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I almost quit my job last week.

I still might do it today.

Not to blow my own horn, but I do a great deal to keep this firm running, at least the bankruptcy side of it. If I walked out the door, the people in my department here would not know what to do. I do all the bankruptcy case review, all the bankruptcy hearings, all the negotiations with creditors, opposing counsel, trustees, and the court. I am the one that has re-built the firm's rapport with creditors, opposing counsel, trustees, and the court. I am the one that keeps up-to-date on recent bankruptcy law. They would be left with no-one to practice bankruptcy law.

Well, they would be left with the Big Boss and my senior counsel. . . but . . . .

You see, my supervising attorney apparently really has no interest any more in practicing the law, but he delights in rubbing his so-called "opponents" noses in it when they're "wrong."

We came to verbal blows last week over a Motion he wanted me to file. I told him he was wrong. He refused to admit it, because it made opposing counsel look bad. I told him it would damage the good rapport we had with that attorney and his office. He did not seem to care. I told him that it was an inadvertent mistake by someone who happens to be a friend. He told me that it was my friendship coloring the issue, not his glee at proving an "enemy" wrong.

Then another employee--holier-than-thou, self-important--jumps into the mix. Explains to me the damage that has been done to the client by the "evil" attorney.(Oh, all right, he didn't actually say "evil" but you could almost see it in his eyes.) How the client's "entitled" to get the relief that my boss wants to get from the court.

Never mind that, so far as I can tell, there is no provision for such relief in the law.

Never mind that it was an inadvertent mistake by opposing counsel's office and that the situation was covered in disclaimers that my office-mates and supervising attorney won't admit to seeing.

Never mind that he's wrong.

Now I have to argue something that I have NO belief in and that I think is reprehensible. It could cost, potentially, someone their job. I argued for 24 hours to take a different course of action. I re-wrote his motion six times, only to have him put it back in front of me for signing with only minor, insubstantial changes.

Oh yeah, he's forcing me to sign it, because he does not sign anything around here any more. Little does the boss know.

So I am going to suffer the wrath of opposing counsel.

And probably the judge.

Not that it was anything illegal or necessarily improper. Just something that goes against everything I believe in where the practice of law is concerned.

Well.

I'm just about done.

I've been stabbed in the back one too many times since the start of December 2006. I've had too much passive-agressive lecturing given to me. I've had too much mothering and monitoring of my work.

I've had too much implied insult towards --and quiet aggravation with-- my belief that family comes before all this crap.

This may have been the final straw.

If I did not have the Horde and my LW to support and feed, I would have thrown the motion back in his face that day.

But I didn't.

And now I've gone along with something I don't believe in because there was a pay check at risk.

I realize now what that makes me.

And it ain't a pretty realization.