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Old 11-11-2015, 02:06 PM
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LexieCat
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: South Jersey
Posts: 16,633
Taking my own advice

I got an email a few days ago from my lawyer's paralegal (lawsuit over my foundation problems) with draft interrogatory answers to the interrogatories sent by one of the defendants.

When I practiced BRIEFLY in the world of civil litigation, I hated, hated, HATED discovery practice (one of the things that attracted me to criminal practice--discovery is pretty cut and dried). Throw in the fact that this is MY lawsuit, and the email was promptly forgotten as being too stressful to think about.

I got a reminder email from the paralegal yesterday and I promised her I'd review the responses today. I finally forced myself to sit down and read through it, and as I felt my stress level rising, I thought, "Didn't you just TELL someone to let the lawyers worry about it?" Frankly, I thought some of the responses were slightly, well, not that responsive, but then I reminded myself that my lawyer has been doing this for DECADES, and if he thinks these are sufficient answers (and he's been dealing with the case for YEARS at this point), then I need to trust him and stop stressing over it. If I wanted to stress over how much to provide, I could have represented myself. This is what I'm PAYING him for.

So I made a couple of minor corrections/additions, and now I don't need to worry about it. It's hard to let go, especially when I know just enough law to debate it in my head. But part of hiring someone else is trusting their judgment on things we're just too close to.

Once again I was reminded that fear of dealing with stuff like this gets in the way of being able to concentrate on other things that would be far more enjoyable/useful.
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