So I've been trying to keep my client out of a hearing for about a year. He's one of those people with a fanciful idea of the legal system, based on reading one of the Gerry Spence's books and a healthy diet of Law and Order reruns on the Dubleyoubee.

I managed to delay and stall for nearly a year. It was pretty amazing. But it eventually started to take its toll on my conscience, or that place in my heart where my conscience used to be. I told him that he'd eventually have a hearing, and he could probably just pay a settlement worth what he's been paying me to get rid of it. He didn't want to pay a settlement. "I want that bitch to pay through the nose for this," he said.

The bitch in question is his daughter, and this morning she told a nearly empty courtroom that her five year old child was conceived with his sperm. Hilariously, he never told me about this part, though the look on his face after I managed to retreive my eyeballs from across the room and place them back in my head, told me that he knew this was coming all along.

Now the judge calls us up for a sidebar to hear arguments for and against a test to determine paternity. I'm not sure whether I should just burst out laughing or argue this seriously. All eyes are on me as they await what would have to be the greatest argument in legal history.

"Is it blood test or simple DNA?" I ask. They're not really sure. This is about the only opening I have, so I leap for it.

"If they're father and daughter--and I don't think anyone here disputes that they are--wouldn't they have identical DNA? Or nearly identical? How do we separate the DNA patterns between hers and the alleged father? I'm not a doctor but I think we need some expert guidance on what is going to be done. Otherwise I'd have to object to any test result being introduced."

Frankly, I have no fucking idea what I just said and what that means. I watch the jowls of the judge twitter and I wonder if he's going to forward a complaint to the bar association, as he threatened to do during the cancer scare. The other attorney starts to talk but I see the judge has tuned him out. The mysteries of the double helix are working through his mind. Yes! He's going to buy it!

I go back and tell my client that the judge is going to delay the test until an expert witness can be heard. We don't even know what the fuck DNA has to do with it, but I managed to use the mass ignorance of science that the American educational system brings about to delay yet again.

We end at 11:50, and my client asks me if I knew about this "I impregnated my daughter" thing. I ask him if he knew. "I had my suspicions" he said... and begins to cry. I know better not to ask the question that I want to ask. I realize at this moment that I'm defending a babyrapist with tears in his eyes. And I realize, my God, this is as good as it's going to get, and it's never going to get any better than this.