New Look

Well, law-new-view has a new look. I will be making a few more changes, but for the most part, I think I am ready to go through the end of law school and into the bar. Other new features include the capacity to leave comments which never seemed to work with my last template, and searching all of my past post all the way back to the beginning of One-L.

I have been thinking a bit about the last year. It was a long and frustrating year. Was I worked to death as the saying goes? It did not really feel like it. I certainly did not spend as much time on law school as I did in the first year. On the other-hand, I can't remember a Sunday evening throughout the whole last semester where I was not working on either my legal writing or another paper. It was more relentless than anything else, and the fact that I had learned how get a lot more done with less work took some of the mystic out of law school. It was more like a problem that I simply had to work through. It was not especially engaging, but not yet entirely boring. I was law school's middle child.

Now a look ahead. I am looking for a new job, but I have not found anything that is both something I want to do and in the right location. I am commuting to Bellevue and working at the same firm I have been working at for the last year. I go back and forth with my feelings about work. Some days I really enjoy the work. I am getting much better at the work and it is still a lot of fun to settle a case. I have been there long enough now that I have worked on some cases from the very beginning when our clients were injured, through writing their demand and finally working out a settlement. I have a bit more independence now, and since I have been working full time, I have gotten to do some different tasks like draft complaints and edit interrogatories. I am looking for a job that will get me into court at least occasionally, but I am having the same problem I had last spring: lawyers do not call back. I interviewed twice at a firm, and then they told me they would have a decision in a few days. That was two weeks ago. I have called once and left a message with his secretary and also a voice mail. I still have not heard anything. At this point, I don't care if he offers me the job or not. I did want to work there, but that is simply rude and inappropriate. I already have a job, which removes some of the stress, but I simply want to know whether to tell my old job if I am leaving. Even if he isn't offering me the job, the lest he could do is return my phone calls and let me know.

Oh well, maybe I just don't understand how hard it is to be a lawyer and how your work is more important than common decency (add sarcasm yourself). I would like to think that even when I have my own firm, I will return phone calls. A week is understandable, two weeks and two follow up calls. . .???

Thanks blog for letting me vent my frustrations.

Quick Update

I am still in the middle of a blogging hiatus. Since the end of the spring semester, I have moved to Everett, gotten a puppy, and started working full time. I have a lot of ideas I want to blog about, but it will be a few more weeks until I have the time or stability to start writing again. Check back some time in June. Happy summer!

Note to Readers

Over the course of the next couple of days, I am going to attempt to merge all of my law school blogs into one blog so that all of the drama, the tears, the joys, the boredom can be found in the same place. You would think there would be an easy way to do this, but it looks like my new summer free time will be used copying posts from one blog to the next. We'll see how long that lasts.

Finished!

About 15 minutes ago, I printed out my Medical Liability take-home final. That means I am finished with the semester. I do not have the same sense of relief as at the end of my 0ne-L year. On the other hand, I am not completely exhausted. I have done a better job of striking a balance between my personal life and my school life (some times I think too good of a balance) and in a lot of ways, not that much will change. I have been working through finals, and now I will just be working full time. It is true that I am not taking classes this summer, and for that I am very happy. I need a break from school before I can face the last year, which by all reports is just an excuse for the law school to rob you of another $25,000.

Blogger's Life

For you faithful readers, you can tell I have been in a bit of a slump with this blog lately.  I am rethinking exactly what I want to accomplish here when I pick up with my 3-L blog.  I will blog a bit more to wrap up this year, then take a bit of a hiatus from thinking about law school, and will hopefully be back in the blogging business with a new look and new enthusiasm at the beginning of June. 



I would really appreciate from any of you who read my blog regularly any thoughts you might have on what works and what does not work. Are there topics you would like to see more of or topics I cover too much.  As law school life because lest, well, important, I am considering using this as more of a political/legal blog. On the other-hand, some of my best writing has been about the mundanities of law school. I would like to get more regular about my posting, which means I need to be more enthusiastic about the topics.  Any thoughts? 



In the meantime, I have been gathering some interesting reading on blogging that I will share with you:



A story on blogger etiquette

A story about a blogger journalist who is taken seriously.



An, somewhat related, the first supreme court opinion which included a hyperlink to a video. You can find it at this site, and the case is Scott v. Harris.



I have to get back to studying for my evidence final. 

Con law continues

I may be done with Constitutional Law of Terrorism, but that class just seems to live on.  John McKay is in the news again, and terrorism will be in the news long after this prosecutor scandal is over.  In some ways, I wish that class would just keep going on.  It was not unusual that there would be major news directly related to the topic of conversation for the day, such as a supreme court opinion or a major news development.  I have also never seen so much online discussion on a class website before.  It is rare if one or two people ever post in the TWEN discussion section, but for this class we had people posting several times a week and often in response to each other.  I think this indicates a need to continue having discussions on terrorism and the many constitutional issues it creates.  I'll have to see if there is some way to keep the discussion going.