The H-line Transfer: One Attorney's Journey from Private Practice to Public-sector Employment

By Teresa M. Elguézabal

You think you've considered everything until you wake up one February morning and you no longer have that reserved parking space in the law firm's adjacent lot. You gave it up along with the career that law students dream of. You cashed in the partnership at that venerable firm with ceiling-high windows overlooking the Capitol Square.

"Have you lost your mind?" some have asked.

"It feels so right," you replied.

"You left the firm that takes ACLU cases even though they don't pay?"

"It's freeing," you said.

Day One. It's the first day of your state job. You stretch your arms back from under the comforter and bump into the wall between the spindles of the headboard. You push against that wall, extending your arms and reaching with your toes, then glide down deeper for five more minutes.

All set to leave for work and you realize, again, no more parking space next to your office door. So you quickly leaf through the bus schedules you picked up over the weekend and study the routes. The E-line winds through the familiar drive: north on Seminole Highway past the Arboretum where the crabapple trees bloom in frozen fog, past Nakoma Golf Course surrounded by pretty Tudor and Colonial homes. But that route requires a hike to the nearest stop. Maybe in spring and summer, you think, and settle for the H-line instead.

Week One. When you climb aboard the bus most of the seats are empty. The driver continues southeast. After crossing the railroad tracks near the Post Road and Todd Drive intersection, crowds huddle at each stop. They climb up the steps and scramble to find a seat. They live in brown, two-story apartment complexes along the way: Whispering Pines, Ridge Wood, and Southridge Village. Many passengers are students living away from the high-rent district of campus and downtown. Yet plenty are heads of households who live in these two-bedroom units where their children have to share a room.

Week Two. At the stop in front of the apartments, a man climbs in and takes the empty space next to you. Smells of cooking waft from his direction. They seem to have saturated his down coat. You place the spices, turmeric with a hint of ginger. He has wide gaps between his top front teeth. While you look straight ahead so that he can't tell you've noticed the faults in his teeth, he turns and speaks.

You tell him you just changed work after 18 years at a private law firm. You're now an investigator for U.W.-Madison.

He questions your decision, too. He doesn't even ask, "Investigator of what?"

You explain that you'd been a lawyer for too long, that sometimes a change, any change, is good. He listens intently to your practiced response ­ that things aren't always what they're cracked up to be; that the adversarial system depletes the soul; blah-blah.

"How many kids you have?" He changes the subject.

"I have one daughter and my husband has two," you say. "All three are grown up," you add.

"I have two girls, one boy," he says gesturing with two fingers then one.

"Does your wife work?" you ask.

"Nurse. University Hospitals," he says. "She takes car."

You look straight ahead again thinking that's the end. It dawns on you that he talks like curry ­ the way curry would sound if it talked.

"How long you have this husband?" The man wants to know more.

"Excuse me?"

"How long you have this husband?" he repeats.

So you tell him. You tell a perfect stranger, "Six years."

Week Three. Across the aisle you spot a girl, no older than 14, who takes small and fast bites from a breakfast burrito. She chomps at the rolled tortilla she holds in her fist. She leans her head into the burrito each time she bites. She chews real fast, leans and bites, then chews real fast again. She reminds you of how you imagine a mouse eats ­ quickly so as not to be caught. She finishes and reaches into her bag. You expect another burrito because one's not enough for a young girl, but she takes out a large paper cup and inserts a straw through the plastic cover. At least she's having a large orange juice, you think, until she sucks on the white straw and it turns dark. At the corner of Park and Regent she gets off the bus, and you turn to watch as she crosses to Regent Street to transfer to a bus heading west. You wonder who's at home when she leaves in the morning and if there's orange juice or milk in the refrigerator.

Week Four. One seat ahead and across the aisle, two students discuss the difference between case precedent and cases that have persuasive merit. They talk of the rule against citing unpublished decisions. A man old enough to be their father leans across the aisle toward them.

The students nod and the man smiles with approval.

It occurs to you that in the 18 years you spent as a lawyer, you could have started and finished law school six more times. The thought sends shivers up and down your spine.

While the bus idles at the red light at Park and West Washington, you feel a pull at the side of your waist. Some invisible magnet is drawing you east towards the Capitol Square. The pull is so strong that it hurts. It feels as if that part between ribs and hip bone ­ where it's soft and unprotected ­ is being suctioned from left to right. Something wants to take you there. You blame it on those law students you overheard. But the other day you automatically dialed your old office number when you meant to call your husband at home. Give yourself a break, you said at the time. For 18 years, you repeated that telephone number three, four, up to five times a day. It's no wonder it's imprinted in your every cell, right down to the fingertips. It's that same involuntary memory that pulls you towards the old law office now. When the light turns green and the bus speeds away, that pain on your side fades to an ache.

Week Five. The Down Syndrome woman gets on the bus with her large purple duffel bag. Each day one of the students at her stop carries it on for her. As the bus pulls away she kisses her hand and blows at it in the direction of one of the apartment buildings. "Bye-bye, baby," she says in that tone adults assume when talking to small children. "Mama loves you. Be a good girl," she says as she blows another kiss. "Bye, sweetie. Mama be back."

Two stops down the road, the burrito girl gets on and takes a seat next to you. You wait for her to pull that McDonald's bag from the backpack she places on the floor in front of her. When it doesn't come, you ask: "No burrito this morning?" You grin with familiarity. She looks back, unsmiling, and grunts, which you take to mean, "Don't mess with me so early in the morning." Instantly, you wipe the smile from your face and get real sober. She smells tough as stale cigarette smoke. When she leans over for something in the backpack, her layers of sweatshirts ride up exposing the small of her back. You notice that where you have cellulite, she has baby fat.

You resist the maternal urge to pull her shirt down, to cover her skin, to rub her back and say, "There-there." After she roots around in her backpack, the girl sits up and adjusts herself. She yanks her shirts down and pulls up on the right sleeve that's been covering her hand. That's when you notice the suture marks against her white skin on the soft inside of her wrist. It's a two-inch brown stripe that resembles a child's drawing of tiny railroad tracks. You wonder if it's a tattoo, or the mark of some gang rite, or worse. The slash doesn't run across the wrist. You've heard it's more deadly to cut parallel to the arm. While you're thinking, the girl hauls up on the strap of her bag, slings it over her shoulder, and she's gone.

Week Six. Going home it's a different mood. When you get on at Park and University, the state office workers from GEF I and GEF II are already on. They sit together at the front and pass around pictures of someone's son's wedding. The driver says he wants to see the pictures, too. He remembers the boy from when he rode the bus with his mother not that many years ago.

One office worker says she's been updating her position description. Keeping her fingers crossed, she hopes for that next pay upgrade. Her friend says she plans to take her four hours of floating holiday on Good Friday.

So that's how they get around it! The union negotiated a half-day floating holiday to make up for the loss of the Good Friday afternoon holiday that Judge Shabaz struck down as unconstitutional.

A third woman says she plans to combine that half-day floater with 12 hours of comp time she's built up. "That will give me two free days," she says, dancing her feet on the floor. "Free," she says, as if God had tacked two extra days to her 1998 calendar.

You envy her sheer pleasure. In a split second you see the beauty of it, too. It's that confluence where union contract and wages and hours laws and classified staff rules flow together. From that pool, the lady fished out two days. It has a certain magic about it; a little miracle. Well ... it's at least like finding a $5 bill in the pocket of pants you hadn't worn in a year. It's free. Free money. Free time.

This is what you missed during those years of backing out of your attached garage. With a flick of the thumb on the remote, you closed the door and drove straight to your reserved parking spot. You can't get this on your drive through the pleasant part of town. You cross your arms and lean back, satisfied with your rich and full bus-life. A life you all but forgot while you surrounded yourself with insurance executives, summary judgment motions, shifting burdens of proof, embezzlers, Rule 12(b)1, excessive entanglement clauses, billable hours, firm retreats, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, illegal searches, bar luncheons, a revised compensation plan, noncompete covenants, expert witnesses, adequate consideration, work product, separation of church and state, and a few falsely accused.

Fondly, you think of the man who talks like curry and the Down Syndrome woman who blows kisses out the window of the bus. You offer a silent prayer for the girl with the scar on her wrist. The light is green when the bus approaches the corner of Park and West Washington traveling south. But you turn in the direction of downtown. You place yourself gazing out of your old office overlooking the Capitol Square. As the bus rolls past, you crane your neck to continue the gaze. You anticipate the grace of tulips that bloom every May, the Wednesday Farmers Market, and the Concerts on the Square. For a second, your mind wanders over to the adjacent parking lot. And you say to reserved parking, "Bye-bye, baby. Mama loves you."

But there's no going back.

Wisconsin Lawyer