Ask the Author: Portia Porter
Answered Questions (1)
Portia Porter
This book is inspired by people who stiff divorce lawyers.
It was written by a divorce lawyer who learned what is in these pages through painful experience. Really!
My friends who are not lawyers couldn’t understand.
“Wait just a minute! You are still a divorce lawyer, aren’t you? Telling people how to stiff yourself? You tell people where you keep your spare house key too? That a joke?�
“You do not understand,� I said, “It’s a safety matter. Imagine you own a gas station, and one day . . ..�
That got them talking about owning gas stations, which got them distracted from thinking about stiffing lawyers.
My friends who are divorce lawyers, though, did not get distracted at all. They erupted in outrage at my proposal to betray the location of vulnerable chinks in the bill-payment armor of our profession:
“We ought to report you to the State Bar for aiding and abetting fraud,� threatened my friends who are lawyers,
“It’s interference with the contracts, what you are doing. You want the profession to suffer for your private amusement!�
“Listen to me,� I said, “Have you read ‘Getting to Yes,� in law school . . .� but they did not want to get to anything.
“You are betraying our professional guild!� complained my divorce lawyer peers, “It’s an ethics breach! It’s treachery! We are writing you up!�
Divorce lawyers can be a hard-headed (as well as hard-hearted) bunch.
I realized that my professional peers were seriously determined to report me, even though they at least dimly realized that what I proposed was neither unethical nor illegal. Maybe my mother was right, and my divorce lawyer friends are not, in the end, really my friends.
My mother, always dependable, said: “No, I get it. It’s like . . . imagine you are minding a gas station and three masked teenagers come in and try to rob you for the thirty bucks that’s in the register.�
“Exactly,� I said.
“And then they get all spooked and shoot the rusty rifle they dug up somewhere and smash two thousand dollars-worth of glass, and one of them shoots another in the leg, and then they all end up behind bars.�
“Yep,� I said. “Sort of like Donny.�
“I remember Donny,� said my mother. �... And you feel bad for these no-goodniks because they are, like kids and do not know what they were doing.�
I was not sure if she was still with the metaphor or actually talking about Donny. In any event, I was glad that I did not have to resort to the hopelessly careworn example of the hapless bull in the china shop.
“Right on,� I said. “Donny. I wrote about him. But it’s upsetting to the Union.�
“Write it anyway!� she said. “People are going to stiff divorce lawyers either way; always have. This might at least guide them to do less damage to themselves? . . . Tell the Union to like it or lump it!�
Well, dear reader, although the lawyers� guild will have to lump it, I avidly hope that you like it.
It was written by a divorce lawyer who learned what is in these pages through painful experience. Really!
My friends who are not lawyers couldn’t understand.
“Wait just a minute! You are still a divorce lawyer, aren’t you? Telling people how to stiff yourself? You tell people where you keep your spare house key too? That a joke?�
“You do not understand,� I said, “It’s a safety matter. Imagine you own a gas station, and one day . . ..�
That got them talking about owning gas stations, which got them distracted from thinking about stiffing lawyers.
My friends who are divorce lawyers, though, did not get distracted at all. They erupted in outrage at my proposal to betray the location of vulnerable chinks in the bill-payment armor of our profession:
“We ought to report you to the State Bar for aiding and abetting fraud,� threatened my friends who are lawyers,
“It’s interference with the contracts, what you are doing. You want the profession to suffer for your private amusement!�
“Listen to me,� I said, “Have you read ‘Getting to Yes,� in law school . . .� but they did not want to get to anything.
“You are betraying our professional guild!� complained my divorce lawyer peers, “It’s an ethics breach! It’s treachery! We are writing you up!�
Divorce lawyers can be a hard-headed (as well as hard-hearted) bunch.
I realized that my professional peers were seriously determined to report me, even though they at least dimly realized that what I proposed was neither unethical nor illegal. Maybe my mother was right, and my divorce lawyer friends are not, in the end, really my friends.
My mother, always dependable, said: “No, I get it. It’s like . . . imagine you are minding a gas station and three masked teenagers come in and try to rob you for the thirty bucks that’s in the register.�
“Exactly,� I said.
“And then they get all spooked and shoot the rusty rifle they dug up somewhere and smash two thousand dollars-worth of glass, and one of them shoots another in the leg, and then they all end up behind bars.�
“Yep,� I said. “Sort of like Donny.�
“I remember Donny,� said my mother. �... And you feel bad for these no-goodniks because they are, like kids and do not know what they were doing.�
I was not sure if she was still with the metaphor or actually talking about Donny. In any event, I was glad that I did not have to resort to the hopelessly careworn example of the hapless bull in the china shop.
“Right on,� I said. “Donny. I wrote about him. But it’s upsetting to the Union.�
“Write it anyway!� she said. “People are going to stiff divorce lawyers either way; always have. This might at least guide them to do less damage to themselves? . . . Tell the Union to like it or lump it!�
Well, dear reader, although the lawyers� guild will have to lump it, I avidly hope that you like it.
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