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.

Last Semester

I apologize for the lack of posting lately. Honestly, I really have not even been on my computer much at all except for what has been necessary at work. And besides work, I have not really thought about the law since my last final. I started a trial last week, but it ended in a mistrial half way through the defendant's opening statements (not my fault,) which was kind of sweet because the defense counsel had been a bit of a jerk to me in the past and it was fun to see him squirm in front of the judge. Plus I did not like the jury and hope that the pool is better next time we get a crack at the case. But beside that, I have not thought much of the law. We took a weekend trip up to Pacific county because S had a hearing at the court house there. It felt very "My Cousin Vinny," except that I was in the Marisa Tomei without the knowledge of cars. The county only has one judge and probably only a handful of lawyers. It was not surprising that he thought he may have to conflict out on the case because he knew the parties. How do you avoid that in a small town like that. We stayed at a small hotel a block from the courthouse, which also happens to be in FEMA zone (last months floods.) There were FEMA agents staying in the room next to us. After the hearing was over, we went to the beach and practically got blown off our feet. We also visited a lighthouse and had oysters at Chester's bar and grill. I fit in in my flannel and beard. S was the only woman there, besides the bartenter, and the only woman with teeth. When the phone rang, the guy sitting at the bar said "if its my wife, tell her we're divorced." I started my reading for the semester toning. It included J.S. Mill's On Liberty--he did not know what a paragraph was and rambles on for long sentences before he actually says what he wants to say. I liked the subject matter just not how it was written. And then I had to read two articles about how the practice of law makes you a depressed alcoholic who trades free time, sanity, and health for money and the false dream of a meaningful profession. I think the profession, for professional responsibility, is going to try and impart some wisdom about how we might do things differently, but it sure does suck to have to read about how negative things have become for lawyers. Isn't there some inspiring stories about being a lawyer out there instead of this dribble about how much it sucks to work at a big firm billing 2200 hours for a six figure salary. I can tell you that much of the negativity is true based on what I see in those who graduated before me, but it is a little late for that. Greedy law schools have already let in too many helpless idealistic confused twenty three year olds right out of college with a dream of fast cars and downtown apartments to prevent the suffering that lies ahead. It is a good thing I went to law school because I saw how much working 60 hours a week in a kitchen could suck. It makes the long hours of the law seem pretty reasonable.

Well, there you have it. Some thoughts on the eve of my last semester of law school. I was hoping to take only easy classes that would let me slide by on a minimal amount of work, but because the registrar has done such a horrible job of creating a schedule I am stuck with what I have. One of my professions already wants us to turn in a thought piece for the first day of class. I hope that does not keep up. When I saw that, I looked for another available class, but I have to stick with it because administrative law lab is really not an option. Enough ramblings. I will probably be posting more often now that I have to sit through classes again. Yes, it is very clear I have senioritus, but can't I get a little break? This will be my 44th semester of school.

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.

Two-L 25

You have certainly heard of the "freshman 15," but you have probably not heard of the "two-l 25." With only my third year of law school ahead of me, I have taken a little time out to weigh the past two years. I see all of these one-ls coming in all fit and fresh and, in general, pretty darn healthy looking. They are coming off the summer after college, or a year off working at Starbucks, or volunteering for non-profits so that, well, at least their resume might look a little fatter. Even last year's one-ls look pretty the same as when they came in and seem to have worked off the stress eating from the first year, but those of us who have survived legal writing-two and two full summers of real legal work certainly have a little more to show for our efforts--and much of it around the waist.

Before I get to calling anyone fat, I am basing these observations on my own weight gain and statements made freely to me by others in my class. Second year is probably the busiest and most stressful part of law school. In addition, you have been living off student loans for a year, which means your budget for healthy food has been diminished for two years now. I weigh more now than I ever have before, approximately 25 more pounds than I weighed at the beginning of law school (when, if you remember, I worked all day on my feet in a hot kitchen.) The law is very much a sedentary profession. Even in court, while I might be on my feet, I don't move around too much. And it is a busy profession, which means it feels like you don't have time to sit and eat slowly and healthfully (which may not actually be the case, but that is what it feels like.)

The good news is that your first year in practice looks to be even busier so that there won't even be time to eat, so those 25 pounds come off pretty quickly after getting your bar number. I also seem to have hit a plateau, so if I can get some regular exercise this semester, as I plan, I may actually start moving in the other direction.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Weekend Update II

Before the weekend gets too far away, I wanted to finish the posts I have been meaning to wright about it. On Saturday I celebrated my 30th Birthday. It was a great night. I invited a bunch of friends to come bowling with me (to get in the mood of the year I was born.) Even people who did not think they were going to bowl got on the rented shoes and rolled. There is just something so fun about knocking things down, especially when you throw in your friends and a bunch of pitchers. I must be getting old though, because I didn't end up in the gutter by the end of the night. I have learned recently that it takes a lot more out of me if I drink too much, so I have been taking it easy.

Also, now that I am getting older, I thought I should get a more clean cut hair cut. I had the barber chop off that mop that was growing on my head recently and I got rid of the mustache that was also taking us back to 1977. I almost look courtroom ready, but alas, I still have more than a year of school. It seems like too much school. I saw a friend from high school this weekend who started medical school the same time I started law school. He was out here during a break after finishing the first portion of the Boards. He is done with the classroom aspect of his education. What? Maybe you didn't read that right. Yes, in medical school, they understand that practical education is as important as classroom education. Law schools have not quite learned that. I think its because they don't want to give up that third year of tuition money, but from what I can tell, the third year is pretty much a waist. And it would be a lot more helpful if that year was used as part of a full year apprenticeship. I do not think anything will change any time soon, because the only people with the power to make that kind of change are people who have already completed law school and the bar exam. They simple do not have any motivation to make things more efficient.

I better get back to legal writing. I am going to a Mariner's game tonight, so that means I will not be getting anything done this evening. However, even at this late point in this semester, it is important to take a night off and to something fun.

Is School Over Yet?

It is getting harder and harder to stay motivated for school.  I can only imagine how ready I will be for law school to be over next year.  A colleague of mine just came by and said he felt like he was living Groundhog day and my girlfriend woke up this morning and said in half-consciousness but full earnestness: "isn't it Sunday?"



For those of you who read this and who go to school with me, stop by the Men's Law Caucus table and buy some baked goods for our bake sale.  We are also selling those cancer bracelet things to support research for testicular and prostate cancer.  One student already came up and said she has a friend who had testicular cancer and how goes by the nickname "one-nut." 



In other news, the prosecutor  scandal keeps going on.  I  had the opportunity to go have some beers with McKay last week under the auspice of discussing paper topics for his class.   We did not talk about the scandal at all and it  seems like he is ready for this whole thing to blow over; although people at the bar were buying us beers, so I didn't really complain.  We mostly talked about terrorism and whether or not it is a serious problem.  I did not think there was much debate about that and most of the public debate was on how to deal with terrorism, but it seems some people do not think terrorism is that big of an issue.  At a different event this weekend, I was accused of being Dick Cheney, because I said the issues of terrorism and the law will be important and changing for most of my legal career.  It has taken over four years for some of the prisoners at Guantanamo to get charged and sit before a commission.  Considering that fact, I do not know how anyone thinks these issues will go away anytime soon.  This is an important and changing area of law exactly because terrorism exists now as a particular form of violence against civilians which has grown in our fast moving media environment.  Never before could a band of armed rebels bomb a nation's soldiers thousands of miles away from home and have the news reach millions of citizens within hours.  Terrorism, as we know it, is only possible because the means of communication allow terror to spread. 

Sick Day

I have not taken a sick day like today in many years. I have asleep most of the day, only to awaken for some food and to walk the dog. Usually I can pull through the couple days a year when I get sick and make it to school, but this time it was too much. I think I have been fighting this for a while because I first starting feeling the symptoms a few minutes after I sent in the final copy of my Brief for legal writing last night at 11:00 P.M. It was a downhill slide from there. I must be in the mid-two-L slump. Life as a lawyer still feels very far away, and I do not feel like school is getting me very prepared. I am going through the motions, but I don't feel like I would know what I am doing if I was out there practicing. Maybe it is a good thing then that being a lawyer still feels far away.



The problem with legal writing is that you spend 8 weeks working on the same brief. If you make mistakes, you don't get to really learn from them because you only really write two briefs in the semester. It seems like it would be better if we spent less time on each brief and wrote more of them. Over the course of last year's legal writing class, I wrote four memos, and the last was considerably better than the first. That was the result of making mistakes on the first two and having an opportunity to start from the beginning on later memos without making the same problems. With this kind of learning, repetition is the key. I will stop complaining about legal writing now. Complaining about that class at law school is endemic. You would think we would all be more appreciative considering we supposedly have the number one legal writing program in the country.



Time to go back to bed. This has been too much thinking for my sick head today.

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Group Work

I am inherently averse to group work at school. I rarely study as part of a study group, and when I do, I do so only on a limited basis. It is not that I don't think groups can be helpful or even productive, but that is often the exception rather than the rule. I have said this here before, but there are people in law school who really shouldn't be there. A girl in my medical liability class responded to the professor's question about whether medicine was an exact science by saying: "Um, like, isn't that what we are learning in this class?" I wonder how she got into undergrad, let alone law school. Of course I want everyone to learn and be successful at law school, but there comes a point where you have to watch out for yourself. If that student asked me to be part of a study group I would decline without hesitation.



Group work can be a pleasure, and I am excited about my group for my forensics class. Everyone in the group is very intelligent, does their work independently, and when we get together, we do so for a limited amount of time to focus on the task at hand. It can work. The law, probably like most professions, requires skills of both independent work and group work. No one can get through law school alone, but for any group to work, each person has to bring a relatively equal amount of knowledge to the table, albeit different knowledge. We all see different things and focus on different aspects of a case or a project and by combining the different views, we all know more. You would think that with all of the cut-throat pressure of the One-L year, some of the idiots would have failed out and you could put a good group together with about any set of students. Not the case, and the same is probably true in practice.

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Men's Law Caucus and Other News

I apologize for the long neglect of this blog. I have not gone this long between posting since I began blogging. There are multiple reasons for my absence, the major one being law school. Sometimes it simply takes up all of my intellectual energies. My reservoir of resources was spent on establishing the Men's Law Caucus, which required two appearances before the Student Bar Association Board, a meeting with the Deans, a meeting with the Women's Law Caucus, a meeting with our to-be faculty advisor, and lots of politicking. The work paid off. Not only were we approved along a 12-1 vote with two abstentions, but we earned the respect of the SBA board by our respectful and persistent submission to the Boards, sometimes hostile, questioning. No previous group has been submitted to such scrutiny, which can be seen in one of two ways.

Either we were victims of some sort of reverse discrimination. Or we are simply on the cutting edge, which always creates resistance. I do not feel in any way like a victim. That might in itself be an indicator that things are still pretty good for an upper middle class white male. I would rather think that the lively discourse was the result of our little organization being on the cutting edge. We are pushing the envelop, so it seems quite normal to me that we would be treated differently. I am unsure if the difference in treatment should amount to "discrimination." It might in the most technical sense, but part of the reason we set out to set up this organization was to stir the soup. We like the shock value of out name and we think the shock has been productive in furthering the conversation on gender at law school, in the profession, and in personal relationships in general.

On a somewhat related note, I won the pot at our regular poker night. It is nice to win, and I will never turn down the $35 I took home after a night of fun, but winning is not really the point. The point is to get together with a bunch of friends who are very busy and have an activity that allows us to keep our minds busy while we laugh and relax. It was during a poker night that we decided to start the Men's Law Caucus after all. In the end, the organizations main purpose is based on this premise: the law should be fun. Yes, the law is very serious. Peoples lives are sometimes in your hands and often their money, their home, or their business, but it is a very fun profession. Like poker, sometimes you will loose, and sometimes you will make it big, but what would be the point of all the work if it was not fun?

I will trying and write more often. Until then. . .

Nothing Specific

I do not have anything specific to write about today, but it seems like a long time since I have written. In the meantime, I have received all of my grades. I stopped short of submitting an article along the same lines as my last post to the Prolific Reporter (our law school weekly publication) on the advise of someone who knows much more about university politics than me. I am happy with this discretion. I can get away with a lot more in this blog than in the more public forum of the PR, and the last thing I need is to piss off a bunch of law school professors. If I am going to do that, I am going to take some precautionary steps first like suggesting my late grade fee plan to the administration. Maybe that can be one of the projects of the new law school group that I am founding with some other students: The Men's Law Caucus.

Our school already has a Woman's Law Caucus, and while they admit men , they are decidedly focused on issues of women in the law, which is a good thing. There are also lots of other groups, 32 in all, that fulfill the needs law students who either have a specific political leaning, interest in a particular area of law, or who share a certain ethnic identity. There is, however, no group for students who are not politically active "ethnic" students interested in the study of business law (for example). I heard that some students at the University of Washington started a Men's Law Caucus, but it became somewhat controversial because they never went through the official process for starting an organization and printed up a bunch of t-shirts that could be interpreted as mocking the Woman's Law Caucus. While I do find it kind of amusing when I tell people we are starting a Men's Law Caucus, my intention in helping found this group was not to mock. I talked with a lot of students who said they wanted to be involved in a law school group for the camaraderie, the networking opportunities, and for their resumes, but did not know where they fit in with the other groups. So we are just a law school group for a law school group's sake!

What I did not forsee is that this group is basically shaping up to be a fraternity. Never did I think I would be part of a fraternity; although, never did I imagine I would be a lawyer. On the other-hand, I am very excited, and I think it is going to be a lot of fun. We are planning a charity poker night event, a charity run, and possibly a law school "Man of the Year" talent show. We also hope to sell Men's Law Caucus briefs with the words "Case Briefs" printed on them (law school joke.) Look for them coming soon!

We go before the Student Bar Association board next Monday and ask for approval. The only thing we have left to do is find a professor who will be our faculty advisor. In that, I am very grateful I did not piss off the law professors by proposing a fee for turning in late grades.

Late Grades

Some days I feel I am getting ripped off by my law school. When all is said and done, my legal education is going to cost me the price of a small house in some states (probably not Seattle because of the out-of-control housing market.) I realize that I am getting a pretty good product for my money, and after I have passed the bar, start working, build a successful practice and work honestly and hard, a law license can be a license to print monety. However, that does not mean that I should not expect the highest quality from my professors and my school.

If you think back a month ago, I was just finishing up my finals. As a matter of fact, I took my first final six weeks ago. With the exception of extreme weather, which is a real possibility this winter, or sickness, if I showed up late for any final, I would be failed in that class without exception. Whereas the standard for students is quite high, our esteemed professors live under a somewhat more relaxed standard. The deadline to turn in grades was last Friday, and it is not unusual for the registrar to take some time trying to sort out grading curves and such, but I would expect to have most of my grades by this point. Not so. I am lucky to have two of my five grades. I talked with a student today who hasn't received any grades yet. There are some classes where this situation is shameful; I hada class with 9 students in it and we all turned in papers 5 weeks ago and we have not received grades yet. Also, this class is not even curved, so the grades cannot be held up in some administrative process. The only answer is that the professor has simply has not finished. (I found him totally incompetent to teach, so I don't know why I thought he would be competent to grade our papers)

I propose a new system. I even understand that several law schools already have this system in place. For every day that a professor is late in turning in grades, he/she will be charged 100 dollars to be placed in a fund for student organizations. Every students who completed a course has already fulfilled his/her contractual obligations of paying the university, attending classes, and taking the final, but in this bargain, the deans, the administrators, and the professors have all the power-- at least for the meantime!

Court Rules!

If you could not tell from previous posts, I began law school with a certain innocent ignorance. Not having had much experience with the law, luckily, I had very little understanding about how the law actually worked. Also, until recently, I had not exhibited any interest in the legal profession, and I still find myself asking: "how did I end up here?" No matter how I arrived half way through law school, I am glad to be here, but to be honest, I do not feel I know that much more now than when I started. At least I am smart enough to know that is both true and false.

It is true that I am still quite ignorant of how one would prosecute a law suit through the legal system. Sure I am more familiar with some substantive theories of liability and the basic procedural framework, but the day to day experience of court feels very foreign. It is false because if I really look back and compare what I know now with what I knew the summer before entering school, it is quite staggering. Although less ignorant, I still feel quite innocent. I am still amazed at the legal method for resolving conflicts. When you consider the intensity of conflict that can arise between two parties, it is shocking that the law actually works. This trick seems to stem from several aspects of the law that allow for resolution. First, the evidentiary rules limit the facts that parties can actually argue. Having to introduce only relevant evidence, the conflict is condensed to be more manageable. Secondly, while the law does change, in many ways, the law is the law. Parties must argue to either conform or differentiate the facts from the law, but before a case gets to the level of appeals, the judge must apply the law. Finally, everybody has to follow the rules; otherwise, it would not work. Your client may hate the opposing party, but as a lawyer, you can only make any reasonable argument why you should win. Your power comes from knowledge, persuasion, ethics, and creativity and not by pure force (knowing the judge probably helps).

All of this might see painfully obvious. I guess I am trying to come to terms with the legal profession that I am becoming more and more enamored of. On the other-hand, I still feel very intimidated by this profession. It may sound simple, but that does not mean that it is. Right now, the time when I will feel comfortable in a court room feels very far off. Tonight, these are just the ramblings of a tired law student at the end of what felt like a very long week.

Semester Preview

I am just about to head to class for the beginning of a new semester. As much as last semester was focused on the more philosophical and theoretical questions of the constitution and policy, this semester is going to be a focus on the nitty-gritty details of contemporary litigation. I have legal writing again this semester, where I will be preparing pre-trial and appellate briefs and making oral arguments. I am also taking evidence and forensics, which I will hopefully be able to put to use this summer after I get my Rule 9 certification (a limited license to practice law prior to passing the bar and under direct supervision of an attorney.) Unfortunately, because I am doing plaintiff's work, we do whatever we can to resolve claims before they ever see a court room. Still, the statutes are about to run on a bunch of our cases, so I might get some court time after all.

I do have a couple of substantive courses to balance out the procedural emphasis of this semester. My medical liability course looks fairly interesting. My doctor/med school friends have already put in a request that I fall on the defense side of that issue. Then there is the class I am most looking forward to, constitutional law and terrorism. Our professor is the U.S. Attorney for the Western States and we are going to have a lot of really interesting speakers in that class. I am sure I will be tying in some of the topics from that course to posts on this blog. It is nice to have a class that is so contemporary as to be in the news daily. We are Reading Hamdan v. Rumsfeld for the first class and meeting with the former defense council for detainees in Guantanamo.

Looks to be an interesting semester. I will keep you all updated as it shapes up.

Half Way

Believe it or not, I am almost half way through law school. The almost consists of finishing my constitutional law take home final, but I do not have much more to go. I just handed in my 25-page paper surveying governmental programs dealing with homelessness, which you can download here if you are interested. It is definitely not my best work. The class was a lot of fluff. We went on three field trips, and when we were in class we either had guest speakers or watched PBS documentaries from the late 80s on dislocated populations. I have never done so much research on the Internet for a paper before. I went to college at a time when teachers still frowned upon using the Internet for research, but I think things have gotten a lot better since then. People were afraid they would not be able to verify information, but now that so many legitimate sources publish their information on the web, it seems archaic to go to the library and root through volumes of journals. Anyway, I will post again this weekend with a semester wrap up.