Sometimes the case took a turn in a direction beyond the scope of the advocate. The case, the defendant, and everything else was simply withdrawn from the advocate, and then even his best contacts with officials were of no help, because they knew nothing themselves. The case had simply reached a stage where no more help might be given, it was being dealt with by inaccessible courts, where even the advocate could not reach the defendant. Then one could come home one day and find on one's desk all the submissions one had made in the case with such labor and such high hopes; they had all been returned because they could not be transferred to the stage the case had now reached, they had become worthless scraps of paper. But the case was not necessarily lost for all that, not by any means, or at least there was no compelling reason for this assumption; it was simply that one knew nothing further about the case, nor would one be able to find out any more about it.

The Trial by Franz Kafka