Episode Transcript
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I just finished. Okay, Julie Chan Is Dead by Lian Zhang, an Alice Feeney book, Blue Beautiful, Ugly, and the latest Linley book by Elizabeth George.
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[00:01:47] Speaker B: Hi, and welcome to the Politics of Justice. It's me, Amy Austin.
Let me say up front that as I record this, it is about 9 billion degrees in Los Angeles.
There may be a hum of the air conditioner, but if I turn it off, I will be sweating on screen.
And for that same reason, I actually don't have the ring light on. It's just too hot for all of that. So you're just gonna have to see me the best way you can.
So when I left off the last recording, I was on chapter, I had finished chapter four.
So as we start chapter five, Casey is going to the courthouse to cash in on her favor. So the upside of access, the thing that she actually always wanted, and she talks about this across multiple books, but Casey had this fantasy that she was going to marry Tom and they were going to be this power couple. And she was going to have all this access to power that she otherwise did not grow up with.
That did not work out when Tom dumped her. But now he's back, he's got his own motives. I don't even gotten to that. But now he's back and he's offering favors. And one of them is an opportunity to get these referrals from his uncle in juvenile court.
But Judge Eamon Brody is a creepy creep. And as a creepy creep he is.
He's a creepy creep and a little power hungry, which maybe those two are always married. Let me think about that. But always married together. But as like creepy creep, he wants her to like come in so that he can like dole out the favors, you know, little by little.
And, and he's using this thing. And this like, the thing is like, this has happened to me probably within the last few years where men are like, can you. You must have a. You must come with a woman's touch. So can you give me ideas on paint, decorations, accessories or whatever?
And they want you to do all this emotional labor for them and you're.
Yeah, no. So I actually saw an adult man pout when I refused to give him paint color samples. I was like, what color should I paint it? I was like, I don't do that. And he was like, you're not going to help me. I was like, you're an adult man. Find somebody to help you that you pay, that you pay not for free, not using women's labor. Moving on. So Casey goes to Judge Brody's office and she. In the beginning of this chapter, I'm sort of like laying the groundwork a little bit more and like developing this like Cuyahoga county legal world.
And in this instance, she's going to the juvenile court and she talks about like she's walking up the steps like a recalcitrant child. And one of the things, I will say this, the beautiful thing about the WPA and slightly earlier era courthouses is they all have these grand steps. The awful thing is you got to step up all these steps. So she's stepping up all these steps. But in this case, because of the way juvenile court was run, there was only one door in and out. And it's like in 1920s, maybe earlier, maybe even late 18, late 19, late 1800s, early 1900s building.
So there's only one in and out. And while the city police, county workers and prosecutors had an express route in and out, defense attorneys and litigants had to wait their turn. So you had to stand on the steps, online to get in and go through security, check where they went through your coat. When people did have heavy coats, because it was, you know, Cleveland in the winter often.
So coats, purses, briefcases, and seem to have this, like, whole inspection, sometimes the wand, sometimes the pat down.
And in order to, like, represent litigants. And I may have been a little resentful, I said I hated this. When I was working, we treated like common criminals when going through security, as lawyers took more time than it should to enter a courtroom. And God forbid you should want to step outside.
Sure, you couldn't. It was like knowing it out privileges.
And I think I will say that there's a juxtaposition that in some courthouses, maybe federal court, I have to think about. I don't remember this, but in some states, if you show a bar card, you can bypass some of the extra level of scrutiny and security. But that was not the case in that particular court, actually. I believe you could go into some other courtrooms without security. This is before 911 and a little bit after. I think it tightened up after. After that.
So she, you know, she makes it to his chambers in his courtroom, and he's wearing a robe. And she, like, just, like, out of the fleeting corner of her eye, she thinks she sees, like, a bare leg.
And she's like, okay, I'm not gonna, like, think too much about that, because, like, there's a lot of jokes about what judges wear under their robes. And she's like, okay, you know, I'm. I'm too dialed into the creepy creep. She's like, but I want this favor, so let me just dial it back and, like, you know, put on the professional demeanor.
So she's like. She takes out a briefcase. She's like, okay, I'm gonna, like, take out my, like, shiny cross pen, the gold cross pen, which, by the way, I used to have. And I don't know where they went.
And I'm gonna take notes, and I'm gonna do what I do. But he does that thing where he's like, I'm gonna dole out favors. So she's sitting there uncomfortable, but the only thing I will say this is that she's not wearing stockings.
And when I was practic, women still had to wear stockings. I mostly wore pants a la, like, Hillary Clinton pantsuit time, mainly just so I could wear socks and shoes like a regular person.
And.
But she's, like, grateful that she's not wearing stockings, because it would just, like, cut across her and just be One under comfortable thing. And then I wrote a note. I think about how I'd love to meet the person for whom stockings were comfortable. Never met that. Oh my God.
I feel like half of my childhood memories were like wearing stockings and slips and, and being like really, really uncomfortable in dress up situations. Look, it's not corsets and like the Bridgertons, but it wasn't great.
Athleisure was a beautiful thing.
So Judge Eamon is like stretching this out and he's like, why don't we retire to my office where we can sit and chat.
And, you know, she's like thinking to herself, I'm a hungry lawyer, I need the referral.
If this is like, this is the currency that I have to spend, this is what I'm going to do.
So she falls into his office.
And I just made a side note. Most judges decorated their chambers with drab earth tones, prints of ducks or eagles or something patriotic, alongside pictures of terrific children photographed barefoot, robed, in requisite white oxfords and blue jeans. I don't know, it was a 90s, like, personal photography style. I haven't seen it in years. I assume it has died a death.
But every office I went to, actually, this is true for lawyers as well. And most professionals, they would have pictures of their children and they would be wearing white oxfords and blue jeans and barefoot for the family photos.
God save us from that era. Moving on.
Things are a little different now.
So he's like, he is using his power to make himself feel better in the accompaniment of a woman.
So he's like, what do you have on your walls at home and what is your bedroom like? And he says, I'm sure a single girl like you has an interesting boudoir.
And I said, this is a very creepy creep type of question. One that is a woman I've heard too frequently in my life, as in more than zero.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But in the book, Casey's like is thinking to herself, I just had to remember that I was playing the game to get the prize.
And. And this is like. And this is true. The note I wrote is, this is how nearly all referral conversations went with men. Women would call me, give me the client name and number and get off the phone. Men always wanted ATT in exchange for the referrals.
Nuff said.
Enough said about that.
So, yeah, enough said.
I will say this. I am realizing that as I'm talking about these notes, so if you go on to Goodreads and maybe I'll include A link in the show Notes. All of the highlights and notes are included on any book that I've made. Heights and Highlights and notes. And they're automatically published to Goodreads when I make them in my Kindle copies.
So she's waiting.
He's giving out the information as slowly as possible.
But while she's thinking about giving him cliche decorating ideas, she's going to get thousands of dollars worth of referrals in her pocket. And this is just the exchange.
So she. Once he gives her that name, she, like, closes the briefcase. She's, like, ready to run. And it's only when she gets outside of the courtroom, in his chambers, that she realizes that she left the pen. And for her parents, buying her this gold pen was very expensive and, like, a very thoughtful gift. And the kind of thing, like the gold cross she wore her mom that gives her. She wears around her neck sometimes that they might be likely to ask about.
So she's, like, thinking. She's, like, doing that. Wait, how. How important is it to get the pen back versus creepy creep? And she realizes that, like.
Or she comes to the conclusion that everybody's professional and she's just going to, like, go in and get this. Get this pen.
So she sees, like, a black woman go in, and she's thinking, you know, I thought his chambers were empty. But again, none of her business.
So she's, like. Goes back into the office, and it's, like, pushes the door to the chambers open. She should have knocked. I don't know. I don't know. There's no way to get this.
And goes in to get the pen. And when she takes the brass knob and pushes the door in, she realizes that she sees something that she shouldn't see. And. And he's saying to this black woman, bend over, Rhonda. And she said the woman whose naked brown flesh was out of place in his office became visible when her elbows hit the desk.
And she says, judge Brody, I forgot. And he looks her in the eye, and Rhonda looks in the eye, and she runs out of there. She's like, I know what I saw. And no pen is worth that.
But she gets. So after she leaves, she gets on the bus. So I will say this.
And this is a thing that actually a lot of lawyers did. There was, like, a loop. I think it's called a loop bus or. Yeah, the loop. So there's a bus that, like, went downtown between, like, all the big government buildings. And once you parked your car. In my case, I didn't Always drive a car. I usually took public transportation, but once you were downtown, you weren't moving your car.
So just, like, the court, no in and out privileges.
So you would just take the loop bus between, like, all the government buildings. And while she's on the bus, she is freaking out. She's getting this sort of, like, gross and creepy feeling, like that, like, the thing that she saw happen to her. I don't know, it's like secondhand trauma. I don't even know what you would describe that as, but she's, like, freaking out over having seen what she thinks is probably not consensual sex and probably is assault.
And it's just, like, messing with her mind.
But she's, like, compartmentalizing, which is a lot of people do. And she's just, like, soldiering forward. So she runs to her office. She, like, her, like, assistant has set up this lunch with a client, and she runs to the club and to just, like, have lunch and, like, put it in her mind. So the next chapter, five, six, six.
It's Claire on the same day. So Claire is home with her son Luke, with the broken arm.
And she is just beside herself because she's feeling so much guilt for having made the decision to leave her son with his father and not being vigilant enough to not prevent his broken arm. And obviously, this is not her fault, but she's got mom guilt. What am I gonna say? She's got mom guilt. I mean, if my son broke his arm, I don't know if I care where he was. I'd feel like, oh, my God, I should have somehow prevented that. And for every person I know whose child has broken something, they have talked about it. And this is after I wrote this book. But I have observed this in my life. I've had friends, especially with scooters or the hoverboards or the. I don't know, there was a time when everybody's kid fell off those things. I don't even know what they're called. I think it was the hoverboard or maybe the scooter. And then there's some other, like, little micro mobility thing that was popular, like, five, ten years ago.
And a lot of my friends, kids broke things, and they just feel so much guilt, even though it's not necessarily a preventable accident.
So she's feeling all this guilt. And then Darius, her ex, comes over and he's like, I wanted check up on him.
And he says, and this is something that's interesting because I'd forgotten about this element of the book.
He says, oh, it's a torus fracture. And she says, when are you going to do something with your certificate?
So when they met, Darius had said that he was in college, but it turns out he was in a radiology tech program, and he'd finished but hadn't taken advantage of the job placement. She says, and he's like, I've been looking. And she's like, you've always been looking. Why can't you get a job? And she's sort of in this.
I don't even know. I don't call it a pit.
How can I say this?
She had an intact family and parents who had, like, solid government jobs. And Claire had a very certain expectation of herself and the kind of life that she would have, and it would be markedly different from the kind her parents have. So parents, like, are professionals and, you know, like, have government jobs and solid income and a home and all of that. But she thought by going to law school, she was going to elevate just, like, a certain level above that into, like, a certain professional class.
And having met Darius and, like, the chapter tells the story of how he met her, like, on a bus, that he sort of, like, pulled her back down into a place that she never wanted to be. And this is a tension, at least, well, I know of in the black minority community. I'm not going to speak to any other communities where we live in a society that's always like, get an education, get a job, become more than your parents were, but then also speaks to you being egalitarian and dating within your group, because you can bring each other up together, but also, we can drag each other down together.
And that is a constant tension that I know people experience in the black community, but probably something we don't talk about too much in public, but I can see it even now, watching various shows.
I'm all into this single reality show.
Fortunately, I quit the streaming service, so I'm good right now.
Where there's this constant tension between trying to live this, like, rich professional life, but still having people in the community or in your family who are not on that level and having to feel like you have to, like, walk this tension where other families who. And you meet them in life who are like, my father was a lawyer. My father was a lawyer. My great grandfather went to Harvard or whatever, have never had to walk that line.
So in. In this chapter, she, like, reminisces about how she met him on a bus and she didn't want to talk to him, but he like, for reasons he was uncompelling, probably just good looking and like charming. And she ends up talking to him and going to a party and unfortunately getting pregnant. When she had, she was in law school at the time.
And even though she had not like gotten like the white shoe job, the kind that Casey lost, she was like, was going to get a solid government job and it may not be glamorous and certainly the kind of job that hundreds of thousands of black women are being fired from in this current administration. It was going to be like a solid life that she could count on for herself.
And despite all that she put into place to do that, she got waylaid by this guy.
And so he's in her house, like, well, she's sort of lamenting about this past and how she got here. And at some point she's like, what are you doing?
Why aren't you working? Working?
And he admits that he caught a felony.
He wasn't the perpetrator. He got caught up in something and it just really pulls her down and it starts her longing again for the kind of life that she believes that Miles can provide for her.
And the tension goes on.
What happens in the end, we will see.
But she knows that Darius would like them to get back together and her son would like her to get back together, but she can't be in this family unit with this guy now with a felony and a radiology degree or something. And when Miles is out there who's like the Ivy League graduate with the parents of a certain class and sort of represents her way out in the same way that Tom Brody represents a way out for Casey. It's sort of like their parallel tracks acts where these women are just maybe looking for somebody to save them when they can't save themselves and are in this constant tension of trying to figure out if they can do it for themselves or do they have to wait for that hand down or hand up from a man that could save them.
So in chapter seven, Cayce's basically in the.
The club, the union club, having the. Having the lunch with Marissa Ellingwood. And she's not doing the best job that she can because she's completely unsettled by this thing she just saw with Judge Brody.
But she pulls it together in the end, gets the client. So the thing I say about Marissa is because Marissa is going to be in juvenile court and because clearly she's unmarried, she says, I'd been brought up in a fairly observant Catholic home, though my family wasn't ultra religious. Even I knew better to show up to Mass knocked up and unwed. Because, like, like Claire, like, there are these, like, things that. That you always want to avoid. And, like, the two of them are like unwed mother.
And in the 80s and 90s, like, being an unwed mother was like a fate worse than death societally. And so there's, like, a lot of angst in this book about trying to avoid that and what happens to women who can't avoid it, even though clearly, you know, it doesn't take one person to make a baby.
So one of the things that she.
I admire about Casey is that in this book you can see the beginning of her growth. And she says to Marissa, well, we'll do our best to keep your kids with you. I said in a way that I hope sounded soothing.
I'd learned earlier on in my career never to give a client, get a client's hopes up. Much of the practice of law was managing expectations, which is true, because you can't. Even if people have the perfect case, you can't make promises because you can't control the judge, you can't control the jury. You can't control facts and circumstances that are outside of what you originally know. So you manage expectations to the best degree possible.
So at the end, as much as we see that Casey has had some growth, we see it's not perfect, because she says, when Marissa penned a check with what I now saw was her inbred European flourish and handed it over without hesitation, I knew I charged a big client. Too little. Once again, I promised myself in my anemic bank account that I wouldn't make the same mistake a third time. So I believe the retainer she charged Olivia. I mean, excuse me, Olivia. Sheila Harrison Grant was $2,500. And the amount that she charged with Melissa Ellingwood, I believe was 10,000. And it's still not enough. And this is like a lesson like, that lawyers learn. Like, every so often I pop my head into, like, women lawyer groups online, and people are still having this problem. You have to charge enough up front to cover the case, basically because on the back end, you may not get money.
And as student loans are not dischargeable, you can't write off debt for services, for attorney services.
I don't know about other personal services, but I know we could never write off debts. So you just had to eat it.
So we're up to chapter eight, and it's a Clara chapter again.
And at this point, she has decided that Darius is a danger to her son. She calls and asks her parents for money because she is going to take him to court. So the thing she says to her parents and, you know, she has to eat a lot of crow for this, is that they were 100% right about Darius, and his arm got broken when, like, he was in his custody. And now it's time for me to, like, take charge of his life.
And she said, I made a mistake with Darius. I admitted for the hundredth time.
And this is true. And I read about this yesterday in a different context, but it says sometimes families never forget even the smallest lapse in judgment.
And actually, I read, like, random advice columns. And one of them the other day, somebody was updating, like, the commentariat, as it were, about the advice that had been taken and given. And this person had, like, changed jobs, like, four or five years ago. And she was talking about how her parents still talk about how it's the biggest mistake of her life. And I'm like, oh, my God, you're in your 30s and you have to live with your parents. Talking about how changing jobs is the biggest mistake. And it's actually not a mistake, it's just different.
And in the end, it actually worked out because the previous job she had was a doge job that she wouldn't have had if she had kept it.
But there are some families where if you go hat in hand, you have to eat crow and admit to every mistake they think you've ever made before. They will help you. And sometimes that's the price. I don't know, maybe the theme of the book is that sometimes you have to pay a lot of really awful prices to get what you want.
But she talks about how working for this nonprofit. So she worked for Sheila Harrison Grant, if that. If you don't remember. And when Sheila left her job, she lost her job because clerk judges always hire their own clerks. It's rare that a judge will take somebody else's clerk, although I saw it once, but I think the judge had died. And so the new judge was just going to finish out the old clerk's term.
But people. It's often the same with political appointments. People hire their own people. So when the judge or politician leaves, you're out of a job.
And so she talks about working for UAMA and how it's a miniscule salary because nonprofit salaries are often smaller, with the idea that you're giving up part of the salary for a. The working conditions, and because you believe in the mission of the organization.
And the note was working for a nonprofit is an interesting conundrum for employees.
Many pay barely livable wages but expect a huge employee commitment because of the cause. It's something I saw many go through 20 plus years ago and little has changed since then. It's true when you read about it now, nothing has changed.
So at the end of this chapter, you learn that Claire has hired Case, that she's going to hire Casey to represent her in juvenile court to try to get custody of her son Luke. And she said she'd been good enough to recommend to the judge, then she'd been good enough for me.
And the note says this was how Sheila Harrison Grant and judge came to hire Casey. Court, I believe at some point in the book and judged. Sheila Harrison Grant asked Claire for a recommendation and Claire recommended Casey. Don't quite know how she found Casey, but. But who knows?
Later in this chapter, it switches pov, which actually I rarely do. I wonder why I said it in this book.
No, it actually doesn't switch pov. It's just later.
It's later when Claire goes to see Casey and Casey looks up and she's like, oh, I thank you for the referral.
And she says, the reason Claire. I guess Claire maybe could represent herself. I don't know. I never thought about that. But she says we can't all be experts in everything, especially with specialization in the law the way it is. So she's looking for Casey to save her. I guess a lot of people are looking for a lot of people to save them. Or maybe looking for a professional to help them. Maybe that's a better way of looking at it.
But.
No, this actually is from Casey's point of view.
So weird.
One of the things I learned in writing was one chapter, one point of view. Because my first couple of books, I switched point of view in chapter. And it's very difficult narratively to write follow.
And difficult for readers, I think. Not if you're Nora Roberts, but for everybody else, well, that's head offing. But I think that I really tried to be very structured, and it's odd that I broke the structure here.
But this is only book two of the series. I was learning. I was learning.
So at some point Claire says, look, here's my issue. I have a son, Luke, and I never married his father. I watched her scratch notes in the pad. And I wonder if she realized, even though I sounded like a stereotypical black mother having a baby out of wedlock, I was the exception, not the rule in my family.
Oh, my God. All of this, like, guilt that you put out there.
And actually I'm thinking about it now. So the big buzz news, like in the gossip world is that this woman, Taylor Frankie Paul, is not going to be the Bachelorette based on like some domestic violence allegations.
But what's interesting when I'm looking at black creators is that they do recognize that if this woman had been a black woman with two with different children, by different fathers and involved in like domestic violence on film, people would be dragging her to the ends of the earth. I'm not saying they're not dragging this woman, but they did not think it was a disqualification to be on, I guess, two different reality shows. Whereas for a black woman it would be a completely different sort of thing.
And it's something that comes up and Claire's super self conscious about this because she keeps talking about in this book.
But Casey, to be frank, is not really thinking that deeply about it.
So Kayce's like, have you ever tried working it out? And Claire's like, clearly you haven't met Darius.
So it's.
These women are now on a path together and to try to like sort this out.
And you never.
Obviously it's a collision course because it's a book.
But this is like the beginning of the book where you now like we now know who the players are. It's mild Claire and Casey and they're all on a collision path.
So with that I'm going to end up with chapter eight.
And let's end this with the end of chapter eight.
And in the next video I'll obviously start with chapter nine.
But I'm starting to see some emergent themes which are interesting where people, where these women are looking. Well, a, there's creepy creeps. Let's not forget the creepy creeps. But we're living in the creepy creep world right now.
I mean, if the headlines weren't Epstein, then there's Cesar Chavez.
And it's just, it's a creepy creep world. And I think women were just living in it.
But let me say that's a great way to line. But the other theme I think is so interesting that in this book that these women are looking for saviors. And well, we'll see if they can be saved if Miles can help Claire, like pull Claire out of from one world into another. Whether Tom can like pull Casey. I mean, Tom can fold Casey from one world into another.
But there's a lot of hope between these women that somehow these men can elevate them and change their lives, their life trajectory.
And I don't know if that's gonna happen.
