BarTalk August 2004
Volume 16, Number 4

Deadlines and Other Movable Feasts

By Tony Wilson

To misquote Shakespeare, as I like to do, and to misplace modifiers, as I like to try: “cry havoc and let loose the Dog Days of Summer!”

Ahh, summer. It’s finally here, although for those of us in some parts of B.C., hot summer weather has been with us since April, turning my grass brown and my skin red months before it should have. Those who still don’t believe in global warming should be denied sunscreen and lawn watering privileges on principle.

Although the meteorological summer has been with us for months and the official summer has been with us since June, the psychological summer has more or less just gotten underway. The psychological summer is a frame of mind as much as a space on the calendar. It’s a time of absent partners, absent associates and more or less vacant courtrooms. It’s a time when we’re all expected not to be expected. Smart people get out of their law offices for extended periods of time, and smarter people try to stay away longer. Even some of the big Toronto megafirms close up Fridays at noon to allow those Type-A triple-by-pass-in-waiting lawyers to get to Highway 401 by 2 o’clock, just so they can make it to their cottages for dinner. The French are the smartest: they close down the entire country during August because everyone knows that everyone else is elsewhere.

It’s a time of flexible deadlines, because it has to be. Nearly everyone is gone. If you’re on your boat, the accountant is camping in Tofino, the lawyer on the other side of the file is floating down some pastoral river in France, the expert witness is on Saltspring, and even the specialist at the Toronto mega-firm is away, the client may actually have to wait a little. Deadlines may have to move. Extensions of time may have to be obtained. Schedules may have to be amended. Feasts may have to be moved. Paradigms may have to shift. Reality may have to be acknowledged. Common sense may have to be embraced. To accurately quote my old friend and mentor Len Polsky, “There are real deadlines, and there are artificial deadlines. The secret of practice is being able to tell the two apart.” Summer is the time when you just have to be realistic about deadlines; you have to distinguish between the human and the inhuman, and not commit to the impossible or the superhuman. Things happen. People are away. I’ll be back. It’ll get done. Get a grip. (Get a life.)

My favorite quote about deadlines is from the late Douglas Adams, a writer known for his astounding and some say superhuman ability to procrastinate. “Deadlines,” he said, “I love them. I love the whooshing noise they make as they fly past me.” The quote goes a long way in the book business but as Mr. Adams did not have limitation dates and liability insurance to deal with, I wouldn’t want to be using it with our friends at the Lawyers Insurers Fund.

Whether it’s summer holidays, Christmas, spring break or the first day of school for your kids, sometimes your personal life, your family and your sanity must take precedence over your work. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and tell the client “I’m sorry. I’m going away. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.” And sometimes you have to stay late. The trick is to know the real deadlines from the artificial ones.

Tony Wilson is a Franchise and Intellectual property lawyer at Cawkell Brodie, and has written for The Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun and Macleans magazine. His e-mail address is twilson@cawkell.com.

This article was published in the August 2004 issue of BarTalk and is subject to the © Copyright by the British Columbia Branch of the Canadian Bar Association, 2004, all rights reserved.