Law Students

Steam of Consciousness Update

By Anonymous

I've been drafted onto an absurdly complicated patent law case because our battalion of IP lawyers was swamped and we needed to quickly respond to a Motion for Continuance in a federal action. A call for help was sent out for a "top researcher and writer" from our general litigation group, and apparently I was nominated. A dubious honor, I've decided.

Luckily, there is a parallel ITC action (as is, apparently, common in patent disputes) and a Motion to Stay was filed there. Our esteemed co-counsel, another highly ranked BigLaw firm wrote the response, and I was told I should pretty much be able to copy it and then add a few modifications to personalize it for federal court.

I opened up the document yesterday morning and yeah, no, copying was not going to work. So I dug in. I researched patent law standards and procedures, I researched the history of our case, I learned that the shorthand way to refer to a patent involves a backwards little apostrophe, something that only the cool kids on the IP inside track know. My promised due date for sending my draft to the senior associate on the case was "late afternoon" which morphed to "this evening" which stretched into "by the end of the day" which eventually became 1:15 a.m., or "you'll have it when you wake up in the morning."

And my thoughts about the brief I was writing went from, "this is going to be pretty good" to "oh my god this is crap" to "well maybe I can make it pretty good crap" back to "nope, no I cannot" to sending the email attachment at 1:15 with a hope that it was at least written in English with proper citations. Then my first thought this morning was "well, maybe I was just tired and overly negative last night- maybe it's actually really awesome!" to sitting down and reading it with my tea this morning and deciding it was completely within the bounds of acceptability but nothing that would blow anyone away. And thus my motion's evolution was complete.

So far I have yet to hear from any of the patent people, so I'm not sure what they think of my draft, but I'm comfortable with it and know it is a substantial improvement from what was submitted in the parallel action. I think I was supposed to just update the case law and terminology, but once I get in a document it's very hard not to turn editing into re-writing, especially when you know you can make it better. And I know that all my little apostrophes are facing the right direction, which I am told, is super important.

Oh, and the other big event of yesterday: my perinatal check-up and my total lack of progress on the cervical front. Yay! I'm a little effaced, but show no further dilation or other changes, so my nurse practitioner was very pleased and told me to just continue with the general goal of resting as much as possible until we hit 36 weeks. Which is only 2.5 weeks away! JP has been doing just about everything for me at home; I think he's petrified that I might go into labor before his finals and presentations are over on May 7. I do a lot of sitting and thinking of things to organize, and then I go organize them while sitting. Our bathroom drawers are beautiful and our linen closet is a triumph of rainbow-order.

So that's where I am, personally, professionally, and cervically. I am 33 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I billed enough yesterday to make up for my 2-hour accidental shopping trip at Gap Body last Friday (everything was on sale- I bought 6 things and not one of them cost more than $7!) and the fact that I spend too much time each day on baby-related non-billable things. My feet are starting to swell, but I'm in cute silver flat sandals and feel otherwise fine. Landon told me I was "so pretty" this morning, even though I was bleary eyed and huge and weigh an apallingly high amount of pounds.

Ooh and I just got an email from the IP associate with a "nicely done!". Excellent. I'm buying myself a Double Doozie at American Cookie Company after lunch.

Full post as published by Lag Liv on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).