Is There Anything the Law Can't Do?

This morning I was looking for "fraud" in an index and came across this entry:

Freak Shows: validity and construction of statute or ordinance prohibiting commercial exhibition of malformed or disfigured persons

I think I've found my area of specialization.

Civil Procedure and Nerd Appeal

My civil procedure class started on Friday (for the first three weeks of school we had extra contracts classes instead because of a professor's schedule conflict). The professor was at pains to warn us that it might be our hardest class because, being the rules of American jurisprudence, civil procedure has no analogue in day to day life. I think I'll do fine for the same reason that I like law generally: I'm a big fat game nerd.
A lot of game nerds, especially role-playing game nerds, are social misfit types looking to immerse themselves in an orderly, rule-bound world that's easier to understand and manage than the open-ended mess that is real life. The study of law is very attractive to someone like that. What do you know, it turns out real life does have rules that can be learned and mastered. And if law is the rule book to the game of Real Life, civil procedure is the game mechanics: what dice to use and when to roll them. I think I'll take to it like a duck to water.

52,660 Minutes To Go

To be awarded a Juris Doctorate, one must receive 56,000 minutes of classroom instruction. That's what happens when academic rules are written by lawyers. Another statistic: in the first four weeks of classes I have read 94 judicial opinions. I think most of my class is unfazed by legalese by now.

I Watched The Paper Chase

I had never seen it before. The classroom and study group scenes looked surprisingly familiar. You might think John Houseman's character is a caricature, but some professors really do seem to take pleasure in making students look bad in front of the class. Even the nicer professors will pick a student and ask questions until they come up with one the student can't answer. I guess lawyers are supposed to be used to that.

Election Day

Think of the most rabid student council campaigner at your high school. Now give them a political science degree and maybe experience on a couple of congressional campaigns. That's who runs for student government in law school. It has been a week of wall to wall emails, buttons, t-shirts, flyers, candy and baked goods. They weren't allowed to hang posters in the halls, thank goodness.

Important Nonacademic Skills

I've had two weeks to work on it, but I still can't gracefully get out of my car with all my law school gear. On a typical day I have my laptop bag and five or ten pounds of books. With the bag over my shoulder I can get everything in one hand, but even with a free hand I can't get everything out of the passenger seat, past the steering wheel and out the driver's side door without flailing like Mr. Bean. Sure, I could just walk around the car to get my stuff, but I'm convinced that with practice I'll be able to move smoothly from car to campus without opening two car doors.

Bye Bye, Syllabi

In about half my classes, the syllabus has ceased to have much meaning. Reams of reading is assigned in the syllabi, but the professors move through the material at a pace determined by how well they think the students are getting it. In no case is the professor ahead of the syllabus, but a couple of them are miles behind. One professor has dodged the whole issue and said, "Just read fifteen or twenty pages past where we ended the last class." For a meticulous planner like me, it's just maddening.

Why not just grind along through the book while the classroom discussion falls behind? To some extent I've tried to do that, but it gets me into trouble. The reading is so voluminous and so dense, I can hardly remember what I read three days ago. Sometimes I open my reading notes at the beginning of class and they might as well have been written by someone else.