Sunday, May 30, 2010

Crim Pro Could Get Political

The Criminal Procedure Post-Trial professor is a bit of a crusader. She's a criminal defense attorney who teaches on the side, and she's easily side-tracked into holding forth about the sorry state of defendants' rights in this country. No one has challenged her views yet, but I'll be surprised if we get through the summer without some law-and-order conservative picking a fight with her.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

My Enthusiastic Classmates

Advanced Torts must be the chattiest class I've ever been a part of. I think the students have done more talking than the professor. Part of it is the professor's style--there are some twenty students in the class, and the professor calls on pretty much every student at least once in the course of a two-hour lecture--but mostly, I think a handful of the school's most gregarious students have just coincidentally converged on one class. Mind you, I'm not accusing my classmates of being what are pejoratively called gunners (students who volunteer in class just to flaunt their own intellect). These are just that unusual breed of student that isn't too intimidated to ask the professor for clarification.
So far, I like it. The constant back-and-forth makes the time trot, if not fly, and the professor's classroom management skills are such that we don't get bogged down in one subject for too long. It's going to be a nice summer.

Okay, one or two of them are what I'd call gunners, but I'm not here to judge.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Limited Study Space

I was back at the library today for the first time since I had to give up my private study carrel. You see, there aren't enough carrels to go around, so they turn over every semester. Now that I'm finished with my law review note, I no longer get priority when carrels are assigned. I'm going to miss having a place to store all my books and bags.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Gearing Up For Another Round

My summer books came in the mail today, just in time. Classes start Monday. I'll be taking Criminal Procedure Post-Trial and Advanced Torts (I did not get into the over-booked class I had my eye on). It is more or less an accident that I am taking these two classes--the summer schedule doesn't offer many choices--but they both look interesting to me. I think they can hold my focus for eight weeks, notwithstanding my new jaded 3L attitude.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Involuntary Summer Vacation

Today I got a polite "no" from the law firm I interviewed with last week. I'm starting to believe the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and too many blogs to count when they say I'll never find a job in this business. But there's no point in second-guessing myself now. I'll be in my seat with pen in hand when summer classes start next week.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Business Associations Exam

The Business Associations exam was a week ago, but I've been hanging on to this post because there was a late make-up exam date and I didn't want to inadvertently tip my classmates to the exam's contents. Here's the low-down:

My grade on the Business Associations final will make or break my semester. It was the only four credit-hour class on my schedule, making it 25% of this semester's grades. I went into the exam in pretty bad shape. I was under the weather all weekend, so I lost a lot of valuable study time to NyQuil-induced naps. Fortunately, the professor went much easier on us than she might have. The bulk of the exam was short-answer questions that anyone who paid attention in class should have been able to answer.

The bad news with an exam like this is that the questions that were easy for me were probably easy for everyone. The professor can't give everyone As (that's just not the law school way), so the difference between an A and a C will probably come down to marginal differences in our responses to the essay questions. Did I remember only five factors of what was supposed to be a six-factor test? Did I forget to mention that Delaware courts apply some variation on the general rule? That kind of stuff could kill me.

One unusual aspect of this test that is worth mentioning: it was not timed. The exam started at 9:00 AM and ended when the last person left. We've all had the awful experience of remembering some key fact (that sixth factor, say) on the drive home from an exam, so it is hard to walk away from an untimed test. I stayed for four hours, and there were at least a dozen people still at work when I left.

Friday, May 14, 2010

One More Chance at a Summer Job

A few days ago, the career services department sent an email alert about a late-breaking summer clerkship opportunity. I interviewed for the job this afternoon. Previously, almost all of my clerkship interviews have been on campus. It was nice to sit down in an airy law office instead of the claustrophobic, institutional on-campus interview room for a change. But I'm being uncharitable. I'm sure I found the on-campus interview room perfectly pleasant a year ago. I've just come to associate it with failure. By Monday I should know if I give better interviews off campus.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

International Criminal Law Exam

I just wrapped up my International Criminal Law exam, and it was God-awful. I didn't take this class seriously all semester, and I paid dearly for it. It wasn't that the questions were terribly hard. I just didn't know the material very well, so my answers were short and shallow.
I was one of the few students who regularly volunteered in this class, so I'll just have to hope the professor gives me a bump for class participation. A word about that: grading of exams is anonymous--the professor will just get a stack of exams with random numbers on them. However, when professors turn in their grades they can, if they choose, include a list of students whose grades are to be raised or lowered for attendance and class participation.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

One Exam Left

This time tomorrow, it will all be over. It is awfully hard to work myself up to study for this last exam. International Criminal Law was my least favorite class this semester, and it was only two credit-hours. It's also an open-book exam, making it tempting to think that I can go in underprepared and look stuff up on the spot (never a good strategy).

So far, I've gone through my notes and typed up three pages of bullet points covering the highlights of the course. It's well short of the fourteen-page outline I brought into my Sales exam, but it's better than nothing.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Planning for Fall

I finally have 100% confirmation that I have an externship waiting for me in the fall. I'll be clerking at the Arkansas Supreme Court. If you don't know what that entails, it's like this: when a case comes to an appeals court, it comes with a boatload of paper. There's the record of the trial proceedings, and then there are briefs (that are anything but brief) from attorneys on both sides. Most appellate judges have a couple of law clerks who read all that stuff, double-check any cases or statutes the attorneys cite to, and make a recommendation to the judge. Law clerks are the oompa-loompas in America's law factories.
Research and writing projects have been my favorite part of law school, so I could not write a better job description for myself. This is work I would do for free--which I will be, because it doesn't pay.

I also took my Business Associations final today. I wrote a longish post about it, but I'm going to wait a few days to put it online because some of my classmates haven't taken the test yet.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Sales Exam

Today it was Sales Transactions. This was an open book exam. I've only experienced a couple of these, and I don't care for them. With all my books and notes in front of me, it's easy to get fastidious and waste time looking up niggling details when I should be painting in broad strokes and getting more material onto the page. I'm a pretty good memorizer, so closed book exams play more to my strengths.

I walked out of the Sales exam feeling pretty much the same way I felt after the Advanced Civ Pro exam: all the questions made sense to me, and I wrote a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean my answers were good.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Even Cheap Law Schools Cost Plenty

To remain a Law Review member in good standing, I have to spend one or two semesters working for the editorial board. It doesn't pay, but I do get course credit.

So today I paid the bill for my summer classes, and they charged me for my Law Review credit! That is, it's costing me just as much to work for a student-run organization as it does to receive classroom instruction. Man, that is low.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

One Exam Down

Advanced Civil Procedure was a pretty good way to start this semester's exams. That was the class with only four students in it, so we all studied hard all semester and had no reason to fear the final. Certainly the professor felt no need to pull his punches. The exam covered about two thirds of the course in one sprawling essay question (my response was just over 1100 words) and mopped up the rest of the course material in three shorter essays. I don't know if I gave the professor what he wanted, but I will say this: I had something to say about every question. I didn't write any wild guesses or filler. That's about the best I can hope for.
I should be preparing for my next exam, but I'm wiped out. I'll just have to put in an extra long day tomorrow.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Well-Fueled Study Sessions

I don't know if the student government is burning off its unused budget for the year or what, but the student lounge has been positively bathed in free food this weekend. If the idea was to encourage students to study on campus, it's working on me. I rarely come to school on Saturdays, but here I am.