Friday, February 27, 2009

Employ Me!

The halls are clogged with sweaty students in suits. Every year, for a few weeks in February and March, a number of law firms set up shop in the Career Services office and interview potential interns. I've had two interviews so far and have three scheduled for next week (two on campus, one off). The on campus interviews are unlike any job interview I've experienced before. Students are cranked through every twenty minutes, so the interviewers barely have time to run through the particulars of the job they're filling. Then it's a few perfunctory questions and away you go. I see now why employers are said to rely mostly on applicants' GPAs.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Suited Up

Over the next two weeks I have four interviews for internships in the summer and fall, so it was a good time to replace the suit my Dad bought me fifteen years ago. It turns out that a 6'3", 145 lb. frame is a tough fit. Here's the timeline of my suit-buying odyssey:

2/16: Order suit from highfalutin' local men's shop
2/18: Return to shop for fitting. Suit is too short. Order another.
2/23: Call shop. Suit has not arrived.
2/24, 10:00 AM: Shop calls. Distributor sent the wrong suit.
2/24, 11:00 AM: Go to Men's Wearhouse. Pick suit off the rack.
2/24, 5:00 PM: Pick up tailored suit from Men's Wearhouse.
2/25, 1:00 PM: First scheduled interview.

The monolithic chain store did in six hours what the local haberdasher could not do in eight days. It hurts me to say it, but maybe Wal-Mart kills main street because Wal-Mart is better.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

First Casualty

I heard that one of my classmates dropped out. It probably wasn't about grades - the school won't throw you out unless your GPA is under 2.0 at the end of the first year, and only a tiny handful of students are flirting with that possibility. The student that dropped has kids and lives more than a hundred miles out of town, so I assume she just decided she had bitten off more than she could chew. She sat next to me in Contracts, so I'm enjoying the extra elbow room.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The Long View

Now that my first big paper is behind me and I'm well and truly over the cold I had a couple of weeks ago, I have a week or two to regroup before work starts in earnest on the next paper. This is week five of the semester, well past time to start organizing my notes into a form that I can use to study for finals. If I can get all my notes typed up in outline form by the end of next week, the second half of the semester will be smooth sailing (relatively).

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Taking a Breath

I turned in the first writing assignment of the spring semester today. In the fall, I did a good job of managing my writing assignments and finishing them well ahead of the deadlines. This paper, by contrast, was written in a heated few days leading up to the deadline. I hope the quality didn't suffer too much.

I am obviously not the only one who flirted with the deadline. Absenteeism in class has been running at thirty or forty percent for the last couple of days. People weren't so cavalier about missing class in the fall. Some professors took it better than others. The Property professor really raked those of us who showed up over the coals. I was not called on, thank goodness.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Fidgeting

Sitting in class is equal parts boredom and nerves. Boredom because professors drag out their interrogations of students interminably, and nerves because of the 1.2% chance that I'll be the next interrogee. I deal with it by repeatedly disassembling and reassembling my pen. One day this week the inevitable happened: I broke my pen and was unable to take notes for about twenty minutes. Maybe I should start bringing origami paper to class.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Think Different

One oft-heard pronouncement about the first year of law school is that it will change the way you think (and it's usually spoken in italics). I don't feel any different yet, but this morning when the contracts professor asked me about calls for contracting bids, I said something like, "An offer made to a class of offerees invites a race to accept, but a call for bids is not an offer. It is an invitation to deal." It was a lawyerly response, and I was surprised to hear it come out of my mouth. I think we're all getting better at spewing jargon on command.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Class Rank

The school has finally ranked my class, so I'll stop being cagey about my grades. I did well. I even scored an A in Property, when I'd have been happy with a C. Most importantly, I squeaked into the top ten percent of the class, which is supposed to matter a lot when one applies for summer work. A lot of grade statistics are published on the school website, if you're interested. The median GPA in my class is 3.0, which is higher than I was led to expect. Maybe the administration was just trying to keep expectations low.