Decisions, Decisions

Spring registration has rolled around already. It's a little surreal, because I definitely still feel like I'm in my first weeks of law school. Nevertheless, we've already got to pick classes for next semester. When we arrived in October our classes were all picked out for us, but now we've got a bit more choice. Every 1L here has to take Torts, Contracts, Property, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, and Legislation & Regulation with their section. We took four of them our first semester, and will take two in the spring. We also have a year long course called Legal Writing and Research, which is simultaneously the most boring and most useful class we'll ever take (or so we've been told). SB tells me that this type of course is called "HLS classes" by Yalies, on account of how boring they are. On the bright side, I hear passing the bar exam is a lot less stressful when you've taken the basics. **

So, even given all those requirements, we still have a little bit of choice our spring semester! We can pick among 7 international/comparative law courses. I'm taking one on international business law, which is super exciting. Other options include International Public Law, The Constitutional Order & International Law, Intro to Chinese Law, and European Legal Theories.

Then, we have one straight elective. Here, I have basically no idea what to pick. The choices are overwhelming. We can pick between larger or smaller classes, and I think I'd like to take a smaller class. So far, every class has been with a group of the same 80 folks. There, though, all decisiveness on my part vanishes. How to pick between Family Law and Disability Law? Poverty Law and Local Government Law? Everyone I've talked to is in the same spot, and we all admit to being pretty excited to find out what class we get into to. (And thrilled to be paging through the course guide.) Daily, my pre-law school worries of "Harvard Law Student: Master of the Universe" is replaced by the reality of "Harvard Law Student: Gentle Geek."

** There are other snarky comments I could add in here concerning YLS's supposed inability to prepare students for an acutal lawyering job, but they're probably not true, and anyway, we still go to school in Boston and not New Haven.