CH 49.1

Shu Ning went straight to Zhengyuan Law Firm the next day to lodge a complaint.

"There was a man who went with her. He said that he was her husband - what was his name? Yu Feiyuan. He was super fierce. He accused you of instigating his wife to divorce him for the sake of making money off destroying their family. He threatened to go to the media to expose the firm if they didn't deal seriously with you..."

Shao Lili hurried to the community office early in the morning to report the matter, panting. "Because I happened to be at the firm at that time, I saw the whole thing. This man looked like he would never let the matter drop, and the woman hung onto his every word. You already know that once the firm receives a complaint, it was necessary to start the investigation process, but with the husband and wife united, so long as they insist that you're the troublemaker, in the end you're going to be the one who's unable to please either side..."

Ning Wan lost her temper. "This Yu Feiyuan could seriously teach pickup artist classes! Besides brainwashing her, he's even cut off any resources Shu Ning might be able to turn to for help. From her old friends, relatives and teachers, and now having her make a clean break with the lawyer who wants to help her! Reinforcing his position whenever he makes an advance. What a master!"

"You can't consider Shu Ning right now!" Shao Lili looked anxious. "You need to be thinking about yourself, Ning Wan! I have to be at court soon, so I have to run, but hurry up and think of something!"

After Shao Lili left, having tipped them off, Ning Wan wasn't looking too good. Shortly thereafter, however, Director Ji called her up, asking her to go to a certain building in the community to mediate a family dispute. Without anymore time to think about it, Ning Wan picked up her bag and left.

Chen Shuo and Fu Zheng were left in the office.

After hearing that a complaint had been lodged against Ning Wan, Chen Shuo looked surly, his face ugly. Since she wasn't here at the moment, the hostility in his heart toward Fu Zheng overflowed--

"Certain people who just hang around dragging other people down can still sit around indifferently when the other person has been complained about. How shameless!"

At the moment, Chen Shuo was filled with remorse. If only he had insisted on accompanying Ning Wan on this domestic violence case. If it had been him by her side, he would have certainly felt the change in her mood in time to head it off, or at least to prevent the case from turning into this...

If it hadn't been for this Fu Zheng…

But Fu Zheng seemed completely unconcerned about his wrath. "Ning Wan's complaint has nothing to do with me. She didn't get it because I did something wrong, but because she herself couldn't keep her own emotions under control."

Fu Zheng wasn't surprised at all that Ning Wan had received a complaint. Don't project your feelings onto your clients. Don't let your emotions get the best of you. This was a truth that even a lawyer first starting out should know. Ning Wan, a lawyer who had been wading in the grassroots level for a long time, had made such a basic mistake that even Fu Zheng couldn't stop her. She had completely lost control before Shu Ning in an extremely inappropriate and vulgar manner. That mistake came with a price. Having a complaint lodged against her was the consequence that she had to bear.

Fu Zheng was accustomed to the way of thinking of a manager. Though he felt sorry for Ning Wan, when it came to this sort of low-level mistake, everyone received equal treatment.

Sometimes, mistakes and punishments made for better progress.

Ning Wan had poured her heart into this case, but as a lawyer you should never feel that you were a client's saviour, and neither should you ever feel that you ought to sacrifice yourself for others.

"Forget about that, let me ask you, Fu Zheng, will you help intercede for Ning Wan? I'll definitely go, but I'm not the one working on the case, so the weight of my words won't be as taken as heavily as yours. All I can do is prove that Ning Wan usually works hard here at the community. You have to be the one to clarify the specific situation in this case..."

Fu Zheng pursed his lips. "It's true that Ning Wan does remarkable work in the community, but in the case of Shu Ning, she was indeed in the wrong for how she communicated and got too emotional," he flatly refused. "I won't plead for leniency on her behalf, because it's true that she was the one in the wrong."

"Although a lawyer can help people with the law, not everyone deserves to be helped, and not everyone can be helped. There are always a few idiots in the world who will never wake up, and all a lawyer can do is to stay away from such idiots to protect themselves." Fu Zheng glanced at Chen Shuo. "Even though she's such an experienced lawyer, she doesn't even know this and can't even control her emotions. Having a complaint lodged against her is an understandable occurrence."

Though there was nothing wrong with Fu Zheng's words, Chen Shuo was furious. "You ungrateful bastard, has Ning Wan taken care of you vain? Is it that you're afraid that pleading on her behalf will make the partners feel like you've got some blame in the case as well and will give them a bad impression of you?"

Fu Zheng lifted his gaze and gave Chen Shuo a look. "I don't care what other people think of me. Ning Wan got a complaint for having done something wrong. This is an opportunity for her to grow, in disguise."

Chen Shuo was simply beside himself. "Since it's an opportunity for growth in disguise, then why don't you grow up?"

Despite all his words, Fu Zheng remained uncaring and convinced that he was in the right. He looked at Chen Shuo as though he was an idiot. "I don't need to grow up."

"I shouldn't have let you and Ning Wan take on a domestic violence case, you selfish bastard," Chen Shuo ranted, mad with fury. "You use Ning Wan to brush up your resume, yet at the critical moment you only think about yourself and don't care about her feelings at all. You have no idea how every time she handles a domestic violence  dispute she's reminded of her past…"

Fu Zheng, who had been expressionless until then, frowned slightly when he heard that.

"She was so angry and uncontrollable because she grew up in exactly that type of family environment, with a father who's rubbish! Completely useless aside from gambling and beating. Ning Wan has been working to earn their living expenses ever since high school. She had an awful time in junior high, whenever he drank too much and wasn't content with just beating her mother, her father would beat her too."

The more Chen Shuo recalled, the more his heart hurt. "She shouldn't have taken on a domestic violence case at all. She shouldn't have exposed her old wounds back up like that. I should have stopped her." He glanced at Fu Zheng, then blamed himself. "At the very least it shouldn't have been you who accompanied her…"

He looked at Fu Zheng as he was saying this. "Are you really not going to help plead on behalf of Ning Wan?"

After his anger had dissipated, Chen Shuo had calmed down and was now trying in vain to talk sense into Fu Zheng. "You're new, so you may not understand our rules here at Zhengyuan. In our firm, having a complaint lodged against you isn't as simple as having a bonus deducted. So long as there was a complaint lodged against you, you can't apply for any partner's team that year. Ning Wan has been wasting her talents here in the community for too long when she's fully qualified to work at the general office. There's a new senior partner coming in from the US this year who will need to form a team and without this complaint on her record, she could apply. You should know that our partners teams are pretty set in stone. If the complaint can't be revoked and she misses this chance, how many years will it be before she gets the chance to enter another team? This complaint will almost decide her future in this career!"

Fu Zheng bit a lip, then said succinctly, "No."

You were kidding him. A senior partner, interceding for an employee?

What's more, a mistake was a mistake. No matter the extenuating circumstances, it was wrong for Ning Wan to project her own emotions and experiences into a case. As a partner, he couldn't think the same mistaken way Chen Shuo - the most taboo trait of management was undue sympathy, and there was a reason for this. Otherwise did that mean that you couldn't discipline anyone that you cared about? Everyone made mistakes.

Even being considerate of Ning Wan, even if Ning Wan hadn't had an easy time in the past, it couldn't justify erasing this complaint merely for her own interests.

It was just that Chen Shuo's words still affected Fu Zheng. He remembered the first time he had seen Ning Wan drunk, her tears, her low sobs, her self-deprecating tone, her trembling eyelashes; and that sort of unignorably contagious feeling of depression...

Because Ning Wan had later followed it up with mirth, Fu Zheng had always thought that she had just been talking drunk nonsense. She looked for all the world like a girl who had grown up in the sunshine, carefree and hot-tempered, so much so that Fu Zheng had never thought that she might have once lived in such an environment...

It was just that he hadn't expected her terrible father to not be a simple drunken fabrication, but actually real.

Whether handling a case or management, it was taboo to allow the other side's emotions to unduly influence you. Even as Fu Zheng commented rationally on Ning Wan's allowing her feelings to spill over while handling this domestic violence case, he was without realizing it already unconsciously sympathizing with her.

Was it because she had had to endure such a father and work in high school that she hadn't been able to go all out to get into a better university? What had Ning Wan been like in high school? Even living in restraint and depression, had she still been able to display that same brilliant, blazing smile?

The more Fu Zheng thought about it, the more agitated he became for some unknown reason. He knew that it was right for him not to interfere with a customer's complaint, yet at the same time, paradoxically, it felt almost wrong.