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.