I sobered up a long time ago.

I've just been busy.

So, my judge was a 90 year old slightly deaf guy who even a court officer told me "is crazy" when we broke for lunch the first day of trial. Awesome, right? He ended up precluding one of my witnesses who was supposed to testify regarding a BIG part of my overall theory. The judge was completely wrong on the law, and after a long argument on the record, he pretty much accused me of trial by ambush and he wouldn't allow it.

So that sucked. And totally freaked me out. But we kept going, and I recovered. My summation was kind of done on the fly because of the aforesaid hiccup, but the jury was still out all of 15 minutes before rendering a complete verdict in my favor. My heart was LITERALLY jumping out of my chest before the verdict was read. Afterward, the judge who had screwed me over winked at me. In hindsight, he probably knew the jury would go my way, and precluded my witness to either a) fuck with someone he knew was doing her first trial or b) assert his idiocracy on a somewhat basic point of law.

One of my firm's partners was in the courtroom when the jury came back, and although I was still in shock, I remember him giving me a hug afterward. Which is something I NEVER would have expected he was capable of doing, so it was pretty nice.

Our client was happy, and of course later told me she had been "a bit nervous" about it. Well, hell, so was I. But I proved myself at least on the first one. I'm sure the next one will be harder, but at least I'll have a base of confidence to go on.

In other news, a homeless woman on the subway today told me I was a "fucking fucking whore fucking slut" because I demurred when she asked for some change. Nice.