Hey Shorty, It's Your Birthday

Today is John Roberts birthday! No, not that John Roberts – the LawBitch JR. In an obvious moment of weakness and rare show of kindness, I sent him an e-card signed from his “Favorite Calculating Bitch.”

Here is the conversation and hilarity that ensued. Okay, maybe not so much the hilarity:

Roberts: Thanks for the card, Calculating. A question though: are you my favorite calculating bitch because I genuinely like you, or because you are the only calculating bitch I know?

Calculating: Are you bummed that I didn't make your birthday wishes into a math problem? Because if you want I can replace any and all personalization with numbers...

Roberts: How about you tell me how many billable hours old I am, and then I can see how much I am worth?

Calculating: Hmm, I don't think we can count any of the hours from the time that you were born until you graduated from high school, because I'm sure most parents would agree that from the terrible twos up to the teenage wasteland years do not add any value to anyone's life. (Perhaps even decreases one's billables?) Then again, most kids do have a good year somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10, so we probably could add that one year in.

Oh, and you were an Eagle Scout, so you probably have some billable hours that we can count during that quest.

Since you went to college and went into the computer/technology field, we can probably include those years and after in our billable count. But if you had been an English lit or philosophy major, then you probably wouldn't have any billables for that period.

So, let's see. You graduated from high school in '97, right? So we can count Fall of 1997 up until Fall of 2005. Once we all entered law school, I think most would agree that we haven't added any value to society (especially in a community that is already overflowing with lawyers), and therefore cannot count our efforts as billables unless we truly are billing client hours in our jobs this summer. Which for you means that in billable hours, you roughly have about 11 years worth, and we'll say at an average of 1900 a year (I know, I know, perhaps a bit ambitious), that would make you approximately 20,900 billable hours old.

If you, like most law clerks, are billing at about $95/hr then I guess then you'd be worth $1.9 million ($1,985,500 to be exact).

Roberts: Well done. However, I must point out that I graduated from high school in '96. Also, college, or at least how I spent a good portion of it, probably shouldn't count as billables. Overall though, I would say you did an excellent job reducing my entire life to a dollar value. You truly are the most calculating of bitches.

****

To JR: Even though I’ve already said it in both words and numbers - Happy Birthday! Hope you had a good one.

To the Other LawBitches: Don't worry. I'll reduce y'all to numbers as well on your birthdays.