Terry: another excellent part. Meaty with lots of action:

Lois realizing Clark (or "Charlie")isn't what he seems to be. Introducing the new lawyers. Linda, date-raped! Clark, musing on the Silent Vigilante and how he doesn't want to leave Metropolis.

It's late and I can't say more, except keep on posting! Wonderful fic.

Ack

So, what else... The Silent Vigilante Inc. seems to be a quite large network of moles and dark knights, huh? Now we have Vicky, Lois, her Florida contact, Constance Hunter, her partner (where is Angela Winter from?), Perry, and Clark, who doesn't seem to be hitched, yet.

And Lois is noticing Clark

Michael

Now I'm envious of Constance Hunter--she's going to know more about this situation than anyone else! Do you think they'll run into each other at the lawyers' office?

Terrific plot development, Terry. I love that Lois notices that Charlie is not what he seems. And she doesn't immediately assume that he's on the wrong side because she knows what it is to be undercover.

Linda is definitely more sympathetic now that she realizes how stupid she's been. And Clark's response was perfect; leaving the door open but not minimizing the seriousness of Linda's actions either. He's taking a cautious wait and see attitude, which is entirely appropriate. You also gave helpful background about why Perry puts up with Linda--it is sometimes better to be lucky than good, and Clark supplies the good to Linda's lucky and vice-versa.

You may already know this, but, in case you don't, you have a major conflict of interest brewing between your two attorneys. Since Connie and Angela are partners, legally they are considered one person as far as conflict of interest goes. That is, it is assumed that each of them knows everything the other knows. On the one hand, that protects them both with attorney-client priviledge for all of their clients. On the other hand, neither of them can represent a client who has a conflict of interest with the other's client. Linda and the Mountaintops have a conflict of interest if Linda becomes implicated in Christie's murder. Actually, the individual members of the Mountaintops have potential conflicts of interest with each other. They are all potential suspects. If it looks like the police are close to charging more than one of them, a sharp attorney would advise that they need seperate counsel.

Linda also has a conflict of interest with the Planet since they are potentially liable for her injury. Perry spotted that right away. Attorneys who work for corporations have to be careful to remember that the corporation itself, not the individual officers of the corporation, is the client. Sometimes the corporation and its officers have competing interests.

Before agreeing to represent any client, every attorney in a firm runs a conflict check to make sure the new client doesn't have a conflict of interest with any of the other attorney's clients. The only way Connie and Angela could represent both the Mountaintops and Linda would be to disclose the conflict of interest to both parties and get written consent from both. Then they would build a 'firewall' between the cases, meaning that neither of them would share any information and they would use seperate support staff for anything related to both cases.

Like I said, you may already have that built into your plot, or you may choose to ignore it for the story's sake, but that's the way it would work in RL.

Looking forward to the next part.

(FDK on the FDK:)

HappyGirl, that's very interesting! I hadn't known all that about conflicts of interest. Glad to have learned something new today!

Thanks for the great comments, FOLCs!

Iolanthe: Thanks for the props. Both lawyers are from the series: Constance Hunter from "Whine, Whine, Whine" where she defended Superman, and Angela Winters from the Lois execution arc ("Dead Lois Walking") in S4 where she defended Lois. But they weren't partners in the show, whereas I put them together. It's even possible that Connie Hunter is involved in some activities to which her partner Angela Winters is not privy.

Michael: So Linda's not a floozy? See the next chapter. And right now the Silent Vigilante is working alone, but that may change in the near future. Interesting that you'd notice a loose network of do-gooders in this story. I hadn't deliberately intended to present them as such, but upon reflection you're right, they are.

HappyGirl: You're absolutely right about your legal point. I was aware of the potential for a conflict of interest. If both attorneys were to take on their respective clients, they'd have to build what I've heard referred to as a "Chinese wall" between them to prevent information from leaking from one side to the other, which would be difficult with just the two attorneys in one partnership, and not even a permanent receptionist at this point. (Connie answered her own phone, remember?) We'll see how they handle that situation should it come up.

Next part up soon! Thanks for reading, y'all!

I loved the whole section about Perry's response to Clark's first story, particularly this bit.

Perry's noticed there is something special about Clark - and I don't mean his powers.


Corrina.