Inside the Secret Lives of Lawyers Issue

“The only people who should use the possessive ‘we’ are kings, newspaper editors, and persons with tapeworms.”

– Mark Twain

Dear Reader,

In your hands you now hold a unique issue of the Contra Costa Lawyer: an Anthology Issue. After the past two years, we (as in the Editorial Board) have all felt that members of our profession became even more isolated from one another, deprived of the many wonderful social get-togethers facilitated by the CCCBA and its sections, of our office camaraderie, of meeting our colleagues and opponents in the halls of the courthouses, of impromptu walks down Main Street for a quick latte after a chance meeting at a case management conference.

We are still boxed into our offices or even home offices, and life just feels less fun. We were all of the persuasion that we needed a fun issue, an issue completely devoid of legal analysis and chockablock full of interesting pieces on the human side of lawyering.

Along came this issue, in which we expose the yet unexposed secret lives of lawyers and judges. Many of us have artistic talents and ambitions and quite a few stepped forward bravely to share with us the products of these ambitions.

We will share excerpts from a chapter of a mystery novel – by the renowned lawyer-mediator Claudia Long; and of a romance novel – by the powerhouse real-estate transactional attorney Myra Mitzman (aka Sheryl Sorrentino in literary circles). You will read the script for a short film by award-winning entertainment lawyer Natasha Chee, song lyrics by our former Co-Editor in Chief, business litigator Marcus Brown, and uplifting poems by family law attorney Joe Wolch. Last but not least, in our interview article, you will hear from six lawyers who practice a variety of performing and visual arts: the Hon. Leonard Marquez, currently serving our county on a family law calendar in Martinez; probate litigator and universal talent Mika S. Domingo, now retired business lawyer Kent Parr, fearless bankruptcy lawyer Michael Primus, Alan Ramos who retired from the law to act on TV (until he retired from both), and family lawyer Deborah Jo Sanders. We hope you have as much fun reading the first ever anthology issue on the Secret Lives of Lawyers as we had while shepherding it together.