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He used to think the trick was not to get hit. And a cold/heat pack or two over sore muscles before sleep.
Matt knows better now: the trick is to be able to do all the law stuff with your head still numb and dazed or maybe even ringing from the hits he took the night before, compounded with the lack of sleep. And at least six cold/heat packs all over his body and head, if not an ice bath, before sleep.
There’s only so much that caffeine can help. Foggy was surprised the first time when he came into the office with a huge cup of coffee (he had no idea of the other cup he’d finished on the way over): the Matt Murdock he knew didn’t drink coffee, not even when they were up all night revising constitutional law and criminal procedure, not even when they were barely surviving through the second day of the bar exam. He tries not to be too over-dependent on coffee—it will only be a crutch, and the heart palpitations from the caffeine don’t go very well with the dazed and ringing head.
He gets maybe fifteen to thirty minutes to himself in-between clients during his busiest days. He tells himself to spend the time to start on his trial submissions, or catch up on the law, maybe flip open the law review, at least skim through the table of contents, see what the Big Topics are in the community. He mostly ends up sleeping—this is probably the only way Bundles of Authorities are useful to anyone today: as a makeshift pillow.
When they eat lunch in the office they do it in Foggy’s (Matt can smell orange chicken in the room a day after it’s consumed and thrown away). Foggy, bless his soul, is how he keeps track of Important Legal Issues and Office Matters. Foggy, like most lawyers, never misses the chance to discuss clients. When a lawyer says talking shit about clients is what makes lawyering bearable, they’re not joking. The billable hours do help, but when you’re two young attorneys fresh out of law school with only internships and training contracts to your name who have inexplicably set up your own law firm and take on a disproportionate amount of pro bono cases, the perks of billable hours would only come after much time and sweat and blood. Second to talking shit about clients is talking shit about others in the legal community. Prosecutors, naturally, make up a favourite topic of Matt’s. In the safety of their office they can also discuss judges without fear of contempt of court. He sometimes wonders where Foggy gets all these information from. Maybe if he spends enough time in the office [awake], or going for those seminars and dinners and alumni gathering he’d be able to have something of worth to share with Foggy. All he has to offer are dirty dishes on the criminal underworld and tabloid-worthy Avengers tidbits, but these are not things for Matt Murdock, Esq. to talk about.
The worst thing about court dates is making sure that he wakes up in time for it. Other than that, he’d rather every day be a court hearing of some sort. He knows litigation—he breathes and lives litigation. He stands up there, and the fighter in him wakes up. Litigation is instinctive, just like fighting. There’s one thing to be said about being a plaintiff aggressively pursuing a claim, but he’s in his element in criminal defence. It’s like Aikido—you’re at your most dangerous when defending. As Daredevil he employs his radar sense to find a foe’s structural weakness in their armour or in their body and uses that against them. Foggy didn’t know of his radar sense yet, but he’d commented how uncannily surgical he could be when dismantling what seemed like a straightforward, if not solid, prosecution case, as if he had a sixth sense for it.
He has to remind himself not to swagger, not to smirk; he has to play the blind man from time to time—society doesn’t like to see its disabled members too aggressive, too assertive, too capable. So after a devastating cross he has to fumble for his seat, and after a powerful closing the taps of his cane would echo in the eerily quiet courtroom.
When Foggy was attorney-general he wondered about his career—he was a good lawyer, if not a great one. He could be a Supreme Court advocate; a judge, too, maybe, and not just a trial judge, maybe an appeal judge; or even the attorney-general. If his dad were alive, he’d be telling him to do just that—why stay a trial lawyer, Matty, go on, make an even bigger name for yourself, make a mark in history!
Well, he didn't always listen to his dad.
Foggy used to laugh at him--this was before the Kingpin turned his Brownstone into rubbles--at how he’d be out of the door when the clock struck five, latest six. Matty, work-life balance is important but you gotta sacrifice a little for the job. This was when he didn’t have arch-enemies systematically destroying his body, his mind and his life, and he could still pull his weight in the firm, dazed or maybe even ringing head in the mornings notwithstanding. So he could hear the smile in Foggy’s words. Sometimes he would hear the twang of disappointment-barely-suppressed and he’d know that Foggy wanted him to have dinner or a drink with him that night. He could smell loneliness wrapping him like a musty blanket. When they were working for Rosalind she would make disapproving noises because Lawyers Who Are Worth Their Hours Don’t Have a Life. But she liked Karen, so she let him go by virtue of his being her boyfriend.
He doesn’t warm-up often now, but when he does, he’d do the drills he knew his dad did in the gym: a light jog, skipping with some double-unders, and then a few rounds on the heavy bag. His dad didn’t leap around pommel horses or still rings, but he didn’t have to leap across rooftops and balconies at night.
He likes a cup of tea before going out. While waiting for the kettle he’d check if the cold packs are in the freezer, and if there are still enough ice cubes in the 6-pounds bags. Then he slips his mask on and climbs out of the skylight and into the night.