Problem Solving

I have been the Legal Assistance Attorney, Officer-in-Charge, of my little kingdom for over 7 months now.  I even have business cards with gold-embosed print.  I've learned a lot (spread your hands as far apart as possible, then triple that) in the last 7 months.

Legal Assistance is the forgotten step-child of the Judge Advocate responsibilities.  Congress deemed this service important for our military, and it most definitely is.  Every knows about Prosecution and Defense, and most people know about the lawyers that provide legal guidance to decision makers (staff judge advocates),  both are absolute requirements to the functionality of the the Military and justice.  But no one really thinks about the lonely lawyers helping to prevent an eviction, stay a civil law suit, write letters for child support.  Yeah, I've got a big office, but that allows me to have my married clients talk to me about all the issues regarding their house in foreclosure, or for the going-to-get-a-divorce client with her three under-five-years-old children explain how the servicemember has not made life easy.

I like to explain my job as all the other random legal problems people run into: divorce, death, wills, child support, home-buying/selling...and my list doth go on.

As the Random Legal Problems Attorney, I'm often left to my own devices with rare supervision and plenty of legal woes.  I am the Capt Belt-Buckle of the SJA: Alone and Un-Afraid!  And I'm never at a loss of work or research gluing me to my overly large desk--my very own government constructed fighting hole.  I digress.  Research and Legal Woes: Google is the Best legal search tool I have--better than those two dominate legal search engines.  But even with Google, I do not find the Answers.  I only find law or facts or blocked websites.  That information I gather must then be translated into understandable stuff via analysis.  I have begun to MacGyver my own legal sounding board--when my supervision is too busy to answer my inquires.

In my "alone-and-unafraid" mentality in my legal kingdom, I've grown the practice of asking questions on everything, literally.  "Yes, I remember the answer the last seven times, but maybe common sense has struck in the three days since I last asked."  When I have a question that needs answering and I'm the man for the job--usually because it is my job--I've leaned on my fellow lonely legal assistance attorneys when the answer was not immediately available in my mind.  However, I had to stop that almost cold turkey when I realized I have 6 months more experience than my closest ally--Yeah, I'm his source of info now.  Wasn't method of getting answers either.

Now, to fill the knowledge and experience gap I lay everything down in an email to an attorney I trust--normally someone placed in the state of the issue.  Then I go through the facts, legal problems, and possible solutions that I've typed.  I just hammer away at the keys explaining my problem to whomever I planned to email.  At some point during the email I've found a path to follow or the answer itself .  So I print the email for my records and communicate with my client.