monday I am to write a memo on the tax consequences of a certain form of partnership distribution, about which I have absolutely not one iota of prior knowledge or understanding. It’s taking awhile.) The baby is home, sick. Therefore, I have to bow out of a holiday party to which I’d been looking forward for weeks, ever since I got the beautiful invitation, and whose hostess, Kristen, is one of the best cooks and entertainers I know. My mouth is watering as I think about all the treats I’ll be missing. But what can you do — what if Little Buggy is crying and needs me and I’m not there?

Still, the day is not lost:  I convinced Tim to get a tree (even though we’ll be gone for a week at Christmas), which is being decorated even as I write (love the tree: hate to decorate it…always have). And we’ll have a fire tonight.

And sometimes when you walk around your neighborhood doing errands on a bitterly cold Saturday, you can see this:

I mean, I just have no idea. But since this “race” seemed to begin and end at the Pour House on Boylston, I imagine these people were fortified with a bit of liquid courage. (Kind of like Nude Olympics, no? Except a bit less nude, i.e., we were much tougher. Or drunker.)

I was sworn in yesterday and so can now dispense legal advice and be sued for it. The swearing in ceremony was actually lovely. It was in Faneuil Hall, and it was an official session of the court, meaning we had to “all rise” when the justice of the Supreme Judicial Court (Massachusetts’ highest court) walked in. We took oaths of allegiance to the Massachusetts constitution, the U.S. constitution, and took a lawyers’ oath that dated from 1638 (or something like that) in which we pledged not to accept any “filthy lucre.”

Chief clerk Maura Doyle — who, as anyone who attended the ceremony knows, is kind of a hoot — standing in front of a huge painting depicting John Adams debating Daniel Webster.

As you can see, I was sitting in the front row for the ceremony. They ask you ahead of time if you will be bringing small children, and if you answer yes, you get to sit up front so that you can be the first ones to sign your name in the ledger and accept your license and then to leave. This was a good thing, since my child was the one howling up in the balcony, and it was my child you could hear yelling, “Dada! Dada! Up! Up! Noooo!” through the doors even after Tim took her out to the hallway, where  apparently the two of them spent most of the ceremony climbing up and down the stairs. My mother and Henry drove up for the ceremony, and my mother came up on stage with me to hand me my license, which was rather poignant and symbolic — I think we both appreciated the moment.

It’s been a long road! But here I am — if you need any legal advice relating to corporate or non profit taxes, or maybe even partnership distribution, tax exempt bonds, or 409A benefit compliance, feel free to give me a call. I can maybe read a lease or a contract for you, but I don’t think I can defend you on any criminal charges. Quite yet.

Warning: the following post may sound like a whine. I realize I haven’t written in ages but have been suffering from: post-election let-down, a cold, and some other stuff. Turns out that when you are trying to bill 8.25 hours a day, and trying to spend qualify time with your child as well (away from Sesame Street), it leaves you very little time to do things like write on your blog, as meaningful as that is. I am having difficulty getting those 8.25 hours in — I can get in maybe 7 at work, if I’m really, really efficient (e.g., no Gmail or Facebook — yeah right!). So those extra 2 or 3 hours have to come between 7:30 and whenever I go to bed. So no time to blog, until I get more efficient. Which, of course, I’m going to become tomorrow! I swear!

I am going on what is basically my first, real business trip in all these thirty-something years. Just for one night, to New York. Will stay over in a hotel (in a king bed! by myself!) a few blocks from our New York office (can walk to work in 10 minutes! I can sleep until 8:30 if I want — that’s like noon, practically, in the life of a parent…).

So, I roll up to Logan this morning, very professional in my trench coat, laptop bag-that-looks-like-a-stylish-bag, and rolling suitcase (with my liquids packed neatly in an accessible ziploc bag). But then, as the true business-traveler novice I really am, I forget to take my laptop out of my bag before sending it through the scanner, have my face cleanser confiscated for being an ounce too large, and set off the metal detector with my belt, all the while much more professional people in suits pile up behind me, coughing and stamping their feet (or so it seemed to me!).

And then, oh yeah, my flight is cancelled. So I shelled out $7.95 for a Logan internet “day pass” and here I am, drinking coffee that is not Starbucks and waiting for my colleagues who were smart enough to check their Blackberries this morning to see that our flight was, in fact, cancelled.

In any event, it will be a fun little trip — will get to see Law School Lindsey, who works in my firm’s New York office and who is now, after the Connecticut swearing-in ceremony yesterday, officially a lawyer (hooray! Congrats!), as well as my New York colleagues. And the highlight is a big Halloween party tonight, which will take place in a rather expensive and chichi restaurant, so I’d better not mention exactly where on this blog.  (The whole “It was already paid for” argument didn’t make AIG’s executive retreat look any better…)