My Della

Molly Pratt

Some law firms and lawyers treat their staff like automatons expected to do only what they’re told. The truth is, every great lawyer I have ever known, without fail, has had a dedicated assistant working, not for, but with them. Molly was mine, she was Della to my Perry. A lawyer I admired very much, Coming Ball Gibbs, referred her to me when he heard I was looking for a new legal secretary. Years later he confided, however, when I thought I was interviewing Molly for the job, she was actually interviewing me. Luckily, I passed muster and got the job. We worked together for so many years I’ve lost count, twenty-eight I think. Over those years she became so much more than just my legal secretary, she became my administrative assistant, paralegal, office manager, co-counsel, editor, accountant, therapist, confidant, life coach, and, most importantly, my friend. Our lives became so entangled, there is simply no way to separate my career from our career together.

So much so trying to pick a story to illustrate what she  meant to me and my practice was almost impossible but I think the story of the arson case she solved for me comes closest. Although it was never part of Molly’s job description to review the evidence in my cases, she made up her own job description and did pretty much whatever she thought needed doing . I soon got used to it and learned to appreciate how her keen eyes often saw things that slipped my attention.

I was hired to defend a guy accused of burning his own house down for the insurance money. A racial slur that had been spray painted on the house before the fire motivated SLED to get involved. The problem was SLED focused more on my client starting the fire than it being racially motivated. SLED appointed a team of forensic arson investigators under the command of the seasoned Special Agent in charge of the arson squad. And they were thorough, so thorough they buried me under a mountain of evidence the week before trial that the Special Agent argued proved my client’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  

It wasn’t hard to get the gist of SLED’s case against my client from the official report of its investigation. The  racial slur was a ruse to conceal the real motive for the fire, good old fashioned greed. Chemical testing and analysis proved the gasoline fueled fire was deliberate. The owner’s gas can, covered in his, and only his, fingerprints, left in the interior hallway after it was doused with gas and ignited had miraculously survived the flames. But the evidence tying my client to the fire was circumstantial and allegedly contained in the mountain of evidence SLED dumped on me. There were banker boxes filled with business and bank records allegedly showing my client’s industrial maintenance company was heavily in debt and going bankrupt. Hundreds of photographs of the burnt-out house allegedly showing that valuable property had been removed from the house before the fire. And there were was a file of indecipherable cell phone tower data for the tower near the house off which my client’s cell phone pinged during the fire contradicting his statement he wasn’t there.

It really didn’t help that my client had ready answers for almost everything. The property was located out in the country a good ways north of the Santee Cooper Lakes in the Francis Marion National Forrest. My client and his wife planned to live out there full time, with my client commuting to work and his wife pursuing her passion for breeding dogs, but they were still renovating the house and hadn’t fully moved in yet explaining the relatively empty closets and dresser drawers. Although my client couldn’t recall any overt racial threats, he was more than willing to talk about how he felt unwelcome in the otherwise white community. He admitted his business was having difficulties but claimed that was nothing new, it had happened before, and all it would take was one good contract to get back on his feet again like he’d done many times in the past. But the problem from a lawyer’s perspective is having to explain too many things away in a courtroom itself raises suspicions in jurors’ minds, suspicions a skilled adversary can easily exploit. And, like I said, he had excuses for almost everything but not everything. Like why his cell phone pinged off the cell tower near the burning house. The only good news, as I saw it, was the last-minute evidence dump suggested the Special Agent was trying to hide something and all I’d have to do is methodically go through the entire mountain evidence piece by piece until I found the needle in the haystack. Fortunately, Molly offered to help review, organize, and label all the photographs.

Something that endeared Molly to me and everybody who knew her was the way, when she heard a good joke, was surprised by someone or something, or really if anything tickled her in just the right way, she’d let out an unmistakable snort. It sometimes took people by surprise the first time they heard it, but Molly’s good-natured acceptance of her own foible quickly put everyone to ease. That’s what I heard when she was going over the photographs, that unmistakable snort from her desk, and I knew instantly she’d found something.

I waited and soon enough she stuck her head in my office to ask if I had a moment. Of course, I told her, and she entered handing me a photograph with a look of pride on her face. I looked at the photo but only saw a pair of slightly singed women’s high heeled shoes. I must have had a quizzical look on my face because she let out an exasperated sigh, and said, “Oh, my dear boy, those are not just any old high heeled shoes, those are Manolo Blahnik high heeled shoes.” She waited for the light to go off and, when it didn’t, she explained the significance of the shoes to me.

“You know how the SLED investigator said valuables had been removed from the house before the fire? Well, he’s full of shit,” Molly said bluntly. “If you’d watched the TV show, Sex in the City, you’d know those are Manolo Blahnik high heeled shoes that retail for nothing less than a grand. No woman, and I mean no woman,”Molly emphasized, “would ever leave a pair of Manolo Blahnik high heeled shoes in her closet to be burnt up in a fire.”

The light did go off and I immediately saw how the photograph would make it seem on cross examination like SLED’s Special Agent  must have ridden the short bus to agent school but that lawyer in me also knew the prosecutor could easily suggest my client, who was accused of the arson, who was every bit as ignorant about his wife’s shoes as I was, who left the shoes. Fortunately, like I said, Molly and I worked together, the operative word being worked, and we got to it.

Molly was on to something and so we both dug in. If the Special Agent could make such a glaring mistake about thousand-dollar shoes, what other mistakes had he made? We went back over the photographs one by one and soon discovered item after item of valuable property that had been left behind in the fire. Molly quipped almost under her breath how hard it was to pick things out of SLED’s photographs the burned-out wreckage and mentioned how helpful it would be if we had some photographs of the house before the fire. I asked the client, and his wife remembered they’d spent Christmas about a month before the fire at the house and she had an undeveloped roll of film that had been taken Christmas morning.

Armed with the new photographs, we could trace everything shown in the Christmas morning photographs to the rubble on the floor shown in SLED’s photographs taken after the fire. Large, flat screen tv, shown hanging on the living room wall Christmas morning? Still right there all burnt up in the blackened debris on the floor. We hadn’t found a smoking gun proving my client’s innocence, but we’d found the death by a thousand cuts of the prosecutor’s case. Remember what I said about having too many explanations being the kiss of death? It applies to prosecution witnesses too. After the Special Agent tried but failed, again and again, to explain away the obvious truth, he was forced to admit his expert opinion valuable property had been removed before the fire was, well, as Molly put it, full of shit.

But what about that pinging cell phone data? The prosecutor saved the cell phone technician for his last witness, thinking he’d finish strong but, by the time he called the technician it was too late. The young technician lacked the Special Agent’s experience giving canned testimony and readily admitted how much he didn’t know. Like exactly how far did the signal of the oversized tower in National Forrest near the house actually reach? “I don’t know” answers to carefully worded questions are the stuff reasonable doubt is made of, and the technician was glad to oblige. In the end nobody, not even the technician, knew why my client’s phone pinged off the tower.

Having made my defense through the prosecution’s witnesses, I elected not to call any witnesses and thereby secured the last argument. I saved my best argument, the one Molly gave me, til final argument. It is always a good idea to tell the jury whenever somebody gives you a good jury argument. I’ve always found a little humility goes a long way in the courtroom. So, I gave Molly the credit she was due. “Now, I admit I know next to nothing about women’s high heeled shoes, but thank God, my secretary Molly does. She’s apparently not only an expert on women’s high heel shoes but on the TV show called Sex in the City. She says she watched every episode and knew right off the shoes shown in the Special Agent’s photographs of the defendant’s master bedroom closet were Manolo Blahnik. She knew because they were featured on the show as a recurring theme episode after episode. She tells me they retail for upwards of one thousand dollars. No wonder Molly says no woman in their right mind would ever leave a pair of Manolo Blahnik high heeled shoes behind in a house fire,” I entoned in my and the final argument knowing the proseutor wouldn’t have a chance to respond. I knew I had a not guilty verdict when every woman on the jury nodded in agreement.

But this isn’t a story about an arson case or a trial victory Molly won for me, it’s a story about how important my relationship with Molly was to me and my practice. She not only lifted me up being my biggest cheerleader, but she was also the anchor that tethered me to the ground. Her intelligence and wit were as much a part of my success as my own. And, to top it off, her good nature made practicing law fun. The point of this story is, if I only expected my staff to do what I told them to do, I’d have missed out on everything Molly offered to take my practice to the next level.

Next time, instead of asking your staff for a cup of coffee, ask them to sit down and drink a cup with you, ask how they’re doing, for their opinions about the work you’re doing, and how they can help. You may find your practice excelling when your staff starts working with, not for, you.