Disgusting

Warning: If you are easily disgusted by gross descriptions, do not continue reading. What follows may disturb you!

I have been a vocal critic, among my close friends, of the bathrooms at the law school. For as much as this place attempts to present a facade of professionalism and prestige, that image goes down the toilet when you go to the restroom. I cannot speak for the ladies' room, but the men's restroom is in an almost constant state of disarray. By 10:00 in the morning, there is usually a small puddle of urine in front of each of the urinals. I can't really blame my other male colleagues. The urinals suck. Until I learned a trick, I would get an amazing amount of splashback on myself while using them (and I am not alone in having this problem.) Not only do I have to use the urinal in a certain way, but I have to stand with a wide stance not to get urine on my shoes, and we all know what kind of trouble one can get into in a public restroom with a wide stance.

The next problem is the sinks. There is usually pools of water on the countertop, so if you lean in a little too close while washing your hands, you could easily get water on your pants at counter level. You will still look like you wet yourself even if you were succesfull in keeping yourself dry at the urinal.

For these reason, I have found myself on occasion walking to an undergraduate building to use the comparatively cleaner restrooms, but normally I don't have time, so I have learned to be careful, but now I have seen something so disgusting, I am considering just holding it.

Over the past two weeks, in two separate bathrooms in the law school, I have seen dried boogers wiped on the wall next to the urinals, and not just one, but several. Some person, who has been sufficiently successful in his life to graduate college, get accepted in law school, and achieve at least the age of 21, can't find a better solution for a stuffed nose than to wipe it on the wall while he takes a piss. And it is not like he isn't in a place with ample supply of tissue!!! I might understand if he was somewhere else, but there is toilet paper and a garbage can right there. Hey, we all have to clean our noses sometimes, but should if you think wiping your mucus on the wall is the solution, you should not be able to get a law license.

A word to One-Ls

I know this seems like a frighteningly stressful time and you are probably thinking: "Why the hell is everyone talking about outlining for finals? How exactly am I supposed to outline? How am I going to learn all this stuff? What the heck is the rule against perpetuities?" There is a lot you don't know right now that you will somehow learn in the next six weeks, but there is also something else you will not learn until your third year: how good you have it! Yes, I know it looks like us third-year students don't really have to work that hard at school, and the truth is, we don't. We have all pretty much learned how to wing it in class when we have been called on and have not read and how to begin studying for the final a few days before the exam date. Even though it looks like we spend a large amount of our time between classes just hanging out and socializing, the fact is that you don't really get to enjoy law school your third year. Must of us are working about as many hours as we are allowed, and it is not just filing papers at the library like my one-l work study job. We have real cases that cause us to loose sleep and require us to learn what the heck were actually supposed to be doing because law school leaves you woefully unprepared for the real practice of law.

Gone are the days when I could really focus on the subject matter of all my classes, and part of me misses the hermetically sealed life of a One-l. I remember this time two years ago when I struggled through the rule against perpetuities or 12(b)6 motions. I remember the hours spent to working out hypos and practice exams and delving deep into the concepts that were so foreign. I forget now how little I knew and how much energy it took to get all of that new knowledge into my brain. I had time for all of that back then. School was not just something getting in the way of a bar license, but it was, at least for a short time, an intellectually engaging activity.

So if you are heading into your first semester of law school finals, you should keep in mind that when you think back to law school and the law school experience, it is this next six weeks that you will remember. This is the time that movies and books about law school portray and is probably the only time that the stereotype of law school held by your friends and family that aren't there with you will match up pretty close with the reality. It is stressful and intense, but after this semester, it will never be quite the same. And when you are a three-l trying to squeeze in some reading between running to court, you may even miss it.

We have it easy

Compared to lawyers in Pakistan right now, we have it easy. Appointing conservative justices on the Supreme Court is a far cry from firing those who are likely to rule you can no longer be the president. This raises an interesting question that we have been talking about in my Law and the Holocaust class. What is a lawyer to do when you are confronted with an illegal action that you are either charged to carry out or you see taking place in violation of the constitution you have taken an oath to uphold? Musharraf has all the guns (Army) so it may mean risking your own life.

That is one of the things I like about the law. Yes, this appears to be a dangerous but fulfilling profession. If you know me or have read this blog, you know that I once thought I wanted to be a professor and spent two years on grad school researching Nietzschean philosophy. But in the end, it held very little meaning. The law presents real moral, ethical, and philosophical issues almost every day. It is applied philosophy, because underneath all of the obtuse decisions by the supreme court is a client, whether that client is man on death row or the most powerful government in the world. Even my work as an intern at a municipal prosecutor's office comes with considerable power. The possibility of getting an article published on environmental visions of Nietzsche's philosophy pales to getting $50,000 bail set on a guy who was carrying a Glock 9 and violating a protection order.

Basically, I spent a long time looking for a job that I really enjoyed, and I finally found it. Although it is kind of hard to feel right now as I move into the 100th minute of Business Entities Class. I better not speak too negatively about this area of law or I am apt to end up practicing at a transactional law firm. (Many of you know that the law school gods have this power). That aside, there was a line in the movie Braveheart that I have always found inspiring: "you are not really living until you found something worth dying for." I am sure glad I don't have to risk my life to practice law in this country, but that is probably what a bunch of Pakistani lawyers are feeling right now.