Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Last Day of Classes

The semester ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. Both of my professors went easy on us with lecture and review on the last day of class.

This fall was a lot like last fall for me, in that I put in a lot of time on extracurricular activities and gave my classwork short shrift. Last fall, the result was terrible grades. Now we'll see if I learned anything from that experience. My first exam is in ten days.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Finally on Someone's Payroll

From time to time, the student body will get a mass email looking for a student to take on a short-term research project for a professor or an attorney. As luck would have it, one of those emails coincided with my last day at the state supreme court. I sent in a resume and got the job, so for the last week I have been poking around the library on behalf of a local law firm, trying to see if its client has a legitimate claim.

This is the first experience I have had working for a real client. More importantly, it is the first hard evidence I have that people in this town sometimes do in fact get paid for doing legal work. Very heartening.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Passing Moot Judgment

Last week Bowen hosted an undergraduate moot court tournament. It was a big tournament, and I was one of several dozen students drafted to serve as judges. I did this last year, too, and felt poorly qualified to criticize anyone's forensic skills. This year, with more moot court experience under my belt, I felt like an old pro. This weekend I'll be judging again in an intramural moot court tournament.

The more time I spend around moot court competitions, the less I think they resemble real appellate advocacy, but it's still a fun academic exercise--much more fun from the judges' side of the bench than the advocates' side. Hopefully the powers that be will keep using me for these tournaments after I graduate. Hopefully I will have an actual job as an actual lawyer to justify my participation in these tournaments after I graduate.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Too Much "Free" Time

Finishing my moot court competition had an unexpected negative consequence: it freed up a lot of time for study. Preparing for classes is just the worst, and I miss having an excuse to skip or skim my daily reading. I'd like to say that I've lost my enthusiasm for classwork because I've outgrown it and moved on to more challenging stuff, but I think I've mostly just gotten tired and lazy.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Externship Extinguished

Last week I logged my one hundredth hour at the state supreme court. That means that I have fulfilled my externship obligation. I am still going into the office every day as a volunteer (I'll probably keep that up for a couple of weeks), but it's nice to not have to worry about time sheets and activity journals.

Knowing that my time at the court was drawing to a close, I looked back at all the legal memoranda I've written this semester and totted up just how much work I did. In about 110 hours spread over 8 weeks, I wrote 7 memos for a total of just over 10,000 words. The law review note I wrote last year was around 10,000 words, so if you assume a 40-hour work week it seems safe to say that your average appellate court clerk writes the equivalent of a law review note every three weeks. Phew! I really loved this job, but I can see how that kind of grind might get old after a while.