3rd April, 2025
- Black Lawyer
- Apr 3
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 6
Entry No. 180: “The Tears, the Thread & the Trial Date”
Filed under: Discovery Deadlines & Delusional Men Crying
Dearest Diary,
The law is meant to be a battlefield of logic. A chessboard of minds. A noble contest of precision and precedent.
And yet somehow—I found myself navigating a day where two grown men cried, and not one of them was the child in the case.
💌 The Agreement
It all began with an email exchange so civil it could’ve been read aloud over tea: opposing counsel and I agreed to extend the discovery supplementation deadline. Both of us had been dutifully submitting supplemental text threads—mostly screenshots of the parties being passive-aggressive, chronically online, or tragically allergic to punctuation.
It was your standard “he said/she blocked” affair.
But then I had a thought—a legally devastating, procedurally flawless, ethically generous thought:
“What if I just… included the entire text thread?”
The whole saga. Chronologically. No cherry-picking. No editorial bias. Just raw data and digital delusion, wrapped neatly in a Bates-stamped bow.
Why?
Because the Reply Letter Doctrine and Rule of Optional Completeness are not just rules—they are weapons.And I am, after all, a tactician.
📲 The Upload Heard Round the World
I supplemented the full exhibit: 217 pages of screenshots, including full messages, time stamps, and one unfortunate selfie of the opposing party holding a scented candle captioned “boundaries are colonial.”
I exchanged the exhibits. I cc’d the court. I even bookmarked the highlights.
Seven minutes later—my phone rang.
Opposing counsel.Voice trembling.
“You didn’t warn me.”“You gave them everything.”“You’re weaponizing transparency.”
And then—he began to sob.
SOB, Diary.
Like I’d keyed his Prius and cancelled his Netflix.
He cried so loudly, I momentarily thought someone had died.Then I realized: it was just the death of his case.
That same afternoon, I had to inform my client—who’d just survived a six-month custody war and two mediations that felt like hostage negotiations—that our trial date had been moved two weeks back due to the court's availability.
He stared at me, and said:
“I—I just can’t. I’ve… emotionally budgeted for April 16th.”
And then he started crying.
Two full-bodied sobs in one day.By men in court-ordered blazers.
Meanwhile, I was sitting at my desk, overstimulated, under-caffeinated, and dangerously close to crying myself—but only because I hadn’t eaten lunch and someone in the office was microwaving fish.
I stared out the window and whispered to no one,
“Is this my villain origin story?”
In family law, emotional regulation is optional, but deadlines are not. And if the facts make you cry, perhaps the facts were never your friend.
Sometimes, the courtroom isn’t where justice happens—it’s where people unravel professionally.
I remain, as ever—Poised. Petty. Permanently Supplemented.
Disclaimer:This diary entry is a satirical dramatization of fictional legal proceedings. Any resemblance to real lawyers, tears, or scandalous text threads is entirely coincidental and only partially regrettable.
Tag someone who’s ever cried over a deadline. Or a trial date. Or 217 pages of receipts.
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