by Justice William W. Bedsworth

My wife is the best lawyer I know. And I know some knock-your-hat-in-the-creek lawyers.

This is not idle flattery. She’s a research attorney at the Court of Appeal,¹ and I’ve been reviewing her work for twenty-five years. So my opinion is based on a lot of evidence. And she’s simply nonpareil.

My daughter, a UCLA Phi Beta Kappa/Berkeley Law Order of the Coif, has clerked for two federal district judges and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,² in addition to four years in Big Law. I’ve never had occasion to see her work, but federal judges are famously difficult to please and she seems to succeed a lot.

So I am probably the third best lawyer in my immediate family. The good news is that I’m unlikely to practice long enough for one of my grandchildren to push me into fourth place.

I like to think of my third-place finish as what the Olympians refer to as “on the podium.” A bronze medal is nothing to be sneered at in world-class competition.

The Best Lawyer I Know³ is probably that because her thinking process is completely different than mine. Let me give you an example.

When I first met Kelly, she was driving a twelve-year-old Ford Probe. The car was spotless, scratchless, beautifully maintained, and ran like a Swiss watch. But it was a twelve-year-old Ford.

This was hard for me to fathom. I’ve bought a new car every five to seven years all my life. I felt that was an interval that allowed me to satisfy my need for new toys without veering into extravagance or ostentation.

Kelly had spent eleven years as a litigator in Los Angeles. Some of that time had been spent with fairly high-powered law firms. I couldn’t understand why she was driving an old Ford. So I asked.

Her answer: “Because I haven’t yet found a car that’s going to improve my life thirty-thousand-after-tax dollars’ worth.”⁴

As the French say, “Formidable!”⁵

That’s the way she approaches things. She takes nothing for granted. Another example: We were watching a ballgame one night when the home team put runners on first and third and the commentator said, “The Angels have runners on the corners.”

Kelly turned to me and said, “well not all of them—second base is just as much a corner as first and third.”

I’ve been a baseball fan, man and boy, for almost seventy years. I’ve heard references to “runners on the corners” all my life. First and third basemen are referred to as “corner infielders.” By everyone. Left- and right-fielders are “corner outfielders.” First and third are “the corners.” I never challenged it.

But, as Kelly points out, in geometrical terms, in terms of how the bases are arranged and run, second base is absolutely not one whit different from first and third. Until the runners are allowed to run directly from first to third, second base will be a necessary corner to turn.

My brain just doesn’t work that way. Nor did Justice Dave Sills’. He came back from a fishing trip excitedly showing one and all pictures of the fish he had caught. At least he was excited until Kelly jokingly accused him of being a “fish-murderer.”

Dave, nonplussed, nonetheless recovered like the fine lawyer he was. “Oh,” he said, “we don’t kill them. It’s all catch-and-release.”

Kelly pounced. “So your defense is that you’re not a fish-murderer, you’re a fish-torturer?” I think that’s when Dave realized how completely overmatched I am.

There is room—indeed, need—in the law for minds like Kelly’s and mine. Kelly is good at harmonizing. Before she decides a legal issue, she wants to be satisfied she understands the entire statutory scheme and makes sure her analysis fits into that scheme.

I am good at incongruity. I am good at seeing what fits together and what doesn’t. So when I approach an issue, my mind is looking for what part of an argument doesn’t fit.⁶ My solution is a rejection of the part that doesn’t fit.

Kelly’s mind solves problems by positing a solution and then making sure it harmonizes with the rest. If her solution doesn’t fit the entire puzzle, it’s not the right solution, no matter how good it looks in this one spot.

They’re both perfectly acceptable processes but making them mesh can be difficult.

Here’s a typical case discussion between TBLIK and me:

Kelly: “Let’s talk about the Gazorninplat case.”
Beds: “The contract dispute between the grocery chain and the produce supplier? I thought the produce supplier had the better argument. I think the trial court nailed it. The grocery’s argument doesn’t hold up.”
Kelly: “I thought so, too. But that resolution doesn’t square with Corporations Code section 21924.6(b).”
Beds: “Hmm. Really?” [This is about all I can say. I’m embarrassed because I don’t remember the Corporations Code issue.]
Kelly: “Yes. Section 21924.6(b) requires . . . [There follows a two-minute explanation of an arcane chapter of the Corporations Code, replete with clear analyses of this Byzantine statute and erudite explanations of cases decided under it.]
Beds [My eyes are glazing over, and I realize I can’t maintain the charade that I know what she’s talking about]: “How did I miss that in the briefing?”
Kelly: “Oh, it’s not in the briefing.”
Beds: “It’s not in the briefing? We can’t decide the case on a section that wasn’t briefed.”
Kelly: “Oh, we’re not deciding it on that basis. But I can’t endorse the produce supplier’s position without making sure it corresponds to the entire statutory scheme.”
Beds: [Eyes starting to re-focus]: “Okay, explain the problem to me again.”
Kelly: [Another two minutes of dizzyingly complex legal esoterica, this time dumbed down to my level.]
Beds: “That does sound like a problem. Should we ask for additional briefing?”
Kelly: “Oh, we don’t need to do that.”
Beds: “Why not?”
Kelly: “Because the Sixth District decided a directly analogous issue relating to probate cases in a way that clearly obviates our problem.”
Beds: “Probate? This is a contract dispute.”
Kelly: “Oh, I know, but you can’t decide a contract dispute one way and a probate dispute another when they use the same words for the same purpose. The probate case resolves an issue in the Probate Code that is precisely the same as our problem with the Corporations Code. The wording is identical, and their approach fits perfectly with our case.”
Beds: “Uhhh . . . good.”
Kelly: “Yes, it’s really a genius solution. In re Mafuffnick. You’re gonna love it.”
Beds: “So we don’t have to discuss Corporations Code section 21924(b)(6)?”
Kelly: “6(b). No. Completely unnecessary. The trial court’s solution fits the statutory scheme perfectly.”
Beds: “Deo Gratia. How did you find the probate case?”
Kelly [taken aback]: “I looked.”

Okay, let’s be clear about the difference here. I look, too. But my searches are generally limited to finding the fish and catching it. I rarely dive in to the river to check out the underwater flora and see if there are any otters in the neighborhood.

The California Court of Appeal employs a small army of research attorneys. They’re career positions. Kelly’s the only one I’ve lived with so she’s the only one whose mind I’m intimately familiar with. But judging from the opinions turned out by my colleagues, these people all have minds that “grind exceeding small.”

You’re lucky me and Goethals and the rest of the tribe—including our federal court brethren and cistern⁷— get that kind of help. It makes us a lot more appealing.

BEDS NOTES

1. Works for Justice Goethals.
2. Notice the “s” in their name. Our court doesn’t have an “s.” They are a court that handles appeals. We are a court that has appeal.
3. AKA, Madame TBLIK.
4. It was twenty-five years ago; cars were less expensive.
5. Kelly now drives an eighteen-year-old Toyota Highlander. It’s as shiny and impeccable as the Probe was. Using my car-purchasing proclivities, we would have spent . . . I don’t know, $90,000 on cars in that time. Instead, we own a vacation home. Formidable!
6. That, by the way, is also the key to humor. It’s all about incongruity. We laugh because we know what’s supposed to be there, and something else has been substituted. We like sharing with the comedian, the cartoonist, the columnist, that we have an understanding of what’s supposed to be there, and we see and understand the difference. In that sense, all jokes are inside jokes.
7. “Cistern” seems to me an underutilized word. And it goes so well with “brethren.”

William W. Bedsworth is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal. He writes this column to get it out of his system. A Criminal Waste of Space won Best Column in California in 2018 from the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA). And look for his latest book, Lawyers, Gubs, and Monkeys, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Vandeplas Publishing. He can be contacted at william.bedsworth@jud.ca.gov.