Falling for the Lawyer - By Anna Clifton Page 0,34
you charge an hour?”
“Dad!” Alex protested. “That’s no question to ask at the dinner table.”
“Your daughter is right, Peter,” Mary Farrer interjected as she took her place at the other end of the table.
JP spoke up anyway. “I don’t mind giving Peter an answer to his question if no one else minds hearing it. I charge eight hundred dollars an hour.”
“No!” Peter Farrer protested, staring at JP with sharp brown eyes.
“How can you justify that?” Simon asked, shifting his look between JP and Alex from across the table and then JP sensed Alex lower her gaze to her plate.
“Easy,” JP remarked casually, “That’s market price. If clients want the best litigation practice in town then they have to pay for it.”
“But are you the best?” Simon pressed scornfully. “How do your clients know you’re better than the next lawyer charging half that?”
“We’re not always better but we always get it right. Clients will pay a premium to know their lawyers are getting it right.”
“How can you lie straight in bed knowing you’re crippling ordinary people with your fees?” Simon shot back with barely concealed hostility.
“We don’t act for ordinary people. We act for institutional clients and multi-nationals—although I also have a handful of very wealthy private clients. If a mum and dad matter comes in we refer it out. They can’t afford us.”
“But eight hundred dollars an hour!” Simon scoffed. “That’s a joke!”
“Let me put it this way,” JP persisted. “You’re in the rag trade, aren’t you Simon? The amount of clothing you produce can be almost limitless because no doubt you manufacture off shore. Lawyers can’t do that. We’re always labour intensive. Although I have lawyers working for me, at the end of the day the clients look to me, as the partner, to give them the cold hard facts about their court case. You make your profits in mass production. I make mine out of intensive services, like a heart surgeon.”
“Hah!” Peter Farrer half laughed and half scoffed from the other end of the table. “If I could afford eight hundred dollars an hour I’d hire you Mr. McKenzie. You’re the most persuasive man I’ve ever met.” And with that announcement he laughed again. Mary Farrer and Monique smiled uncertainly.
“How many lawyers you got?” Peter Farrer went on.
“Twenty-six in my section.”
“And they’re all men?”
JP suddenly feared he might choke on his meal. He cleared his throat as he lowered his knife and fork to his plate, wondering whether he may have travelled back in time to the nineteen-fifties.
“More than half my lawyers are women,” he explained quietly to the table when he was able to speak again.
“No way!” Simon argued.
“It’s true,” JP explained suspecting that although he moved in a modern world, in certain quarters people had not changed their attitudes much at all. “Girls have outnumbered the boys in law schools for a long time now. It’s a simple equation: if we want the best we have to hire women otherwise we’d end up with second rate lawyers.”
“But how does a woman raise a family when she’s a lawyer?” Mary Farrer asked in disbelief at what she was hearing.
“That’s a good point, Mrs Farrer. It’s one that my partners and I are still trying to address but we have a flexible working hours policy. I’m also finding that men are taking on more of the domestic duties for their families at home, which is only fair.”
“It’s a load of politically correct tripe if you ask me,” Simon interjected dismissively before addressing the whole table. “I’m sorry. But women and men are not the same and no one will ever convince me that women have the head for law and business that men do.”
JP stared at Simon as indignation rose hot within him.
In that single moment he completely got what made Alex tick. But it didn’t make him feel satisfied. In fact, although there was something warm and honest about Peter and Mary Farrer, JP felt thoroughly depressed. The stifling attitudes were closing in around him, just as they had for his own mother. He knew then that only an iron will within Alex would ever allow her to become mistress of her own destiny within that environment. He despaired for her.
He opened his mouth to respond to Simon’s last comment when the girl herself suddenly slid her hand over his under the table and squeezed it. It took his breath away but it was not an affectionate squeeze. She was sending him a message, begging him to