Monday, December 22, 2008

Taking Stock

The fall semester is over. As expected, the Property final was the hardest. It's the only one that I think there's a realistic chance that I failed. About half the points on the test came from multiple choice questions, which are a bane because they allow for no possibility of partial credit.

There will be no grades until well into the spring semester. I'm trying not to let the uncertainty ruin my vacation. My gut feeling coming out of the tests is more or less as follows. Civil Procedure and Torts: thumbs up. Property and Contracts: thumbs down. Legal Research is a wild card because that test was 100% multiple choice. There was no test in legal writing, but I'll be disappointed if my final paper doesn't earn me an A. We'll see how my predictions hold up.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Four Down, One To Go

So far, exams have not lived up to their intimidating reputation. The staple of law school exams is what are called "issue spotting" essay questions: the question will rattle off a half-page description of some fictional events, then say "discuss any legal issues raised," or "advise Mr. Smith as to his legal rights." The facts are laid out in such a way that every few sentences invokes some very specific point of law covered in class. None of the tests has flummoxed me yet, so I'm sure I've passed. My grades will depend on whether I spotted as many issues and discussed them as thoroughly as my classmates.

One day left to prepare for the Property exam, and then it will all be over. Property is going to be murder. We covered more material in that class than in any other. It's also the only exam in which we're permitted to use notes: we can bring one page of typewritten notes to the test, subject to limits on font and margin size. I take that to mean that we're going to be asked some very specific questions.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Cheaters

I went to the restroom during the Contracts final and saw a contracts textbook poorly concealed behind the toilet, so I guess there's some truth to the idea that lawyers are drawn from the ranks of society's most dishonest and self-serving. The smart thing would have been to tell the professor at once, but I let the sleeping dog lie. Now when the cheating comes to light (and it will - at least half the guys who went to the bathroom during the test must have seen the book there), I'll be a suspect. My name is on the bathroom break sign-out sheet not once but twice. I'll just have to hope that whoever was lazy enough to cheat was also dumb enough to write his name in his book.

On the plus side, the test went fine. I have no illusions that I aced it, but I did not feel underprepared.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Underprepared For Exams

Exams start tomorrow. The stereotype would have me sweating over books and notes well into the night, but I just can't bring myself to do that. I went to class and kept up with the reading all semester long. If I didn't learn the material then, I don't see how cramming would help me now. I haven't given up my evenings and I haven't spent any money on study aids (every first-year law student in the country takes the same courses, so study aids for those courses are big business). I've typed up my notes and put in several hours reviewing them. That will have to do.

Some of my classmates, on the other hand, seem to be cramming like crazy. I've sneered at their seeming slacker attitudes for months. Now we'll see if they can show me up on the tests. Of course, I'm sure some students worked hard all semester and are still cramming for the tests. I can live with being beaten by those lunatics.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Pep Talk

Every professor delivered some version of the same pep talk about finals: study hard, don't panic, it's not life or death, etc. The Civil Procedure professor's speech included words to the effect of, "Some of you may find that you just weren't born with the sort of analytical mind required for the study of law. Don't feel bad. I'm sure you'll be very successful at something else." Ouch!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

The End

Classes are over. It was a race to the finish, with most professors cramming as much material as they could into the last session. Now there are eight days until the first exam. Hopefully I can maintain a disciplined study schedule until then.

The Contracts exam comes first, thank goodness. It was my least favorite class, so I'll be glad to get that exam out of the way. Property, which I expect to be the hardest test, will cap off the semester in two weeks and two days.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Burned!

Secure in my immunity from questions in Torts today, I made lackadaisical preparations for class. Sure enough, the first two people the professor called on had not read the material. The professor, usually a pretty laid back guy, gave us a stern speech about taking our work seriously, then proceeded to call on people whom he knew had been prepared in the past. Thank goodness he got to me before we came to material that I hadn't even looked at. Even so, I gave a pretty lame response when called on. I'd worry about ruining my reputation if I thought I had any kind of reputation to begin with.

I'm very interested to see what will happen on Wednesday. It will be the day before Thanksgiving. Will people show up extra prepared, or skip class wholesale?

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

My Number Is Up

I was called on to present a case in Torts on Monday and again in Contracts on Wednesday. I was prepared. I don't know what made everyone decide to save me until the end of the semester, but it's kind of convenient. Once they've called on you, professors tend to leave you alone for a few days. Now I know that I can slack off on my Torts and Contracts reading if paper writing and exam prep put me in a time crunch. On the other hand, I'm almost afraid to go to Property tomorrow.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Time Flies

Prospective students are getting tours of the school today. I guess that means it has been a year since I started the application process. If I had it to do over again, I think I would. But, then, I haven't received any grades yet.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

I Did Not Skip Class

Ironically, a day after writing that class might be a big waste of time I stayed home sick. I wasn't even all that sick, but the last time I went to school feeling unwell I had to race out of class to disgorge my breakfast. Until today, I had perfect attendance in my Thursday classes, so I felt I could afford to play it safe.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Class: Why Bother?

There's a popular school of thought among law students that regards class as just a waste of good study time. It's true, we often spend half an hour in class on a concept the textbook disposes of in four lines. My Civil Procedure professor stated the problem pithily early in the course when he observed that the Socratic method sometimes devolves into a game of "Guess what I'm thinking." A professor may go around and around the room until he or she gets someone to state a legal theory just so. I'd probably skip a few classes if I weren't paying so much for them.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Dissing My Classmates

Any time I fret about where I'll land in the class rankings, I take comfort in this fact: about a third of the class isn't really trying. Almost every day a professor calls on someone and the student makes a disastrous attempt to read and understand the case while the class watches and waits. It's cringe-inducing. I may find myself eating these words in a couple of months, but anyone who isn't in the top half of the class probably isn't working very hard.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Creatures of Habit

Many of my classmates have become very predictable library lurkers - they're in the same seat every time I come into the library. It's like church. I wonder what would happen if I got here really early and occupied someone's seat? I know I'm irritated when I go to one of my usual library haunts and find it occupied. Upperclass students can rent a study carrel with a locking door - a personal office in the library, essentially. It's going to be great!

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Sweet Relief

I turned in a paper yesterday - 30% of my grade in my writing class. With that monkey off my back, the reading load doesn't seem so bad. I should be able to get back on top of things by the time the next paper comes due at the end of November. We're starting to hear rumblings about the end-of-semester tests. There are test-taking seminars on offer and professors are starting to hand out sample questions.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Pet Peeve

At the end of nearly every class, as soon as the professor intimates that he or she is wrapping things up there's a cacophony of slamming books and shuffling papers. That sort of rush for the door was standard operating procedure in high school. It was kind of annoying in undergraduate school. In law school it seems completely out of place. Where are these people in such a hurry to go? Everyone in the class has the same schedule. The worst of it is, the professors usually finish the class with a word about our reading assignment for the next class. That is often completely swallowed up by the din.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Honeymoon is Over

At some point in the last couple of weeks, all this reading stopped being a pleasure and started being a chore. There's always at least one class in which I'm right on the edge of falling behind. The information is still interesting, but sometimes a body wants to stop and reflect. I can't just sit still and read for three hours at a stretch the way I could in September. I'm afraid the four weeks leading up to Thanksgiving break are going to be a death march.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Free Food

I thought for sure that the free food would dry up after the first couple of weeks, but the gravy train just won't end. Some form of free lunch is on offer about once a week. At least half the time it's pizza, but today it was mexican food from the Hispanic Law Students Association. The HLSA lunch didn't even require sitting through a seminar. Fantastic!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Missing class

I had car trouble and didn't go to class yesterday. These are the times when being a friendless misanthrope has its disadvantages. There are ninety people in my class, and not a soul whom I'd feel comfortable asking for notes.

I didn't really notice until now how much school plays to my introversion. That must be why I like it so much. If you go to class and keep up with the reading, you can do just fine without ever saying three words to anyone. I talk more to this blog than I do to the people I spend all day with. Dear Diary, How embarrassing.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Civil Procedure

Civil procedure meets for two hours on Friday mornings. You would think that issues like jurisdiction and the appeals process would make for pretty dry reading, but procedural issues like that tend to wind up in the Supreme Court, so the opinions have a better than average literary quality. Civil Procedure is probably my most readable textbook.

The professor is very likeable, too. I'd guess he's my oldest professor, and he has an ease with the material that makes for entertaining listening. His classroom talk is full of jokes, asides, and anecdotes.

And that's the last of my classes. There are six in all, for a total of fifteen classroom hours per week. It feels like more.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Legal Research

Legal research is the other practical course. It meets just once a week, for one hour every Wednesday afternoon. Most of the work for legal research happens outside of class. We're assigned a research project every couple of weeks. Basically, we're given some question about the law and a list of library resources to use to get an answer. I've enjoyed learning how to find stuff in the shelves and shelves of highly stereotypical law books in the library, but it's a real nuisance having to write up my research. I suppose the professor has to have something to grade, but I already have my hands full with my RWA writing assignments.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Property

Property meets for ninety minutes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It's my favorite class, as far as subject matter goes. The minutiae of inheritance, eminent domain and water rights are a pain to learn, but they're all very necessary and interesting.
I mentioned that the contracts professor, whom I liken to John Houseman in The Paper Chase, is a favorite among the upperclassmen. It was the property professor that the upperclass students all warned us about. Again, it's probably because I like the material, but I don't find her all that intimidating. She's very serious in class, but not aggressive.
Property is the one class that has stuck relentlessly to the syllabus. We've covered so much material that the final exam is already a horrifying prospect. I am told that property law is tested heavily on the bar exam, so I suppose it will all be worth it in the end.

Monday, October 6, 2008

RWA

Reason, Writing and Advocacy meets for an hour on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. It's one of two practical classes, which is to say we do written assignments throughout the semester. I like it. We meet in relatively small sections - there are seventeen students in mine - and get some kind of feedback from time to time. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but most of the classes - the "substantive" classes, they're called - have no grades throughout the semester. The final exam determines one's grade for the entire class. The periodic deadlines and grades in RWA are a welcome relief from all that uncertainty. Besides, my undergraduate degree is in history, so I write reasonably well and tend to get good grades.
The writing assignments are along these lines: we'll get a short description of a fictional client's situation and a list of court decisions that dealt with similar circumstances. Based on that information, we write up a paper that analyzes the applicable law and predicts the outcome for our client should the case go to trial. It's kind of fun.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Contracts

Contracts class runs for ninety minutes on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. If you've been reading this blog, you know that a couple of weeks ago I called shenanigans on the whole field of contract law. My attitude hasn't changed. More and more, it looks suspiciously like judges decide who they think deserves to win, then devise some cockamamie theory to justify that outcome.
The class isn't much fun, either. The contracts professor is the one that most reminds me of the infamous Kingsfield in The Paper Chase. She's imperious and tends to make students look dumb. I'm sure that to some extent I'm letting my attitude toward the material affect my disposition toward the professor. She's a favorite among the upperclassmen, so she can't be as bad as all that. Even so, if I could wipe one class off my schedule, this would be it.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Torts

It occurs to me that I haven't written much about my day to day routine, so over the next week or two I'll give a quick description of my classes.
Torts starts my week. It's a two hour class on Monday and Wednesday mornings. If you don't know what a tort is, it's basically any civil wrong. Negligence and trespassing are torts. So are assault and battery, if you're suing for damages in civil court (they're only called "crimes" when the state is prosecuting them).
Torts is a pretty low stress class. The professor is a young guy - in his early thirties, maybe. He mostly relies on volunteers to answer questions and doesn't quiz students too aggressively. The classroom discussion tends to be about the public policy underpinning the law. It's interesting stuff, and a nice way to start the week.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Is There Anything the Law Can't Do?

This morning I was looking for "fraud" in an index and came across this entry:
Freak Shows: validity and construction of statute or ordinance prohibiting commercial exhibition of malformed or disfigured persons

I think I've found my area of specialization.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Civil Procedure and Nerd Appeal

My civil procedure class started on Friday (for the first three weeks of school we had extra contracts classes instead because of a professor's schedule conflict). The professor was at pains to warn us that it might be our hardest class because, being the rules of American jurisprudence, civil procedure has no analogue in day to day life. I think I'll do fine for the same reason that I like law generally: I'm a big fat game nerd.
A lot of game nerds, especially role-playing game nerds, are social misfit types looking to immerse themselves in an orderly, rule-bound world that's easier to understand and manage than the open-ended mess that is real life. The study of law is very attractive to someone like that. What do you know, it turns out real life does have rules that can be learned and mastered. And if law is the rule book to the game of Real Life, civil procedure is the game mechanics: what dice to use and when to roll them. I think I'll take to it like a duck to water.

Friday, September 19, 2008

52,660 Minutes To Go

To be awarded a Juris Doctorate, one must receive 56,000 minutes of classroom instruction. That's what happens when academic rules are written by lawyers. Another statistic: in the first four weeks of classes I have read 94 judicial opinions. I think most of my class is unfazed by legalese by now.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

I Watched The Paper Chase

I had never seen it before. The classroom and study group scenes looked surprisingly familiar. You might think John Houseman's character is a caricature, but some professors really do seem to take pleasure in making students look bad in front of the class. Even the nicer professors will pick a student and ask questions until they come up with one the student can't answer. I guess lawyers are supposed to be used to that.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Election Day

Think of the most rabid student council campaigner at your high school. Now give them a political science degree and maybe experience on a couple of congressional campaigns. That's who runs for student government in law school. It has been a week of wall to wall emails, buttons, t-shirts, flyers, candy and baked goods. They weren't allowed to hang posters in the halls, thank goodness.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Important Nonacademic Skills

I've had two weeks to work on it, but I still can't gracefully get out of my car with all my law school gear. On a typical day I have my laptop bag and five or ten pounds of books. With the bag over my shoulder I can get everything in one hand, but even with a free hand I can't get everything out of the passenger seat, past the steering wheel and out the driver's side door without flailing like Mr. Bean. Sure, I could just walk around the car to get my stuff, but I'm convinced that with practice I'll be able to move smoothly from car to campus without opening two car doors.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Bye Bye, Syllabi

In about half my classes, the syllabus has ceased to have much meaning. Reams of reading is assigned in the syllabi, but the professors move through the material at a pace determined by how well they think the students are getting it. In no case is the professor ahead of the syllabus, but a couple of them are miles behind. One professor has dodged the whole issue and said, "Just read fifteen or twenty pages past where we ended the last class." For a meticulous planner like me, it's just maddening.

Why not just grind along through the book while the classroom discussion falls behind? To some extent I've tried to do that, but it gets me into trouble. The reading is so voluminous and so dense, I can hardly remember what I read three days ago. Sometimes I open my reading notes at the beginning of class and they might as well have been written by someone else.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Contract Law Gets Weird

I think of law (and I think most people do) as, at its best, a codification of common sense. There are a lot of rules we all expect to be bound by, and we write them down so they can be applied even-handedly. By that standard, contract law has gone way off the rails. It's only week two, and we're getting into some bizarre, esoteric concepts. If I write you a letter promising to give you my shoes and sign that letter in my blood, is it a contract? No. If you sign a letter granting me a one month option to buy your house, is that a contract? Yes. What if the letter says the option costs one dollar, and I don't pay you a dollar? Still a valid contract. Suppose I sign a letter that says if you pay me a dollar today I'll pay you a hundred dollars next week. Not a contract.

How did it get so weird? My theory is that people only enter into contracts in situations where they think litigation is likely. Because contracts are being litigated all the time, the courts are constantly having to come up with new exceptions and justifications that bend the law to fit unforseen situations. The result is this ugly amalgam of rules, exceptions and special cases. But that's just my theory. Maybe by the end of the semester all areas of law will look grotesque and counterintuitive to me. Or maybe some ephiphany will reveal the serene logic underlying contracts. Let's hope for the latter.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Rain + Old Construction = Wet Mess

The Bowen School of Law occupies a lovely building built by the WPA in 1933. On most days, it's a thrill to walk the halls of a monument to depression era industriousness. On days when it rains, the place is a maze of trash cans and carpet dryers. Seriously, this is a five story building. How can the ceilings be leaking on the first floor?

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Back From Labor Day Weekend

I made a point of reading ahead a bit so I could ignore school over the weekend. That may have been hubris. Today was fine, but I'm going to have to read like a maniac to stay ahead of my professors through the end of the week. My resolve to do no work at home will be tested.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Week One Is In the Bag

I'm prepared to admit that law school is pretty challenging. We're going through our textbooks at a blistering pace. I daresay I've learned more Latin in my first week of law school than I learned in my first week of Latin I back in undergraduate school. I haven't kept careful track, but I'd say I put in forty-five or fifty hours this week. The material isn't overly hard, but there's so much of it.

My time management plan has been to do all of my school work at school during the day, and to bring no work home. So far that has held up. I've been getting to school at about 8:30 and going home between 5:30 and 7:00. I bring a sack lunch so I don't have to leave during the day. I'd like to think that I can keep that schedule all semester, but in a week or two I'll start getting assignments in my research and writing classes. Then time may get tight.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Saved By Classroom Technology

I've decided to stick with my undesireable seat (front row, extreme stage left) for every class. In time, I think I can learn to love it. For one thing, it affords a stellar view of the projector screen. I was worried about my view of the white board, but it turns out there is a camera trained on the board so that it can be projected on the screen right in front of my seat. Apart from the view, I may realize some benefits from being at the edge of the professor's peripheral vision - out of sight, out of mind, you know. Finally, I am grateful to be on an aisle and near the door. Students tote a lot of baggage into the classroom these days, and it's nice to not be trapped in the middle of the row while everyone packs up. Yes, things are looking pretty good on the seating front, or I've convinced myself that they are, which is pretty much the same thing.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Seating Chart Disaster!

Since law classes involve a lot of interaction between the professor and students, professors customarily assign seats. Knowing this, more or less everyone showed up very early for Torts this morning. I managed to score a pretty good seat in the middle of the room, only to have the professor tell us that seat assignments will be fixed the next time class meets. Fast forward to Contracts a few hours later, and I stroll into the lecture hall five or ten minutes before class. Eighty per cent of the students have stuck with the same seat they occupied for Torts, but my premium seat has been taken. In this class, of course, seats are assigned immediately. For the next three months I'm trapped at the far end of the front row as shown above. The white board is not even visible from my seat.
Now I am faced with a dilemma: I have four more classes in that room. Do I stick with this awkward seat for every class, or saddle myself with remembering a different seat for each class? Truly, law school tests one's judgment at every turn.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Work Begins in Earnest

I have 92 pages to read for Monday, 68 more for Tuesday. I have always been a slow reader, but this law school reading is particularly slow going. It's not that the text is especially dense - judges' opinions are written in a more conversational style than you might expect - it's that law school teaches a very formal and verbose method of note taking ("case briefing" is the term of art). So far, I've been producing a page of handwritten notes for every four or five pages of reading.
The good news is, the assigned cases seem to have been chosen as much for drama as for their illustrative qualities. Property starts with the lawsuit over ownership of Barry Bonds' seventy-third home run ball. In Torts, it was an unlabeled crate of nitroglycerine that blew up a Wells Fargo warehouse in 1872. I'm sure there's plenty of dry reading to come (I haven't opened my Contracts text yet), but I'm loving it for now.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Orientation is Over


I'll miss the free food. The last two days of orientation did not live up to the promise of days one and two. Mostly, it has been two days of lectures over material we already received in handouts and mailings. I think most of the class just wanted to get on with it and start studying for next week. The best thing about day four? I got a handy pocket-sized U.S. Constitution to go with the hardback edition I got on day one. Law school swag is top notch.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Orientation Begins

Two days of orientation down, two to go. Last night (the first orientation session was in the evening so part time and full time students could all participate) was a gala event of sorts. Parents and/or spouses were invited, classy hors d'oeuvres were served, and each entering student was issued a handsome hard bound edition of the U.S. Constitution.
Today the glamour was toned down considerably. The main event was a practice class in which we were peppered with questions by the professor who will be teaching us property law starting next week. The students who were called on did well enough, but I can see that I'm not quick enough on my feet to be a good classroom performer. I'll want to have good notes in front of me in every class.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Why I'm Overconfident

Orientation officially begins tomorrow afternoon, so it's a good time for some positive self-speech. Here are the reasons I expect to excel at law school: 1) I did pretty well on the LSAT. I hear that LSAT scores are actually a poor predictor of future grades, but at least my scores show that I am capable of the work. 2) I've met a lot of lawyers, and they're just regular people. Obviously plenty of people graduate from law school who are no more smart or hard-working than I am. And most importantly, 3) I'm 35 years old. I've had a lot of jobs in the last twenty years, and student was by far the easiest. Law school can be twice as much work as undergraduate school and still be the easiest thing I've done in years. I'm a better reader, deeper thinker and much harder worker than I was at 22. In the words of George W. Bush, "Bring it on."

Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Safety Net is Gone

I clocked out of work for the last time yesterday. I had been with the company for five and a half years. Truth be known, I was sick of the job. In fact, I applied to law school more because I hate accounting than because I love law. Even so, when it came time to turn in my badge I had a terrible feeling of buyer's remorse. Now here I am with a huge financial commitment and no income to cover it. The whole idea makes me a little sick to my stomach. Jennifer is a saint to let me do it.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

A Property Parable

Contemporary Property is a surprisingly gripping read. I'm not reading cases yet - the textbook starts with a series of short readings on legal definitions of property, rationales for property rights and the like. You don't have to dig very far below the surface to find that legal ownership of anything can get very complicated. Consider this example from the book: You own your own blood, right? I mean, unlike your organs, you can sell your blood for money. So suppose you're in the hospital and the doctor takes a sample of your blood. He finds that your blood produces an unusual disease-fighting protein and patents a treatment based on it. Should the doctor have to compensate you? You didn't join any research studies, you were just sick. Did the doctor "steal" your unique genetic properties? The California Supreme Court said no. Great stuff!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

First Assignment

My first assignment has appeared online: I'm to read pages 1 through 65 of Contemporary Property before the first day of class. I'm taken aback that I had to go hunting for that information. A couple of weeks ago the dean mentioned in an email that assignments would be issued a week or two before the first day of class. Yesterday I got antsy and searched for "assignments" at the school web site, and there it was. So now I'm wondering: are there assignments for my other classes posted somewhere that I don't know about? And what's going to happen to the poor students who haven't thought to check the web site?

Update: A couple of days after I posted this, a broadcast email did indeed announce that assignments were available online. All's right with the world.

Monday, August 11, 2008

A Foot of Books




I have (almost) all my books now. Everything you see here was purchased new at full price from the school bookstore. Some books could be had cheaper online, but I dithered about my purchases until Amazon.com sold out of everything. Bah!


Most of these are good for two semesters. I'm curious about the contents, but I've decided not to crack any books until I'm assigned reading. I'm sure my enthusiasm for the material will burn out soon enough. Why rush?

Sunday, August 10, 2008

For Starters

Here's the story: I'm not the blogging kind. I've never kept a journal. But ever since I applied to law school I've heard so much from so many people about what a grueling and life-changing time it is, I thought I had better make some pretense of documenting my experience.
Orientation starts in one week. To prepare, I've read One L by Scott Turow and attended a couple of on-campus welcome events. One L is Turow's memoir of his first year at Harvard Law School back in the early seventies. He plays up the crushing workload and emotional drama, but it wouldn't be very compelling reading if he said it was easy. I was surprised when I visited the Bowen School and everyone the administration had chosen to speak to prospective students said exactly the same stuff. Seriously, they could have been reading from Turow's book. The time commitment is horrendous. Your relationships will suffer. The stress will drive you to seek psychiatric help. Can it really be that bad?
I'll believe it when I see it, but the repeated warnings were enough to prompt me to start this blog. If law school is really as bad as all that, I'll probably keep posting.