Sick Day

I have not taken a sick day like today in many years. I have asleep most of the day, only to awaken for some food and to walk the dog. Usually I can pull through the couple days a year when I get sick and make it to school, but this time it was too much. I think I have been fighting this for a while because I first starting feeling the symptoms a few minutes after I sent in the final copy of my Brief for legal writing last night at 11:00 P.M. It was a downhill slide from there. I must be in the mid-two-L slump. Life as a lawyer still feels very far away, and I do not feel like school is getting me very prepared. I am going through the motions, but I don't feel like I would know what I am doing if I was out there practicing. Maybe it is a good thing then that being a lawyer still feels far away.



The problem with legal writing is that you spend 8 weeks working on the same brief. If you make mistakes, you don't get to really learn from them because you only really write two briefs in the semester. It seems like it would be better if we spent less time on each brief and wrote more of them. Over the course of last year's legal writing class, I wrote four memos, and the last was considerably better than the first. That was the result of making mistakes on the first two and having an opportunity to start from the beginning on later memos without making the same problems. With this kind of learning, repetition is the key. I will stop complaining about legal writing now. Complaining about that class at law school is endemic. You would think we would all be more appreciative considering we supposedly have the number one legal writing program in the country.



Time to go back to bed. This has been too much thinking for my sick head today.

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Group Work

I am inherently averse to group work at school. I rarely study as part of a study group, and when I do, I do so only on a limited basis. It is not that I don't think groups can be helpful or even productive, but that is often the exception rather than the rule. I have said this here before, but there are people in law school who really shouldn't be there. A girl in my medical liability class responded to the professor's question about whether medicine was an exact science by saying: "Um, like, isn't that what we are learning in this class?" I wonder how she got into undergrad, let alone law school. Of course I want everyone to learn and be successful at law school, but there comes a point where you have to watch out for yourself. If that student asked me to be part of a study group I would decline without hesitation.



Group work can be a pleasure, and I am excited about my group for my forensics class. Everyone in the group is very intelligent, does their work independently, and when we get together, we do so for a limited amount of time to focus on the task at hand. It can work. The law, probably like most professions, requires skills of both independent work and group work. No one can get through law school alone, but for any group to work, each person has to bring a relatively equal amount of knowledge to the table, albeit different knowledge. We all see different things and focus on different aspects of a case or a project and by combining the different views, we all know more. You would think that with all of the cut-throat pressure of the One-L year, some of the idiots would have failed out and you could put a good group together with about any set of students. Not the case, and the same is probably true in practice.

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Disclaimer

It has been a while since I have blogged about blogging, but I think it bears repeating the purpose of this blog. I blog with my real name, so that I can take responsibility for what I write. After all, the contents this blog are nothing more than the thoughts of a single person, me. They do not reflect the beliefs or positions of my employers, my law school, my associations, or any other person. Nothing that I say should be taken as an accurate representation of anything other than my own personal thoughts. Because I blog with my real name, I am very aware of the consequences of my words, and I have stood by the policy that I do not say anything here I would not feel comfortable sharing publicly through another medium, such as a good old fashion conversation in person.

While this blog has been primarily a one-directional conversation, I am always open to hearing your comments. Unfortunately, the comment function is still broken and I am very limited in my computer skills. Therefore, if you would like to leave a comment, e-mail me at hiltops@gmail.com and I will post your comments to the blog. I will only exert so much editorial control as the blogger comments would let me. (keep or delete) Again, thanks for reading.

Men's Law Caucus and Other News

I apologize for the long neglect of this blog. I have not gone this long between posting since I began blogging. There are multiple reasons for my absence, the major one being law school. Sometimes it simply takes up all of my intellectual energies. My reservoir of resources was spent on establishing the Men's Law Caucus, which required two appearances before the Student Bar Association Board, a meeting with the Deans, a meeting with the Women's Law Caucus, a meeting with our to-be faculty advisor, and lots of politicking. The work paid off. Not only were we approved along a 12-1 vote with two abstentions, but we earned the respect of the SBA board by our respectful and persistent submission to the Boards, sometimes hostile, questioning. No previous group has been submitted to such scrutiny, which can be seen in one of two ways.

Either we were victims of some sort of reverse discrimination. Or we are simply on the cutting edge, which always creates resistance. I do not feel in any way like a victim. That might in itself be an indicator that things are still pretty good for an upper middle class white male. I would rather think that the lively discourse was the result of our little organization being on the cutting edge. We are pushing the envelop, so it seems quite normal to me that we would be treated differently. I am unsure if the difference in treatment should amount to "discrimination." It might in the most technical sense, but part of the reason we set out to set up this organization was to stir the soup. We like the shock value of out name and we think the shock has been productive in furthering the conversation on gender at law school, in the profession, and in personal relationships in general.

On a somewhat related note, I won the pot at our regular poker night. It is nice to win, and I will never turn down the $35 I took home after a night of fun, but winning is not really the point. The point is to get together with a bunch of friends who are very busy and have an activity that allows us to keep our minds busy while we laugh and relax. It was during a poker night that we decided to start the Men's Law Caucus after all. In the end, the organizations main purpose is based on this premise: the law should be fun. Yes, the law is very serious. Peoples lives are sometimes in your hands and often their money, their home, or their business, but it is a very fun profession. Like poker, sometimes you will loose, and sometimes you will make it big, but what would be the point of all the work if it was not fun?

I will trying and write more often. Until then. . .