Over The Top
I did not know that Harvard Business School offered courses in design and decorating offices. It appears that John Thain, the former CEO at Merrill concentrated in that area of study while he was there. Apparently office design and decorating is not a course limited to the business schools. You will be surprised to learn that law schools offer the same course, particularly if you are interested in becoming a federal judge.
I was recently in one the new federal court houses. The first thing I noticed was there was nobody around in the vast lobby except for four guards. Perhaps I missed the rush but it was mid-afternoon on Thursday.
When I left around five PM after my meeting, the lobby was just as empty. Not a soul to be seen except the four guards.
The vast space of the lobby was matched by the vast space of the judge’s chambers—not the Chief Judge mind you, I suspect I would have needed a GPS to find my way around the Chief Judge’s chambers. When you enter the chambers you walk down a long entrance aisle with doors with various labels such as “Do Not Enter Staff Only” until you come to one labeled Judge’s Reception. Along the other side of the aisle you see row after row of law books, apparently an entire paper library for this judge alone. I had been practicing for many years, and most of the law books I saw were back drops on television used to make whoever was in front look more prominent. For decades, our research has been almost exclusively electronic, but for reasons unknown to me this new court house appears to have a huge paper library for each judge.
When you enter the chambers area you are overwhelmed by the space. You could fit my old office in the judge’s receptionist’s alcove two perhaps, three times. I suspect the judge had law clerks, but they appeared to have been absorbed in the great expanse of the space between the outer wall we entered and an equally long inner wall which again had a series of doors. My former boss could have housed our entire former law department, 8 lawyers with support staff and modest a paper library that had some texts that had not been converted to electronic format between those two walls with space to spare.
Then there was the judge’s office—perhaps it did not have an $87,000 area rug; however, I cannot be sure because it was so vast it was simply impossible to scope out the entire area without going on an Australian Walkabout.
So what are federal judges around the country doing in these huge spaces, trying cases of great national and international import-perhaps, on some occasion in some court room? But on the whole, what is going on in federal court these days is not great deal more compelling than what is taking place in county court, where the contrast can not be more compelling. The county court house is full—I often have to scavenge for space when I mediate there. And the court rooms and chambers are nice, respectful and far more modest.
We are justly critical of the excesses of John Thain’s conduct and other business executives but we must keep an eye on our own profession’s conduct. The lesson that Thain’s conduct teaches is the size and expense of your office cannot create respect.
