Last Three Weeks
Posted by: Ed Chernoff
March 03, 2007

I don't have the ability to compartmentalize. I don't multi-task. That is why I've been absent for the last four weeks. I've been embroiled in a multi-count federal bank fraud case that took three weeks, 21 witnesses and too many boxes of documents to count. So, among other things, I haven't blogged. I also haven't attended my son's soccer games, or enjoyed the company of the fairer sex. I don't know what's happening in Iraq, or the business part of my practice. Nor have I worked out or eaten any meal that requires more than twenty minutes. But I'm not complaining. I'm apologizing.

When I started this blog, I hadn't any idea that there would be folks out there who would actually read it on a regular basis. I viewed the blog as a way to vent my emotions and amuse my staff. I shouldn't have underestimated the power of this medium. I've received emails from folks who complain about me not finishing stories I've begun. I've run into lawyers at the courthouse who ask me about new posts. On two occasions last week, a client mentioned statements I made in the blog. People are reading and so strangely I feel an obligation to keep updating. For those who are interested, I vow to update every other day. I have alot to report, and for now at least, I have the time to do so.

Today I got the opportunity to watch my son's soccer game. For the first time in weeks, my mind wasn't filled with documents and flow charts and cross examination questions I wished I had asked. It was a beautiful day and I felt entirely relaxed. Early in the game my son, Fate, missed a pass to a teammate. As the game moved on around him, he stopped and clutched his head in despair. We all know about genetics, but it is always a surprise when we watch our children develop personality attributes that we have spent decades trying to rectify.

My stomach ached for him. I knew what he was thinking. My son has always been too hard on himself. Despite my constant admonitions that it is only a soccer game, that it is only a math test, that it is only a transient friend, he internalizes every perceived failure. I wish I could bear his pain for him, knowing as I do that every "failure" shall pass, but the best I can do is struggle through useless fatherly advise. I tell him that life presents failure and success in equal measure, and the best we can do is learn and react , but how can he understand this when he hasn't the experience to place something like a missed pass in perspective?

I remember the day Fate tried out for this select soccer team. For the first time, the other kids were faster and more skilled. I was standing on the sidelines and watched as he slowly come to this realization. Finally he came over to me and with tears in his eyes announced he was ready to go home. I asked him why. He said, "I can't do this Dad. These kids are way better than me!" I just blurted out, "Well, we aren't going home Fate. You are going to wipe your eyes and go out there and either succeed or make a fool of yourself."

I wasn't as gentle as I wanted to be and he seemed surprised. With tears streaming down his face, he asked "But why, Dad? Why can't we just go home?" My response crushed him, and I wondered if I had said the right thing. I wanted to protect him, to hold him and take him to the Nestle Tollhouse cafe around the corner and fill him with icecream and cookies, but I couldn't. I fumbled for the right words and then answered as honestly as I could. I put my hands on his shoulders and waited for him to look into my eyes. I said, "Because son, this is what life is about. We try and fail and then we fail some more until we make it. To be honest Fate, it doesn't get any easier from here, and if I let you quit now you will never get it. LIfe just sucks sometimes. It really does and the thing is, all you can do is learn how to live it. So we aren't going to leave. Not now. And if you make a fool of yourself, then we will deal with it together."

When I was done, I felt guilty. My words weren't measured for a ten year old and I realized that the speech I made was more directed at me than him. I absolutely knew that I had made it worse. I figured maybe I had shocked him because he stopped crying. He looked out at the field where the players were drilling and wiped his eyes. After a pause, he turned towards me and looked at me with sort of a half smile. "Gee thanks Dad", he said teasingly, "that REALLY makes me feel better!" Then he ran off and joined the other kids.

It's hard to take yourself seriously when you have kids! One Sunday, before a particularly grueling trial, Fate asked me why I was so tense. I told him about the upcoming trial. He said something I'll never forget, no matter how many cells die in my brain. "What are you worried about, Dad? You aren't going to jail, are you?" I laughed out loud. Of course, that wasn't the point, but the truth of the statement made it all seem better somehow. The next day, I suited up and ran off to court. It was going to suck, but I figured if I made a fool of myself, Fate and I would deal with it together.

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Marathon Thinking
Posted by: Ed Chernoff
January 22, 2007

When my calve blew I thought about that poor volunteer. It was two days before, and I had gone to the George Brown to pick up my "race" packet. My numbers were being passed out by a matronly smiling woman in a marathon t-shirt. She asked me if I was ready to run. She was really quite pleasant about it, but for some reason the question annoyed me. What if I wasn't ready? What if I had been nursing a calve for two weeks, and was absolutely sure that it would fail somewhere on the pot-holed streets of Houston? What was she going to do about it? What if I had started training 7 weeks too late, and hadn't prepared for the inevitability of injury? Maybe, just maybe, I was completely screwed. Was she going to unscrew me?

Though I don?t remember how I answered her, I do remember the rest of our encounter. She looked at me as if were a five year old, about to enter one of those school sponsored haunted houses. You know the ones I'm talking about. You've got to put your hand in big buckets labeled "guts" or "eyeballs" and little does your five year old brain know that the evil teachers who go home every night talking about how much they hate you, have filled the buckets with wet spaghetti and marachino cherries. Every now and then, some assistant principal dressed like a goblin jumps around the corner and yells, scaring the shit out of you because you've already been warmed up by the eyeball thing. That's the one I'm talking about. Anyway, she looks at me that way and asks, "Are you scared?" Man, that really pissed me off. I replied, maybe too forcefully, "I'm running the marathon, maam. I'm not running from lions."

But there I was, at mile 8, very scared indeed. I was thinking that maybe my part of the discussion that I had perceived as witty, was actually just plain rude. We were both volunteers after all. She volunteered to pass out "race" packets. I volunteered to go to hell. When it hit, it felt like someone was rotating a dagger into my tibia. She was right. I was scared, but it wasn't the pain that did it. I had expected the pain.

Prior to the race, I had planted a shin splint brace backwards on my calve. Then to keep it in place, I wrapped it in gauze. My hope was to distribute the pressure as I jarred it thousands of times during the "race". Nobody had told me to do this, and I didn't learn about it on some Internet site. It was just a hope on my part. I figured it would fail eventually, but mile 8 was a little sooner than I expected. And the pain was far greater than I expected. But that's not what scaredme. What really scared me was that it was the wrong fucking calve!

I spent a week trying to rehab the left calve. I massaged it, I planted it in a hot tub, I took pills, I elevated it when I slept, I stretched it, I rested. Still it called out to me. It warned me of what it was going to do to me if I pushed it too far. During "race" preparations it pinged small morse code alerts on the small runs. At 6 miles it yelled at me. On 9 mile runs it crippled me. It was the bitch I had to obey. It was my second wife after the tequila wore off. But at mile 8 it didn't make a peep. Instead, it was my trusty right calve that cruelly exploded, and the bitch was still out there, biding her time.

I hobbled for a while, eventually maintaining a rhythm. It went numb eventually, and I harbored a hope that maybe I could keep it going until I hit the 20 mile wall. At mile 12, well into West U, I was moving pretty well. I popped the last four Advil I had in my pouch and downed it with a pixie cup of Gatorade offered me at Southside Place, where the wealthy community had lined the streets offering encouragement and toasted the runners with Mimosas. I began to feel pretty good. I began to feel optimistic.

I ran through the Galleria like a man blessed. How silly I was to be scared! Life brings you challenges, but its not the falling off the horse that matters, its how you put the saddle on. It's not falling down, it's the getting up that makes the man. All those fucking little platitudes emboldened me as I plodded along. The year before had been substantially easier, but here I was a year older and 7 pounds heavier, and I was going to make it! It was mine for the taking! The world was my oyster! Of course...it was at that point that the bitch decided to call my cell phone.

There are few things that someone with my alcohol and age addled brain will remember the rest of his life. For me, that pop was one of them. To be honest, I probably didn't hear the pop, but when the pain came it wasn't slow and incremental. I had no warning. It just erupted. I fell to the curb. Like a man drifting on a life raft, drinking his own urine and salt water to survive, I lost all conception of reality. I began tearing off the gauze and clutched my left calve. I squeezed it until it felt like I had separated it from the bone. No matter what I did, I couldn't relieve the pain. The runners passed by me like some expressionistic painting.

I sank into the curb. After 15 miles the cold concrete curb felt like a Lazy Boy. Logic set in. I had run 15 miles. Most people can't do that, I reasoned. Both calves were blown. Only an idiot would continue under such circumstances. I couldn't conceive of even one reason why I should risk serious injury to finish a "race" I couldn?t possibly win. Hell, some Kenyon somewhere was already getting his post race massage and collecting his $100,000 check. I still had to hobble to court the next day. My race was over. It was over. And then, I thought about my son, Fate. (To Be continued. To see Ed Chernoff cross the finish line go to www.chevronhoustonmarathon.com)

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The Rat Pack
Posted by: Ed Chernoff
December 04, 2006

We are an eclectic bunch at Stradley, Chernoff & Alford. How the hell did we ever wind up together any way? Good question! It all started with Alan Baer and Ed Chernoff. They both spent their teen years in Hollywood, Florida. They went to the same High School in the late 70's. They graduated the same year. Yet, they never spoke. Perhaps because Alan was stoned all the time and Ed wasted his days writing poetry for disinterested cheerleaders. The story progresses.

Both Alan and Ed attended the University of Florida. They both pledged the same fraternity. Freaky coincidence perhaps, but neither one recognized it. Paradoxically they spoke only twice in their college years, though they lived three rooms away from each other in the fraternity house. The first time they spoke was at the introductory pledge meeting. Alan told Ed he looked familiar. Ed agreed. The second time they spoke was during hell week. Alan had just finished throwing up the beer that had been forced down his throat, and as he turned to Ed for compassion, Ed mentioned how ironic it was that Alan wanted to join a fraternity of men who so obviously enjoyed the pain they were inflicting upon him. Alan looked on dumbfounded, since Ed was quietly philosophizing while naked on his hands and knees. They didn't speak again for 12 years.

In 1984 both Alan and Ed went to law school in Houston Texas. Neither one had any idea. Eight years later they both wound up in County Criminal Court Number Twelve. Ed was in a jury trial, and Alan was babysitting a divorce client with the not to infrequent collateral issue of domestic violence. Alan thought he recognized Ed and so paid particular attention to the trial. As Alan watched, some crazy assed light bulb went off in his head. He can't exactly explain to you what he was thinking, but he knew absolutely that he wanted to change his life and join Ed in the practice of Criminal Law. No, I'm not making this up. Ask him.

Alan waited for a break during the trial and introduced himself to Ed. He got a card. The next day he asked for a job. Ed, who had just left the DA's office, was driving a 1970 Cutlass and living with a roomate on Westheimer. His student loans had been deferred for five years, which allowed him the five dollars a day he needed to buy beer and note pads. Ed didn't have sex because he couldn't afford condoms, so he absolutely had no ability to hire an associate. He made this perfectly clear to Alan, whose response was predictable. He had his wife call Ed. (to be continued)

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Oh the stress!
Posted by: Ed Chernoff
May 17, 2006

Specializing in criminal defense is a completely different animal than other types of law specialties. No doubt the hours are different for a criminal practitioner, but more pronounced are the stress differences. Underlying everything we do is the constant nagging that we are responsible for the lives of our clients and their family's future. I don't mean that other types of lawyers don't feel responsible for their clients, but with the possible exception of some family specialists, most attorneys in the litigation area are fighting over money. Every day, the lawyers at Stradley, Chernoff and Alford fight over liberty and futures. It will literally make you crazy if you don't put things in perspective. Depression is a rolling theme at the firm. Yesterday Bill was told by one of his clients that she didn't think he was working hard enough for her. Her charge was Aggravated Sexual Assault of a child. Bill has worked tirelessly on her behalf, forcing the State at one point to dismiss the charge when they weren't ready for trial. They re-filed the case because of pressure from the family. Recently I have been lobbying the State to offer a misdemeanor, which they have been considering for the last few weeks. This case has been on Bill's, and more recently my, radar screen for nearly a year. Bill has prepared for trial twice. His trial notebook is immaculate. Bill knows how much he has worked on the case. More importantly, he has suffered for this client. He has a tendency to wear his clients all day long - especially those who face the very real possibility of going to prison for the first time in their lives. Bill took this woman's remarks personally and he shot back at her. All day long he carried this remark with him. Then later, over a drink, we all laughed about it. We had to. Most of our clients are suffering and desperation will cause you to do strange things, not the least of which is attacking those who love you the most. We can do no good for clients if we let the stress of our jobs affect us. I see an awful lot of good lawyers burn out and move out of the criminal arena. What this woman was really saying was "I'm scared." She has a right to be. But we can't be scared with her. Too many future battles lie ahead. There are too many people counting on us.

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