Law Clerk on Gilligan's Island

Prologue

...and you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
--Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime"

     How many times have I used that phrase- "once in a lifetime"- in the last three months? Since I got offered this job back in the beginning of June, I've been trying to find ways to explain to everyone why I'm quitting my job as an attorney and hauling my ass 10,000 miles across the ocean to a little island chain in the Pacific that no one's ever heard of.  But since every explanation I offer for my career change just begets more difficult questions (like "are you nuts?"), I've just fallen back on a cliche.

     "It's a once in a lifetime opportunity," I say.

     "That's nice," says my doctor. "Turn your head and cough please."

      But that's the easiest way to describe it. I'm 29 years old, newly divorced, in a job that I realize isn't for me, and I've got an opportunity to spend a whole year in a tropical paradise as a law clerk to the highest court in the land.  So I'd be nuts not to, right? This only happens "once in a lifetime," right?

      The groundwork for this was laid back in 1994.  I was graduating from law school with an offer in my pocket of a job at a law firm in Buffalo, New York.  I had a great relationship going with my girlfriend Michele, and I asked her to move out there with me.   Days before we pack up and go, I get my first issue of the "Alumni Career Opportunities" newsletter in the mail.  Among the jobs listed:

Law Clerk: The United States District Court in American Samoa seeks a bright, hardworking individual for a two-year clerkship. Law Review experience or top academic credentials a plus.  Competitive salary and full benefits.

     Of course, I had learned all about American Samoa from old "Doonesbury" comic strips-- Uncle Duke was Governor of the place back in the late '70's. Oh yeah, and Margaret Mead did some stuff there, too. Beyond that, all I knew was that it was some weird place out in the middle of the ocean that most people had never even heard of.  But I'm a sucker for eccentricity, and imagined that while my classmates were marching to work in stuffy, button-down firms in their navy and gray suits, I could be standing out on a bamboo terrace in a white linen suit, drinking Pina Coladas out of a coconut shell.  After all, that's the way Gary Trudeau drew Uncle Duke in Samoa.

      But it was nothing more than a passing notion, since I wasn't even sure I could get the job, and, more importantly, I had dragged Michele to Buffalo, away from her friends to a city where neither of us knew anyone.  With two sets of student loans coming due, and us having a hard time making ends meet, I couldn't even conceive of taking some frivolous job just to be different. So I never sent in a resume for the Samoa job, and instead, started a legal career in Buffalo and married Michele.

     As the years went by, I became less and less satisfied with being a lawyer in private practice. I got tired of calling my clients to beg them to send me documents they were too lazy or disorganized to find.  I got tired of dodging phone calls from opposing counsel wanting to know when I was going to produce those documents.  And I got tired of accounting for every 6 minute increment of my work day so it could be billed to someone. The only part of the job I really liked was the legal research and brief writing. 

     I began to envy those judicial clerks, whose sole job it was to take the arguments by each side in a case and write up a decision that justified choosing one side's position over the other. (In case you don't know, in everything but jury trials, the judge's law clerk usually decides the case initially and drafts a "proposed" decision for the judge to review. Since the clerk is the one who does most of the research and understands the case better than even the judge, judges tend to simply adopt whatever recommendation the law clerk makes, and the "proposed" decision usually becomes the final decision with only minor modification by the judge.)

     So by December of 1997, changes were afoot. After two years of marriage, Michele had decided that she wasn't happy with me and said she wanted a divorce. Her decision blindsided me; I knew things weren't always the best between us, but we were in marital counseling and I was hoping that were would be able to work things out.   Tail between my legs, I moved out of the house we shared and started doing some serious thinking about what comes next.

     The first thing, I decided, was that I had to get out of Buffalo. I never wanted to be divorced from her, and the last thing I needed was to be constantly reminded of the whole situation every day-- walking by the little gourmet deli where we ate our first meal together in Buffalo; driving past the theater we used to see plays at together; or, God forbid, running into her at the mall with a new boyfriend.   Having no other family in Buffalo, and nothing else tying me down, I decided to split, to start over somewhere else, and pretend the last four years never happened.  I started looking for jobs elsewhere. By February of 1998, I had landed a job as a law clerk to a judge in Federal Court on Long Island. The only hitch was, it didn't start until October, 1999. (Don't ask why. It's just the way some judges hire.) That was a nice start, but it meant I had another 18 months to kill before I could make my escape.

     Then it came. In March, I got the latest "Alumni Career Opportunities" bulletin.  On the last page, down in the corner, I came across:

Law Clerks (3): The Palau Supreme Court in Koror, Palau seeks three Law Clerks for a one-year commitment. Two clerkships begin in October, one may begin earlier. Involves researching and drafting bench memos and assisting the four judges. Qualifications: Must be a member of a U.S. state bar. Post J.D. experience required; clerkship preferred. Interviews in the U.S. in May.

Well now, let's see: one year clerkship, October 1998-1999.  Fits my plans perfectly.  Post J.D. experience.  Got that. Clerkship preferred-- well, I've been picked as a clerk, so that's almost as good, right? But where is this "Palau" place,  I wondered. Well, it didn't really matter.  It was a job, a clerkship, and it wasn't in Buffalo. Good enough. I put together a resume and writing sample and faxed it off to the contact address. Then I jumped on the internet.

The Republic of Palau is an independent nation, spread over 1,500 square miles in the Pacific Ocean. Located just north of the equator, between Guam and the Philippines, due south of Tokyo and due north of central Australia, Palau, or "Belau" as it is sometimes known, is the junction of several warm ocean currents, making nearly 300 islands within a coral atoll an ideal habitat for thousands of marine species. Formerly a Trust Territory, under the protection of the United States since liberated from Japanese occupation during World War II, Palau recently gained its independence from the U.S., and is the most recent nation admitted to the United Nations.
---Paraphrased from some online source whose name I've now forgotten

    Sounds good, I thought. And with 3 positions available, I'm bound to get an interview, right?  I shared my discovery with my co-workers, announcing that I'd "found my next job." But  after I explained, they stared back at me, heads cocked to the side, like a dog hearing a high-pitched noise.  It was a look I would get quite used to in the coming months.

     "Where?" they asked, as if I had said I was moving to Alpha Centauri. 

     "Palau," I said. "It's an independent nation, spread over 1,500 square miles in the Pacific Ocean. Located between Guam and the Philippines. Didn't you read that paragraph above?"

    "Where's Guam?" They'd ask. Or, even worse: "Why would you want to go there?"

    Ugh. I didn't have the energy to explain my fascination with the obscure, my wounded emotional state, or my burning desire to quit private practice. "It's a once in a lifetime opportunity," I sighed. That would just have to do for a reason.

     Two weeks later, I got a fax at work from Palau. (Having used the office's fax machine to send my resume, the Court simply responded using the same fax number it was sent from. Oops. Fortunately, the secretary who retrieved and collated it either didn't read it, or didn't care enough to gossip about why someone was writing to offer me a job interview.) The 6-page letter informed me that I was selected for an interview, and went on to paint life in Palau in a pretty harsh light, presumably to scare off the dilettantes who were thinking that the job was just a yearlong tropical vacation:

"Court Counsel often encounter legal questions of first impression here. Traditional or customary law, which is an important component of many cases, is unlike any form of law found in the U.S. Working with such issues is fascinating, but sometimes it can be perplexing and arduous."

     Uh-oh. I'm pretty sure I don't like anything that can be described as "arduous."

"There are a few private doctors and clinics in Palau. One in particular has a very good reputation but waiting to see him can take two to three hours."

     Hmm. One good doctor. 17,000 people.   Mental note: bring lots of Band-Aids.

"It is important to remember that Palau is still a developing country. For example, there are no movie theaters in Palau, although there are several video rental shops. However, grocery stores are improving rapidly; it is now possible to find almost anything you want, including fresh fruits, vegetables, and eggs."

     I started wondering if this might be an old letter that just got recycled every year. The fact that "it is now possible" to get fruits and vegetables in the grocery store bothered me. Is this a new development in the last year? If people couldn't get these things until recently, what passed for local cuisine? Recently deciding to become a vegetarian was looking like less and less of a good idea.

"But most people agree that, in general, Koror is not an attractive city now. There is one main road that goes through town, and it is very congested. The abundance of construction makes many parts of Koror dusty and noisy. Most of the houses and other buildings in Koror are made of corrugated tin or concrete. Housing is adequate for living but not quite up to the niceties of much housing in the U.S."

     Oh great. I wondered if the Tourism Office had a hand in writing this letter.  Is this the best thing they could find to say about the place?  I wondered what the "niceties of much housing in the U.S." that were missing were. Dishwashers? Indoor plumbing? Roofs?

"There are occasional power outages and water shortages."

     Water shortages.  In the middle of the ocean.

"The limitations of land space and on social and cultural activities can induce boredom over time."

     Well, I guess what they're saying is, it ain't gonna be like Hawaii. "More like going to clerk on Gilligan's Island," I thought, cynically. But it was still an intriguing opportunity, and I eagerly arranged an interview in Boston.

      To cut this already too-long introduction short, I thought I blew the interview and moped for three weeks.  I went back to work and started thinking about making alternative plans for the next year. Then, one day in June, I got a message on my machine from the former clerk. They were very impressed with me, and were offering me the job.

     A wave of relief swept over me.   All the worrying about blowing the interview, about having to stay in Buffalo another year, about going back to work in the morning were suddenly gone. I called back at 9:00 a.m. the next day and accepted.  Then I marched into the partners' offices and explained that I'd be leaving for a place called Palau in three months.  "I'm sorry to leave," I'd say, "but it's a once in a lifetime opportunity."

     It's now September. I'm two weeks away from getting on the plane to leave. I've been in touch with my co-clerks, two women about my age: Stephanie from Houston and Jill from San Francisco.  It looks like it will be an interesting year.  I'm putting up this web site to keep my family and friends informed about what's going on, and, hopefully, to get a little more info out on the internet about Palau. Just about every site I've come across has plenty of photos of deep blue lagoons and lush islands, but nobody can tell me about what downtown Koror looks like, or what people do on weeknights, or what it's really like to go to a grocery store there. So I'm taking it upon myself to do so.

Stay tuned to this spot.  We start our Palau adventure on September 26.

This page was uploaded on Sept. 11, 1998.

On to Chapter 1...

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