Anonymous, Esq.

30s | TX, USA | she/her but they/them is also fine Just don't he/him me because I am emphatically not a man I'm not your attorney and cannot give you legal advice nothing in this blog is legal advice Visit @attorney-anon-offtopic for random stuff Visit @atty-anon-does-art for bad art

[attorney-anon]

Who are you?

I have been a practicing family law attorney in Texas since early 2021, after being licensed in 2020. I'm also autistic with an ADHD best friend (who is also an attorney), and I can offer insights into how neurodivergence interacts with the practice of law.

What is this blog?

This blog is intended to give me a space to talk about the ups and downs of law practice, in part to help me get stuff out of my own head and in part to offer my own experiences to others in the hopes that we can collectively make the practice of law suck less.

Please note that most of my stories are slightly modified from real events, to preserve my own anonymity and also to help ensure my clients aren't identifiable because I owe them confidentiality even (and maybe especially) when they're annoying.

Can I tell you things?

Asks are open. If you send me a shitty ask, expect a shitty response or a block. Also, I cuss, so if that bothers you, please move along.

If you have something related to being an attorney that you want off your chest without attaching your digital reputation to it, submissions are also open so you can use my digital reputation instead.

I want free stuff!

Don't we all?

Lucky for you, I have made some digital planning stickers, covers, and papers for use with programs like Goodnotes, and I have a Google Drive with a bunch of it, which you can have. It's not always organized super well, but, hey, it's free! I try to remember to post when I add stuff.

Goodnotes Resources - Google Drive

I want legal advice!

✨✨FUCK NO✨✨

Nothing on this blog should ever be construed as legal advice, and my life advice is always to consult an attorney before you believe random legal information you find on social media.

I don't know you, and I am not your attorney.

If you think you need an attorney, you probably do need one.

02/27/2025 Addendum:

Do you live in Texas and feel freaked out about your rights as a LGBTQ+ person? I don't have specific legal advice for your situation (see above), but this post is for you.

[thelawfulchaotic]

sorry if you've already answered this somewhere, but how do you counter the argument that "rapists/serial killers etc don't deserve rights bc they violated someone else's rights/what they did was inhuman"?

I know the obvious answer is probably that everyone still deserves rights regardless, but I think there's still some nuance I'm missing maybe? ty, I'm very fascinated by this stuff

Oof, I thought I'd answered this one, I'm sorry. It's so old now!

In essence, them getting their rights taken away is what happens -- but it's through what's called due process of law. People have a right to be free; when they're put in jail, that right is taken away. Due process of law is the part where the government has to justify why it put them in jail.

The 'due process' part is also where the government proves that 1) they were the one that dun it, and 2) that they deserve the rights being taken away as a result. Without that due process, the government can just point at someone and say "that guy, John A Smith, is a rapist! cut his balls off!" and the cops will arrest that guy and a doctor will grab a scalpel and someone will generate appropriate paperwork and nobody will check to make sure they got the correct John A. Smith, much less whether he actually was a rapist.

A very real example of this, right now, is deportation. ICE is deporting people with the most excruciatingly minimal due process of law that I've ever seen, and I promise, "due process" was always pretty fucking basic and janky. (See: my entire series of posts on the legal system.) ICE will just write up a piece of paper that says "This guy sucks and we get to take him out of the country" and when they show it to other legal authorities, those legal authorities are like /shrug, yeah, this looks like legal paperwork, I guess there's nothing we can do. But that guy didn't have a lawyer for that. That guy didn't have someone to advise them of their options. In many cases, no one even translated the paperwork they were intimidated into signing. That's what it looks like to have your rights taken away without due process.

In any society, there's going to be a little bit of taking people's rights away. It's one of the compromises that happens when you have a lot of humans trying to coexist in a network. Due process is, in theory, the thing where you make sure you do it right and fair.

(In practice, it's the enshrining in law of a lot of stupid human biases, thus making it seem right and fair when it is, in fact, on the whole, deeply horrifying.)

Anyway. If you have rights, you have to have a way to take them away, in order to have a functioning civilization. Due process of law involves individual rights in and of itself in order to be a fair process.

[attorney-anon]

This is a pretty decent explanation of due process and why it matters even for people you don’t like.

[bisexual-biker]

I don't know what I expected when I got a subscription to Dropout TV, but it wasn't Legal Eagle x Mickey Mouse (with big tits) smut, read out loud in front of Legal Eagle.

[attorney-anon]

I’d like to clarify, as a lawyer, that this episode fucking killed me.

[attorney-anon]

The court of appeals in a petition for writ of mandamus I submitted at 9:30 this morning denied my petition at 2:30 this afternoon without explanation. Did they even fucking read it????

[dduane]

Re: the Anthropic suit. How does someone who only published via Smashwords or the like find out if they were excluded, since they don't have a traditional publisher?

Hmm. I think you'd first need to look at the Bartz vs. Anthropic site to make sure you were in the main suit's class to begin with. There were four main criteria writers in the class had to fulfill:

Your work had to be one of those Anthropic used to train its LLM. Those works were acquired from LibGen and PiLiMi, and there's a page where you can look up affected works by ISBN, ASIN, author name, or title over here.

A given work had to have been "registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in a timely manner". This apparently means "within five years of first publication." (See the Bartz vs. Anthropic FAQ page over here.)

A given work also had to have been registered "before being downloaded by Anthropic, or within three months of the work's first publication."

And a work had to have an ISBN or ASIN.

...Now, there's no requirement for a work to have been traditionally published to be part of this class. But somebody has to have formally registered it on or after publication with the USCO.

So if somebody, say, self-published their work through Smashwords, they'd probably need to talk to Smashwords to find out what commitment (if any) Smashwords has or had made to authors using them as regarded copyright registration with the USCO.

Note also, though, that "copyright protection" in the abstract sense (which can ensue simply on the publication of a work) is not the same as copyright registration. (The Bowker page here gets into this in some detail.) The US Supreme Court has apparently ruled that if you're going to seek monetary damages for copyright infringement, you have to have registered the work with the USCO.

HTH. (And for those who may be curious: I have numerous works that were illicitly obtained and used by Anthropic that nonetheless didn't make the "works list" because they had no ISBNs or ASINs, and/or which I'd never registered. But that's on me, and is something I'm going to be way more vigilant about in the future.)

[godblessthesickos]

World historical loser

[drwiltz-official]

[attorney-anon]

Tags by @noirandchocolate. Fun fact, my best friend and favorite coworker has this mug on her desk.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

well i misread that

[attorney-anon]

First read: “What kind of company needs RPF so bad they’re hiring a whole position for it?”

Second read: “OH WAIT RFP. They need someone to do requests for production for them, that makes sense!

…

Wait, no it doesn’t they’re not a law firm.”

I still do not know what this job is for.

[themirokai]

*vague small business general counsel noises* Oop! My turn!

RFP in this context is almost certainly Requests for Proposals.

When an entity wants to do a public procurement for something they can either get bids or proposals.

If they just want to buy widgets, they will put out a request for bids and Company A will respond saying that they will sell the widgets for $10 and Company B says they will sell them for $12, etc. And then the buyer will generally select the lowest bid.

But if they want to procure something more complicated, like, say, someone to design a new bridge, they will put out a Request for Proposals, or RFP. And that RFP will lay out what kind of bridge they need and where and what is the schedule for the project and maybe what is the maximum price they can pay, etc. And then engineering firms will submit proposals that say how they will deliver the very best bridge design for the best value because they have an awesome track record and experienced engineers, etc etc. And the entity that needs the bridge will pick the best proposal and enter into a contract with that engineering firm.

Sometimes these RFPs are dozens or even hundreds of pages depending on how complicated the thing they’re procuring is! So it makes sense that an entity that procures lots of complicated stuff frequently would need an RFP writer.

*disappears back into the undergrowth which, on further inspection, is made up of sub-consulting agreements, NDAs, and land easements*

[attorney-anon]

Fascinating! The business law part of my bar exam made me sad, but this kind of thing is interesting.

[cheaphalloweencostume]

well i misread that

[attorney-anon]

First read: “What kind of company needs RPF so bad they’re hiring a whole position for it?”

Second read: “OH WAIT RFP. They need someone to do requests for production for them, that makes sense!

…

Wait, no it doesn’t they’re not a law firm.”

I still do not know what this job is for.

[attorney-anon]

So, turns out that overworking yourself consistently for three months straight can result in bronchitis :D I still have deadlines to meet though, so today is brought to you by DayQuil, NyQuil, and Tessalon.

[attorney-anon]

Turns out, if you continue to ignore sleep while sick for long enough, your body will eventually just stop giving you a choice in the matter.

I am slowly starting to get better, though.

[attorney-anon]

So, turns out that overworking yourself consistently for three months straight can result in bronchitis :D I still have deadlines to meet though, so today is brought to you by DayQuil, NyQuil, and Tessalon.

[themirokai]

There is something very satisfying about getting a new follower on here and having them immediately become a regular in your notifications. Like ah yes I am getting a good grade in tumblr blogging something that is normal to want and possible to achieve. Hello new friend.

[disorientation]

Having a "stupider people have done this" attitude about the things you want to do can open so many doors

[attorney-anon]

How to cure imposter syndrome as a young attorney

[attorney-anon]

So, I am at the office late this evening because there is an unspoken policy that no one works late by themselves, and Junior Partner is still working. I am not taking this opportunity to work (because I don’t want to) and am instead reading fan fiction on my phone while lounging on the nap chair in my office, but I am greatly enjoying monitoring my emails as Boss and a new OC go back and forth to see who has the bigger dick. (Boss is a cis woman and OC is a cis man. Boss is winning.)

[bar-and-broken]

meritocracy discourse should be illegal before 10 am🙄

Someone in class said affirmative action makes admissions “less meritocratic” and i swear the whole room did that thing where everyone gets quiet but in a fake casual way.

like suddenly everyone is VERY interested in their notes.

I hate this conversation because people say “merit” like it is this clean little thing floating in the air and not something built out of money, tutoring, legacy, unpaid internships, confidence, english, passports, parents who know how institutions work, and like 400 other things nobody wants to count.

I wanted to ask what merit means when some people inherit libraries and other people inherit debt.

I wanted to ask why sounding confident is treated as being smart.

I wanted to ask why “objective standards” always become objective after the room has already been arranged for certain people.

but obviously i did not say all of that because i do actually want to pass this class and not become the diversity debate girl in week 6.

So I just underlined “equal protection” like three times and pretended to be normal.

later in the bathroom this other girl from my section looked at me and went “yeah, i know.”

nothing else. just that.

and honestly that was enough.

things the room called neutral today:

legacy admissions

knowing what a clerkship is before october

unpaid internships

saying “my parents’ friend” and somehow meaning a federal judge

confidence

pretending history ended right before applications opened

Anyway, law school is fascinating because everything is made up but also the made up things have consequences which is rude.

🎧 currently: brutal - olivia rodrigo

[attorney-anon]

I got a stay granted in a case where I have a petition for writ of mandamus pending, which means that a hearing my OC forced upon me where he openly gloated about planning to send my client to jail for contempt will now not be happening. After emailing me near-daily since the last hearing, he has been silent for over 24 hours.

Sometimes, it really is the petty little things that make this job worth doing.

[attorney-anon]

Hi! I am about to start my 1L year this fall and in the last 2 years was diagnosed with ADHD and autism. I have never had any accommodations before. Is there any advice or tips you would give to someone in my position? Are there things about law school and/or the legal profession broadly I should know as an auDHDer?

I’ve never asked for accommodations, sadly, so I have no personal experience there. I do know that some people in my section were accommodated by being able to test in a private room, rather than a room with everyone else. If that would be helpful for you, it may be worth pursuing.

In general, law school (and law practice, too) requires a LOT of communication and interaction with others. With autism, you’ll need to work harder than most to blend in, so also be sure to build time into your schedule to rest so you don’t burn out. A trick I’ve learned to mimic uncomfortable eye contact is to make eye contact briefly, then redirect your focus to somewhere else on a person’s face/head for a few seconds, then look down at your notes (if you have notes) until you next need to emphasize a point or answer a question. This is easier for me, typically, than maintaining “natural” eye contact.

You’ll also need to learn to accommodate your own ADHD symptoms - find ways to help yourself study and get things done. For me and my ADHD friend, during law school, that looked like intentionally making time to study at the school, away from distractions, rather than studying at home where we could find plenty of less boring things to do, and rewarding ourselves for study with fun things (and cookies from a nearby bakery). For my friend now, that looks like building a system for preparing for hearings that automates much of the process, and learning to tell our coworkers directly when she needs quiet to focus, or when she needs someone working in the room with her to help her mirror their focus.

If anyone else has tips, please chime in!

[speakerofnonsense]

No, yeah, of course I’ll help you do the thing that is definitely tax fraud bc chat GPT told you it was ok, why even hire a licensed attorney?? you seem to be doing just fine with your internet sludge!