2-L Dilemna

I feel a bit of a quandary right now. I don't feel the same enthusiasm about the law that carried me through my first year and part of the second. Maybe this is simply the 2-L doldrum before seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. My 3-L friends are all talking about graduation. Yes, the terror of the bar exam looms silently over their graduation party plans, but there is an overwhelming sense of relief when they talk about law school. We, the 2-Ls, law school's middle child have only another year of school ahead of us.

Work has also not helped. I have only been able to work a day or a day and one half each week all year long. This places limits on how involved with work I can become. It feels like I go in, spend a few hours remembering what I was doing, do a little bit of work, and then am gone for another week. One thing I look forward to this summer is being able to work 5 days a week.

Until then, all I can do is just push through the next three weeks. I have to write a 25 page paper on treason and terrorism, give my oral argument for legal writing, take my evidence exam, and write a take home exam. If the end of this semester goes as past have, I will probably be blogging more frequently.

Apropos blogging. We had a panel of journalists in our constitutional law and terrorism class yesterday. One of the journalist made reference a couple of times to those uncredible bloggers. I do not claim to be journalism, but as a blogger for the past couple of years, I feel a bond with those other self-made publishers and it is interesting to see how those in traditional arbiters of information feel threatened by rogue writers. However, one thing bloggers could probably use is some editors. There should exist a consortium of bloggers who also function as editors for each other's works. The same logic applies for movie directors who produce their own movies. (did you see that horrible Kong!) Without editors, we tend to just ramble on, so I will stop now.

Legal Writhing

My legal writing brief is due tomorrow, so I haven't been doing much more than that in the last couple of days. The problem I am up against now is that the school has placed an unrealistic page limit on our brief. I was looking through some Division II criminal briefs as examples and most of the briefs are over 30 pages and only cover two issues. We are expected to cover three issues and do it all in 25 pages. I know it is because the professors do not want to read more than that, but it is an unrealistic expectation. I realize that there is something to be learned by forcing conciseness and courts do not like excessive wordiness, but I definatly cannot get all my arguments covered in 25 pages. I have already cut two whole pages of text and have a page and one-half to go.

I'll admit it; I suffer from a specific writer's malady that makes cutting down tough. My ego is wrapped up with my writing, so when I cut out whole sentences, I feel like I am cutting something important out simply because I wrote it.

I should take some lessons from our new Chief Justice, John Roberts. In his first dissent for the court in Massachusetts v. EPA, he wrapped up his views in 14 pages. Granted, justices have more leeway in dissenting opinions because they do not have to worry about being binding. It is simply a place for them to say how the rest of the judges got it wrong, and he dismissed the case based on standing. Regardless of the merits of his global warming opinion, his writing style is wonderful. He is very concise and easy to read, especially compared to Steven's majority opinion. The other thing that worries me about Steven's opinion is the creation of a new basis for standing, a "special solicitude" for Massachusetts. Robert's called this "an implicit concession that petitioners cannot establish standing on traditional terms" Id at 44. The majority creates a new standing doctrine without citing any precedence. Maybe this is revenge by the liberal justices for the court choosing Bush as president in 2000, or as one blogger said, this case should be renamed Bush v. Gore's Movie.

We're number 2!

All of us who have legal writing this semester are under the thumb of our appellate brief. Our school prides itself on having a very good legal writing program. I have no doubt that there is some truth to that. We used to be number one. Even Harvard uses the textbook written by the professors in our department. But this year we fell a spot to number two. You can tell that some of the teachers and the administration had its pride hurt a little bit. When they sent out a school-wide e-mail with the new rankings, they included a rationalization for how we could have slipped a spot: the number one school hosted the major legal writing conference this year, so that must have been the reason they were number one. How else could Mercer University, who no one has ever heard of, have beat us?

It is probably good that they got a bit humbled. When you are number one, you stop working as hard. For example, I asked my legal writing professor to explain why you only put facts after the when clause of an issue statement. Her first response was: that's what the book you are supposed to be reading tells you to do. I was a little shocked. I know what the rule was, but I was still making the same mistake, so I was hoping she could explain it. Normally I like her hands off attitude, but it bugs me that I should be doing something simply because the book tells me to do it that way. However, in the end, that seems to be what legal writing teaches you: how to write the way you are supposed to write because we tell you what the rule is. It does not require thinking per se. It requires creative plagiarism.

Feeling Better

I am feeling much better today. I spent Thursday afternoon and most of Friday in bed again and by mid day Friday my fever had broken. I don't have my full energy back, but I no longer feel sick. All this means that I have to face law school again. I was able to get some work done while horizontal, but I am not sure how much actually stuck.



Mostly I read the trial transcript for the appellate brief I have to write in Legal Writing, which was pretty entertaining. It seems like criminal defense attorneys are the only attorneys who are pretty much allowed to blatantly lie in the court. The defendants were charged with methamphetamine manufacturing. Neither took the stand, but during his closing argument, the attorney for one of the defendant's kept going on that there were many other plausible arguments for the chemicals that were found in his small trailer. For example, he was a pack-rat on a mission to clean up the world, which explains why he had a mason jar full of coffee filters testing positive for psudophedrine residue. Also, it is equally as believable that the chemicals found that are normally used in meth production could have been used for cleaning rocks-a legitimate purpose; and my client could be a rock collector! Did the attorney really think the jury was going to buy that argument. I am sure the defendant was sitting in the courtroom and I doubt he looked like your rock collecting type. (come to think of it, isn't rock collecting a thing pot smoking hippies do? That association wouldn't help him though) Those two "other possible stories," which were supposed to raise a reasonable doubt in the jury came along in a string of possible stories, which would only lead me to think as a juror: "this guy is just making this stuff up."



Can you tell I am writing from the State's perspective? The interesting thing about the case, the real case, is that I am pretty sure the guy was cooking meth, but after being convicted by the jury, his conviction was overturned by the appeals court because of bad cops (improper search). This raises a question that we, as a nation and as lawyers, have been struggling with for a long time: why should we allow a criminal to get free just because the cops showed up at his place and entered inappropriately? On the other-hand, I like the idea of cops not being allowed to come into my apartment for no apparent reason. I guess in our constitutional balance we allow some guilty men walk so we don't innocent men are not charged and we can all be more secure in our person and possession.



Well, I better go start doing my research for this rather than just keep blabbing on. Happy weekend y'all.

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Winterland

We are having wild weather here in Seattle this winter. The city is covered in snow again. It seems like schools are closed at least one day a week for the last two months and I have been wearing my warmest winter clothes that I never even unpacked last year. I feel like I am back in Colorado again, which I prefer to last January when we were in the middle of 30 days of constant rain. The only real inconvenience I have had to deal with is the ice sheet I have to pass on my walk to school. It was almost impossible when I walked to campus yesterday in my dress shoes to give my first oral argument for legal writing. I thought it went pretty well. I do not really have a problem getting up in front of others and talking. It is not much different than teaching, and same rule applies: the better prepared you are, the better it goes. That is the same principal that applied to working in restaurants; there, prep takes much more time than actully cooking. The difference with the law is the proportions. An oral argument before the appeals court is 10 minutes long, and most lawyers would be commiting malpractice if they did not spend at least 10 times that amount of time in preperation, and most probably spend more like 100 or 1000 times that. Well, I better go start preparing. . .