Sitting where I sit in the courtroom gives me the opportunity to observe some things. Here are a few things that I've noticed. I would love for you to post your own observations.
1. Women under the age of 25 no longer wear stockings. Why is that? Most women's legs look terrible bare. They're misshapen and too white. Ladies, put on a pair of stockings! It's not really that much trouble and you'll look so much better. Control top pantyhose stay up nicely and tuck you in a little bit. I often see pasty white feet jammed into high heal shoes. That must hurt. It wouldn't hurt if you had a pair of stockings on to smooth things along. BTW, this is something I've noticed in both lawyers and their clients. Writing this reminds me of an dearly departed old dear friend of mine, Sandy Smith-Lipke, who used to say that she wished she had followed an older lady's advice of keep your face out of the sun and wear support stockings. I'm not even asking you younger ladies to go the support hose route, but for God's sake, please, just put on a pair of Hanes.
2. If you're coming into court to ask the judge to discontinue an order of protection against you, you probably shouldn't wear your "Scarface" t-shirt depicting a blood soaked Al Pacino brandishing two machine guns. How about wearing a shirt that says something like "My Ex is a Super Lady" or "Flower Power". At the very least wear something with the Muppets on it. But no, you're probably not going to convince the judge that you're not violent when you glorify the lifestyle of Tony Montana.
3. Lawyers, and even the judge, are very susceptible to a condition I call "Word Fever". Most contagious diseases are categorized as bacterial, fungal and protozoan. "Word Fever" is transmitted auditorially, that is, directly from ear to mouth. As soon as one lawyer uses a word that sounds smart, but is coincidentally difficult for me to write on my machine, every lawyer in the room, and the judge (he used to be a lawyer so he's not immune) will begin to sprinkle that word into their speech for at least the next ten days. Recently, I heard the word egregious so many times in two weeks, it was deplorable, grievous, heinous, intolerable, preposterous, even shocking. By the way, all those words are basically the same as egregious, and they're easier for me to write.
4. If you ask a lawyer how they did recently with a case, if they lost, they will never say "We lost." He/she will say something like well, we really got what we needed, or well, the most important part of the case hasn't been heard yet. If they win, they will tell you "I won." So if you don't hear a lawyer say "I won" right away, assume they lost.
5. When people come into the courtroom, only the parties involved and their counsel, if any, are supposed to sit in the tables facing the bench. Often, litigants will bring friends and relatives for support and encouragement. Sometimes though those non-parties really, really want to participate. A sure way to spot these people is if they first try to sit at one of the tables, then when told they can't they will sit as close as possible in the gallery to their friend or relative, and lean in as close as possible to them, even clutching onto the bannister that separates the gallery from the rest of the courtroom. When you see someone do that, you can be pretty sure they're going to blurt out something unhelpful during the proceedings and then I'm going to have to chase after them afterwards to get their name. By the way, these unidentified non-parties who like to speak out in the courtroom usually have funny accents or speech impediments, and they're also usually the fastest people to walk out of the courtroom.
6. People make things too complicated with names. In cases where everybody is supposedly related, kids, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles, everybody has a different last name. Sometimes even married people have different last names! We recently had a case in front of us where everybody had the same last name, and that was unheard of. Sad.
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