Oh my where the time goes. . .

I just realized that school starts this week and I have not blogged in almost a month. I guess I have been too busy to blog, so I will try and summaries a few of the highlights from the past weeks.

At work, probably the biggest highlight was that I did my first jury trial. I always thought I would spend lots of time preparing for my first trial, but this did not happen like that. I learned about a half-hour before it began that my case would be going and another prosecutor asked if I had voir dire prepared. I had time to jot down a few notes, but mostly I had to wing it. It was a lot of fun, especially once I realized I was just having a conversation with the jury. There was a constant underlying fear that I would do something appealable (like call the defendant a liar,) but since there was a not-guilty verdict, any mistakes I made have long since been forgotten. It all went pretty well, except my testifying officer, when I asked him to name the defendant, used the first name of the defendant and the last name of the victim: it was an assault case: a bar fight to be more exact. It was not an easy case to get a guilty verdict. Essentially it came down to deciding who threw the first punch and I believe the jury just kind of threw up their arms and came back not-guilty (the judge said it was clear that the defendant was lying through his teeth on the stand, but why do you think his lawyer wanted a jury and not a bench trial.)

In my own defense for not blogging, I was gone for a whole week in Alaska. Here is a picture of a grizzly bear we saw:



I really liked Alaska. Granted we only saw a very little of it (only a week cruise up the inland passage) but it still maintains such wilderness as I have never experienced, unlike Colorado, Washington, or anywhere else I have been. If we ever run away from it all, it is to Alaska we will go.

And now school starts this week. I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays this week, so tomorrow is going to be just a plain old work day for me--except that I have to do homework. I have successful forgotten about homework until, well, right about now when I am going to start reading. As you can tell, I have chosen to blog instead. That must mean school has started. I am already looking for distractions. This is supposed to be the year they bore you to death.

There is really a lot more that happened in the last month, but sometimes life is just meant to be lived and not recorded.

Invisible Rope Trick

Funny

Non-Legal Observation

Ice-cream trucks are not what they used to be. I remember the ice-cream trucks of my childhood to be true vending vehicles, with a window that opened up in the back and no doors. They were more like small UPS trucks, painted white and covered with pictures of their sweet selections.

The ice-cream truck that passes through our apartment complex is a sad comparison. It is nothing more than an old 80's model Astro Van with the pictures of ice-cream plastered over the outside in a haphazard manner. You can see the empty boxes that used to hold the ice-cream piled up in the back seats and the music, which was always annoying, plays especially slow like the machine that generates those ice-cream truck melodies is not getting enough power.

The kids still flock, but they don't know what they are missing.

Only a Fool

The saying that he who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer is certainly true. It seems like the people least capable of representing themselves are the ones who try and get rid of their public defenders. I that if you are paranoid schizophrenic you might be upset that your lawyer is speaking with other lawyers, but that is exactly why you need an attorney. I don't envy the public defenders. It is really nice not to have clients. As a prosecutor, our clients are the citizens of the city, but they do not call or miss their appointments.

What I read at work nad what I do to forget it

This is one of the funniest, albeit saddest, lines I have read in a police report for work. I have redacted any names but have preserved the text almost entirely:

"she said she was a 24-7 drunk but the crack has helped her get off alcohol. She said crack cocaine is better for her than alcohol because she at least knows who she is waking up with now"

It is a good thing I got away to the mountains for a week of camping. Hundred year old trees, campfires, and naps in the afternoon help restore one's sense of humanity.

Summer Time

I have not had that much to blog about lately. Last time I was just about to head out on my ride along, but it was far less exciting than you might imagine. Mostly I stood around while the officer took witness statements from cases that had happened earlier that day. The only person we arrested was a guy who was waiting at the station when we returned claiming to have outstanding felony warrants. It was true that he had warrants, and he was arrested, but he had his ID out and turned around, putting his arms behind his back before we even walked up. He was a bit entertaining because he had just put down a 12-pack of beer. I did get to see the booking process, and the fact that I was not accidentally shot is a good thing.

Otherwise I have been just going to work and taking care of the home life. I was in court solo for the first time yesterday. It was just contested infraction court. I guess I can count it as a win. The court did uphold the ticket, although he reduced the penalty. Lawyers usually do not go to those hearings, but the kid who was contesting his ticket had subpoenaed the officer so they sent m down to handle it. For the rest of the time I mostly handle the arraignments. I feel pretty comfortable talking in court. I find it easier than teaching. At least you know the judge is listening as opposed to the undergraduates who I used to teach.

That is about it. We have beautiful weather here, so I am trying to spend my free time outside and not at the computer.

ride-along

It has been very crazy since getting back. I have not caught up from being on vacation. The good news is that I am now authorized to speak in court (albeit still supervised for a while.) I have been handling the arraignment calender along with the new prosecutor. For those of you who do not know,that is when you tell a criminal the charge against them and give them a chance to plead guilty or not guilty (which happens most of the time.) It is pretty simple. The part that requires some thinking is if they want to plead guilty and you can present them with an offer, or when you are asking the court to set bail. When I am would get flustered on bail I would just defer to the court.

Well, I am off to watch cops arrest some criminals. I guess I will be arraigning them come monday morning.

wildlife and doctors

I saw this bighorn sheep on my drive out of the mountains. I did not want to leave it was such a beautiful day in the mountains. Now I am in the dermatologists lobby. I used to get annual checkups,but during my wayward twenties I have not been here in seven years. I guess its part of my growing up that I am getting the once over by my dermatologists. I wonder if doctors are more careful with lawyers? my doctor friends definatly have had the fear of malpractice instilled in them. how much could go wrong taking off a mole anyway?

vacation

my body finally gave out on me after a crazy past six week which included finals, a move to a new city, and a new job. I spent the bulk of the last two days asleep on my parents couch with a cold. It doesnt help that I am experienceing a bit of altitude sickness for the first time in my life. It is a bit frustrating to have grown up in Colorado and feel the altitude so much. It doesnt help that my parents live at over 9000 feet. The mountain views and the sound of the creek make up for it. I hope I am feeling better for the bachelor party tomorrow. Otherwise I am going to exercise a lotof self controll.

our puppy

It works. I sent this picturefrom my phone.technology is cool. And to think, I used to be a ludite.

what a week. . .

Where do I begin. So much happened this week. I cannot even begin to describe to you all of the new experiences, starting with Monday morning arraignments in a courtroom packed with defendants, attorneys, families, cops, crazy guys in cuffs. I mostly just watch and try to absorb as much as I can. I have not gotten to do much yet. I am restricted from speaking in court until my Rule-9 card is approved by the Bar association (a limited license to practice law.) I have been in court every day. I watched a whole jury trial, sat through lots of motion calenders, have already seen a criminal plead out on Monday and get arraigned again on new charges on Thursday, have been to jail twice, found out the punk-kid who got the not-guilty verdict in our jury trial lives in my apartment complex, and am researching about drug paraphernalia.

And that was just at work. I also had a chance this week to meet, and briefly chat with the governor at a fund raiser I was invited to. Also present were lots of lawyers from the county, city counsel members, the county prosecutor, and other politically involved citizens. After two years of relatively limited assimilation in Seattle, I feel like I am part of a community after only living here for only about a month.

Oh, did I say, I really like criminal law. Now, I know it is only the first week, but I think I am going to really enjoy this work. One of the things I like is that half the time you are still sitting at a desk, but the rest of the time you are standing up in court. I am still a bit intimidated. Things move fast. The judge gets through about sixty cases in just over an hour during a trial call or arraignment. I am definitely not ready to keep all the paperwork together on my own, but they seem to be phasing me in slowly. In fact, I am going to be on vacation next week. So before I can gather more stories from the world of crime, I will be back in Colorado for a week.

As for blogging, I am trying to set up mobile blogging from my cell phone, so look for that in the interim.

New Direction

I start my new internship tomorrow. I am a little nervous. Even though I was not completely happy with the work at my old job, I knew what I was doing, and I felt pretty successful in my work, but starting tomorrow, I am going to be in completely new waters. It is not correct to say that I know nothing of criminal law. I took the required criminal law class; my legal writing II appellate brief dealt with a criminal issue; and, I have been in law school now for two years. Even though I am starting at the beginning again in some ways, I more prepared for legal work now than I did at the beginning of last summer. On the other-hand, this is all speculation now. I will probably be writing here later this week about how I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.

Besides being a little nervous, there are a lot of things I am looking forward to:

1. short commute. I only commuted from Everett to Bellevue for three weeks and that was enough for me. I am trying not to think about the fact that next fall I will still have to go to school. Is there some way I can skip my third year?

2. lots of court time. From what I can tell, I am going to be in court almost every day. We probably won't get any Paris Hiltons in municipal court here, but I am sure there will be plenty of drama. The other prosecutors I have met have lots of stories about defendants (mostly the stupid things they do.) I don't know if it is possible to do this work and not get jaded about crime. One long time prosecutor told me a story about how he saw an old man talking to child on the street one day and he was thinking "child-molester," but when he walked by he heard the child say "ok, grandpa."

3. connections. They tell you at the beginning of law school that you get your jobs from the people you know. That was not the case on the first job I got, but I had a little help on this one (I'll keep my sources secret.) Since I will be interning in Snohomish County/Everett, I am going to get to know other lawyers here, and I hope after I graduate I can get a job near here too. Apropos connections, tomorrow night I get join my girlfriends firm to dinner with the Governor. Our first question for her is going to be why it takes two and one-half hours to get a driver's license in this state. (now you know what I did Saturday)

4. a break from convincing insurance adjusters that $500 in property damage, and a two month delay before an injured individual seeks chiropractic care can still mean a person was severely injured. Anything can happen, but I am just ready to advocate for some different clients.

A shave and a hair cut

For those of you who do not see me on a regular basis were probably surprised to see my clean face and short hair. I have had that look for a while. It is part of my "look like I could fit in in a courtroom look," and it seems to have paid off. I was just offered a new job this afternoon. No, not at the firm that would not call me back. He did not offer me the job. I finally called after three weeks and he told me he offered it to someone else (thanks for letting me know.) Its the other job I applied for: law enforcement (darn, I should have kept the mustache, but then I might get mistaken for a cop.) I will be starting an internship at the City of Everett Prosecutor's Office next week. I should fit in as a prosecutor with the clean shave. It sounds like they will get me into court as soon as possible, which is exactly what I wanted. I will be mostly working on DUIs, domestic violence, and other municipal criminal violations, but it sounds like the perfect place to get my feet wet, and I no longer have to commute to bellevue. I am a little nervous, but I'll get over that.

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. 

An all-nighter puts me three down, two to go

I pulled my first all-nighter of law school last night. It was probably avoidable, but I had too good of a weekend to regret anything now. In fact, I find that as I worked through the night on my treason and terrorism paper, I was enjoying law school about as much as I have all semester. This has been a very disjointed semester, and I have not been able to get excited about my work until these last minute spurts of engagement. I believe I have been writing about this two-L slump for a while now and today, on two hours of sleep, and two finals still ahead of me, I do feel I am being worked to death.

I had my appellate argument on Friday afternoon, which was probably the best part of legal writing all semester. After 15 weeks of working on the same case, all I had to do was get up in front of a bunch of wanna-be judges (local attorneys) and discuss the most important issues. It was actually quite enjoyable, which is just further proof to myself that I want to be in a courtroom. My forensics class wrapped up last Wednesday, and a few hours ago I turned in my paper for Constitutional law of Terrorism. All I want to do now is sleep. The worst thing is that my computer has been acting a bit weird for the past couple of days and now I am just hoping it will get me through the week. I don't really need any notes off of the computer because for the two classes I have left, I have pretty much stopped taking notes in class. I also don't brief cases anymore or make outlines and with Legal Writing II this semester, there were many a days when it was lucky if I had done the reading for evidence. I guess that means I have five days to learn everything for the exam.

I have had a hard time knowing what to write here lately. I think it reflects my general malaise with law school. I am in the process of looking for a new job right now, so I don't even really have much enthusiasm for my work. I am not unhappy there, but I am going to be moving north and I want to make the commute easier and maybe work for an attorney who gets into the courtroom more often. The key to the personal injury mill that I work at now seems to be to stay out of court. It works for her and I have leaned a lot, but it is time to move on. I am going to miss that job, but I have been bored there for a couple of months cranking out the same negotiation letters to adjusters. I still enjoy that game, but I would like to mix it up with some real court time, especially since I can qualify for a rule 9 (limited license to practice law under the supervision of an attorney) after this semester.

Again, I do not know what to write about. Maybe the lack of sleep is affecting me. I felt great all through the night and was really enjoying the mental puzzle of whether or not treason could be used as an effective tool in the war on terror. I will be posting my paper online here shortly if anyone is interested in reading it. I was actually quite pleased with the final product.

I am boring myself here, so I won't make you read anymore.