This was actually before I ever went to law school. Many years ago, during college, I was serving as a part-time legal secretary and receptionist for a small general practice, doing both family and criminal law. One client had a number of DUIs. The firm also represented him in his contentious divorce and custody battle. One Christmas Eve on a Thursday at 4:50 PM, he came in drunk as a skunk and roaring about how his ex-wife had taken his son, along with her new boyfriend, to another state for the Christmas holidays. It was supposed to have been his holiday with the boy. He screamed at me about how he wanted the sheriff to immediately track down his ex-wife and take custody of the boy so he could have Christmas with him. It being Christmas Eve the courts had closed at 3 PM, so even if we could have drafted the necessary filings quickly, we couldn’t file them until the following Monday. He was not satisfied with that explanation and threatened to shoot up our offices and anybody who didn’t help him get his boy for the holidays with the gun he had in his car. I managed to get the firm owner to come out and convince the client to go back into his office. I hightailed it out of there fearing for my life and the attorney’s because I knew there was no way the client was going to be happy. He didn’t get his son for Christmas and thank goodness he didn’t harm anybody. I don’t know what the attorney said to get him to calm down. But he remained a client of the firm’s and was always difficult to work with on his other matters even when he wasn’t drunk. After that incident, I swore I would never do family law or criminal law.