Making the Team

I have been accepted onto the Moot Court Board. This means that next year I'll be able to travel to at least one out-of-state moot court competition on the school's dime. Based on my experience last semester, moot court competitions aren't much fun, but I'm willing to put up with it for the travel and the resume item.

Awful News

One of the first-year students I mentored last semester has died. He didn't attend many of the mentor meetings, so I didn't know him all that well, but certainly better than I know ninety-five percent of the 1Ls. I even met his parents back in August.
There were a couple of school-wide meetings to offer explanations and counseling, but I was unable to attend, so I don't know what happened. Whatever it was, it was unexpected and very bad. The guy was young, newly married, and had a baby on the way. His obituary indicates that a college fund has been set up for the baby.

Halfway There

The semester is over. Assuming I passed all my exams, I am now halfway to a juris doctorate.

The Constitutional Law exam was pretty nasty. It was my longest exam at four hours, and was a mix of multiple choice and essay questions. I think I wrote reasonably cogent essays, but the multiple choice questions were rough. Most of them were based on the kinds of hypothetical cases that are usually the stuff of essay questions. The distinctions drawn by the offered answers were so subtle in some cases that I don't see how the professor can claim that one was more right than the others. I'll just have to hope that I got lucky.

Two Exams are In the Bag

The Evidence and Family Law exams were every bit the nightmare I was anticipating. Thank goodness the Family Law exam was open book. I referred to my textbook and cheat sheets enough that I almost ran out of time. I wrote longer essays than I usually do, but they still looked very sketchy and incomplete to me. The Evidence test, by contrast, was closed book and 100% multiple choice: the bad, "choose the best available answer" kind of multiple choice. I am not confident about either test, but I'll try not to speculate about my grades because I have a long wait ahead of me.

I do have one piece of good news: MPRE scores are out. Mine were nothing to write home about, but well within the passing range. Here's an interesting side note about the MPRE: It's a national test, but different states require different scores to pass their bar. About a third of states require 75 out of a possible 150. Another third or so require 80. Another third (including Arkansas) require 85. There are a few odd numbers in there - some 77s and some 79s. California and Utah require 86. Why do you have to be such jerks, California and Utah?

It Must Be Finals Week

I came to school on a Sunday afternoon--definitely not my habit. The parking lot is full and every wastebasket in the library is overflowing with soda cans and Starbucks cups. It's actually kind of a fun atmosphere with everybody freaking out and acting giddy. It's not quite the cram week portrayed in The Paper Chase, but it's close.

Nothing Left But Final Exams

After a flurry of writing over Thanksgiving break, plus a 24-hour extension on the deadline, I turned in the first draft of my law review paper yesterday. Even after considerable last-minute padding, the draft is two pages short of the minimum length (40 pages, triple spaced). Hopefully my editor will have some suggestions on how to beef it up.

Yesterday was also the last day of classes. My first exam is one week from today. Between law review and moot court, I more or less ignored my other classes all semester. I am so dead.

Scheduled for Spring

Registration for Spring classes is underway. From here on out there are almost no required courses. Unfortunately, I found the electives on offer less than inspiring. I signed up for Sales and Business Associations because both topics are tested on the bar exam, but I expect them to be as dull as the daytime Emmys. I registered for Advanced Civil Procedure just because it fit a hole in my schedule and I like the professor who teaches it. That course is all about class actions, which is an extremely specialized area of practice that I'll probably never experience. The one class I'm kind of looking forward to is International Criminal Law. The name of that course has such a James Bond quality to it, I don't see how it can be boring. Rounding out my schedule is the one required course: Lawyering Skills II. LSII is nothing but a semester-long mock trial, from the initial client interview to final judgment.

Moot Court Weekend

It was all moot court, all the time this weekend. On Friday, I was a judge at an undergraduate moot court tournament hosted by the school. On Saturday and Sunday, I competed with my moot court classmates in our own tournament. My partner and I were knocked out in the second round (meaning that we had to argue our case three times, because the first round consisted of two arguments: one from each side of the issue). I was not sorry to be knocked out early. The tournament won't affect my grade and, while the class was fun, public speaking is extremely stressful for me.
Incidentally, the issue I was arguing was whether the Sixth Amendment requires a criminal case to be retried if the defendant's court-appointed attorney falls asleep for a few minutes during the trial.

Must Get Well Or Else

I have a bad cold and two moot court events coming up this weekend. If my sinuses don't clear up soon, it's going to be "Elmer Fudd argues before the Supreme Court." I'm hoping Neti Pot (tm) will be my salvation.

Lawyering Takes a Lot of Paper

My partner and I turned in the final version of our Moot Court brief today. It came in at just over sixty pages (half of that was appendices). We were required to turn in eleven bound copies. If that sounds like a lot, dig this: if you file a brief with the Supreme Court of the United States, you're required to submit forty copies. It's all in Supreme Court Rule 25.

Cite Checking

I finally got a cite-checking assignment from my law review overlords. It's a 25-page chunk of a student-written paper. I spent about six hours of my Saturday on it, and I figure I have another three hours of work to do.

I've been dreading this assignment all semester, but it has turned out to be rather soothing. It's work that I'm good at, and in any case it's not for a grade. That adds up to a sense of certainty and accomplishment that is hard to come by in law school.

A Head Start on the Bar Exam

Yesterday I took the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), the one segment of the bar exam that prospective lawyers are allowed to take before graduation. It's a two-hour, sixty-question multiple choice exam on ethics. Since I (perhaps foolishly) scheduled the exam in the middle of the semester, I didn't prepare much. I scored 75% on a practice exam, so I figured I could get by on what I remembered from the ethics class I took last summer. I wound up doing a lot of guessing, but I think I'll pass. The worst thing that can happen is that I'll have to pay $60 to take the test again. For the curious, here's an example of a question I got wrong on the practice test:

An attorney represents the wife in a marriage dissolution proceeding that involves bitterly contested issues of property division and child custody. The husband is represented by another lawyer. After one day of trial, the husband, through his lawyer, made a settlement offer. Because of the husband’s intense dislike for the wife’s attorney, the proposed settlement requires that the attorney agree not to represent the wife in any subsequent proceeding, brought by either party, to modify or enforce the provisions of the decree. The wife wants to accept the offer, and her attorney believes that the settlement offer made by the husband is better than any award the wife would get if the case went to judgment. Is it proper for the wife’s attorney to agree that she will not represent the wife in any subsequent proceeding?

A. Yes, because the restriction on the attorney is limited to subsequent proceedings in the same matter.

B. Yes, if the attorney believes that it is in the wife’s best interests to accept the proposed settlement.

C. No, because the proposed settlement would restrict the attorney’s right to represent the wife in the future.

D. No, unless the attorney believes that the wife’s interests can be adequately protected by another lawyer in the future.

Burnout

Three semesters of law school have taught me that week ten burnout arrives like clockwork. The last month of the semester is never fun because my head is already in exam week. My reading discipline is worse than ever. Let's get this thing over with!

Advance Planning

I accepted a clerkship at a big law firm today. I'm to report for work in January, 2011. I don't know what makes law firms want to make employment offers a year in advance, but most of them seem to do it that way. Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth. Here's my best spin on the news: 1) this is the largest law firm in town, and therefore the most likely to be hiring at any given time; and 2) I'll be working there when I graduate.

Ignoring My Own Advice

Today I did something that I always advise other people not to do: I was called on in class for a case I had not read and I tried to fake it. I looked like an idiot.

Worst. Week. Ever.

Here is my schedule for next week:

Monday: 5-page outline of my law review paper is due

Tuesday: Family Law midterm (Of the eighteen classes I've taken in law school, this is the first with a midterm exam. It's 20% of my grade.)

Wednesday: 15-minute oral argument for moot court (25% of class grade).

Thursday: Written assignment for Lawyering Skills is due (nothing unusual about this--there's an assignment due almost every Thursday)

Friday: Business as usual

On top of that, I have a research assignment from the professor I'm assisting that I haven't even started. No firm due date for that, thank goodness. The upcoming weekend will probably be my busiest until Thanksgiving, when I have to finish a draft of my law review paper.

Damocles

I've been complaining a lot about assignments and deadlines, but it occurs to me that one shoe still hasn't dropped: I have yet to get a citation checking assignment from my law review overlords. Many of my fellow law review apprentices got assignments way back at the beginning of the semester, but a few of us are still waiting for our numbers to come up. Surely the editorial board wouldn't ask us to take on a cite check now, while the paper-writing deadlines are coming hot and heavy. Would it?

Class Cancelled

I showed up for class at 11:00 this morning only to learn that the professor had announced by email at 9:45 that class was cancelled. This is typical. Sometimes we get no notice at all: we'll show up to class and there will be a sign on the door. I'd say this has happened to me five or six times in my year-and-a-half of law school. That isn't a whole lot, but it's annoying as heck when it happens.

Constitutional Interpretation is Voodoo

A frustrating pattern has emerged in my Constitutional Law textbook. Nearly every chapter presents a few excerpts from Supreme Court cases followed by something like this: "Why do you suppose the Court treats commercial interests differently from private citizens in this context? Consider these six possibilities put forward by legal scholars . . ."
Apparently, there are no facts about the Constitution. There are only debates. The Constitution itself, with all its amendments, occupies eighteen pages of the textbook. The rest of the book, an ostensible illumination of those eighteen pages, is another 1671 pages. It's hard to tell just what I'm supposed to be learning. On the plus side, there ought to be no wrong answers on the exam. If I write anything plausible about the Constitution, it's sure to be the position of some celebrated professor or Justice.

Reading Without Reading

I've noticed a big change in my reading habits this semester. Last year (and throughout my academic career to date), I was a slow reader. I read things very closely and retained everything. This year, I don't so much read things as look at them. I pick up a couple of sentences from each paragraph, take a few notes, and move on. My reading comprehension definitely suffers, but time permits no more.

I worry that this is a preview of what it's like to be a lawyer: time and budget constraints probably force one to throw together a lot of work that is good enough, but not the best one can do.

Assisting

I finally scored a paying gig of sorts: a professor took me on as a research assistant. Being a research assistant is probably the easiest way to make a buck around the school. The library keeps a pool of them and professors occasionally put out mass email calls for assistants on top of that. I got my assistantship by pure luck: a professor I've never met emailed me on the recommendation of one of my professors from last year. I have no idea what I'll be doing or even what it pays, but it's nice to look forward to getting paid for legal work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Have an Office

Ah, the benefits of being an upper-level student. Check out the sweet private workspace I have been assigned in the library. Rather, the workspace I share with a randomly assigned partner. The point is, I'm a total bigshot now.

Family Law

I'm taking three substantive law classes this fall: Constitutional Law (required), Evidence (required) and Family Law (elective). It's early, but I suspect Family Law will be my bete noire for the semester. Looking at the syllabus, I am reminded of last year's Property class: rigid organization, voluminous reading, and lots of Arkansas law to supplement the textbook. The good news is, the reading is all quite interesting so far.

I've learned this much already: the next time someone ribs you about cousins marrying in Arkansas, direct them to the 1986 case of Etheridge v. Shaddock, in which the court considered whether it should recognize the marriage of a pair of first cousins who married in Arkansas, found out that the marriage was illegal, then crossed the border to remarry in Texas, where such marriages are allowed.

Law Review Topic is Set in Stone

The editors of the law review blessed my proposal, so I am committed to spending the next nine months writing a paper on the topic I submitted. The folks who grade the papers aren't supposed to know who is writing about what, so I won't describe my topic in this public forum. Here is a link to some general information about it for anyone who's interested. I'll be the first to admit that it's a little dry, but that just makes it less likely that I'll be beaten to publication by someone else writing on the same topic.

Misery Loves Company

The grade distribution reports for summer classes were released today, and I'm prepared to stop moaning about my Criminal Procedure grade. The professor gave 35 C's to a class of 74 students. There was one A. Did we fail, or did the professor?

Breather

Orientation is over. All my summer classes are finished. My proposal for my law review paper is submitted. The next two days will be the last time in the next three months that I have nothing to do but read textbooks. It's a nice feeling.

A Fresh Start

Classes begin in one week and 1L orientation is in full swing. I'm glad I signed up to be a mentor. I liked my first year of school a lot, and it's pleasant to interact with the new students and indulge in a little nostalgia. I have to be careful, though. Everyone comes out of their 1L year with some very definite ideas about study habits and time management, and I am no exception. I'm finding it hard to offer advice without coming off as a blowhard know-it-all.

Cemoralized

Summer grades are in. I have my first law school C, and I am super angry about it. I caved under pressure on the Criminal Procedure test and wrote a bad answer to a question that should have been easy. To some extent, I blame the summer schedule. I found it tougher to perform on a 6:00 PM test than on a 10:00 AM test (it was one of those situations where I woke up the next morning with the "right" essay in my head. I've been dreading this grade ever since). For the first time, I feel victimized by the one-test-one-grade system. This is going to haunt me for a long time, because it more or less permanently eliminates me from competition for the top of the class.

Death by Citation Check

Based on my experience in my legal editing class, the law review workload might kill me. Since the legal profession has a mania for citing to precedent, the main duty of law review apprentices is double-checking the footnotes of papers submitted for publication. Besides going to the author's sources to verify the content, that means ensuring that the citations are in proper format. "Proper format" means in compliance with 150 pages of rules like

When citing an entire decision, and not a pinpoint therein, in short form, you must include the shorter version of the case name, the volume number, reporter designation, and first page; but do NOT include a jurisdiction/date parenthetical.

Let me make clear that when I say 150 pages of rules, I am excluding the 190 pages of tables and appendices in the citation rulebook. I spent the better part of my day grinding through the first six pages of a twenty-two page cite-check assignment.

Topical, But Not Too Topical

I'm all a-dither about finding a topic for my law review note. This paper will be a year-long project, and I have about two weeks to pick a topic. The trick is to find an issue that is 1) unlikely to be resolved in the next year (i.e., cases pending before the Supreme Court are out), 2) topical enough to merit publication (freak show jurisprudence probably would not make the cut), and 3) not so topical that other people have already written about it ad nauseam (anything to do with Guantanamo detainees? Fuhgeddaboutit). If you can think of a contested point of law that deserves a twenty-plus page treatment, please feel free to drop me a line or post a comment.

For those keeping score, this is the one-hundredth post to this blog.

A New Year Brings New Swag

Here is the stuff I picked up at my law review orientation meeting. There was free food, too, but it was that old standby, pizza. I had hoped that our lofty position on the law review would merit caviar and bonbons. Not to worry, though. This meager pile of giveaways is nothing compared to the shower of goodies that will rain down in September when vendors are trying to impress the new students.

Exam Time at Last

Night time is not the right time to take an essay exam. I feel like I did pretty badly on my Criminal Procedure exam. There were only two questions, and my answer to one of them was full of padding. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing the point. Fortunately, my track record for predicting my grades on exams is poor.

A Full Schedule

Since I don't have a clerkship lined up, I deliberately piled on the extracurricular activities in the fall. The rocks and pebbles that will eventually become an avalanche of obligations are starting to appear on my calendar. I was accepted onto the law review, so that will mean a series of orientation meetings starting later this week. I've also signed up to serve as a mentor to incoming 1L students, so I'll be going to their orientation in mid-August. My schedule-juggling skills will get a real test when classes start.

Wrapping Up Summer

Today was the last day of summer classes. I'm left a little disappointed with Criminal Procedure. It was a terrific class, but we only covered about half the textbook. I bet I would have learned more if I had waited and taken the class in the longer fall semester.

Exams are almost two weeks away. I need the review time. An eight-week course really doesn't give one time to soak in information and properly commit it to memory.

Thinning the Ranks

Looking at the class rankings, I see just three students in my class with GPAs low enough to wash out of the program. Two students disappeared from one of my summer classes around the time grades were issued, so they are probably among the unlucky ones. Readmission is possible, but one has to repeat the first year. Ouch!

More Grades and Ranks

Spring grades have been released. My GPA went up by one one-hundredth of a point and I rose two slots in the class rankings, so I'm declaring victory.

My lowest grade was, predictably, Contracts. Contracts was also the only class in which my grade fell from the fall to the spring. I'll have no choice but to take some more classes in transactional law, but you can bet I'll be avoiding that professor.

Summer Classes

Three weeks into the summer session, I finally feel like I have time to write a word about the classes I'm taking. Criminal Pretrial Procedure is mostly about the Fourth Amendment: searches, warrants and exclusion of evidence. It's fascinating stuff, not least because it's taught by a veteran judge who really knows the material. He also shouts, runs around the room and does funny voices. I guess he's had experience teaching two-and-a-half hour night classes.

Just ten minutes after Crim Pro ends, Legal Profession begins. The contrast is stark. It seems like ethics should be interesting - there's material in the textbook about the Enron scandal and even criminal attorneys hiding corpses - but the professor just stands at the podium and grinds through her Power Point slides for ninety minutes. The class ends at 9:35 PM. We should be allowed to attend in our pajamas.

All Done

I just submitted my law review application materials, four hours before the deadline. It wasn't my best work, but just having it in the can is a real load off my mind and my schedule. Ironically, today was also my last day for a few weeks at my on-again, off-again summer job. I don't know what I'll do with all the free time. It's feast or famine.

Something's Got to Give

The sixty-hour weeks caught up with me quickly. I have a vicious cold and spent most of today in bed. This is bad because this weekend is the only free time I have to write the ten-page case note (the law school equivalent of a book report) that will be my application to the law review staff.

Law review is one of the quintessential law school experiences. Every decent law school puts out a journal that is edited and partly written by students. Service on the law review is a flashy resume item, and admission to the staff is competitive. Right now it looks like my application is going to be pretty weak.

Studying in Comfort

The crazy schedule of work plus summer school (part time students, I have a renewed respect for you) has made it hard to post regularly, but I must take a moment to report that the school has put some sweet new comfy chairs in the library lobby. They're dynamite!

School is In Session

Summer classes start tomorrow. I'm only taking two classes, but the accelerated pace of the summer session will take some getting used to. My total reading assignment for the first day of class? 123 pages. Add the fact that I'm now holding down a job, and it's going to be a long ten weeks.

Back In the Real World

There's nothing like a full-time job to make one appreciate the academic life. I couldn't find work in the legal field, so I'm back at the job I walked away from nine months ago when I went to school. At least I had somewhere to go. Tuition ain't cheap!

Two Feet of Books

Way back in August, I posted a photo of the books I had bought for the fall semester. Here they are again, with the addition of my Criminal Law book and two semesters of notes, handouts and papers. Does anyone need to buy some law books?

Out With a Bang

The Civil Procedure exam was the longest of the bunch. It also packed another doozy of an essay question, with the true issue buried in a thicket of red herrings. I think I cracked this one. In fact, I felt better about my answers on this exam than on any other, not least because there were no multiple-choice questions to fill me with self-doubt. I won't see any grades for a solid month. Until then, I'll try not to think about it.

Contracts Exam is In the Books

On the Contracts exam, I encountered a first for me: a page-long essay question that left me with no idea what the professor was asking for. After a convoluted set of facts, the question was, "Can Mr. Closson enforce the agreement?" Was it a question about contract formation? Breach of contract? Conditional duties? Equity? I had no idea. I wrote a 350-word response anyway. I only hope I covered the right stuff.

Three Down, Two to Go

The Legal Research exam was this morning. I suppose I did all right. Legal Research is just a one-credit-hour course and the exam was 100% multiple choice, so few students took it seriously. And let me emphasize that this was not the sort of multiple choice horror show that I hate and fear on other law school exams. This was the multiple choice that you're used to, where many answers can be inferred just from a careful reading of the language of the question. A 'B' would be just fine, and I'll be surprised if I do worse than that.

The Criminal Law exam, two days ago, went as well as could be expected. I'm sure I made some mistakes, but none of the questions took me by complete surprise. I couldn't begin to speculate about my grade.

Wrung Out

I was expecting a brutal intellectual beat-down, and the Property exam did not disappoint. I felt like I studied the right things, but the test demanded a pretty subtle understanding of the law. As happened last semester, I was undone by page after page of ambiguously worded multiple choice questions. I did a lot of guessing. Then my essay responses were accurate as far as they went, but they were so short that I was left thinking that I must be leaving out some important information. I won't be surprised by anything from an A to an F. Criminal Law is next.

Exam Eve

In twenty-four hours I'll be finished with my Property exam. The outline I came up with to prepare is almost twice as long as the one I wrote in the fall. Does that mean that I learned twice as much? I think rather that I didn't learn this semester's material very well, so I wrote more down. I'll find out for sure tomorrow.

Exam Prep

I'm finally through with classes. Time to get ready for exams. Professors encourage law students to prepare for exams by making an outline of all the material in the course (try Googling "law school outlines" and you'll find that that's true all over the country). I'm not very good at structuring information into outlines, so I prefer to draw diagrams like the one below.
I have six pages like that for Property. Later, I'll type this into Freemind software, a free mind-mapping tool that I have found very handy. Freemind will spit my diagram back out as a conventional outline that I can use to study for the exam.

Registered

I registered for summer and fall classes today. Online registration for students entering their second year started at 7:15 this morning. I lallygagged until about 11:30 and found that some of the more desirable classes had filled up. Even so, I think I have an interesting schedule to look forward to. In the summer (that is, starting May 26) I'll be taking Legal Profession (ethics, basically) and Criminal Pretrial Procedure. As for my Lawyering Skills class in the fall, I chose the litigation track. I enjoyed oral arguments so much that it was really no contest.
Classes should be over, but we have to make up a missed session of Contracts on Monday. Contracts, of all classes. sigh.

Registration Looming

Registration for summer and fall classes is in eight days. It will be my first chance to take some electives, but that's not what's on my mind. Next fall we'll all take a version of Lawyering Skills I. We must choose between transaction skills, in which we'll draft contracts; and litigation skills, in which we'll draft lawsuits. On the one hand, I've never liked jobs that required a lot of interaction with the public. On the other hand, Contracts is my least favorite class. I guess what I'm asking myself is, which branch of the legal profession will I hate least?

Law Prom

On Friday I went to the "Barrister's Ball," the law school's annual semi-formal dance. It was nice to interact with my classmates socially--something I don't do very often. On the other hand, it served as a reminder of how schmoozing-intensive the legal profession is. A few of the local attorneys who have addressed my class have intimated that we have a lot of charity dinners in our future. It's fun to picture myself walking among the rich and powerful, but I hope I don't turn into a smiling and insincere handshake machine.

Semester Winding Down

Yesterday I was graded on my oral argument, the last big assignment in Reason, Writing and Advocacy II. I still have a paper to turn in, but it's ninety per cent finished.
Final exams are on the not-too-distant horizon, and I have done almost nothing to prepare. Fortunately, most of my classmates seem to be in the same boat. At the end of the fall semester I aired my belief that cramming for exams just doesn't work. I hope I was wrong.

Done Researching

I turned in my last assignment for Legal Research this week. It might just have been my happiest moment all semester. It's surely in the top five for the year. Legal Research assignments are to law school what mimeographed worksheets were to high school. I haven't talked to anyone who thinks they're anything but useless busywork. It's a great feeling to know that I've put them behind me for life.

I Like to Talk

I've always told anyone who asked (and everyone asks) that I see myself becoming a transactional lawyer--contracts, corporations and the like--but since we started working on oral arguments I've been hearing the siren call of litigation. Standing in front of a panel of judges and making a case is a lot more fun than I would have guessed.

Break Time is Over

I naively thought that I would catch up on all my reading and writing assignments over spring break, with time to spare for a few movies or video games. Instead, I spent pretty much my entire break writing one paper, and it's still not quite finished. Maybe I slept in too much.

Spring Break!

Whoooo! I'm spending my entire spring break writing a paper, but that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it. I don't think I can convey just how great it feels to sit and work on a single project for several days without the constant influx of reading assignments from other professors.

Rejected!

I'm accumulating a nice collection of rejection letters. One is short enough to reproduce in its entirety:

Thank you for your interest in [firm name redacted]. We regret that we are unable to offer you a position due to the limited number of clerkships we are able to offer. I wish you every success.

I admire the writer's refusal to pad it out with boilerplate courtesies, notwithstanding the "I wish you every success."

I still have applications outstanding with two firms, but I know they've already hired some of my classmates.

View From the Top

Lately I've taken to sitting by the windows in the library. The sunlight is nice, but the view leaves something to be desired. Unless you happen to be into interstate on-ramps. Here is a crummy cell phone photo. Incidentally, let me assure you that the research materials strewn around the desk are not staged. I took this photo when I was working on my first paper of the spring semester.

And Now We Wait

It has been a week since my last job interview, and I have heard nothing. None of the interviewers told me how long I should expect to wait, but I know that many of my classmates have been offered jobs, so I'm starting to sweat. This could very easily turn into a burger-flipping, office-temping, panhandling kind of summer.

Wise Guy Architect

The restrooms on the first and second floor of the law school are identically situated, with one important exception: on the first floor, the men's room is on the left. On the second floor, the men's room is on the right. I've made the mistake twice, but so far without consequences. I must be more careful.

I'm A Dummy

You know what feels awkward? Walking into a classroom and seeing that everyone except you has a completed assignment that you knew nothing about. To make matters worse, it happened in RWA, my favorite class and one in which I have a reputation as a diligent student. It might have been wise to make apologies or excuses to the professor after class, but that's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation: do I really want to make the case that I was the only student in the class too stupid to find the assignment the professor posted online? As is my habit, I kept my mouth shut and let the professor draw her own conclusions about why I wasn't prepared.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Technology Taketh Away

There are ninety-plus students in my class, so we meet in a very large classroom. There are microphones in the ceiling to pick up students' voices and project them to the other side of the classroom. That's great when there's a class discussion going. It's not so great in the dead of winter when everyone is coughing and wheezing.

Missing Class

It's just week three of the new semester, and I'm missing a day of classes due to illness. Luckily, the school videotapes every class. Not every professor makes the videos available online, but the professors I have on Thursdays do, so I shouldn't miss a thing. Technology is a life saver.

Civ Pro Fulfills Its Promise

In the fall, the Civil Procedure professor warned us that the class would be concerned mostly with esoteric technicalities, then we spent the whole semester on broad, almost philosophical topics like state sovereignty. In the spring we're finally getting down to brass tacks. Suppose, for example, you were served with process pursuant to rule 4(e), but you think the complaint falls short of the requirements set forth in rule 8(a). What to do? File a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, of course! I'm in Heaven.

Iced In

Classes were cancelled today due to inclement weather. This is terrible news because it adds up to three and a half hours of class time that will have to be made up some time later in the semester, probably when we're all a lot busier. It also means I have a few more days to forget all the stuff I read for today's classes.

Fall Grades are POSTED!

That's a relief.

Off the Hook

I'm under the impression that the Criminal Law professor checks students off her roster as she calls on them so as to call on each student once during the semester. If so, I scored a coup by being called on toward the end of class today. Ten minutes of light questioning about the eighth amendment, and I can relax for the rest of the semester.

Taking Notes

If you've ever wondered what exactly I do all day, here's a representative page from my Torts notebook. The black ink is notes I took while reading. The red ink was added in class. The letters down the left margin stand for "Facts", "Issue", "Rule", "Analysis" and "Conclusion". Those five parts of an opinion were drilled into us from day one of orientation. Pi and Delta, if it's not obvious, are "Plaintiff" and "Defendant". In the fall, I produced sixty or eighty pages like this in each of the four substantive law classes.

Seating Settled

I scored my Contracts seat (my most desirable seat, it being on the aisle) for Civil Procedure, so all's right with the world. I can tell already that my seat assignment in Criminal Law is going to be a pain. My neighbor spent all of today's class checking Facebook and shopping online. I was flabbergasted. Who can be bored by a discussion of murder and cannibalism? And why would that person go to law school?

Back in the Groove

For the first time since the new semester started, I was happy to be at school today. In fact, classes were over at 2:00 PM and I was completely caught up on my reading, but I decided to hang around in the library and do some extra work just because I wasn't ready to leave. I fully expected to stay in a foul mood until fall grades were posted, but I can't help myself. School is fun.

Criminal Law Shows Promise

Torts was a fun class. I was sorry to see it go. Fortunately, Criminal Law looks like a worthy replacement. The professor seems easygoing despite her background as a military lawyer, and the material cannot but be interesting. The assigned reading for the second class includes a 19th century cannibalism case, for goodness sake.

Seating Chart Madness

I had hoped that everyone would stick to their old seats for the new semester, but no such luck. It's the August scramble all over again, and this time I've found myself in a different chair for every class. I need to draw myself a diagram before I forget them all. Civil Procedure meets for the first time tomorrow, so that will be a fourth chair to remember.

More Reading

The first day of class is Monday the 12th, and several professors have posted reading assignments online. You'd think that a three week break would leave me fresh and motivated, but I dread getting back on the treadmill. Starting the spring semester without having grades for the fall is a real morale killer. It's almost as if the administration wants the students to feel like all this work is a futile waste of energy.

Beginning Anew

I have my schedule for the spring, and the training wheels have come off. In the fall, all classes had sensible, easily memorized schedules. Property class was on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:10 to 3:40 PM. No problem. In the spring, Property will be in session on Tuesdays from 2:10 to 4:10 and on Thursdays from 1:05 to 2:00. Criminal Law meets on Tuesdays from 8:45 to 9:40 and on Fridays from 8:45 to 10:45. In the immortal words of Charlton Heston, "It's a madhouse! A maaadhouuuse!" The professors can't possibly enjoy teaching classes that meet for one hour one day and two hours the next. This schedule is heavy with the scent of some Excel junkie administrator's idea of efficiency.