By Robin Roshkind, Esquire – West Palm Beach, Florida
It is 8:45 am and I am standing in the West Palm Beach courtroom waiting with my colleagues for my turn to talk to the judge. I am here on some motion or other…usually procedural…usually with argumentative opposing counsel. I fight with opposing counsel as the judge listens. He rules from the bench. Another court order in the case is born.
After a stop a Dunkin Donuts, my reward for being alert from very early in the morning, I go up to my office. As I put my hand on the door knob, I start to hyperventilate and worry about what is waiting for me on the other side of that door. I am usually not disappointed…as the saying goes, it’s always something.
Something could mean a new client on the phone; an existing client complaining about his bill; a saleman trying to sell me malpractice insurance; opposing counsel phone messages, faxes, emails. By 9:30 it’s information overload.
Then the appointments start arriving, filling out forms, wanting to talk to a lawyer. We always offer coffee and a hand to hold, as family law clients are always as stressed as we are, or moreso. I try not to, but I do, get involved in my clients’ intimate life. What gets me is as follows: if a wife is purposely spending her husband into the poorhouse; a father failing to return children to the wife; emotionally battered, tired or sexless husbands; physically hurt wives with bruises and tears, betrayal, lies, and all around misery. I try to help, by taking down the facts and assigning the case to one of our very experienced family law attorneys. Sometimes I cannot help. The law does not protect unmarried, unmoneyed, aging women who are thrown out on the street after years in a relationship but without a co-habitation agreement. I see a lot of sad situations.
Time to open the mail and along comes another court order. We WON! Quick, call the client and order lunch for the entire staff! We are good, after all, with our research, strategizing, letters to opposing counsel, posturing, bluffing, proof. All that testimony, expert witnesses, numbers flying around the courtroom, this scenario, that scenario, evidence marked, deposition transcripts, all that work and preparation. All that money spent on us.
By 4pm it’s time for a courthouse run to file more notices, motions, and pleadings. Our paralegals are at their computers, our lawyers are in conferences with clients or drafting documents. The phone is ringing off the hook, or sometimes it’s not and the place sounds like a morgue. That is when I worry most.
I am the founder and owner of the Firm. Ultimate responsibility for EVERYTHNG rests with me. I hardly rest at all. I am fighting with opposing counsel, fighting with my staff, fighting with clients who don’t follow advice or direction, fighting with suppliers whose bills I can’t understand, fighting with judicial assistants and mediators to give me more time for this or that. I put out fires all day long, trouble shoot, explain things to clients who don’t get it, pay bills, and run the Firm.
By 8pm I am exhausted at my desk. And some of us are still working, preparing for that trial tomorrow, or generating bills for the mail. My FIRM is generally humming from 7am until 9pm with different staff members coming and going. We are all busy. We shout, we cry, we celebrate, we joke, we throw books at the wall, we pop the champagne. The law office of Robin Roshkind, P.A. is the law firm of love. We all love what we do, because we are good at it; we are a family, and we are helping people get through the most difficult transition for their families.
For more information about the law office of Robin Roshkind, P.A. go to our web site at www.familylawwpb.com or call one of our attorneys at 561-835-9091.
