Last Halloween, I blissfully passed out candy to half a dozen RBGs, bedecked in their black robes and signature collars, and I thought, finally, there’s an attorney costume I can get on board with. Unlike, say the half-assed attempts put forth by my law school brethren who showed up at Halloween parties with plastic white fangs and declared themselves blood-sucking lawyers.
Over the years, I thought I’d seen them all. The bespectacled Atticus Finches. The aggressively pink and perky Elle Woodses. The high-waisted jean and halter-topped Erin Brokoviches. Heck, I even once handed out Kit-Kats to a blue-haired Lionel Hutz.
But what was chuckle-snort worthy as a costume turned downright upsetting this year when someone crossed THAT line into a full-blown impersonation of an attorney. That was the moment my reptilian brain kicked into high gear and ran around flicking its lizard tongue and shouting “do not want” over and over again.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think if you’re going to put forth legal arguments and draw legal conclusions in a legal opinion, then perhaps it’s best you’ve suffered through the slings and arrows of law school, passed the bar exam, and obtained your license to practice (or you’ve otherwise satisfied your state’s requirements… looking at you, Washington State, you lovable weirdos). Then you can hold yourself out as an attorney and enjoy all the benefits and baggage that comes along with that title.
What you can’t do is draw up a legal opinion where you use language like “the company has legally concluded” and send it off to an outside party. I mean, you totally could if you’re an attorney. But if you’re a first-year tax manager straight out of school, you really shouldn’t do this. And when confronted, you definitely shouldn’t shrug your now-dated Bieber bangs and ask what the big deal is.
Because that is how you unleash this beast this Halloween season.
Without going into the gory details, I found out this week about this non-authorized sham of a legal opinion (dear business partners, we always find out) and spent a stupid amount of time walking back our “legal opinions” and doing general damage control. Then I confronted the tax dweeb. With all of the dignity I could muster — which was very little and mostly consisted of teeth grinding and constipated expressions — I ticked through the various reasons that legal opinions needed to be prepared by the legal department. I didn’t use sarcastic air quotes around the word “legal,” but it was a near thing. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe a plea of ignorance or some hint of remorse, but the guy just looked at me and asked what my problem was. Oh, right. My problem. But don’t worry, he helpfully added he found the answer on the internet, alright?
Facepalm. The jerk actually admitted he found the answer on the internet.
So, we fired the guy just days before Halloween. Turned him out on the streets with the other tricksters. Nah, I’m just kidding. Of course, he wasn’t fired. Like you’ve no doubt seen a hundred times in your practice, business partners aren’t disciplined for their transgressions. Occasionally, they’re axed when they miss sales targets or use the company card for a four-figure personal boondoggle. But not for something as silly as the unauthorized practice of law. I mean, what’s a misdemeanor or in some cases, a felony between friends, right?
As someone who has buttressed her in-house career with a sense of humor and the ability to turn the other cheek, even I can admit there comes a time to cut basic, common-sense-lacking ass waffles out of your professional life. And in the face of an unrepentant creep essentially masquerading as an attorney and exposing the company to a world of risk? Time to ghost ‘em.
Kay Thrace (not her real name) is a harried in-house counsel at a well-known company that everyone loves to hate. When not scuffing dirt on the sacrosanct line between business and the law, Kay enjoys pub trivia domination and eradicating incorrect usage of the Oxford comma. You can contact her by email at KayThraceATL@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @KayThrace.