Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Deadlines

This time last year I was taken aback by how few graded assignments I would have before final exams. This fall is quite the opposite: I'm appalled at the amount of text on paper I'm being asked to produce. Family Law, Lawyering Skills, Moot Court and Law Review all march unforgivingly from one deadline to the next. It's a rare week that I don't have to turn in at least one written assignment.

As a result, it's a rare week that I finish all my reading assignments. It's as if I'm taking two parallel curricula: a full-time reading load and a full-time writing load. When I have to choose, the writing always wins because that's where the deadlines are. If I can't find a way to cram all of this work into my schedule, I'm going to be picking up a lot of slack when exam cram week comes around.

I'll Sue!

Lawyering Skills I continues apace. I just wrote my first complaint, the document that initiates a civil suit. So be careful how you treat me from now on.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Getting Skilled

I had my doubts about this required Lawyering Skills course, but the more I go the more I like it. Lawyering Skills I is a once-a-week, pass/fail course in which an experienced local attorney comes to the school to teach small groups of us about the brass tacks of litigation (there is a parallel course for students planning to do transactional law; I had to choose between them in the spring). Most of the class is about how to draft the many documents that make up a lawsuit.

I've heard that some of the Skills teachers (there are a dozen or so) are on the stuffy side, but mine is excellent. He has been practicing for twenty-five years, so his advice is practical and backed up with terrific anecdotes. Unfortunately, most of the anecdotes go to show what many of us already suspected: in court, winners are often determined less by the law than by the technical skills of the lawyers involved.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Celebrate Small Milestones

I just emailed a finished draft of my Moot Court brief to my writing partner. This thing has been a giant time suck for the last week and a half. It's nice to feel like I can finally devote some time to all my other reading and writing assignments.

It occurs to me that I haven't said anything about this Moot Court class, so here's a quick rundown: The school sends three-person teams around the country to compete with other law schools in written and oral argument. The farm system for those teams is an elective class in which we write an appellate brief and practice oral arguments before panels of mock judges (some of whom are real judges). All of the writing and arguing centers on one mock case and is done with a randomly assigned partner. I lucked out and was assigned to a partner whom I already know a little and whose skills I respect--not that there are any bad writers in a group of people who signed up for a class like this.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Will Work For Money

It is on-campus interview season again (last year I was too busy being a 1L to realize that there were job interviews going on in September--it was a pleasant surprise when sign-up sheets started popping up on the career services website a few weeks ago). I had three interviews this week and will have a couple more in two weeks. The first interview was just three days ago and I already have the rejection letter.
My experience with interviews last spring left me pretty thick-skinned about the rejections, but if someone doesn't hire me soon I'm going to have to start rethinking why I'm in law school at all. I could graduate with every honor the school offers, but without some legal work experience on my resume I'll never get a job come May 2011.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Falling Behind

I missed the better part of two days to illness last week, and I have been running at a dead sprint trying to catch up. I got an unexpected reprieve this week when two classes were cancelled. Cancelled classes are usually a bad thing--the makeup class is inevitably scheduled at an inconvenient time--but for once the timing could not be better. If I put in a few extra hours this weekend, I should be on top of things by Monday.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Starting Research

I have two monster papers to write this semester (10,000-15,000 words each), and I'm in the early stages of research for both. In my experience, legal research (probably any research) goes like this: First, you're frustrated because it seems like there is no relevant information out there. Search after fruitless search turns up nothing. Then, you come across the one perfect document that cites to a dozen relevant sources on the subject. Those sources cite to a dozen sources each, and from that point on you're frustrated because there isn't enough time in the world to read all the relevant information.

For now, I'm in the first stage of both of my projects: pulling my hair out trying to find just one document directly on point. With any luck, by the end of next week I'll reach the tipping point with at least one of the projects.