I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I had received a phone
call from the mayor and the city attorney earlier that day, asking me to
consider running for municipal court judge.
I had thought about becoming a judge. My second summer of law school I externed for a judge in the district court in Provo, for just 3 weeks until my summer gig started, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Six months later, I landed a job clerking full time for Judge Valerie Adair, who had just been elected to the bench. Judge Adair had enjoyed a successful career as a criminal prosecutor, and my goal was to eventually work either for the district attorney or public defender, but we had a full civil calendar. To say there was a learning curve was to put it nicely. I seriously did not know what I was doing at the start, but I grew to love that job and participating in the judicial process. So yeah, I’d thought about it. I thought it was something that I would really enjoy doing.
Except for elected-judges thing.
Different states have different approaches to hiring judges, but in Nevada all state and municipal courts are elected positions. I am not a fan of that approach at all. Oh, and I’m also not a politician.
So when the mayor asked, I was definitely intrigued, but I was certainly not convinced. I laid there, awake, going back and forth.
After a few weeks, I thought yeah, I would like that job. I should run for judge. After all, it was just North Las Vegas, and I have friends and clients all over the city. I figured it was a race I could win.
But then I turned 50.
THAT was a bad idea.
COVID? Check (on my birthday, no less).
Pain in my legs and feet? Check.
Difficulty breathing? Check.
Racing pulse rate? Check.
Tired. All. The. Time? Check.
So I went to the doctor and he decided to explain to me all about how high blood pressure is the silent killer and how could I still be alive because the silent killer was seriously chasing me around with a big knife and why hadn’t I done anything about this before and whatever you do REDUCE THE STRESS IN YOUR LIFE! And just like that he brought my plans of running for judge to a halt, before I’d even started stretching.
I decided that I really wanted to play judge, though, so I reached out to one of the municipal court judges and asked what I needed to do to get on his pro-tem panel. (Ed.Splain: A judge pro-tem is just a substitute judge who covers for judges when they go on vacation, are sick, etc.) I jumped through those hoops and by May I was appointed as a judge pro-tem and in June I was sitting on the bench and living my best life.
I loved it. Seriously, like the most fun I’d had in a long time at work. But it ended after just four days. Four days and the judge was back from his vacation and I was back to my regular daily grind waiting for another chance to cover for him.
I started to look for other “judge” jobs. I was searching for administrative law judge gigs, but seriously the only thing that was open was for the Department of Taxation and just shoot me now. Did I tell you that Clorinda took the tax course at H&R Block to save our marriage because of how much I hated taxes? Yeah, taking any tax-related job was not going to be a thing.
It was all pretty discouraging.
On July 6 Clorinda and I went to the temple. As I was sitting on the back row, trying to pay attention, I was interrupted by a voice saying, clear as can be, “You need to look for hearing master jobs.” I reached for my phone, but, well, temple, so it was not in my pocket. I filed the idea away in the back of my mind and went back to trying to pay attention. And I promptly forgot to search for anything after we were done, until 2:00 a.m., when I woke RIGHT up with a moderately more firm, “You need to look for hearing master jobs!”
I rolled over and grabbed the phone and googled “hearing master jobs las vegas” and woke up a little bit more when the top result was a posting for the probate commissioner position at the District Court. “Hmm,” I thought, “probate commissioner. I could do that job.” I turned the phone off and laid back and thought about that until I fell asleep.
The next morning at work I looked at the announcement again. The job had literally just posted, together with two other hearing master positions, and was open until July 27. The more I thought about it, the more excited about it I got. I dusted off the résumé and worked on a cover letter and submitted the application early the next week. To that point, I hadn’t said anything to Clorinda, so when I told her I had applied for a new job that day she was shocked, but also excited.
Starting that night, Clorinda prayed, every night, for me to get an interview. I’m afraid my faith wasn’t as strong as hers, and I decided on the last day before the job closed to hedge my bet and I submitted a second application for one of the other hearing master jobs (I had no business doing that—the other two were for TROs and child support, neither of which I had any experience with, but hey, YOLO!). So Clorinda prayed, and I just looked at the calendar and counted the days from when the job posting closed.
At one week I figured it was too soon. Clorinda told me I needed to give it at least two weeks, so when we got there and still no word I was discouraged but Clorinda kept praying. By three weeks I was certain that my résumé had been tossed, probably with a laugh of scorn. I had given up all hope, so when Clorinda prayed that night, again, for me to get an interview, I had to ask her to please stop. Every prayer she voiced was a reminder that I wasn’t even good enough to get a letter telling me that I wasn’t good enough.
It wasn’t two days later that I got a call at work inviting me to come and interview for the probate commissioner position that Friday. (WHAT ?!?!) Clorinda confessed that she had NOT stopped praying, she was just doing it incognito.
So that Friday I interviewed for the probate commissioner position. I met with two of the district court judges and an attorney from court administration. I thought it went well, but by the time I was back to my office I had second-guessed every answer and had pretty much convinced myself that there was no way they could hire me.
The email came the following Wednesday, confirming my every second-guess: “Thank you for interviewing for the hearing master position. We interviewed many outstanding candidates. You won’t be moving forward.” I sent a text to Clorinda and she called me to tell me that I did NOT suck and that the job must just not be right for me.
Disappointment again.
But wait there’s more!
The next morning I was on a conference call and missed a telephone call from a number I did not recognize. The voicemail message was from a lady in human resources at the District Court. When I called her back, she apologized profusely and explained that the email was sent in error. While I was not selected for consideration (or even an interview) for the other hedging-my-bets hearing master job I had applied for, I was a finalist for the probate commissioner job!
So that was crazy.
She said that details would be coming soon. By soon she meant the next day, when I found myself on the telephone with the HR director for the District Court. He explained that the official announcement of the two finalists (including me!) had just been made by the court, and that the publication triggered a ten-day public-comment period. I was not familiar with the other candidate, but I looked him up and he was certainly qualified.
Then the panic started to kick in. I could feel the urgency creeping up inside me and the blood pressure rising. I texted my buddy Mike and asked if he had a minute to talk, and before I’d put my phone back down it was buzzing. Mike talked me in off the ledge and helped me map out a plan for the next couple of weeks. We didn’t really follow the plan, but just talking to him was so helpful.
My initial plan was to only ask a select few people to comment, but I opened that up quite a bit to friends, clients, and colleagues who were very generous in agreeing to help. I cannot express the gratitude I felt when I was sitting in my final interview and saw the deep stack of printed email pages (so much for saving the trees) with my application. For the most part, I don’t know what was said (a couple of people cc:d me on their submissions), but it must have been better than it should have been.
At the end of the two weeks, HR called again to schedule my final interview. I went on a Monday at 1:30 in the afternoon. This time I met with the chief judge, the chief civil judge, and one of the probate judges. They were a formidable bunch, but I felt like the interview went as well as it could have. They were cordial, and we had some good discussion about the probate office and my ideas if I were to get the job. After a half-hour, which felt much shorter than that, I was done. When I got to the elevator I pulled my phone out of my shirt pocket and it was DRENCHED. I had sweated right through everything.
At that point, I had done all I could do. The chief judge had told me the decision would be made by the end of the week, so I figured I had 96 hours, give-or-take, to stress about it. But the stress didn’t come.
Until Wednesday at about 4:30 a.m. Then it came. I woke up again and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I lay there with my thoughts.
By the way, my thoughts in the middle of the night are not kind. No filter. Just the brutal how-dare-you-think-you-were-even-qualified-for-this-position thoughts—by the time I got out of bed I had wholly convinced myself that there was NO WAY I would get selected.
I was spiraling.
And then the HR director called and offered me the job.
Me.
He offered ME the job.
So yeah, starting October 31, 2022, I will be the probate commissioner for Clark County.
