Chapter 6: The Pro Bono Assignment - Part One
Day 18, and Louis was in a mood.
I could tell from the way he paced his office—short, sharp steps that made his expensive shoes squeak against the floor. His desk was covered in folders, and he was eating Cheetos straight from the bag while glaring at his computer screen.
Something went wrong.
I knocked on the doorframe.
He looked up, expression irritated.
"Roden. What?"
"You asked for the Henderson brief by noon."
I held up the folder. Louis waved me in, impatient.
"Put it on the desk. And close the door."
I did.
Louis tossed the Cheetos bag aside, wiped his hands on a napkin with sharp, angry movements.
"The Bar Association is breathing down Jessica's neck about pro bono hours. Apparently, we're not meeting our community service requirements, which means partners have to distribute cases to associates."
Here it comes.
He grabbed a thin folder from the pile on his desk and slid it across to me.
"Elderly tenants versus Castellano Development Corporation. Eviction proceedings. Queens."
I picked up the folder, flipped it open. Three pages. Basic case summary, client contact information, court filing deadline in six weeks.
This is nothing. Throwaway work.
"Castellano wants to demolish the building and develop luxury condos," Louis continued, voice flat. "Tenants have rent-controlled apartments, been there for decades, but the development company has legal precedent on their side. It's probably hopeless, but the Bar Association wants us to make the effort."
He leaned back in his chair, studying me.
"Make them feel heard. Negotiate the best relocation package you can. Close it clean. This isn't about winning—it's about checking a box."
Translation: I'm dumping grunt work on you because I have to, and I don't expect miracles.
I kept my expression neutral.
"Understood. When do they want to meet?"
"This afternoon. Community legal aid office in Queens. Address is in the folder."
Louis dismissed me with a wave.
I left his office, folder under my arm, and went back to my desk.
Pro bono case. No billable hours. No partnership points. Just community service requirements.
The System activated automatically.
[CASE ANALYSIS: INITIATED]
[ELDERLY TENANTS V. CASTELLANO DEVELOPMENT]
[INITIAL ASSESSMENT: LOW-VALUE ASSIGNMENT]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: MINIMAL EFFORT, QUICK RESOLUTION]
I stared at the notification, then dismissed it.
Maybe. Or maybe there's something here Louis isn't seeing.
The community legal aid office was in Flushing, Queens—a forty-minute subway ride from Midtown that took me through neighborhoods I hadn't seen since moving to the city.
Bodegas with hand-painted signs. Laundromats with flickering neon. Restaurants advertising authentic cuisine in languages I couldn't read.
This isn't Manhattan.
The legal aid office was on the second floor of a building that had seen better decades—cracked linoleum floors, fluorescent lights that buzzed, furniture that looked like it had been donated by offices upgrading in the nineties.
A tired-looking receptionist pointed me to a conference room.
"Mrs. Chen's waiting. And the others."
Others?
I pushed open the door.
Four elderly people sat around a battered conference table—three women, one man, all of them looking at me with the kind of exhausted hope that came from fighting systems designed to crush them.
The woman at the head of the table stood. Late sixties, Chinese, wearing a cardigan that had been mended multiple times.
"Mr. Roden? I'm Eleanor Chen. Thank you for coming."
She shook my hand with a grip that was stronger than I expected.
"Please, sit. This is Rosa Martinez, Joseph Kim, and Linda Washington. We're all facing eviction from the same building."
I sat, pulled out my tablet, opened the case file.
"Tell me what's happening."
Mrs. Chen's voice was steady, but her hands shook slightly as she laid out photos on the table—old pictures of the building, of neighbors, of grandchildren playing in the courtyard.
"We've lived there for over thirty years. Rent-controlled apartments. Safe neighborhood. Our families are there."
"Castellano Development bought the building six months ago," Rosa added, her accent thick. "They want to tear it down, build luxury condos. They've been trying to force us out."
Joseph Kim leaned forward, voice quiet.
"They cut our heat last winter. Said it was a malfunction. Repairs took three months."
"The elevators break down every week," Linda said. "My daughter has asthma. Climbing six flights with groceries—"
Mrs. Chen put her hand on Linda's arm, steadying her.
"We can't afford to move. Rent in Queens now—it's three times what we pay. We'd have to leave the city. Leave our families. Our lives."
She pushed the photos across the table to me.
"This is my grandson. He goes to school three blocks away. If I move, I can't see him every day. Can't pick him up when his mother works late."
I looked at the photos. The building was old, but solid. The courtyard had gardens that the tenants clearly maintained. There was a community here—real, living, built over decades.
The System activated reflexively.
[WIN RATE CALCULATOR: ACTIVATED]
[QUERY: VICTORY PROBABILITY - TENANT RETENTION]
[PROCESSING...]
[PROBABILITY: 11% (±8%)]
[VARIABLES: RESOURCE DISPARITY - EXTREME]
[VARIABLES: LEGAL PRECEDENT FAVORS DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS]
[VARIABLES: CLIENT FINANCIAL LIMITATIONS - SEVERE]
[ASSESSMENT: DAVID VS. GOLIATH SCENARIO]
[RECOMMENDATION: NEGOTIATE BEST POSSIBLE RELOCATION TERMS]
Eleven percent.
Louis was right. This is hopeless.
I should negotiate a relocation package. Get them better terms than they'd get on their own. Close the file. Move on to work that actually mattered.
But Mrs. Chen was looking at me with hands that shook, holding photos of her grandson, and something in my chest tightened.
The numbers don't tell the whole story.
"Mrs. Chen," I said carefully. "If you could keep your apartment—stay in the building—would you?"
She laughed, but it was bitter.
"Who could fight Castellano? They have armies of lawyers. Millions of dollars. We have... this."
She gestured at the cramped legal aid office, the donated furniture, the four elderly people who'd probably never sued anyone in their lives.
"You have me."
The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them.
Mrs. Chen blinked.
"What?"
I set down my tablet, met her eyes.
"I can't promise victory. I can't promise this ends the way you want. But I can promise I'll fight like it's the most important case in the world."
Silence filled the conference room.
Why am I doing this? Eleven percent. This destroys my weekend. No billable hours. No credit. Louis expects me to phone it in.
But Mrs. Chen's hands had stopped shaking.
"You'd do that? For us?"
"I'd do that for what's right."
The System offered no calculation for why I'd chosen this.
Maybe some decisions don't need one.
I left the legal aid office two hours later with a signed representation agreement, four client phone numbers, and a case that was going to consume every spare hour I had for the next month.
The subway back to Manhattan was packed with the evening rush. I found a spot by the doors and opened the case file on my tablet.
Castellano Development Corporation. Major real estate developer. Deep pockets. Legal team from Bratton & Associates—one of the firms that specialized in crushing tenant opposition.
Rent-controlled apartments. Thirty-year tenancies. Building in good condition despite Castellano's claims of structural issues.
Eviction proceedings based on alleged code violations and economic hardship to the landlord.
The System started organizing automatically.
[BLACKMAIL ARCHIVE: CASTELLANO DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION]
[CROSS-REFERENCING: BUILDING CODE VIOLATIONS]
[CROSS-REFERENCING: TENANT PROTECTION STATUTES]
[CROSS-REFERENCING: ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW REQUIREMENTS]
[PRELIMINARY RESEARCH PATHWAYS IDENTIFIED]
I dismissed the notifications and stared out the subway window at the tunnel walls rushing past.
Louis thinks this is three meetings and a settlement.
He's wrong.
By the time I got back to my apartment, it was almost eight PM. I ordered Thai food, cleared my desk, and spread the case documents across every available surface.
Building permits. Zoning records. Castellano's corporate filings. Tenant protection statutes for New York City.
If I'm going to lose, I'll lose spectacularly.
The System hummed quietly, organizing information, flagging relevant patterns, building the framework for what would either be a miracle or a disaster.
[CASE COMPLEXITY: HIGH]
[RESOURCE AVAILABILITY: LOW]
[EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT DETECTED: UNUSUAL]
[QUERY: WHY THIS CASE?]
I stared at the notification, then typed a response in my mind.
Because Mrs. Chen's hands shook when she showed me photos of her grandson. Because eleven percent isn't zero. Because Louis expects me to quit, and I don't quit.
The System processed that, then went quiet.
And in the silence of my apartment, surrounded by documents and cheap Thai food, I got to work.
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