Page 49 of Partners In Evil
“Good night,” he says. “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”
“Good night,” I tell him.
And with that, he gives me a last smile and sets off towards his own house. Already, as I wave to him, I’m looking forward to what the next day will bring me.
24
FINN
“Okay,” I begin, dropping the load of files I’ve gathered onto my desk with a satisfying thud. Damien, Luc, and Emma are all paying close attention. “I think I have a plan for how to deal with Raven. But I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”
“What is it?” Luc asks.
“We’re gonna do a really good job at being lawyers.”
“You’re right,” Luc agrees. “I don’t like it.”
“I definitely get what you’re saying,” says Damien. “But I worry it’s a bit too late to just do a good job. The damage is done. Even if we’re honest, people aren’t going to think we’re honest.”
“That would be true if we were just doing a normal good job at being lawyers,” I explain. “So that’s why, instead, we’re gonna do a really good job. Good enough that the word spreads just as much as Raven’s nasty rumors about us.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Emma admits. “But it’s pretty hard to make the news of a good thing spread as fast or as far as the news of a bad thing.”
“It’s totally impossible!” I say. “But that’s okay. Because we don’t have to get the news far. We’re gonna be doing nice, honest, good lawyer things for our clients.”
I pull one of the folders off the top. “Each of these files is a client who’s left us. What we want to do is figure out something that we can offer them, contact them, and hook them back in. I’ve already done it myself a few times! It works! But we’re gonna need to make a whole practice.”
Damien takes the folder out of my hand and looks it over. “You have been doing some good work lately,” he offers, cautiously.
“I don’t know about this,” says Luc. “If we start doing special favors for our clients, new clients are going to expect us to treat them the same way.”
“That’s the real genius of it,” I reply. “We do that.”
“We do it?”
“Right! We’re honest and hardworking with all our clients! We start with the old ones, but then we just keep doing things that were for all of the new ones.”
“Isn’t that just how you normally do things?” Emma asks.
“You paralegals are so cute,” Damien mutters. “Let’s be honest. What you’re talking about is a whole lot of extra work.”
“I wouldn’t be asking you to do it if I weren’t already doing it myself.”
Damien thinks about that one. “It’s true. You have been doing it yourself lately. I’ve been impressed.”
“We’re gonna end up doing this, aren’t we?” Luc groans.
“That depends,” says Damien. “Do you want to admit that Finn’s a better lawyer than you are?”
Luc sighs and picks up another folder from the pile on my desk. “Hmm. This one wouldn’t even be that hard. We’d just have to make a quick presentation offering them some more transparent options for how they want us to handle their defense.”
“See?” I cut in. “None of it’s that hard. It’s just a matter of taking the time to look for it. And then actually doing it!”
“Well, hold up,” says Luc. “I didn’t say I was gonna do that part yet.”
Luc sets the folder down and picks up the next one off the top. “Darn it, this one wouldn’t be hard either. They’d just need some explanation of our different pricing options.”
“You’re starting to talk like Finn already,” Damien says, giving Luc a little nudge.