Buzzard Two-Step

The Buzzard Two-Step is Deck Shifflet’s quick solicitation routine for approaching people caught at the vulnerable edge of the court system. It introduces his street-level method of finding legal work, but its defining episode is a failed pitch that unexpectedly leads to a genuine client.

The Street-Court Routine

Deck carries a business card identifying him as a paralawyer and works the hallways outside City Court, where small-time criminals wait for their first appearances before judges. He looks for people who seem frightened and are holding paperwork, then makes his approach. The Buzzard Two-Step is described as a quick solicitation perfected by street lawyers who linger around the courthouse; the account presents it as a recognizable hustle, not a formal legal procedure.

Deck once invited Rudy Baylor to accompany him and learn the routine. Rudy declined. The name gives the maneuver a predatory cast, while its setting makes clear how it operates: Deck seeks prospective clients not in an office but among people already facing the court and holding documents that mark their immediate trouble.

Derrick Dogan’s Failed Pitch

Derrick Dogan is one of the people Deck initially targets. The approach falters when Dogan asks what a paralawyer is. Deck reaches for a prepared answer, fails to satisfy him, and leaves in a hurry. Dogan nevertheless keeps Deck’s card, an incidental detail that gives the failed encounter a second life.

About a day later, a speeding teenager broadsides Dogan. From his semiprivate room at St. Peter’s Hospital, with a broken leg, broken ribs, a broken wrist, and cuts and bruises to his face, he calls the number on the card. He now wants to speak with a real lawyer rather than a paralawyer. The same card that had failed to persuade him at the courthouse has become his route to legal representation after the accident.

From Hustle to Client

Deck and Rudy hurry to the hospital. Rudy takes charge, advising Dogan to avoid insurance companies and not discuss the accident with anyone, and saying that the firm handles more car wrecks than any other in town. Deck smiles at the familiar routine: Rudy has learned from him, even though he had refused to learn the Buzzard Two-Step itself. Dogan signs a contract and a medical release, making the encounter an actual attorney-client undertaking rather than a solicitation that ends in retreat.

By noon, Deck has obtained the accident report and spoken with the teenager’s father, who says the family is insured by State Farm and believes the policy limit is $25,000. The father and son are sorry about the accident; Deck sees a possible fee in the claim. The episode ties the expression to the precarious economics of a new practice, while reversing its original pattern: a failed courthouse pitch leaves behind the card that brings a client to the firm, and Rudy’s hospital visit becomes a milestone for the lawyers’ small business.