My Della

Molly Pratt

Some lawyers and law firms treat their staff like automatons expected to do only what they’re told. The truth is, every great lawyer I have ever known, has had a dedicated staff working, not for, but with them. Molly was mine; she was my Della to my Perry. She was referred to me by a lawyer I admired, Coming Ball Gibbs, when he heard I was looking for a new legal secretary. Years later he confided, when I thought I was interviewing Molly for the job, she was actually interviewing me. Luckily, I passed muster and we worked together for so many years I’ve lost track, twenty-eight by my reckoning.

Over those years Molly became so much more than my legal secretary. She became my administrative assistant, my paralegal, office manager, co-counsel, editor, accountant, therapist, confidant, life coach, and, most important of all, 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 this 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 always did 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 house down for the insurance money. A racial slur painted on the house before the fire motivated SLED to get involved but right from the start SLED focused more on my client starting the fire rather than it being racially motivated. SLED sent in its crack Special Agent and his team of forensic arson investigators. And, they were thorough, so thorough they buried me under a mountain of evidence the Special Agent claimed 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 arson investigation. The  racial slur was a ruse spray painted by my client to conceal the real motive for the fire, good old-fashioned greed. Chemical testing and analysis proved the gasoline fueled fire was deliberately set. My client’s gas can, covered in his, and only his, fingerprints, that had been left in the hallway had miraculously survived the inferno. But still the evidence tying my client to the fire was circumstantial. The real evidence I was told was contained in the banker boxes filled with business and bank records allegedly showing my client’s industrial maintenance company was going bankrupt, hundreds of photographs of the burnt-out house allegedly showing valuable property had been removed before the fire, and a box of indecipherable cell phone tower data from the tower near the house that my client’s cell phone pinged off of during the fire. A prosecutorial tri-fecta: motive, intent, and opportunity.

It really didn’t help that my client had ready answers for almost everything. The property was located a good way out in the country, north of the Santee Cooper Lakes, in the Francis Marion National Forrest. My client said he and his wife planned to live out in the country 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 explicit racial threats or incidents, he was more than willing to tell me all about how he felt unwelcome in the otherwise white community. He admitted his business was having difficulties but claimed that was nothing out of the ordinary. It had happened before and all it would take was one good contract to get back on his feet just like he’d done many times before. But the problem from a lawyer’s perspective of having to explain too many things away in a courtroom is too many excuses raise 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 he said he wasn’t anywhere near. The only good news, as I saw it, was the way  the Special Agent dumped the boxes of evidence on me suggested he was trying to hide something and all I’d have to do was methodically go through the evidence piece by piece until I found the exculpatory 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 whenever something 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 through 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 putting it delicately. “If you’d watched the TV show, Sex in the City, you’d know those are coveted Manolo Blahnik high heeled shoes that retail for nothing less than a thousand dollars. No woman, and I mean no woman, 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 SLED’s Special Agent  must have ridden the short bus to agent school but the lawyer in me also knew the prosecutor could easily suggest my client, who was the person accused of the arson, was every bit as ignorant about his wife’s shoes as I was. 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 how hard it was to pick things out of SLED’s photographs of the burned-out wreckage and asked if  we had any photographs of the house before the fire. The client’s wife remembered they’d spent Christmas about a month before the fire and she had an undeveloped roll of film taken Christmas morning.

Armed with the new photographs, we could trace everything shown in the Christmas morning photographs to the burned-out rubble on the floor shown in SLED’s photographs. Large, flat screen tv, shown hanging on the living room wall Christmas morning was still there all burnt up in the rubble 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 as well. After the Special Agent tried but failed, repeatedly, 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 cell phone technician lacked the Special Agent’s practiced 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 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, was sure 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 made the most of it knowing the prosecutor wouldn’t get a chance to respond. It’s always a good idea to tell the jury whenever somebody gives you a good jury argument, it makes the argument sound less lawyerly and more common sense not to mention a little humility goes a long way in the courtroom. I gave Molly the credit she was due and told the jury, “Now, I admit I know next to nothing about women’s high heeled shoes, but thank God, my secretary Molly does. She’s not only an authority on women’s high heel shoes but also on a 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 bedroom closet were Manolo Blahnik. She knew because they were featured on the show as a recurring theme episode after episode. Coveted because they cost upwards of a thousand dollars a pair. No wonder Molly says no woman in their right mind would ever leave a pair of Manolo Blahnik high heeled shoes behind to burn up in a house fire.” I also knew I had a not guilty verdict as soon I saw every woman on the jury nod in agreement. Since I had the last argument, the prosecutor couldn’t respond.

But this isn’t a story about a trial victory in an arson case, 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, she was also the anchor that tethered me most securely 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 them 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.