Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas. Well, Christmas is mostly over. I am heading back to work after a wonderful couple of days of relaxation. I had to move, again, but after that was over I had plenty of time to hang out with the dogs, read books I wanted to read, and cook. I even made bread today, which is one of those hobbies that has unfortunately gone to the wayside since starting law school.

At least I am only just heading back to work and have another three weeks before my last semester begins. If I passed Business Entities, I will only have four classes this next semester. I have 3 credits in the bank from that dreadful summer Administrative Law class. That should leave me some time to actually learn the law. As I have said many times before, I learn a lot more by doing the law than by reading about others doing, messing up, appealing, having their case decided, published and deemed important enough to be put in a text book.

For example, between my finals I did a trial. All the senior prosecutors said it was a dog of a case. We tried it anyway. The outcome, however, isn't important. The jury was hung like a . . . jury that could not agree, but at least we got a majority of the jurors to agree with us and maybe he will take our plea or we will take another crack at it. Again, the outcome is not as important as what I learned in that case: Doing direct and cross is difficult!

I had a moment during closing arguments where I really hit my stride. I had at least a majority of the jurors right with me; I was off the script speaking directly with the jury, convincing them that I was right; it was smooth and clear and fun. The same cannot be said of the testimony part of the trial. Closing is theater; testimony, on the other-hand is difficult and technical. It is so hard to get from your witness all the information you want without the stuff you do not want and cross can easily get out of your control and meander into an area you do not want to visit. It is so hard to tell a story using other people's words without being able to tell them what to say or how to say it and have it all make sense to a jury. It must take a lifetime to really get good at taking testimony. I think opening and closing are really very simple compared to testimony. Learning that is going to take many, many trials and a lot of mistakes.

And that is why I need free time from law school to learn the law.

final wait

I have to blog from my phone because my computer is in test lockdown mode. I am finished with my community property exam, but I have to wait for the whole time to elapse before I can leave (for lunch-I have another exam tonight) I donot know if it is in a good sign I finished early. either I totally knew what I was doing or I did not know enough to keep writing. Or I couldjust blame it on the force conciseness of page limits.

Funny Moment

People slip up and mis-speak all of the time. It happens in court pretty regularly. An attorney-that we all find very slimy and stupid-was arguing a Crawford motion last week when ask the court to indulge him for a few minutes while he explained what Scalia really meant. We all already know he is an idiot and instead of actually lawyering he usually just puts on a show for his client, but he appeared especially idiotic when he pronounced Scalia like scale-i-a. And his argument went down hill from there. While his mis-speak can be chalked up to just being a despicable, lazy, idiot of an attorney, sometimes it is simply an accident, or maybe a Freudian slip. Check out the MSNBC reporter Contessa Brewer:


Either she just had a slip up, or that is how her and the fellow reporters talk about the polls in the break room and habit just took over. Either way, it is pretty funny.

Finals

Its finals week again. I have a whole day ahead of me studying corporate formation and insider trading. It is not exactly my favorite subject but because I have not been as diligent through the semester as I probably should have been, it is going to be a full day. The thing that is keeping me going at this point is the fact that I only have one more semester left. The bar exam is no longer this abstract event somewhere off in the future but something I need to think about and plan for, and graduate law school for--hence my motivation for actually learning business entities.

In the past, I have blogged a lot during finals, but when you have 15 weeks of derivative suit litigation to memorize, it leaves fewer time to blog away, but I will sneak in a few posts. Apropos blogging--guess who else blogs? Let me give you a hint: he's short, always wears a tan jacket, doesn't own a tie, and denies the holocaust. Yes, you're right! Its the Ahmadinejad blog. There are blogs of political dissent and advertising blogs and far too many law school blogs, but this one falls into propoganda blogs. Its kind of interesting that he appears so excited to have a free forum to express his ideas when there is lots of documented suppression of political bloggers in Iran and censorship of the internet. (read more here and here). One of the rationalizations you hear for why censorship of the internet is good is that it keeps out western values that could corrupt the Iranian culture. I wonder if one of those western values is free speech.

Laws the Movie