Perspective

New Dogs, Old Tricks

by Mark F. Dunkle, Esquire

Our Invisible Fence might seem cruel, but it really works. The mechanics of it are pretty simple. A thin, insulated wire is buried along the perimeter of the yard and connected to an electronic black box in the garage. A dog collar with an even smaller black box goes around the dog's neck. Little white flags (like the kind surveyors use) dot the yard a few feet from the edge of the buried wire. As the collar gets closer to the flags (and the buried wire) it beeps. The beeping gets faster and faster as the collar (and dog) move closer to the buried wire. Once the collar is right above the wire, Zap! a mild electric shock corrects the dog. ("corrects"means it hurts).

It took all of about 15 seconds for our yellow lab Sandy to appreciate the rudiments of the Invisible Fence system. White flags - beeping - Zap! sunk in quickly. Immediately afterwards, white flags were given a wide berth and immense respect. Beeping was avoided and the Zap never happened again.

I'm a big believer in the Invisible Fence school of lawyer training - just get out there and get zapped! It might hurt a little, but it's not fatal, and to the extent you've made a mistake, you'll never repeat it.

New lawyers really don't need to spend five years writing memos for partners just to graduate to fourth chair at counsel table. All that memo writing will make you a really great memo writer. But, the moment you are sworn in, you really are a lawyer. You are not a clerk. Even if you are toiling away at the bottom of the pyramid, working ungodly hours for those above you, the skills to handle a complex case are already within your grasp.

If you can be appointed by the Superior Court to represent a criminal defendant, you can pull together that stock dilution TRO and expedited discovery request in Chancery. Sure, you might spend a lot more time on line with Westlaw, or rewriting your hand-crafted pleadings than attorneys with five more years of experience, but you can do it. If you are chained to that desk in the firm library, consider a respite from the world of cite-checking and footnotes and volunteer for a criminal or family court appointment. You'll probably end up with more real trial experience than your supervising partner. Later, you can mesmerize the crowd at 821 by dropping the phrase nolle prosequi into the conversation.

My friend the Doctor also has an Invisible Fence. His aging black-lab Sam loved to run the neighborhood, so the Doctor had the Invisible Fence installed, and even hired a professional Invisible Fence dog trainer to teach Sam the way of the fence. Unlike our pup Sandy, Sam really didn't seem to understand the audible cues made by that special collar. Instead of backing off when the collar started to beep, Sam would just sit down at the edge of the flags, oblivious to the electronic racket. Sam kept this odd behavior up for about a week. Then, he was gone.

The Doctor eventually found Sam about two miles away from home. It turns out that after about a week of constant beeping, Sam had managed to run down the battery on his collar. Once the beeping stopped, and the battery was dead, Sam bolted.

Whether you are a young pup like Sandy, or a wizened old retriever like Sam, you are a lawyer the moment you take that oath. You really don't need to be on a short leash. Go out there and get zapped.*

*No animals were injured in the writing of this column, except Sandy, and she soon got over that. However, Sandy now resides with relatives (mine, not hers) in Lewes, behind the gentle security of a plain old wooden fence.

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Mark Dunkle is a Director with Parkowski & Guerke, P.A.

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