Seth Cohen - A Cold Sore Chronicle

 

I pressed my head against the glass of the window in my 30th-floor office. It was the only way I could see the cargo ships heading out under the Golden Gate Bridge. I was 29 years old, and I was a brand-new associate at a huge global law firm. I was sucking on a cold sore that had erupted from my lip like the eighth wonder of the world. [audience chuckles] This thing was enormous. It cast a shadow. [audience laughter] The phone rings, and it's the chairwoman of the litigation department for this entire 1,100-lawyer law firm. She's summoning me to her office, because she wants me to work with her on a case. 

 

This woman was legendary. She was famous for being in the delivery room giving birth to one of her kids, and she had a fax machine wheeled in, [audience chuckles] so that she could edit a brief in between contractions. [audience chuckles] These big law firms, what they do is they hire a small number of law school graduates each year and then like the Navy SEAL selection process, they push you to the brink to see if you have what it takes to survive intense legal combat. I wanted to have what it takes. 

 

Not everyone at these firms is ultra intense and turbocharged. I was assigned a mentor by the law firm, a guy named Jack. Super nice guy, doting father. He'd survived. He'd made it through seven, eight years of this, and he was on the brink of becoming a partner. Wealth and prestige was about to be his. And he'd somehow continued to be a super nice guy. 

 

It was all about making a good impression. I'm wondering as I'm heading to this meeting, how am I going to make a good impression when I have this cluster of cold sore blisters? [audience chuckles] So, I head up to the office of this chair of the litigation department, and there I am, sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay, three lawyers I'd never met before. She says, "Seth, we want to put you on this case. It's an important case. It's a major client of the firm. We want you to be on the team." And I said, "That's great. I'm looking forward to working with you all. What's the case about?" And she said, "It's about their market-leading treatment for cold sores." [audience laughter] And I thought, this wasn't by design. They'd never met me before. This was just one of those funny coincidences in life, only no one was laughing [audience laughter] and I was mortified. 

 

So, I begin the work on the case, and it's intense. What you realize is that to excel at a place like this and to have any semblance of balance in your life, you have to be almost superhuman. I wasn't superhuman. I was just super stressed. [audience chuckles] Before I took this job, I might have had one cold sore a year, if that. But since taking this job, I had them all the time. And sure, it was enormously stressful, but it was also the fact that in my heart I knew I didn't want to be a corporate lawyer. These cold sores were like a check engine light on a car. [audience chuckles] They were telling me something's not right.

 

I worked hard on this case. We'd have a big hearing in court on the cold sore case, and I'd show up with a cold sore. [audience laughter] I'd go to the library to research, to find an expert witness physician on herpes. And there I am at the library table stacked with books about herpes, and people are walking by thinking, “I know what's wrong with that guy.” [audience laughter] And then, the chairwoman had a cocktail party at her house and she had these sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. And of course, I had a brand-new cold sore. [audience chuckles] She introduced me to her husband. She said, "This is Seth. He's working with me on the cold sore case." [audience laughter] He smiled at me with concern on his face. My girlfriend at the time said, "It's a lovely house. Do you ever have time to enjoy it?"

 

Well, life went on. My mentor Jack, the nice guy, called me into his office one day and he said, "I'm withdrawing myself from consideration for partnership." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "I was always leaving my house for work at nights, on weekends, on holidays. And my toddler son started calling me ‘Daddy, bye-bye.’" [audience aww] And that was it for him. He was done. Well, the cold sore case settled, as they all do. We go on to the next fight, and I resigned from that firm after about two years. 

 

I can't say I've ever loved being a lawyer, but I've had a rewarding career. I've fought coal-fired power plants and big oil. I've fought private land grabs and I never missed a parent–teacher conference. I didn't just go to my daughter's soccer games. I coached her team, and I've never been called ‘Daddy, bye-bye.’ [audience chuckles] And as I stand here tonight, I can tell you I can't remember the last time I had a cold sore.