Am I Not a Moral Person? Wait, Don't Answer That...

One of the fun things I get to do as a Legal Assistant at a law firm is compare documents (or different versions of the same document) using a program called DeltaView. It's usually referred to as redlining or blacklining documents, and it's a very convenient program-- it shows what text has been deleted and what text has been added to a document.

One of the other fun things I get to do as a Legal Assistant is look on the server for documents that probably shouldn't have been saved there, or should have been saved their with some security to prevent schmoes like me from seeing them. This includes letters of recommendation.

I recently asked a partner for whom I've been working for a letter of recommendation to send to the law schools that relegated me to their waitlist. The letter he sent was saved to the system, as was the letter he sent on behalf of Josh, one of my former co-workers, who's also going to be going to law school in the fall. So, being the underhanded and naturally inquisitive person that I am, I blacklined my letter against Josh's letter.

For the most part, it was the same. Some phrases were slightly different, or had been moved from one part of the letter to the other, but it was basically the same letter.

With one exception: Josh's letter said that he had "a solid moral foundation," and there was no mention of anything like that in my letter.

Huh? A couple things pop to mind here. The first is that with this type of letter, the partner almost definitely doesn't write a word of it and probably doesn't even provide much input. It's his secretary who has the most influence. The second thing is, who cares? What a random thing to include in one letter and not in another. It's not like Josh is a priest or something. Was it the beard that I had for nine months? I know I should have trimmed it more often and sometimes I looked like a mountain man, but I don't think that's a proper benchmark to gauge morality.

Coincidentally, I've been wondering recently what kind of person I am. Am I a fundamentally good person that does some bad things? Or am I a fundamentally bad person that does some good things? I've known myself for 28 years and I can't figure it out one way or the other, but either this partner or his secretary has got me pinned in the 18 months I've been working here.

By the way, I'd like to think that I'm a fundamentally good person, but I don't know. What I do know is that it's good that I ask these kinds of questions of myself.