Corporate Partner Totally Overwhelmed By Family Court

Things at the office have been painstakingly slow for Terry Whiteheart, a partner in Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP’s Corporate group. So, last week, once he had made the last call on his business generation list of college and law school contacts, Whiteheart made a decision he would quickly regret – he decided to take on a pro bono case. “I used to talk about this program we have with Child Support Services all the time when we used to recruit attorneys so I decided to get involved. . . looking back, I wish somebody would have talked some sense into me,” explained a haggard-looking Whiteheart when Litination met with him in his Los Angeles office last week.

Whiteheart soon learned that he would be representing a behaviorally-challenged ten-year old girl that had been institutionalized after she had been voluntarily placed in foster care by her mother. As a “deal guy” accustomed to order, structure and tons of help, he quickly realized he didn’t know where to start. His first meeting with his new client went about as well as that frantic closing in 2006 where some idiotic associate screwed up the signature pages. Luckily, a social worker from Child Support Services had been assigned to help him manage. According to Whiteheart, she gave him key pointers like “try to make occasional eye contact” and “avoid references to expensive wines.”

Quickly moving past this bumpy start, Whiteheart felt like the ship had been righted when he requested and received his client’s educational records in advance of the first court hearing. As soon as his town car dropped him off at the Compton Courthouse, however, Whiteheart realized he was back in hot water. As he entered the courthouse, he was asked to leave behind all of his electronic devices with the clerk at the door. Worried how he would continue to function without his electronic security blankets, he charged toward the front of the security line in search of the royal treatment.

Despite his hurried look and thick pin-striped suit, Whiteheart failed to impress anyone. A burly security guard barely even glanced at him before demanding he produce his attorney identification card – something Whitehead kept at home in the drawer designated for things he never uses. He tried hard to convince the rent-a-cop that he was an attorney, including repeatedly pointing to the monograms on his button-down, but his powers of persuasion were clearly lacking. Sent to the back of the line, his heart began to race as he realized he was in danger of running late for his hearing. This fear became reality about fifteen minutes later when Whiteheart’s two contraband Blackberries set off the security alarm as he walked through the metal detector.

Finally, eighteen minutes later, and eleven minutes after his hearing was scheduled to begin, Whiteheart made it to Courtroom Q. When he saw the social worker from Child Services heading toward him, he sighed with relief. That passed quickly though as she asked with exasperation how in the world he could have missed the hearing. Whiteheart looked around for an associate to blame, but he was caught with his proverbial pants down - and the reprimand from the social worker was not the worst of it. Since Whiteheart didn’t show, the judge had appointed another attorney to represent the child. Whiteheart had also been sanctioned for his failure to appear. The sentence? Twenty hours of CLEs on civil procedure.