Errors on the Record

Part of it is that the town does not look like it is in Nebraska. It's more like a little mountain town in Colorado. Not the nice ones like Breckenridge, but the smaller, grittier ones on the way up the mountains. The roads pitch up and down and end in dead ends that are steep climbs or drop offs. The main street has a few bars and a cafe and a hardware store that looks like it once bartered with trappers. It's hard to believe that Omaha is just a short drive away.

The other part is that I do not have reasons to go there regularly, but I do there occasionally, and every time I do, I think of my first client and his two little kids and the trips South from Omaha in the van with my teacher Kate and my clinic partner Craig.

We lost the case. Over and over and over again. The clinic tried everything from every angle, but he did not get his kids back. The result is that they were raised by people he did not know in a little town that doesn't look like it is in Nebraska.

The case went on for years in multiple appeals and every year he got a new set of law student lawyers to represent him in his appeals. As proof that the Universe has a sense of humor, my high school boyfriend, who went to law school a few years after me, got assigned the case the year it went to the Nebraska Supreme Court. He reviewed the file, saw my name, and then emailed me to tell me about oral arguments. I went to watch.

There was a swarm of law students at oral arguments standing outside the Supreme Court. I didn't know any of the other students there, but standing to the side I saw him. I saw the father. My client. All these students here for the case and it had become something more than a case about a dad and his kids. This case affected a person they didn't recognize and some kids they never met.

He smiled at me. I walked over and greeted him by name and we talked about his current life - his fiance and their baby. He had very emotional eyes - huge and brown and communicative. I picture his little kids with those same eyes. I picture them that way still today.

Yesterday I was in that town again. I drove past the school where they went to school. I did the math that I do every time that I am in that town. They'll be in school by now. They'll be in 3rd and 4th grade by now. They'll be in junior high by now. They're in high school now. They're old enough to know who their father is now. And I wonder if they have found him.

My son and I went to Mom's Cafe. Frank had his first chicken fried steak. "Amazing!" he declared. I watched my son eat - my son the same age as my client's son at the time I represented him - and I felt overwhelmed.

That case changed my life. It reminds me to treasure my time with my children. It reminds me that I am fortunate to know them and parent them. It reminds me that even "bad people" can love their kids. It reminds me that lawyers sometimes lose track of what the case is about - it should be about people. It should be about the feeling of love for children that comes from deep inside a parent's eyes. It is about losing a case and affecting people for the rest of their lives. It is about winning a case and affecting people for the rest of their lives. It's about funny towns with little cafes that make really good chicken fried steak.