Long Island Compromise

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Phyllis had a suspicion, a deeply Jewish one borne of events that had played out in her very lifetime, that actually it was her connections that would help her here instead of the law enforcement that was tasked with it—that the fast and enthusiastic location of her missing son, more and more missing as time went on, would happen not by someone obligated to help her but by someone trying to please her.

Our grandmothers would often tell us that no matter how much you envy someone, if everyone threw their package of problems into the center of a room and was given a choice of anyone else’s, you would, guaranteed, pick up your own.

He couldn’t do bankruptcy law because he couldn’t be around the anxiety of people enduring bankruptcy. He couldn’t do criminal law because no thanks he did not want to be around criminals. There was family law but he didn’t want to be around fighting. There was wills and trusts, like his cousin Arthur, but wills were about dying, and he could not spend his day talking about dying when he already spent the day thinking about it.

“Well, what kind of thing do you like to do all day?” Arthur asked when Nathan came to him for advice. “Do you see yourself as a good negotiator?” A shiver ran through young Nathan. “Do you see yourself going to court?” Whatever happened to Nathan’s face just then was an indicator that no, Nathan would not like to go to court. Arthur told him about contract law (but there’s still client interface), immigration law (what?), labor law (but there’s still negotiation), don’t even say itigation-lay. Then Arthur told him about land use. The statutes and regulations and ordinances. The amendments to the statutes and regulations and ordinances. The case law. The amendments to the case law. Precedent. Newer precedent. The treatises. The applications. The pre-applications to fill out before you can submit the applications. The permits. The permits to fill out the permits. The piles of paper. Land use had so much delicious paper that you could bury yourself in it, and once you lay beneath the laws and regulations and ordinances and statutes and loopholes, if things went wrong, no one could find you beneath all that paper! Sure, there were hearings to go to. And most land use lawyers had to go to court and negotiate with project opponents and neighboring property owners. But there was an entire category of land use lawyer who just sat under the piles of paper, doing research and filling out forms and finding workarounds and marking up documents. That was Nathan.