Monday, March 29, 2010

Always Read the Directions

Last week being spring break, I had plenty of time to work on this week's Lawyering Skills assignment: a closing argument. It was a good one, too. Unfortunately, when I double checked the syllabus today I realized that the assignment was a closing argument not for the case we've been working on all semester, but for a new case that was distributed just before spring break. I guess a little extra practice never hurt anyone. I still have two days to do the right assignment.

Friday, March 26, 2010

The Gloves are Off

Last year, most of the cases we studied had pretty basic facts: dog bites neighbor, neighbor sues. That sort of thing. Some of the cases in my upper level classes, by contrast, are laughably complicated. The Business Associations and Class Actions textbooks in particular are full of stock fraud cases and the most esoteric contract disputes. Unfortunately, the complex cases are probably more representative of what I'll see in practice.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Spring Break

It's spring break this week, so I've had time to organize the blog a bit and switch to more spring-like colors. This time last year, I had a big paper to write (the same one my blogging schoolmate is writing now). This year, spring break is just a chance to take a breather and maybe get a head start on prepping for final exams. So far, I've done some cleaning around the house, but no school work at all. In the next two days I need to get it into gear so I can be on top of things when classes resume.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Final Draft

The final draft of my law review paper is due tomorrow. I turned mine in a couple of days ago, as did most of the classmates I've talked to. We were required to turn in so many outlines, research materials, and drafts over the last eight months (the schedule has nine deadlines on it) that there was little chance of anyone being behind at this stage. As I was running off the four paper copies I was required to turn in, I spotted a typo. I chalked it up to wabi-sabi and let it go. The editors need something to do.
Now, we wait. The editorial staff will grade each paper and either pass it or demand a rewrite. If my paper passes, I get the all-important advanced writing credit required for graduation and my paper gets thrown on the slush pile to be considered for publication next year.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Judges With Unfortunate Names

For tomorrow's International Criminal Law class, I have been assigned to read an opinion by Judge Sayeman Bula-Bula of the Congo. The Congo has a Judge Bula-Bula? Really? Really?

Incidentally, International Criminal Law is, as I hoped, much better than the Intro to International Law material that preceded it. Intro to International Law was basically a philosophy course about the nature of law and statehood. Zzzz . . . In International Criminal Law, by contrast, we are learning about what happens in the real world when people are prosecuted for war crimes or apprehended in international waters. Great stuff!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Oxford Comma

I am a grammar snob. I am one of those people who takes photos of signs with misplaced apostrophes. And at some point during my formative years, I learned that serial commas were not just unnecessary but plain wrong. Then, some thirty years later, I read this in my Aspen Handbook for Legal Writers:
Although the final comma in a series (often called the Oxford comma or the serial comma) is optional in most writing, in legal writing it is required.
It is easy to see why if you consider this sentence from a hypothetical will, also from the Aspen Handbook:
I leave all my property in equal shares to Jim, Helen, Tim and Eva.
So, do Tim and Eva get a quarter share apiece, or do they split a one-third share? If there were a third comma, there would be no question. Now, after all those years of turning up my nose at serial commas, I experience a flash of cognitive dissonance every time I see a comma-separated series with or without the controversial extra comma.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Application Essays

If there is a way to write an application essay without coming off as insincere and self-aggrandizing, I haven't figured it out. Between admission, scholarships, and internships, I have had to write eight or ten such essays in the last two years. Some were successful, some were not, but they were all just awful. The worst of it is, the essays that are the most honest (in my case, these are the essays about public service, because my goal has always been to work for the state) tend to look the most sycophantic precisely because they are written with such enthusiasm. It doesn't help that I have a weakness for florid rhetoric. I hope it isn't too much in evidence in my blog entries, which I try to make as frank as possible.

Anyway, I just submitted an application essay for the Fall externship program. If I am accepted, it will not be because of my essay.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Stories Without Endings

Most people won't resort to litigation unless they're in a truly intractable conflict, so most court cases have compelling stories behind them. Unfortunately, those cases are included in legal textbooks not to tell the stories, but to illustrate some distinct point of law that came up during the litigation. As a result, one often starts reading a case, gets to know the characters and learns about their tragic circumstances, only to reach the end of the case and find that the moral of the story is something like, "the plaintiff may recover damages if a jury determines that the parties intended their contract to extend the liability imposed by statute." The end. There's almost never a footnote to tell you who won in the end, no closure, no catharsis. When I get into practice, I hope I'll at least know whether my clients win or lose.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Working Weekend

I'm pretty good at confining my schoolwork to business hours, but once in a while a weekend like this one comes along: I have a cite check to do for the law review, an application to complete for externships in the fall, and I haven't started on next week's reading assignments. I'll probably spend a good chunk of the weekend in the law library. Never mind the fact that I still haven't done my federal income taxes. I'd better get on that, because I'm expecting the refund to finance summer classes.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Missing My Calendar

The paper calendar I used to carry around ended with 2009, and I have yet to replace it. For a few weeks it was no big deal, but now that we're in the meat of the semester I have a lot of appointments and deadlines to keep up with. Back at the beginning of my 1L year I tried using a web-based calendar for a while, but I found that it was much faster and easier to deal with good old fashioned pen and paper. Even so, before I buy a new calendar I may try to master the calendar function on my cell phone. Maybe it can marry the immediacy of paper with the flexibility of digital information. Let me make it clear that I pack a four-year-old clamshell phone that was designed for talking on, not a pocket-clogging smartphone of the type that most of my classmates carry.

While I'm on the subject, I'll offer this observation: classrooms are like movie theaters. No matter how many times you warn people to turn off their phones, someone's is going to ring at the worst possible time.