Wee bit o' worry

• First trial of my own today.
  
• It won't be a trial; it will be a simple withdrawal of charges, it's all been worked out, no need to stress at all. Slam-dunk of a case, given to a student because there's no possibility of it being complex, so it's an ideal first case in terms of taking a matter from start to finish on my own.
  
• Still illogically nervous. And wondering what I'll do if it doesn't work out as planned.

Gang aft agley

• 9:00: confirm that my matter is in Court #X, 10AM
  
• 9:30: go to Court #X
  
• 9:35: check docket, don't see my client
  
• 9:40: start looking in other courtrooms
  
• 9:45: find out that it has been moved to Court #Y, clear across the courthouse
  
• 9:46: start gimping over to #Y
  
• 9:47: hear my client and myself being paged to go to Court #Y
  
• 9:50: arrive at Court #Y
  
• 9:51: have a short conversation about charges being withdrawn against my client; the Crown isn't the Crown assigned to the case and has never dealt with a withdrawal before, the judge isn't from here so doesn't know whether they're supposed to withdraw or stay, and I am not even really a lawyer yet so I can't help
  
• 9:52: Crown goes to see what he's supposed to do
  
• 9:55 Crown comes back
  
• 9:56: charges withdrawn
  
• :D :D :D :D :D

Disclaimer (AKA When my Inner Law Geek meets my Inner Blog Geek)

Herein lies a disclaimer to be attached to all postings of a defendant-client-court-related nature:

Solicitor-client privilege is a serious thing, yo. If you see any quotes, paraphrases, or any other kind of work-related tidbit on this journal, you are not seeing anything confidential. Most of it is from the (very public) courthouse, from defendants who have nothing to do with me. Any names used are fake, and I would only post something from one of our clients if it was extremely generic. Eg, everything from "I murdered my mom" to "I work at a Canadian Tire" is too specific to post, IMHO; "I like summer" is probably OK. "We got a first-time petty drug dealer thirty days suspended sentence today" is too specific; "we got a fair sentence last week" is probably OK.

Eg, a few months back I posted about three co-accused in court named Mohammed Mahmoud, Mehmet Ahmed, and Ahmad Muhamed. They weren't my clients, and those weren't their actual first and last names; I have no memory of what their real names were, only that there were three guys, six names, and all were close variations on Mohammed.

Just wanted to make that clear :)