Lies about Law School

This is the first in a series of posts I want to write in the coming weeks. Now that I am in the last half of my last semester in law school, I think I am entitled to indulge in a bit of reflection on the whole process.

If you are thinking about going to law school and happened to stumble upon this page, there are some important things to consider about law school before you make your decision that you will not find in your law school's brochure. In fact, they are going to make sure you don't understand them until after the deadline for receiving a refund on your first semester has pasted. If after you have read this and still want to go to law school, then you should go; otherwise, find a different career.

Lie #1: After you get accepted, everything will be OK.
Almost everyone I know in law school has told me that when applying to law school they thought that as soon as they got accepted, everything else in their career would fall into place; they, and I, believed that once you were in the door, your first internship would be lined up, then your first job, then your meteoric rise in whatever field you accepted, and then partnership. The real competition is against those who are trying to get into law school! False. In fact, once you are in, getting accepted is meaningless, because now you are competing with the accepted students for the limited internships and later you will compete with all those young lawyers from all the law schools and in their first five years of practice for your first job. At least when you are applying for law school, you are not facing the impending doom of your student loan repayment grace period ending six months after you graduate.

On a positive note, during your first semester you will probably be thinking: wow, there are a lot of really smart people here, but by your third year, you will wonder how most students ever got into law school.

Three-L

I think I am enjoying school right now more than I have since my One-L year. As much as the One-L year was stressful, it was also new, so my interest remained piqued a lot of the time. My motivation over the next three semesters progressively dwindled. Because of a combination of actually working in the legal field and getting better at learning exactly what I needed to learn to do well on the exams, much of the reading seemed superfluous and the classes painfully uninteresting compared to court. This semester, my attitude is a bit different. I don't know if is the fact that I only have four classes and only on two days a week, or if I am enjoying the specific classes that I have, or if the thought of the bar exam and finding a job is so daunting that being in school does not seem so bad. I think it is the latter. I realized that it might be a long time before I get to be in a seminar political theory with 4 other students and an expert in the field and have a conversation for two hours a week. There will never be a job where ethical issues are presented like interesting problems to puzzle over as they are in my professional responsibility. And there will never be a trial like the one I am preparing for in trial clinic class where no one has to pay any money or go to jail at the end. After twenty years of schooling, the real world has to come at some point, and, honestly, I do look forward to the responsibility of having a real job as a real lawyer with real consequences, but I sure am going to enjoy the time I have left in school while it lasts.

Freedom of Press

Bill of Rights: Amendment 1

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Suppression of Free Speech?

I promise I will get away from political issues and back to the law soon. As a note about my previous two posts, I understand now why some of the normal election regulations did not apply to the caucuses. The caucuses are private events run and funded by the political parties. As far as this post goes, I am concerned about this trend of our public representatives asking private individuals/companies to limit speech they find offensive. This reminds me of when Harry Ried wrote a letter to Clear Channel asking them to fire Rush Limbaugh for comments he made on the air. The speech that the founders were particular concerned with protecting is political speech. That means the freedom to comment on any figure in the political, public sphere. I hope NBC puts Schuster back on air soon and Clinton should take some lessons from Obama on how to brush off inappropriate comments made by pundits who have to somehow fill 24 hours of news each day.

Personal Info

Well, the democratic party is not requiring that you have any kind of identification when you show up at the caucuses this saturday (see previous post,) but they would like you to provide them with all sorts of personal information such as your name (duh,) address (duh,) phone number and e-mail. In addition, they want to know your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender in order to use affirmative action to create a diverse delegate pool. I guess diversity is more important than whether you are a registered voter or not.

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20080207/NEWS01/24161373/-1/RSS02

Election Law

We received a piece of junk mail today-well, not exactly junk mail. We received a political flyer. It was an endorsement ad for Hillary Clinton from the American Federation for State, County, and Municipal Employees. In addition to promoting their endorsement, the last page explained how to caucus, which takes place here this Saturday. I was struck by one of the explanation which stated:

"You don't need to bring ID, but you should bring your family and coworkers."

It caused me to wonder, what is stopping me from renting a bus, driving to eastern Washington, paying a bunch of illegal farm immigrants to drive over for the day, give them lunch, and get them to caucus for the person I wished. Wondering if this could possibly be true and wondering what the flyer was trying to encourage from Hillary supporters, I called the caucus hotline and asked the person on the other end of the line that exact question, and he answered: "Well, technically you could do that." To my question of how the precinct determines if the caucus goers are even registered voters, he said that all someone needs to do is sign a statement at the door. I may not know that many illegal Mexicans, but I could probably round up a group of felons. From reading all the police reports I read, I know where they like to hang out.

I simply do not believe that requiring people to have an ID disenfranchises anyone. Anyone who is legally allowed to vote can get a license, or an ID card and the fact that some people are too lazy to get an ID does not mean they are disenfranchised.

But I didn't get into this with the volunteer on the other end. I just asked where my precinct was and will go to add my one vote, and whatever posse of registered voters want to come with me.