Noah's Law Read Online Free Page B

manila folder opened in front of me on the photocopier. ‘Aren’t you even curious? You’re the one who wants to be a lawyer – well isn’t this your chance to see how it all works?’
    â€˜Look, I don’t have time to read through the files. Casey dumps them on me all the time. I do know that they’re usually personal injury cases. You know, people slipping on a spilt milkshake in a shopping centre and hurting themselves. Losing a finger in a machine at work.’
    â€˜Ouch.’
    â€˜Getting stuck in a turnstile in the entrance to a shop and pulling a back muscle.’
    â€˜Woah. Can you imagine how fat that person would have been to get stuck in a turnstile?!’
    â€˜I saw her actually. She was huge . . . God, that’s mean.’
    â€˜So this file I’m copying now. What’s it about?’
    â€˜You can read – check it out yourself. But we’re on a deadline. Casey needs this all by tomorrow or we’re seriously in trouble. You haven’t seen her mad.’
    â€˜So what I’ve seen so far is happy ?’
    â€˜No, she doesn’t do happy. She does frustrated, stressed, annoyed, condescending, dismissive and mad. If you can get her on a frustrated day, count your blessings. It’s her best mood.’
    Jacinta kicked the photocopier and swore. ‘I hate it when it jams!’
    â€˜Casey sounds like my maths teacher. Move over, let me have a look.’
    â€˜I’m fine,’ Jacinta muttered, and crouched down to fix the paper jam.
    We didn’t talk much for the rest of the afternoon. I found out some things in the small pockets of time we had to chat. Jacinta grew up in Canberra. Her dad was born in Indonesia, and he worked as a lawyer with the Indonesian embassy. Her mum had an Italian background and was a teacher. Jacinta was enrolled to study law at Sydney University and had moved to Sydney in late November getting a job at Aunt Nir-vine’s firm shortly after she arrived. She’d been renting a flat with another girl in Surry Hills. The only problem was that the girl had a pet rat she kept in a cage in the kitchen and she had a chronic case of BO (the flatmate, not the rat), so Jacinta was on the hunt for a new place and a rat-free, odourless flatmate.
    That was about all the information I got out of her. She was right. There was a heap of documents to get through. Sometimes the photocopier jammed and I felt like hurling it against the wall. By four o’clock I’d had enough. I went into the kitchen, got a tablespoon, grabbed the tin of Milo, sat down at the table and crammed mouthfuls of crunchy chocolate into my mouth. John, one of the lawyers I’d met earlier in the day, walked in, looked at me and chuckled. I gave him a sheepish smile. My teeth were full of chocolate and I guessed my mouth was smudged with chocolate too.
    â€˜Healthy,’ he said as he made himself a cup of herbal tea. Apparently he was the youngest lawyer in the firm and had only been practising for two years. ‘So how was your first day? I suppose Casey’s breaking all the award minimum standards?’
    â€˜I don’t know what that means,’ I said, helping myself to another spoon of Milo, ‘but I know that you’ve all got the most boring jobs on the planet.’
    Amused, he said, ‘Let me tell you something – most of us started at the photocopier. You’ve got to see it as an art form. Getting the image at an exact angle. Avoiding smudges. Making sure the staples are at perfect right angles.’
    I laughed. ‘Right, perfect right angles. I knew I was missing something. So do you like working here?’
    â€˜Sure,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Good bunch of people, interesting work. We have our good times, dude. Swing by my office later this week. I’ll give you some real legal work.’
    John wasn’t so bad. But using the word ‘dude’ just said nerd all