Training Day

Today was a bit of a breakthrough for me. Not one of those beautifully poetic "everything in law finally makes sense to me - I *will* be a great lawyer!" sort of breakthroughs, though...more like a "finally, I can make it through a day of classes without being haplessly lost at some point" breakthrough. For the past week or so, I've been pretty solid for two of my three full-day-of-classes classes, but today my high school debate experience proved unexpectedly useful in a discussion about federalism (summarily abbreviated as 'fism' in my notes, as has been the case since 9th grade) and centralization/decentralization (aka the states CP in high school policy debate).

When I got unexpectedly called on in my small group (I read most of my con law cases on the computer rather than printing them out - I think this makes me somewhat vulnerable to the target of 'let's try to find someone who's surfing the internet' cold calls in small group, but I prefer to save some trees...and some money...so I guess a few targeted questions is the price I pay instead), I took a broad sweeping guess at something as vague as possible (I really had no idea what he was asking, and I had only just read (read: skimmed) the opinion about an hour beforehand) - and it turns out that me saying the word "...goal...?" was just what he was looking for. Score.

Then, in an in-class brainstorming session, I managed not to sound like an idiot when comparing centralized and decentralized models of power. That's some states counter-planning for you.

This was in the afternoon, following a morning in which my procedure class was presented with our 'client,' for whom we're supposed to write a complaint this week with a partner. We got to pepper him with questions for about an hour, and it was really quite interesting to think about how the process of client intake happens, especially in cases like this hypothetical one, in which an individual is alleging some sort of (religious? gender?) discrimination. I felt like I managed to ask a few interesting, probing questions - and I was doubly impressed by everyone else's line of questioning. Clearly, we really have no idea what we're doing, and there were a few light moments, such as: "Other than not using condoms, how do you practice your [Catholic] religious beliefs?" ...but come next Wednesday when our assignment is due, we'll have taken our first step toward being competently practicing lawyers from a school that our professor insists doesn't really teach us how to practice.

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Also, since some people have asked - Appendix A: General Weekly Schedule [and yes, this is cross-posted from TLS: why write it twice?]

My daily schedule really depends on the day; on Monday & Wednesday I have six hours of class between 830 and 4, so I don't really get much time off during the day - I usually spend the hour or two break prepping/finishing reading for my last class of the day. Sometimes I (gasp!) take a nap after class ends, and then there are group/journal/activity meetings at 6 till maybe 8 or 9. Reading and studying happens after that, sometimes till 1 or 2 - but I'm trying to get on a more rational schedule (sleep by midnight or so), or else I worry I'll have to result to Cat's level of tea (in my case, coffee) intake. [As a completely random side-note, my 2am bedtime/830am class has created a weird situation in which I now gchat occasionally with one of my former employees in India...he's at work across that period, and finds it hilarious that I'm awake then.] Mondays usually involve a big group viewing of Gossip Girl.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have class from 830-10 and then have a break till 4pm (class 4-6). I use that break in the day to catch up on e-mail, do reading, and take care of personal errands and my outside-of-law-school job. Again, evenings are meetings and reading. Thursdays are also Bar Review at a local bar...

Fridays are pretty chill, with class in the morning and sometimes lectures or various legal writing instruction; there is always a school-wide happy hour Friday afternoon. People go out on the weekends (weekends being loosely defined as Wednesday-Saturday nights) for sure.

And, also per request - Appendix B: How Classes are Going

Class difficulty is hard to describe, and I imagine it varies WIDELY across professor and individual student, based on what your interests are and where your background is, too. I would say so far my classes would be something like this [1 = easy, 5 = very hard]:

Contracts: 1 or 2...very little reading, just two cases maybe for each class. Things are pretty easy to follow and the professor doesn't move too quickly. She also told us it's the "easiest class ever."

Torts: 3? Everything in this class is covered extensively in past outlines, and the grand concepts aren't that hard to grasp, but so far, for me, understanding how everything interacts at a granular level has been pretty challenging. The professor's been teaching the class for 50 years, so he knows his stuff - and expects us to, too!

Procedure: 2. Not too much reading, and we've so far had a pretty big emphasis on policy analysis, which is more my thing. The readings are more "plain English" than in torts, and things have been building on each other pretty well so far.

Con Law: 4 to 5. This is my "small group" seminar class, so our professor expects a great deal of interaction. He assigns a lot of reading and speaks quickly when he gets excited about an important point...I'm just learning how to really soak up his class, and today, I think, was my real "breakthrough" (though it might just be because we were talking about a topic that I have comparatively extensive knowledge in - that's not saying much, though...).