Becky, Esq.

So, yesterday I had my first case. I got the case from the VLSP on Wednesday and interviewed my client then. The court appearance was yesterday morning. I was freaked. I mean - I've been to court under a practice order....I did moot court...I took trial tech.....but this was the first time I actually had to be a lawyer. For real.
It went really well. It's a visitation case, so it's kind depressing and hard, but I did a good job. My client gave me a hug when it was over and told me how great a job I did and how lucky she was to have me representing her. That was awesome to hear. I mean - this was for real - real people's lives - not just a grade or a reference.
So...if a settlement can't be reached, the case will proceed to trial in July. I don't want that to have to happen, considering the circumstances, but I'm ready for the challenge.
And, like I said to Clay, if I do enough of this for free....I can start chargin people on my own. Whooo extra income. For now, I'm bucking for 50 hours of pro bono in 07, which would qualify me to be called "Empire State Counsel" - Now THAT looks way better on a resume than what I do at my real job =)

Houses and Taxes

So...this weekend was good.Saturday Clay and I got up and decided it would be a good idea to go get our taxes done. We usualy do them ourselves, but with the wedding and the relocation that we were given from Thomson, we didn't know how it would all play out. We went to H&R Block and paid an obscene amount to do something that we ocld have done ourselves, but, we got a $4000 return! That's what happens when you're taxed in a 70,000+ tax bracket, but only actually made about 30,000 because you didn't work the whole year! WHOOOO!! Next year we may get them done again because we hope to have a house which will lend us to having a host of itemized deductions instead of taking the standard (don't worry, Becky I'm not going to start talking about capital gains and boot hehe)Which brings us to houses.......Sunday we went to 4 open houses. The first one was a condo in Brighton which was a DUMP (looked wayyy better in the pictures). And, being in Brighton, it was EXPENSIVE. For the amount of work that needed to go into it, an asking price of 100,000 was ridiculous. Then we headed over to Greece and saw a relly really nice townhouse priced just over 120,000. It was so awesome, but the taxes were 6000 a year! So, with the high price plus the taxes, we just wouldn't be able to make that mortgage payment every month, at least not if we wanted to eat. On a side note, it is sooo easy to get qualified for a ridiculous amount on a mortgage. As an example, Clay and I can qualify for almost a 200,000 mortgage on a 70,000+ gross income because we have good credit and only school debt. But, paying that every month just would not be possible!Anyway, then we went to Gates and saw another condo. This one was a reasonable price for the amount of work that had to be done, but it was a lot of work and the rooms were pretty small. And it came "furnished," which made us think that someone died there. Ick. Finally, we ended up at a really nice townhouse in Henrietta (West Henrietta). That one would have definitely been a possiblility, except it was too small. It had 2 really nice bedrooms, but the kitchen and living area were small. And to get an office, we'd have to finish the basement.Which leads me to this thought.....so, we've been looking at houses and townhouses and we don't have an agent. This is because we are not ready to buy yet and we don't want to waste an agent's time. We would obviously get one when we were closer to buying. But, at the dead person open house, the agent there was nice. We signed in and later that day I got an email from her apologizing for ot being able to talk more to us because the open house was so busy (it really was - there were people all over that tiny condo). So, I thought that was nice, but I didn't follow up. Today I got another email from her saying that she had created a list of places that fit our criteria and tha it would be updated nightly, blah blah blah. And when you click on the link it says "Listing for Rebecca M.." So, I got a little annoyed and figured she was being pushy. So, I emailed her back and changed the criteria (she had us only seeing listings in Greece and Gates and we want listings in Henrietta, Irondequoit, Victor, Chili, Churchville,... And I also told her that we weren't ready to buy yet because we were saving and because our lease doesn't end until August. Well...to her...credit(?), she was cool and changed the criteria and said she'd just keep updating it and when we were ready we could just call her. So yeah, I guess we have an agent kinda now.Still deciding on whether we should mortgage through the Nothnagle mortgage services or through Wells Fargo (we were already pre-qualified through Wells Fargo)Looking for a place is really exciting, but scary at the same time. I'm way more picky than I have been with apartments because I know that this is a place where we will be for a longer time (we're looking at at least 5 years on a 15 year mortgage to build enough equity to make it worthwhile)...and it's a place where we'll have kids, so it has to be big enough and not in a shitty neighborhood.OK, so that whole post made me sound really old. I think I'm going to go to bed, since I have to go to WORK tomorrow =(