The Pro Bono Singers have just finished their wildly successful tour of Alameda County, California.  The performances received rave reviews but the group had to decline an invitation to perform at the White House due to pressures from their various day jobs.  Here’s a sample of this year’s show, with more to come.

(Due to size restrictions, I’m unable to post these videos in full quality.  If you know how to do it, resize your Windows Media Player by dragging its edges inward and then toggle full screen mode.  This will give you about a half-screen mode.  Otherwise, you have your choice of a tiny picture with good quality or a full-screen picture with lousy quality.)

My thanks to my good friend Pam Priest (the chief pimpette) for suggesting I post these and choosing the songs for me.

It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp

Take Me Out To the Cleaners

Money

Fugue for Attorneys

All the cats and chicks can get their kicks at the hop

The Pro Bono Players are a group of attorneys, court commissioners and mediators who have performed song parodies (mostly about family law) for selected legal groups for years.  (I joined the group about four years ago and, except for sex, skiing and walking around Paris, have never had a more enjoyable time in my life.)

Most, but not all, of their numbers are based on old doo-wop songs from the 50s and 60s, such as “My Guy,” “Duke of Earl” and “At the Hop.”  But director-choreographer-songwriter Carol Gilbert doesn’t restrict herself solely to the oldies.  She’s written a hilarious number about attorneys to the tune of “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” and another about family law mediators based on “Be Our Guest” from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

This number is based on Connie Stevens’ “Lipstick on Your Collar.”  It’s called “Cleavage in the Courtroom.”

Pro Bono Cleavage

Carol is concerned about copyright issues, and might not take it well if she knew I had posted this number performed last December.  So if you’re listening, ASCAP, it’s parody, get it?  Fair use.  And if that’s not enough, I take full responsibility.

If there’s any interest out there, I’ll post some more.  Just don’t tell Carol.

I will fight if I have to.  It’s part of the job.  But I fight calmly.  Many another attorney has lectured me – or even yelled at me.  Or lectured my client during a four-way meeting.  I don’t lecture back.  I don’t yell back.  I lay out my position as calmly as I am able under the circumstances.  If that doesn’t work, I shrug my shoulders and say “we’ll let the judge decide.”  (I do, however, tend to get a bit sarcastic in my briefs for the judge.)

I would much prefer to look upon litigation – particularly family law litigation – not as a battle, but as a problem to be solved.  I think that’s why so many litigants whom I have opposed have later come to me for representation.

Several years ago, another attorney and I had a case in front of Judge Gordon Baranco when he was sitting in family law.  He called the two of us up to the bench and said, “I’m glad you two are on this case.  It looks like it could get really nasty, but I know you won’t let that happen.”

Probably not a year goes by that I don’t get a call from a husband or wife whom I opposed in a dissolution action some years back, asking if I would represent him/her in a new matter.  “You were so fair and so calm – unlike my attorney – that I want you to represent me now,” is the usual refrain.

***

Many of my clients also become life-long friends.  Until she died, an elderly Portuguese client would bring me homemade wine every Christmas.  Another one brought home-baked cookies, and another one homemade chocolate treats.  Louie, an elderly Chinese client, always brought sprigs of magnolia blossoms.  They were beautiful and smelled wonderful for about five minutes, and Louie never knew that we had to toss them outside into the garbage can almost as soon as he left because the scent was so overpowering.

***

My favorite story about former adversaries also involves a grateful tip of the hat to a now- retired family law attorney.

Louie’s daughter asked me to represent her in her divorce.  Prior to her marriage, she had owned a house in her own name, but she had placed it in joint tenancy with her husband out of love and trust.  This all occurred prior to 1994, when the law was different from today, and it was legally assumed that her house was half his.  And – unlike today – there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

Husband’s attorney was the most renowned and respected female attorney of her day in Alameda County, a lady who played strictly by the book and who seldom gave a sucker a break.  Most attorneys liked her and respected her, but nobody underestimated her toughness.  But when the four of us met during the obligatory “four-way conference,” she told Husband he really should give up his interest in Wife’s generous pension plan.  Although he was greedy enough to demand that his wife pay him for the half-interest in the house which she had given to him in the first place, he agreed to let her keep her entire pension, which pretty much evened things out.  It was a fair settlement, morally, even if I could not have gotten the same result following a trial.  My high admiration for his attorney rose even higher.

***
About two years later, Husband’s brother asked me to represent him in a divorce.  Husband had recommended me.

(It’s all downhill after Iwo Jima.)

I inherited Murray from my senior partner, Bill Moore.  The two of them seemed to get along because they were both veterans of the Pacific Theater in the Big War: Bill a decorated fighter pilot and Murray…well, who knows what Murray was, except he had evidently fought at Iwo Jima.  Anyone who knew Murray knew he fought at Iwo Jima.  Murray made sure of that.

Ask Murray the time of day and he was as likely as not to mutter, “I’m old and useless.  They should have finished me off at Iwo.”

How he spent the post-war years, I never learned and I was never really certain that he’d ever been totally with the program.  But several years after I first met him, he’d finally become not only mentally, but physically helpless and his son and daughter-in-law asked me to petition the court to appoint a conservator for him.

Establishing a conservatorship is not a step that courts take lightly. It essentially takes all of a person’s constitutional rights away from him and grants them to someone else.  He is no longer able to decide where he lives, what he eats, who his doctors are and so forth, and all of his assets come under the control of the conservator.  With proper accounting to the court, of course.

Because of the danger of greedy relatives trying to rip off rich Uncle Fred, a trained psychologist from the Court Investigator’s Office interviews the allegedly incompetent person as well as the person petitioning to become the conservator, checks out the living arrangements and makes a recommendation to the court.  And absent very serious health problems, it is required that the proposed conservatee come to court so the judge can see him before making the final decision.

That’s how Murray and I ended up in the Contra Costa County Superior Court.

“That matter is ready, your honor,” I responded when our case was called.  “Steven Dimick representing [daughter-in-law], the petitioner in this matter.”

“Mr. Dimick, is that the [mutter, mutter, mutter, killed me at Iwo, mutter, mutter]?”

“It is, your honor, and we’re [mutter, mutter, mutter, goddamned Nazi sitting up there, mutter mutter] Murray, hush!  I’ve read the Court Investigator’s report and [mutter, mutter, mutter, Nazi, fought for my mutter, mutter, Iwo.]”

“Mr. _____, do you object to the [mutter, mutter, useless, mutter, mutter, Iwo, mutter, Nazi]?”

“Murray, hush!”

After a few formalities, interrupted constantly by Murray’s suggestions that they should have finished him off at Iwo, the judge granted the petition.

As I wheeled him out of the courtroom, the audience exploded in laughter when they heard me say, “Murray, it’s not nice to call the judge a goddamned Nazi!”