Happy Holidays!

And enjoy the New Year! The only thing I have to post about is a unique gift wrapping idea. All my presents were wrapped in old law school practice exams - and my family still loves me. However, tragically, I did not get one present that I really wanted.

Law Professors Hate Rules, Too

Actual text of an e-mail from a shall-remain-nameless professor:

"I regret to say that Law School and American Bar Association regulations require that I make some sort of assessment of your performance in this class. To this end, I have prepared an exam for the course."

Last Exam is Tomorrow

And today I read this quote:

At any rate, the entire Guidance, from beginning to end - except the last paragraph - reads like a ukase.⁶

FN 6: [Ed.] For those who (like some of the editors of this casebook) are unacquainted with the word "ukase," it comes from czarist Russia and means fiat, an order by absolute and - by connotation, arbitrary - authority."

My question is: which editors of the casebook were familiar with the term "ukase"?

Picking Classes: Help Requested

I have a (relatively short) paper due at 4pm tomorrow/today. Instead of doing the pre-reading necessary to write the paper, I am procrastinating. By picking possible classes for next semester.

Some of my "maybe" list, generally listed in order from "most black letter law-like" to "this is not actually a law school class, right?":

* Criminal Law (the one class I still have to take)
* Evidence
* Trademarks & Unfair Competition
* Trial Practice
* Business Organizations
* Family Law
* Elements of Effective Legal Writing
* The Book of Job & Injustice
* Ethics in Literature
* Economics of Education (this is actually not a class offered at the Law School, but in the Economics department...still, I can get Law School credit for it anyway)

I have to pick two of these, basically, to fill my spring schedule. Any suggestions? Course descriptions available here.

**

Welcome to the Class(es) of 2013!

YLS admissions officers made some hearts skip beats by announcing via Twitter: "The first admissions offers will be made at the end of this week!" By now, the first few calls - with a tell-tale (203) area code, of course - have gone out. We might not work as quickly as the HLS admissions crew, who, following tradition, made their first offers before Thanksgiving, but I like to think that the element of surprise (with no pre-screening "interview" call) makes up for the relative delay. :)

Welcome to our newest readers who seem to have found our blog upon their recent acceptances to HLS and/or YLS. We're happy to have you!

OK, I Lied

I will post this.

Posts to the Blog Will Resume as Soon as Exams End

Unless, of course, SB with her single exam in January feels like posting. Man, I am jealous . . .

Thanksgiving Recap: Taboo Version

Thanksgiving vacation has come and gone. A HUUUGE meal was prepared and halfway-consumed (seriously, there was about 5x the food we needed and at least 2 bottles of wine per person - we do not take holiday meals lightly around here, people). And the rest of the weekend - except for some excursions out to Crown Street's nightlife establishments, one of which found us narrowly avoiding a deadly stabbing - was basically spent playing long extended games of Taboo.

Let it not be said that YLS students are competitive - in the classroom. But when it comes to board/group games, some of our crowd can get downright intense! [Maybe it's easier to trash-talk when you're all good friends & comfortabably able to make fun of each other's game-playing idiosyncracies...and inebriated by leftover wine...] We probably could have used an Olympics-level arbiter on a few close scoring calls. :)

All-in-all, a super-successful weekend. Very little academic work got done. But a holiday plane ticket got booked, we tried out the new Mexican place across the street (YUMM!), and I did my laundry. Baby steps.

**

Best Sentence of Today

"[I]n United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, the United States Supreme Court split 5-4 over the significance of a comma in a bankruptcy statute."

This is from Richard C. Wydick's Plain English for Lawyers, which is my favorite and only reference guide for legal writing (and which is the real topic of this post). A supervisor at an internship suggested it to me, and I think it's really helpful. Legal writing is often totally abstruse and it's really hard as a law student not to want to pile in as many legalisms as possible. I myself enjoy writing about "proving up a case" and tossing in a "res ispa loquitur" from time to time, but it's probably not super useful in actually being understood. Wydick is clear about what not to do and has lots of good suggestions. Does anyone else have useful legal writing guides?

As a side note, I still have not wrapped my head around the format of a legal memo. The facts section makes sense, as does (obviously) the discussion section, but why can't the brief answer and legal question sections just be presented in a much more intuitive introduction section? Sigh . . . at least Legal Writing and Research died with 1L year.

Giving Thanks

I've never been a huge fan of Thanksgiving (especially because I *hate* lots of traditional Thanksgiving foods; see stuffing/dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie...each and every one = yuck), but Thanksgiving break during law school has been a huge blessing.

Last year, my roommate & I both stayed in New Haven for the long weekend...our families are far away, and the hassle of traveling wasn't something we wanted to mess with around Thanksgiving. We watched a full-day "Jon & Kate Plus 8" marathon. I went to a big potluck dinner with a bunch of our classmates. We passed the rest of the weekend being lazy and ordering takeout and occasionally venturing out to neighborhood bars; it was glorious.

This year, both my roommates and I are all staying here. And I get SIX WHOLE DAYS off. Woo hoo! We're again having a massive Thanksgiving potluck (coordinated this year with a Google Spreadsheet - hallelujah!). We'll be joined throughout the long weekend by friends who share our love of wine, cookies, and board games. We'll sleep in, with no alarm to be heard. We might do some online shopping. There won't be any "Jon & Kate" this year, but I'm sure we'll find something else on TV worth watching (personally, I'm hoping a "Dog the Bounty Hunter" marathon magically appears).

Sometimes in the midst of source cites and long lectures and fruitless searches for international and unpublished law journal sources, I forget just how wonderful a life we've been blessed to be living: we spent last weekend with visiting friends for the epic Harvard-Yale weekend, where there was school spirit galore and beautiful weather and a bountiful tailgate and only a little bit of homework. Now, just one school day later, we get twice as much of a weekend. Lovely.

Happy Thanksgiving! How are you spending your holiday? Are other law students buckling down with work, or are you taking a real break?

**

Women in Law Firms: II

Cat, I'm so glad you wrote your last post! The lovely ladies over at Ms. JD have talked about the issue of "to ring or not to ring" before, and it's amazing to me just how stark the difference was in how you were treated across different interviews. As far as I know, none of my engaged/married female friends here took off their ring while interviewing...but I think you raise a good point about how, given that you took your ring off eventually [and took a job where you didn't initially wear your ring], you might/might not be expected to "keep up appearances" that you're somehow some young, unattached female associate. Obviously, your summer firm will probably have events where your (amazing!) S.O. will be invited...and presumably, he'll want to go to at least a couple! But hopefully, your firm will realize that your work product matters more than your relationship status.

I guess I should feel lucky not to have had to make the "ring or no ring" decision, but I definitely had a couple of my own awkward "this is only happening to me because I'm a woman" moments during the interviewing process. At one callback, a mid-level associate vented to me about how her chosen practice area meant lots of long nights and not much flexibility to start having a family right now. I appreciated her honesty, but I don't think she would have shared the same "my biological clock is ticking!" horror stories with a man.

At another callback (admittedly, in a smaller Midwestern market....so take that for what you will), three different women tried to sell me on the firm by saying that it was a great lifestyle firm, that their hours were reasonable, and that the firm was really supportive of flexible work arrangements and going part-time, even for those on a partner track. All of this was lovely to hear, of course, and they're things I care about - but they were not things that I asked about. The women seemed to just assume that as a woman, I'd want to weigh them as serious considerations. Again, I appreciated their almost "big sister" approach, but I question whether I would have received the same treatment (or had more "down to business" conversations) had I been a man...or if the two of them who met their husbands while working at the firm would have mentioned that, either.

Of course, there's a fine line to walk...I sincerely appreciate that law firms are trying to be more lifestyle-friendly in ways that will help to address some of the problems that have kept women from staying/rising to the top in the past; but I also hope that those measures are being adopted to help women and men alike to have more balanced lifestyles, and that women aren't automatically being written off as unlikely to work hard to make partner, etc. It's nice that accommodations are there should we choose to take advantage of them, but it's important to make sure that choice is ours, not theirs.

Women in Law Firms

I'm going to use a little of my day off to write a post on something I got angry about while we were still in interviewing mode: my experience of interviewing as a woman at a law firm. No, I don't mean gender-discrimination exactly. I think that firms have made great strides towards gender equality. But, I noticed that they're most interested in a specific kind of woman . . .

I am in a committed long term relationship and I (usually) wear a symbol of that on my left ring finger. Before we started interviewing, an engaged friend told me that she wasn't planning to wear her engagement ring out of an abundance of caution. I thought that was ridiculous, and didn't take off my ring . . . until I realized that not only was no one giving me call back interviews, the interview seemed effectively over after my interviewer noticed my left hand, and I was getting a lot of very probing questions about how committed I actually was to working in a firm (one gentleman even asked me if I was considering leaving the workforce at any point). So, I took off my ring, got some call back interviews, and moved on with my life.

I don't want to go too far - it's totally possible that this just happened by chance, or that I improved after my first round of interviews, etc. Still, I noticed while doing call back interviews at the firms themselves how few female associates had kids and how many of the female partners with kids had toddlers and were in their forties. I also have a friend who is visibly pregnant, and who is a law student at a different but equally "good" school - and who got no job offers at all.

I totally understand the thinking that goes into not wanting to a hire a married/engaged woman. It's probably more likely she'll leave for maternity reasons, and also possibly less likely that she'll actually come to the firm since 2-career couples have more trouble committing to one geographic area. In a tough economic climate, firms want to take no chances. But that leaves me in a tough spot this summer. What am I supposed to do for the 10 weeks I'm interning at a firm? Not wear my ring? Not mention my S.O. at all, even though we'll be living together?

All of the above made my life more difficult, but didn't make really made angry. The part where I blew up was when I found out that my male friends who are married (and some of whom have kids) had no problems at all when interviewing. Rather than being a liability, marriage was an indication of responsibility and stability.

Veterans Day!

No, we don't have class off (although the 1Ls do.) But due to an amazing convergence of events, I have (almost) no class/other responsibilities this Wednesday - a day that I am usually out the door by 7.30 and not home until 9.30! I will be using my extra day to:

1. Catch up on a little sleep

2. Catch up on a lot of reading

3. Eat a sizeable amount of the pumpkin pie I bought this evening.

I promise, I would be grateful to our veterans even if I had to spend all day in school. Is it bad that I'm just a little more grateful to them since I don't?

Loans

I am unbelievably in debt. In the middle of 2L year, I owe $103,000 for my law school education. I know that this is the cost of going to law school, but the fact that I owe this much money even with substantial grant assistance from the school is, in my opinion, totally nuts.

I know that this much debt is typical. I also know that if I went to work for a fancy law firm, I would be able to pay it off. I know that HLS has great loan-assistance programs, and that I'll even get the 3rd year of school free if I commit to working in public service for 5 years.

Still, I don't understand it. Why do they need all that money? What do they do with it? Does anyone else think that this is as crazy as I do? (Because it seems like no one else here is much worried about it . . . ) Doesn't this seem especially crazy given that there were people who were not able to find fancy law firm jobs this year given the economic situation?

Firm Rejection Letter: II

Actual Gchat conversation with a mutual friend of Cat & yours truly...xxxxxx is a first-year associate at a BigLaw firm:

...
xxxxxx: also

law firms are so great

me: haha. well, [the firm you work at] sent me a rejection letter yesterday, after *I* REJECTED *THEM* three or four weeks ago.

xxxxxx: HAHAHA

that's awesome

i told them to do it

i said it would be awkward to work with you

me: ahhh

xxxxxx: i'm a pretty big wheel at [my firm]

me: oh yeah? a squeaky one?

xxxxxx: i get so much grease

me: eew?

xxxxxx: i'm not sure what that even means

Decided.

Yesterday I finally made a series of "Thanks, but no thanks" calls to law firms that had generously offered me a place in their summer associate class but where I wasn't ultimately going to accept an offer. Basically, I was anticipating the most awkward phone calls ever.

Fortunately, every HR person I spoke with was absolutely wonderful; while expressing regret that I wasn't going to be joining them, they were friendly and encouraging and welcomed me to get back in touch down the road if my career plans changed [I don't know if that's just part of the schtick...but it sounded nice at the time].

So now, I'm settled; I know which firm I'll be at next summer. I have a city whose Craigslist apartment ads I can start perusing when I want to procrastinate [just doing my research...]. And I can hopefully be at least something closer to a real student, and not a vagabond who hasn't slept in her own bed in literally 14 weekends. Hooray.

**

Firm Rejection Letter

I have gotten a lot of rejection letters from law firms. Most were really polite, but there have been some doozys. Up until today, my favorite was the firm that sent me a rejection letter postdated two days after I had withdrawn myself from consideration at their firm. (I guess to show me just where I stood.) However, I can't resist sharing my new favorite:




In case you can't read it - I think it expands if you click on it, but posting this pushed the limits of my technological abilities - it says:

"Thank you for taking the time to meet with our Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher recruiters on campus at [school name] last August [September for Penn]. Please accept our apologies for the delay in communicating with you following our on-campus interviews.

We are now coming to the end of our recruiting process, and we do not anticipate extending additional callbacks. However, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for your interest in our firm and also to wish you all the best as you complete your degree and begin your legal career."

I'll point out that their legal recruiter was actually very friendly when we met on campus, and it seemed like a great firm to work for. Still . . .

Time for a Break

Today's the official beginning of fall break - formerly known as fly-back week - around here. It's not really fly-back week anymore, since most of us 2Ls are finished with interviews and happily settled (or happily unsettled) on our summer job details for next year. Without official business to attend to, we're free to decide how much work to do over the next week or so. The dramatic drop-off in new messages flowing into my inbox today suggests that a lot of people really need - and are going to take advantage of - a real break.

I am SO excited to be going away on vacation, even if the weather forecast looks like it'll be a bit wetter than we'd like on our Caribbean island of choice. Still, unlimited fruity drinks & no-alarm mornings are luxuries that are welcome in any climate. Today I spent about an hour making photocopies of my tax and insurance readings so that I don't have to lug a huge law book around the beach. And I have grand plans to *finally* finish The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer - almost 11 months after starting. Plus I've been speeding through Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo, who might just be my new favorite author.

Off to pack...
**

An Ode to Clinicals

HLS offers some amazing clinicals. You can work in local Boston legal aid offices, for foreign war crimes prosecution tribunals, for a professor about to argue before the Supreme Court, for the child protection unit of the D.A.'s office . . . the list goes on and on. If pressed, I would say that clinicals are my favorite part about 2L year (although it's pretty hard to pick). Keeping in line with SB, here's a list about them. Specifically, a list of the benefits. I can think of no downsides, unless you're just not interested in doing a clinical. Which, to be honest, may be a bit crazy.

1. 2-3 credits. No exam. No reading. No notes. Need I say more?

2. The opportunity to work somewhere totally awesome.

3. The opportunity to work somewhere that you want to work after graduation.

4. This may be clear from 1., but honestly, I find it to be a giant relief to spent part of my week actually working. I love law school, but at the ending of the day, most of it is just busy work to prove you're smart enough to get job X.

5. There is usually an attached class to clinical. The class will (probably) be a lot of fun, as you spend time reading and talking about the things you're doing.

I could go on, but . . . I've just realized I've got to hop in the shower and head off to *my* clinical today. Happy Wednesday!

Fell Off the Wagon

I had been doing really well with staying caught up on my class reading this semester. Better than I had all last year - even better than during the first few weeks of 1L fall, when I was pretty much just overwhelmed. For the past four weeks, I'd done all my federal tax reading! All my neuroscience & the law reading! Even (okay, almost) all my insurance & public policy reading!

Then something happened. I don't know what it was. Probably the nine & counting straight weekends of traveling. Maybe the change in weather. Maybe the explosion of my inbox while I was in dialup-only internet access territory this past weekend. Maybe the realization that if I didn't do all my reading last year and it turned out okay, I probably don't need to do all my reading this year. Whatever it was, I hit the proverbial wall some time on Sunday/Monday and just decided to take it easy this week. Inevitably, that means I won't probably ever get back to my studious start-of-semester self, but that's fine with me.

Sometimes - like yesterday morning at 9:05am as I sat bleary-eyed and dreadfully in need of caffeine near the back of Federal Income Tax - I see the eager to please transfer students with their perfectly organized binders of printed case briefs and think, "Wow, they are so on top of it - if they can do it, surely I can do my reading and show up to class prepared, too." Then I snap back to reality, where the transfers largely come from schools where it's expected that you brief cases ahead of time and be ready to answer grueling Socratic questions or else you won't stand out and be impressive and get the teacher recommendations that you need to do xyz... And I sort of pity them because, well, as I look around the room, nobody except the transfers (including the 3Ls who transferred last year...I guess old habits die hard?) seems to have case briefs neatly organized in a binder.

I don't really want to venture a guess as to what that says about the rest of us, who don't have 100% perfect attendance and sometimes beg off answering when called upon. We were raised by the law school equivalent of wolves? We generally feel like we have more important things to do than prepare for class? We're just not morning people? I don't really know. But it makes me feel better not to be the only one who's quickly and relatively shamelessly fallen off the wagon.

**

Totally Awesome

Tom Cruise came to Harvard. Really.

Some Quick Updates

2L year is very very busy, so this will be short:

1. I've accepted a job. It is exciting and a relief. For some people, this means law school is effectively over (although maybe not in this economy). For me, law school is basically just beginning.

2. Even if I never have to change/edit/check/see/touch/be near a law article footnote again, I think I will have dreams about managing an article team for the rest of my life. My dad swears he still has the "I forgot to drop a class in college and now I have to take the exam dream." My dream will involve a source list spread sheet.

3. Being busy with things I am interested in (footnotes not on that list) is so much better than being busy with 1L Property. I love being a 2L. I just wish it involved more sleep.

Some Thoughts on Callbacks

Hooray for Cat being all done with callback interviews! Hooray for me only having one left!

As much as I value the chance to go visit law firms in person - to meet with partners & associates, to get a sense of the culture, and to learn more about their practice - I will be pretty happy to be done with interview-related travel after next weekend.

My desk is littered with train tickets with my name on them. I have my fill of tiny shampoo and lotion bottles squirreled away for winter. I've eaten more Auntie Anne's train station and airport pretzels than I care to admit.

And of course, we're extremely blessed to have multiple callbacks and offers to join some fabulous firms. But I think I speak for the collective of many 2L law students: we're exhausted. We're ready to be students again. Whatever that means.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, interviewing has been the best boost to my class reading completion thus far this semester. Lots of hours on the train without internet access = very little excuse not to catch up on tax reading. And some cool encounters:

A few weeks ago I was on the train up from DC, and it just so happened that Joe (that'd be Biden) was hopping the 4:00, too. I sat next to one of his Secret Service agents, who was apparently so bored that he felt a desire to attempt to stealthfully read my screen - unfortunately for him, it was plastered with relatively mind-numbing moral philosophy.

The LSAT is - suprisingly - not the LAST thing from my mind

Tomorrow, for the second time in a couple weeks, I'm proctoring a practice LSAT for an LSAT prep company. The last time I proctored - a glorious morning in which I was able to simultaneously time the test-takers and work on my own research for a professor, resulting in getting paid twice for doing two different tasks - the students were pretty new to the game and had relatively no idea what they were doing. Many of them couldn't even hope to finish the various sections in the allotted 35 minutes. I'm sure by now their skills and confidence have improved dramatically, but at the time they were incredibly overwhelmed:

"You go to Yale?!?" they said. "You must've gotten, like, every question right on the LSAT."

"No," I said. "But I *did* study a lot. And I got lucky on a few guesses," - both of which are very true.

Sometimes it's sickening just how important one single test is in the general scheme of admissions for 99% of the law schools in this country. Every time I talk to someone in the midst of prepping for the LSAT, I am incredibly thankful that I'll never have to take such a high-stakes test again. Except maybe the bar. But I'm not going to think about that right now.

**

Some More Words on Interviewing

Our poster had a good point - I am, of course, very grateful to have the opportunity to do all these interviews. That does not mean, however, that the process was pleasant. I had the flu, and running all over New York to do between four and nine half-hour interviews a day was not fun. The interviewers themselves were extraordinarily varied. I met some incredibly kind and helpful people, some very direct and professional folks, and one extremely rude gentleman from a firm that shall remain nameless. I had some delicious lunches, which I couldn't really eat because I was nauseous, and met a large number of extremely nice junior associates. Despite that fact that most of the people I met were friendly, approachable, and genuinely interested in making sure that both I and they made the right decision, I think that even had I been in the best of health, the process would have been pretty miserable.

Before this week, every firm looked identical to me. I had no experience with law firms, and to be honest, very little idea of what they actually did. I still don't have a great understanding of what your archetypal New York law firm does, especially the corporate sections of it. Now, though, I see that there are actual differences between firms. One partner told me to "kick the tires a bit" while I was interviewing, and so I tried to do that. For examples, firms have different ways of assigning work to associates that seems to have a tangible impact on the associate experience. There are definite cultural differences between really large firms as compared with smaller ones. Some firms seemed more formal, while in others, no one was wearing suits. And, associates did actually say different things about how many hours they worked per week, and how happy they were with their jobs.

All in all, I hope this week will result in both some job offers, and also a better conception of how to chose between firms. I'm happy I got a chance to participate in fly-out week. However, I think I'm going to retire to bed until Monday to recover from the experience.

2 Words About Doing 6 Interviews in 4 Days

It sucks.

Sad Day at Yale

It was announced today that the body found in an on-campus research building was that of Annie Le, a student at Yale's medical school. Tonight, there's going to be a candle-lit vigil at Cross Campus, a large outdoor meeting space near the center of campus. Of course, additional counseling staff have been brought on board, and a lot of extra security has been put in place around the medical institutions, which are generally on the south side of the Yale complex and about a 15-20 minute walk from the Law School.

Although it's believed that the crime was not a random act, lots of people are quite shaken that something so horrific could happen here, so close to where we live and study. [I walk by the Amistad building from time to time, usually on my way to the train station from the medical campus.] Perhaps rightly so, the Law School is doing its best to put forth a supportive but reserved face - reminding students that we do live in an urban area where crime does occur, circulating phone numbers and security shuttle schedules, and emphasizing the need for everyone to speak up if someone or something seems out of place.

Neither Cat nor I are strangers to living in cities that are stereotyped as dangerous and/or crime-ridden, and I don't pretend to be invincible...though I do walk home alone in the dark probably more often than would be advisable. Still, I think what's particularly troubling about this case is the reminder that threatening activity can happen even inside the confines of a building you think to be safe simply because it has the University name stamped on the outside. Sadly, that heuristic isn't always accurate.

***

Choosing Battles

Today has been a day unlike any other. Partially because, well, every day around here is different...and partially because it was full of some great highs (the possibility of an exciting part-time job as a teaching assistant in Yale College; anticipation of an impending reunion in DC this weekend; dinner with a good friend) and some obnoxious lows (a difficult phone call with a clinic client; a piece of news uncharitably delivered via Facebook newsfeed). For some reason, the first couple weeks of a semester are a time for reconsideration and rebirth - both good and bad - and the past few days have been no exception.

One of the challenges of 2L is the realization that "1Ls do all the busywork, 2Ls are in charge, and 3Ls tune out" is often truer than one might like to believe. Most organizations are run by 2Ls, and while some of the groups I'm involved in are a huge source of positive energy, others tend to be a bit of a drain. A few times, I've found myself thinking, "Why did I sign up for this again?!? How did I let someone convince me to be in charge of this??"

It's always been hard for me to say no when asked to help out...and to acknowledge that I can't and don't want to do everything is certainly a positive change that I'm trying to make for myself. I was trying to explain to a 1L friend of mine today that 1L fall is all about trying lots of new things, but that you shouldn't feel obligated to do *everything*...and I felt like I should have been giving myself the same advice. As my calendar fills up with color-coded obligations from morning till night, it gets harder and harder to prioritize class reading (which, let's face it, is almost always my lowest priority), clinic projects, journal work (honestly, I'm scared to check my journal's email account that I've let languish for at least two months), and research & other part-time work...especially against spending time with old friends and nurturing new relationships. One of my goals is to be more purposeful this semester - thinking seriously about how I use and commit my time, both to myself and others.

**

Too Much to Do in 2L

Classes have been going for just under a week around here, and things are already moving quickly. Of course, we had FIP way back in what feels like a past life (really only two weeks ago...really?!), and now everyone is scattered to the wind trying to do callbacks as quickly and efficiently as possible [unlike at HLS, here at YLS we don't have a dedicated "fly-out week" so everyone has to make their own callback schedule]. On any given weekend, a good number of people have been out of town.

I myself just got back from visiting Cambridge (with a brief foray into Boston on Saturday) for a few days...though this trip was strictly for fun. It was great to see Cat - and her new bike - and a handful of other good friends, especially since the New England weather cooperated with us so nicely as we walked around Cambridge and played badminton in a parking lot. I was so exhausted from all the weekend's fun that I slept the entire train ride back to New Haven, even though some Yale undergrad thought it smart to watch a movie without headphones right behind me.

The weekend was great to rest up before what promises to be a busy week full of classes (I'm taking one black letter class, my clinic, a couple fun-sounding courses, and probably a reading group), clinic meetings, club meetings, and an interview trip later in the week. I'm also really looking forward to catching up with a few new 1Ls that I haven't had a chance to meet up with yet this semester. All in all, if this semester keeps moving as quickly as it has, interviews will be done and finals will be here before we have a chance to enjoy the autumn colors.

**

2L!

Classes have just started at HLS, and I'm very excited for the semester. 1L year at Harvard is (semi) fun, but I think the upper level years is when the true benefits of going to a large and diverse law school really become apparent. There is a specific sub-field of law that I am particularly interested in, and the wonderful thing about HLS is that not only is there a wonderful and well-known legal expert in that field at the school - there are many, and therefore there are multiple classes taught in the subject each semester by professors and practitioners with very different professional experiences and perspectives. Additionally, I'm finally able to meet a variety of other people who hope to practice in the same area as myself.

In fact, the real problem I'm having is restraining myself from taking too many courses at one time. The options are so fantastic, and it's the last time I'm going to be in school. However, I'm doing a clinical this semester, so 15 hours of my week are already spoken for. I'm also working as a research assistant, as well as on a law journal (although not THE law journal). And of course, I'd like to save time to ride around my brand new bike (bought with money I made as a part-time RA this summer), enjoy the company of the S.O. and my wonderful friends from 1L , and gripe about the Boston winter.

OCI in Cambridge

We've just finished our own OCI (On Campus Interviewing). I, like most of my classmates, interviewed with about 25 firms in 5 days. In addition to wearing very uncomfortable shoes and a suit that doesn't fit, I spent my time during it saying fairly stupid things. For example, on a day in which I had eight interviews, I interviewed with Firm A from 10-10.20 and Firm B from 10.40-11. During the Firm A interview, I said "I see your firm has worked on X litigation - that's very impressive." As those words were leaving my mouth, I recalled that I actually intended to make that comment to Firm B. Luckily, litigation X was ginormous. Ginormous enough, in fact, that the interviewer from Firm A said "Oh, yes. That was a very important milestone for us."

Anyway, it's all over (thank goodness) although our flyout week is approaching shortly. You can tell where people interviewed by how depressed they look on campus. Interviewing in NYC = relatively cheerful, interviewing in DC = very unhappy, interviewing in California = mentally picturing self as homeless hobo with HLS diploma sticking out of back pocket (I exaggerate, but not that much). I'm sure that almost everyone who wants one will end up with a firm job, but there is a fair amount of panic going around. Still, I think most folks feel the situation is better than what we were expecting (i.e., DOOM). Better yet, classes start tomorrow, so soon we'll have other things to expand our mental energy upon!

On-Campus Interviewing, Post-Hoc

I just finished my last of 19 interviews in our on-campus interviewing week (here at YLS, they're called FIP: fall interview program). I am exhausted, to a degree that doesn't seem directly related to the actual amount of time spent in interviews - no more than 3 hours a day. On the up side, I now have about 12 firm-branded flash drives, a pair of iTunes gift cards, and a re-usable shopping bag courtesy of firms' desire to hand out swag.

With the economy the way it is, everyone went into FIP knowing that things were going to be a little tougher, that summer programs were likely going to be somewhat/much leaner than in the past...but I was astounded by just how many firm representatives proactively brought up the economic situation or metioned how "conservatively-managed [their] firm is." Others straight up told us that callback interviews and offers are going to be much more competitive this year, or that the timeline will be stretched out to make sure that the firm doesn't over-offer and end up flooded with summer associates-to-be. Not particularly encouraging, that's for sure.

Now, some people are already beginning to get callback invitations from firms while others are still waiting. It's kind of an excrutiating process (akin to sorority rush) where everyone is hoping that the firms they liked like them, too. One of our classmates had the brilliant idea to create an anonymous Google spreadsheet to document which offices have already sent positive & negative responses...so we all know (somewhat) where we stand. Some people are already doing callbacks next week, and others are taking the week off, hoping to squeeze one last week out of a too-short summer.

***

When the Living is Easy . . .

I'm back home in Cambridge, since the best internship ever has ended. I learned how to blow things up, shoot a gun, and make an arrest . . . and also did some interesting legal work. Only one thing on that list will (at least I hope) be useful for my future career, but I had a great time. Plus, as an added benefit, my nephews and little boy cousins who used to think I was totally uninteresting now think I'm the greatest auntie/older cousin in the world.

However, I'm happy to be home in Cambridge with the SO, who wasn't able to come down to Washington with me. Like SB, the incoming 2L class at HLS is already thinking about internships for next summer. OCI starts the last week of August, and so we have to get ready to do about a gazillion interviews in a week. We submitted our bid lists for the firms we'd like to interview with, and are waiting for the results. The mental atmosphere surrounding those of us who are really committed to working for a firm can best be summed up as "DOOM." I went to see the Career Services Office yesterday and they were much more cheerful (although it was their podcasts who led to the "DOOM" atmosphere in the first place). Like SB, I have to go invest in some new suits and print out copies of my resume in 28-plicite.

Before that happens, I'm planning to spend a bunch of time hiking, swimming and drinking lemonade. I've been foiled at the moment by this bizarre salty fog that has descended upon Boston, but hopefully it will return soon to the ocean from which it came. I hope the rest of your summers are wrapping up well! SB, we have to arrange this trip to New Haven to eat lots of icecream together before the summer ends.

Summer, Months II and III

The past two months have just flown by! My internship was only 8 weeks long, so I barely got settled in and it was time to think about wrapping up projects and packing up luggage. As I mentioned in my previous post, my job was mostly related to transactional work which turned out to be much more interesting than I had expected. I got a lot of responsibility as the summer went on, to the point that I was drafting and editing agreements by myself near the end. Probably the most valuable part of my internship was learning firsthand just how important single words and phrases can be (and also the value of precise language and brevity) - I definitely feel that my time summer work gave me a new appreciation for the "real world" practice of law.

I also had the great fortune of finding a YLS alumna in the city where I was working who was willing to be a great mentor to me, taking me to interesting events and introducing me to both the city's legal market and her own unique career path since becoming a lawyer. I really enjoyed spending time with her, and it was cool to find that even in a "secondary" market, there are alumni excited to connect with current students.

In the past week or so, a lot has happened: my internship finished, I left to go abroad for a quick exotic vacation [picture above], and I had to bid for OCI (on-campus interviewing). While planning and executing all of those tasks was harrowing, the last was probably the one where I was most in the dark and stressed....even though the Career Development Office did a good job of telling us that "the economy isn't great but don't worry you'll be fine," I wasn't sure how many interviews to bid for or whether to concentrate all my bids in once city or expand a bit. Big, well-known firms or smaller boutique places? Firms that haven't laid anybody off (indicating a strong position), or firms that have done layoffs (indicating they've already trimmed the fat)? Too many questions, not enough answers - and not time to think through it all in the midst of everything else.

In the end, I'm quite pleased with the just-under-20 interviews I have scheduled for next week. I have a good selection of geographies, firm type, and practice areas of interest. While I have a couple days where I have five or six interviews, on others I only have one or two. I'm hoping that by Monday afternoon (when my first interviews are), my Sunday international dateline-crossing jetlag will have worn off, and that I'll have something clean & coordinated to wear. Cat, how're you feeling about OCI?

***

Summer, Month I

It's been about a month since spring semester ended. After that, I spent a few days visiting my best friends in DC. Then I went on vacation for a couple weeks...I spent a lot of time at the beach. Even though it was the rainy season, there was a good dose of nice weather that gave me ample opportunity to lounge around and finish a book I've been reading and to review a few "you ought to read this article as a part of our ongoing research" assignments from the professor I'm RAing for this summer. I also drank a lot of really cheap beer and saw some beautiful waters and fish just off the coast. Overall, it was a really relaxing vacation, and a great glimpse into another country's culture.

Last week, I spent a few more days in DC (and got to hang out with Cat!) before shipping off for my summer job. I'm working for a mid-size non-profit. I've just finished my first week, and I really couldn't be happier. My supervisors are really great; I get to work very closely with the general counsel and associate general counsel every day. The perks are fantastic: I have employer-provided housing, subsidized meals, a nice gym, free espresso drinks all day, and even my own bike to get around town. Since there are only about a dozen interns here, the HR department and out supervisors have coordinated lots of cool outings for us. My co-interns are all really interesting, and since most of us aren't from the area, we've been exploring the city together.

My work, too, is turning out better than expected. While I'm not sure I was quite prepared to be spending 70-80% of my day working on contracts and agreements (and I'm probably not qualified to do so, given my lackluster attendance in Contracts last fall), I've found the work to be diverse and interesting. I've been dabbling in employment law, trademark law, federal grant regulations, internet content licensing, and banking agreements....and that's just in my first week! I'm looking forward to the rest of the summer and building some level of competency in a few areas of law. Since lots of my work will probably be related to drafting and reviewing contracts, I'll have to be careful to make sure I get the chance to do some longer writing assignments,too - I'll almost certainly need a writing sample to submit to potential 2L summer employers when they come to on-campus interviewing this August, and I'm not particularly happy with any of my written assignments from 1L.

Speaking of OCI, I'm really glad to report that my last spring semester grade was posted last week. YLS professors are notorious for taking FOREVER to grade exams and papers, so I was delightfully surprised to find that all of mine were finished within a month. Even though I'm not stressing much about grades (our system pretty much prevents it, and I'm not gunning for a SCOTUS clerkship or a spot at Wachtell), I'm still happy with how things wrapped up.

One of my other favorite things about this job: having evenings and weekends free to just explore the city, be outside, and relax. I really need to buckle down and finish the next stage of my research for my professor, but he's been pretty lax about deadlines, so I haven't exactly been proceeding at breakneck pace....and may have spent the last four hours watching "LockUp" on MSNBC with my roommates....

***

Elephantitis & Epic-itis: Reflections on 1L

Among the selection of TV stations available to me in my overseas hotel room, only two are in English: E! and CNN. CNN keeps showing this horrible preview for an interview with Tarantino about his new movie, and in the soundbite he says something about how he didn't want to submit to "elephantitis...or epic-itis" in doing a movie about something "so big." I guess he was tooting his own horn, claiming to have shown restraint? Not particularly something he's known for, but...eh.

In any case, I obviously don't want to over-state anything about 1L, but it was honestly pretty big in all sorts of ways. I knew that my classmates would be amazingly accomplished and intelligent, but I was (and constantly still am!) incredibly surprised by how nice and interesting they are. I knew that my professors are foremost in their field, but I have been blown away by just how completely they've mastered the content and how compellingly they can make their point...while at the same time being gracious and compassionate. I had heard that YLS was an extremely caring small community, but I never expected to have built relationships with so many staff and administrators or to honestly feel as though everyone is so invested in others' successes.

Of course, that doesn't mean that things weren't overwhelming at times. As a former science student, I'd never been expected to do so much reading - so closely - every night. I'd never before had an assignment that I honestly felt I'd completely blundered. I've never felt so over-committed by everything I had to do, for things both in and out of class.

Given all that, I guess I'll follow in Cat's footsteps and give a few bits of advice:
(1) Don't spend your 0L summer trying to "get ready" for law school - it's not really worth it: it'll be hard to nearly impossible to predict exactly what will be helpful, and you should use the time to relax (read non-law books, travel, hang out with your friends, etc.) because you'll need all your energy for the semester.
(2) Do cultivate some non-law interests. Sign up for an art class, explore your new city-home, volunteer. Just do something that doesn't involve the FRCP or the Constitution or a Restatement.
(3) Similarly, have some non-law school friends: pay attention to your pre-law school friends, and try to make new friends who aren't in law school. When you need a break from the madness, they'll be a great asset.
(4) New school, new city, new classmates = a new chance to "start over," if you want. Feel free to explore new interests, redefine yourself a bit. If you think you've been unfairly typecast before, you can most likely break free from that and try again in a way that suits you.
(5) That said, don't feel compelled to create a new and improved version of yourself...more specifically, don't think that you have to conform yourself to any stereotypes of what kind of student attends your school - if you're not an aspiring academic, don't pretend to fill that mold just to fit in. Do what makes you happy: take classes and join clubs that are fulfilling, not just ones that will look good on a resume. Chances are, you'll do much better in things that you enjoy.
(6) Like Cat said, put effort into making friends - especially people that you wouldn't normally find yourself befriending.
(7) Eat well. Free food at lunch lectures and dinner meetings is great, but there are only so many food pyramid blocks that get repeated again and again.

Okay, back to vacation...as Cat said, we'll be writing periodically over the summer as we feel inspired!

***

Goodbye 1L Year

1L year is now over! I've finished the law review exam (ugh), all my exams (double ugh), and am basically just waiting for grades before I say goodbye to life as a 1L. Since finishing the law review exam, I've spent several days getting my life back together. My apartment is now significantly cleaner, although there is a stack of paper about three feet high waiting to be recycled in our living room. It's not all mine - I have been eyeing my SO's growing mountain of paper on his bureau for about six months now (he's also a graduate student), and decided that while I'm throwing out paper, we might as well make a clean sweep - but I'd say about 1.75 feet of it does belong to me. When I finally get rid of it, I imagine the feeling's going to be pretty cathartic.

So, what was 1L year like in retrospect? I'd say that unlike most people, I both really liked it and did not think it went by that fast. Of course, that may be in part due to fact that I got to move in with the SO, move back to a part of the world that I like a lot, and experience various other major personal developments that have nothing to do with law school itself. Still, I think that most people I've talked with did not think 1L year was as bad as predicted. What general advice can I offer now that SB and I are rising 2Ls?

(1) Ignore the top part of this post, and go in with really low expectations. It definitely helped that I thought 1L year as going to be the worst experience of my life, and was instead pleasantly surprised.
(2) Realize that there's going to be a really steep learning curve. The first two months of your first semester are going to be really difficult. In comparison, the rest is cake.
(3) Get a hobby. Get enough sleep. Eat right. Sorry, I'm sure I'm starting to sound like your mother. But honestly, the most unhappy people I knew were the folks who were all law school all the time. I may be totally off on this one - perhaps I'm not going to get the super great clerkships that the more intense people got or graduate with a "laude" attached to my degree. But I decided that there's only so long that I was willing to wait for my life to really start, and that if I didn't start doing the things I wanted to do now I was going to be in my mid-thirties before I could.
(4) Apply for a lot of summer internships, since they're apparently a lot harder to get than you'd think. Maybe if the economy's turned around by next winter, this won't be relevant.
(5) Put effort into making friends.
(6) Don't be afraid to change the way you study as you figure out what works for you. Don't feel pressured to study exactly the way other folks do - i.e., if using commercial outlines doesn't help you with exams, then don't use them.
(7) Probably, your law school will invite interesting people to come talk. Even if you are super busy, go see those people. They were inivited because they are probably actually interesting, they will help you to think about your career, and plus then you can call up your parents and say "I got to see X,Y,Z person" and your father will rail about the inequities of one political party or go "that's nice, sweetie" depending. (I would say that's just my family, but I think it's a pretty universal phenomenon.)

Hm...I wish I could come up with more, but that's all I've got. Enjoy your summer! SB and I will be posting sporadically, I think....probably mostly about the job search for next summer. We'll see you next year for life as a 2L at YLS and HLS.

Slightly Less than 14 Hours to Go...

...or at least, until I *really* need to start my Property exam. Most of our exams are self-scheduled, meaning we can take them any time during the two-week exam period. Almost everyone I know has left at least one of their exams until precariously late in that period, which ends tomorrow at 5pm. I am one of those people. Property makes me want to die.

But not actually, you know? Sure, it's not the *most* thrilling topic (Cat, I know you agree with me on that!), but it could be worse. Still, I kind of blew off Property this semester for a host of reasons, and now I've let it go on too long - kind of like a relationship that you know you have to break off, but you kind of hope it'll get better if you just wait and see? [I'm pretty sure "wait and see" is a doctrine relevant somehow to property law...in the Rule Against Perpetuities?]

So here I am, the night before I absolutely need to take Property, and I'm wasting time falling in love with this blog: http://tinyartdirector.blogspot.com/ [Premise: Awesome artist father gets instructions from young daughter about what to draw. Father draws. Daughter critiques, and either accepts or rejects, often while saying something outlandish and/or funny.]

***

Its the End of the 1L World, And I Feel Fine

Exams are finally done, which is super exciting, but I can't relax quite yet - the law review competition is in full swing. Each year, 1Ls at Harvard happily finish their exams and celebrate exuberantly...for a grand total of two days. Then, many of them - upwards of 200, I'm told - take the week-long exam to get on the Harvard Law Review. I forget how many actually make it. It's not very many, so perhaps I'm blocking it out. I'm one of the multitudes, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high. There are two parts to it - an editing component, and writing a mock student note. None of it sounds incredibly fun, but I'm going to give it my best shot. It's too good of an opportunity to pass up for basically no reason (i.e., my desire to watch back-to-back episodes of Law & Order and sleep 14 hours/day).

When I finally finish everything this Saturday, I've got a week worth of vacation before I head down to DC for the summer. I'm planning on seeing some family living in New England and generally getting my life back into order after some minor exam-induced chaos. Like I mentioned previously, exams this semester were not a cake walk, but unlike in the fall, I don't need a couple weeks of lying comatose on the couch to recover. I'm not quite sure what will happen to the blog, as SB heads off for points less muggy and not built on a swamp. What do you think SB? Are we on vacation until August? (After of course, some obligatory end of the year reflection.)

Things I've Been Doing Instead of Studying for Finals

I only have two final exams this semester, because a) I'm in a clinic, which only gets a credit/no credit designation; b) see a), but for a journal; c) one of my classes was finished halfway through the semester, so I took the exam just after spring break.

As such, I am now doing everything BUT studying for my two exams. [I don't really feel anxious about these two exams - yet - in part because it's kind of arbitrary, I think, whether I'll get an Honors or a Pass grade in both of them. I *could* work hard to get an H in either/both, but I'm just not sure I care that much.]

Some things I've done instead:
* Graded papers for the undergrad class that I'm TAing. This is torture. Some of these kids CAN NOT write. They're juniors & seniors at Yale, and yet they have trouble forming complete sentences or creating logical arguments. Sometimes I wish that I read the papers while slightly buzzed, but that would be irresponsible TAing, I imagine, and I'm not getting paid the big bucks to be an irresponsible TA. If you want to talk about being irresponsible, look no further than one of my students, who after getting a week-and-a-half extension on the only graded assignment of the semester, insisted at 11pm that she needed a "few more hours" to polish her paper that I had told her was do-or-die due at 12 midnight because I needed to read it & grade it before going to bed/getting up uber-early to get on a train [see below]. At 1:08am, my plea of "Please, for the love of my sleep schedule, send me what you have now!") was met with "Just 15 more minutes, promise!" Those 15 more minutes turned int0 30, which resulted in a not-too-happy SB. The paper was, to put it lightly, underwhelming. I found out today that she's taking the class pass-fail. "Underwhelming" = she passed (and with a pretty good grade!), because I'm a really really nice TA. [To be fair, a couple of the papers have actually been quite good. Hooray!]

* Went to NYC. Twice. In 30 hours. I have to get a special tourist visa to travel to South America later this month because the Consulate General of a certain soccer-crazed country demands outrageous fees and rather excessive procedure, in retaliation for the US doing the same to their citizens. Fair enough, I suppose, but I don't make US immigration policy! In any case, I had to either make two trips to NYC to drop off and pick up my visa, or pay a bundle to a private company to do it for me. It turns out to be cheaper to take the Metro North and do it myself. Ironically, the first studying I've done this finals period happened when I opened a Property hornbook on the train and again in the Consulate waiting room.

* Packed my room and moved my stuff into storage and a different apartment. Our subletters needed our apartment on a certain date, which just so happened to be a date before we really wanted to vacate. So I'm now subletting someone else's apartment for the week, because I figured I'd be more productive here in New Haven than somewhere more exotic. Productivity has not been particularly high, however. On the upside, there are nice neighbors & it kind of feels like being in a hotel for a week.

* Organized a few summer events with YLS alumni for a student group I'm involved in. Wished that I'd actually be in densely-populated cities this summer, so that I could go to the events.

***

Two Notes on Music During Study/Exam Period

I. I absolutely *adore* Songza. My current playlist is literally just anything and everything by Sun Kil Moon. It's folksy indie music that's all relatively quiet & subdued, so it can block out background noise without distracting me. Particular favorites: Carry Me Ohio, Exit Does Not Exist, and Trucker's Atlas.

II. Earlier this week I had one of the most traumatic experiences ever in the YLS library. I went into the Foreign & International Law Reading Room (Room 0008) on L1 - one of my favorite places to get work done, because it's normally isolated/quiet/doesn't involve the distraction of ten thousand people walking by (as you can tell by now, I am very easily distracted when I should be working - I have ZERO self-discipline without a hypothetical gun to my head). In a rare moment of promise, I came prepared with headphones, since I wanted to listen to some peaceful tunes while revising a handful of final papers for the class that I'm TAing for this semester.

Scene: I come in, sit down at one of two big wooden tables; the other is occupied by another 1L girl who I know mostly through my roommate [for the purpose of the rest of the story, it should be noted that while this girl is really nice, she is also really intense]. We nod hello, and she gets back to work. I plug in my MacBook, plug in my headphones, turn on my music and get to work. I'm being uber-productive, editing page after page [aside: these kids have another thing coming if they think this counts as fluent, well-reasoned scientific argument...]. After about 20 minutes, I go to adjust the volume on my music and realize that MY HEADPHONES HAVEN'T BEEN PLUGGED IN - or, they've been plugged in, but not into the correct jack...so the other girl has been exposed to my music (quiet, yes, but still...the whole purpose of headphones is to keep your music yours) and hasn't said anything about it.

Immediately, I say, "Oh my gosh, I'm SO sorry - I had no idea my headphones weren't plugged in!" Which, of course, sounds totally stupid, as they're hanging from my head...she says: "Oh, no problem, it's like, not a big deal at all." But kind of in that voice that lets me know that it totally WAS a big deal. Eek! I feel bad, because I'm relatively stress-free at the moment (at least academically), but I know others are freaking out about exams and papers and (at the time, earlier this week) finding out whether they passed the first stage of the Journal-joining competition.

In any case, I feel a little less awful when I come back later, after a few meetings. I sit down and double-check to make sure my headphones are correctly plugged in this time - yes. And then, the same girl comes back. And sits at the same table as me. So I guess she doesn't hate me? Then, another guy (an LLM, I think) comes and sits at the other table. Plugs in his headphones. Turns on his music REALLY LOUD. The girl can hear his music, too, and her head snaps to face him: "Could you, like turn that down??"

Him, realizing he's being spoken to, but not sure why: "Oh! Do you want me to turn it down?"

Her, visibly agitated: "Yeah, could you turn it down? Yeahthanks." She turns back to her work, scouring a book and frantically typing things on her computer.

Me, thinking to myself: Phew. Glad that wasn't me.

***

Havard's Answer To Yale's Cupcake Truck

And it's delicious! A cupcake store just opened up in Harvard Square, and I couldn't be more excited. Although, watch out - I ate just one cappuccino cupcake, and I already feel like I've eaten my normal sugar consumption for the year.

Exams! (Again)

So, again we're studying for exams, but this time around, it is a LOT less stressful. Most obviously, it clearly helps knowing what a law school exam is. Having already taken four, I feel like I have a much better handle on what to expect, and how much time I need to devote to reviewing each subject. Also, I have one less exam this semester, since my elective was graded based on ten short papers. Plus (thank god) none of my exams will involve property law, unlike last semester.

The fact that exams are less stressful is helping with getting my outlining done one time, since I tend to procrastinate things that I'm really worried about. Also, I've got about a bazillion things to do before I move down to DC this summer, and I don't want to do them. So, I'm procrastinating doing them by studying for exams. In fact, if I can give you one tip for studying, that's it. Find something else to procrastinate as a substitute for outlining procrastination. OK, that may only work in my bizzare psyche, but trust me, it really does. This semester, I've also taken advantages of the fact that my classmates are brilliant, and am trading outlines. Some people work in study groups, which I think works really well for them. For me, if I don't make my own outline, I'm never going to learn the material, but having someone else's outline to fill in gaps is really helpful after I'm done with my own.

Since I've been thinking so much about outlining recently, I'll expound on the subject a bit more. I forget where I read this - I think Volokh - but someone somewhere once observed that too many law students treat outlining as it were the exam, rather than merely a study aid for the exam. I think that it's true that each outline really does need to be tailored to the class. If your professor is going to ask you about squibs, cases in the footnotes, and things you spent three minutes of class time on, your outline needs to be about 32904578629 pages long, indexed, alphabetized, with little colored stickies and a detailed table of contents. (I had a professor like that.) If not, and probably that won't happen to you more than a couple times during law school, an outline that long will kill you during a 3 hour exam. Something a lot more svelte will be much more useful, since the professor expects you to actually think about the question, rather than dump your outline into the test. What I do is write an outline with everything in it, but then put it on a diet, as it were. That way I have the security blanket of the long outline, but then a pretty short outline that I actually use during the exam.

OK, I realized I should go back to studying. Lest you fear that I am planning on spending the next two weeks in Langdell Libray, fear not. I have plans to go see a very talented friend sing in a concert, drink mojitos while watching the Kentucky Derby on a friend's porch in Cambridge (don't ask, and it's not with Harvard folks), and go play a couple rounds of pool. I think I may not tell some of my classmates though. There's always one who will give you that look.

Attack of the 0Ls

This past Thursday-Saturday was the admitted students program here. By the numbers, I:

* Gave one (1) unofficial tour;
* Staffed the registration desk for three (3) hours, during which time I had only one (1) person previously known to me unexpectedly show up in front of me;
* Gave directions to The Table at least eight (8) times;
* Ate five (5) free meals - highlights included two (2) bottles of Raspberry Ice Tea Snapple and one half (1/2) of a delicious chocolate-covered Rice Krispie treat - in the span of about thirty (30) hours;
* Accidentally directed people to go to room 128 instead of room 127 at least five (5) times before realizing my mistake;
* Currently have seven (7) HUGE Gladware containers of leftover food in my fridge because the wonderful guys at the takeout place WAY misoverestimated how much food twenty (2o) people would eat;
* Met, by my best guess, at least one third (1/3) of the class of 2012.

After all that excitement...the most telling number of the rest of my weekend: 7 (the approximate number of hours slept over the past two nights, combined).

***

Things I Love About Cambridge

In keeping with SB's post, a list of things I love about Cambridge/Boston:

*I love, love, love the various tea/coffee shops in Harvard Square. I do most of my studying in the mornings in them, and kind of rotate through them on a weekly basis. My top three are Dado Teas, which has really nice herbal teas and bubble tea (among other things) in a store with a TON of windows so you can watch the Square as you work, Tealuxe, which has simply the best tea I've ever had, although they do have a tendency to play loud punk-rockish type music, and Burdicks, which has amazing hot chocolate and other assorted dessert-things.

*Harvard Square/Harvard on the weekends. There's always a ton of people out, even in the middle of winter, and there are usually street performers. 

*If you want to see where you'll be spending a lot of time as a HLS student, try out Cambridge Commons. The beer is excellent, the food is not bad, and it's right near the law school, so lots of us are there a lot of the time. If you're looking for more night-life, the Kong is super popular with  law students (I've never been myself, actually). 

*If you're feeling adventerous enough to leave Harvard Square, there are a bunch of great parks and museums in Boston. My personal favorites are the Isabella Gardner Museum (free to Harvard students), and the Harvard Botanical Gardens. I also love walking down the Charles River - it's free, there's a lot of boats on it, and since it's spring, it's mobbed.

 

Things I Love In New Haven

I know a bunch of people that read this blog are prospective/admitted students, and a lot of you are going to be visiting various schools over the next couple weeks if you haven't already done so...and hopefully, you have plans to come to Yale. [If you're on the fence about whether or not to visit, my advice: DO IT. You'll never know whether you're making the right decision until you really *feel* a school in person.] Other people who read this blog are just our non-law school friends...and you guys should visit, too!! (I'm looking at you, NS, MT, and JS.)

While the YLS admissions office has some great blog posts about various things to do on campus/in New Haven, I thought I'd give my own random list of favorite things:

* This one's pretty general/overarching, but I love Restaurant Week (a week of prix fixe menus at some of the fancier restaurants in New Haven, similar to those in other, bigger cities). If you're coming for the ASW later in April, you're in luck - the next Restaurant Week is April 19-24. Call now for reservations, though, as it fills up quickly.

* Other great ethnic food. My favorites: Pan Thai Asian, Sitar, Bentara, and Skappo.

* Yale's known for its own architecture, but as a buildings buff I really prefer the School of Architecture. They have a ton of cool exhibits and lectures that are open to the public.

* Similarly, the coolest architecture on Yale's campus, in my opinion, is the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. This is what it looks like on the inside.

* The Cupcake Truck.

* IKEA.

* The New Haven Green. One of my best memories from law school so far is from a big picnic that a bunch of us 1Ls had at the beginning of the year. We spread out in a patch of grass on the Green and threw a frisbee. In the winter, there is a big tree lighting ceremony on the Green, too. I think it's nice that New Haven really does have a semi-vibrant downtown area, which is anchored by the Green...I'm always amazed by the number of people shopping and strolling downtown, even on week days.

* Various theatre & music options: The Shubert for touring Broadway shows and big names, Toad's for tribute bands and townies, and the Yale Symphony and Rep for cheap student tickets to quality performances.

There are a lot of other things, too, but this is probably more than enough to keep you busy for three days...

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Brief Post About Briefing

Every first year at HLS participates in the Ames Moot Court. This is not to be confused with the much cooler Ames Competition, which is a two-year process that can culminate in students arguing in front of Supreme Court Justices. Despite the fact that most people complained about the 1L Ames Moot Court most of the time, I think most of us found it pretty fun to do. Well...you know....fun for schoolwork. We all got assigned a partner from our section to work with. My partner was absolutely fantastic, and I've heard surprisingly few horror stories about folks with not great partners. As teams of two, we all wrote a brief supporting either the appellants or the appelles of the mock case. The case, by the way, was *awesome*. It was fake, of course, but it concerned the necessary level of protection for participants on Kid Nation. SB, of course, will remember the hours and hours of our lives that we devoted to that paragon of a TV show. My partner and I, as the appellants, submited our briefs yesterday. Our opponents with submit their briefs next week after reading ours, and then we'll have a round of oral arguments in front of the student advisors in our Legal Research & Writing class, as well as some outside people. The oral arguments don't count towards your grade, but they still seem like a neat thing to be doing. 

Housing Hassles

For someone who, in periods with lots of down time, watches a lot of HGTV's various house-hunting shows, I am absolutely *horrible* when it comes to dealing with the hassles of a housing search for myself.

In college, I was an RA for my junior & senior years, so I didn't go through the off-campus housing shuffle that all my classmates did. I just showed up, and I had an apartment and it was all furnished and perfect. Same pre-packaged deal for college summers.

After college, when I moved with five of my best friends to a bit city, the process was relatively painless, too (but it might have just been a HUGE stroke of good luck, since it took a lot of wrangling to get 6 people to agree to live together/submit all their paperwork/tour the place we eventually picked/sign the lease)...my boyfriend-at-the-time and I just used Craigslist, found five places that had enough bedrooms and public transportation access, and went to see them. We instantly fell in love with one, and the rest, as they say, is history. Two years later, some of the original group is still living in "the house," and it looks like it will stay a permanent fixture in our lives for the foreseeable future, even though some of us (myself and Cat included) have moved hundreds of miles away...we've got a rotating crew of friends and acquaintances ready to take over the lease, so long as the landlord doesn't realize (or doesn't care?) that we've killed the lawn/broken the banister/almost knocked down the garage/burned a hole in the sink with a hookah coal.

When it came to choosing a place for law school, I was similarly laissez faire. I don't think the reality of "law school is starting in three months!" hit me quite as it should have...so I just somewhat randomly agreed to live with a girl from the YLS 2011 Facebook group after talking to her on the phone [we picked up a 3rd roommate, too]. It's turned out amazingly: we're now GREAT friends, the living situation couldn't be better.

EXCEPT, that now we have to:
* Find subletters for the summer, and
* Pay more for rent starting July 1st.

Both of those things suck. Big time. It's been a hassle and a half finding subletters who want our apartment for the whole summer at the price we're looking for; as you can imagine, New Haven's not the hippest summer destination, so the market's depressed overall...we're now trying to calculate just how much of a hit we're willing to take, rent-wise, to get a sure-thing set of subletters lined up.

And, of course, even though the real estate market in Manhattan and everywhere else seems to be favoring renters right now, for some strange reason our rent is going up by a not-insignificant amount. So we're trying (to use our lawyering skills?) to negotiate with the management, but as we live in a pretty in-demand building, it's not really as if we're bargaining from a position of power. Perhaps I will bake caramel-chocolate chip cookies in attempt to bribe the nice leasing lady? :)

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Clinics & Client Contact

One of my favorite things about law school so far has been getting involved in two student organizations that provide direct service to clients: the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) Project, and the Education Adequacy Project (EAP).

The TRO Project lets students - even in their first semester - assist victims of domestic violence in applying for civil restraining orders. After a few intensive training sessions, students staff an office right in the New Haven court house. About once a month, I spend a morning or an afternoon helping applicants fill out all of the (rather confusing!) forms and accompanying them to the clerk's office and then the judge as they await a decision on their application. While it was really scary the first few times - it's awfully hard to sit and listen to graphic stories of domestic abuse as women [generally, but sometimes men] are crying in front of you - it's also really gratifying to see that you can pretty easily help someone simply by walking them through a relatively routine process. Students can get credit for working six shifts a semester, or just volunteer for a few sessions.

This semester I've started working with the Education Adequacy Project, one of the clinical courses at the law school. To be honest, EAP was one of the big pulls for me to come to YLS, as I'm really interested in education policy issues. We serve as legal counsel for clients that are suing the State of Connecticut over the state's education funding formula, and we're currently awaiting a decision on a pre-trial motion before the CT Supreme Court. In the meantime, we've been busy preparing for trial: collecting evidence, interviewing possible witnesses, talking to experts, and building our trial strategy. Obviously, I can't go into much detail since it's all privileged attorney work...but it's awesome and amazing, and even though it's a lot of work, I'm SO glad that I got involved with the clinic.

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I am also SO glad to have had spring break! I'm really sad to be back from the Caribbean, but it's nice to have had a week to relax and forget about the details of my gCal. Now, it's back to work. And work. And work. But also some fun...law school prom is next weekend!

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Give Me A Break!

A spring break, I should say! (Sorry for the lame attempts at humor.) By noon tomorrow, I'm going to be on vacation, and I couldn't be more excited. In the past month I have accepted a summer internship after applying and being rejected from many many many places, completed 1/2 of my second semester of law school, recovered from a nasty battle with the flu and read about 459028746 pages of various law books. Obviously, I need a looonngg and very relaxing vacation. Unfortunately, I'm probably not going to get it. Instead, I'm embarking on a visit-the-frozen-north-while-everyone-more-sensible-goes-south kind of trip. Yes, while my brilliant classmates are heading off to Mexico and Florida, I'm going to Maine. Where the snow has not yet melted. SB, don't think I can't hear you laughing from your beach in the Bahamas right now. Still, I'm excited to spend some time with my feet propped up in front of the fireplace, do some yard work in repayment for a free place to stay, and most importantly, reconnect with my boyfriend. Poor guy - despite the fact that I live with him, we see each other...well, I'm embarassed to admit how infrequently.

And that brings me to part two of this post - how law school will destroy your romantic relationships if you're not careful. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. In law school, you're stressed, you're busy, your mind is filled with law, and everything else just falls by the wayside. If you're like me, most evenings your partner will come home to find you fallen asleep on the couch with your torts book as a pillow. You are barely able to carry on a conversation, let alone a conversation that doesn't involve the words "per se" or "indica" or "holding." My suggestions for making sure your significant other doesn't leave you by fall break of your 1L year? I have three...
1. Make time. I know, this one seems obvious, but it's super hard to have perspective in any given week. But, you'll be a much much happier person if you actually see the person you're dating once in while, so if you have to sacrifice the contracts reading, go ahead and do so. However, there is an exception to (1), which is....
2. Do not be in the same place over exam period. You will either use your SO as a distraction or drive them insane with your complaining. Probably both. Plus, this way (hopefully) you eliminate the problem over having someone annoyingly snoring in bed next to you the night before a huge exam.
3. Find a non-law school activity to do together. Plus some non-law school friends. This probably will not work if you are both law students, but if so....let's face it...you're both likely too busy to find someone else to date. We watch a lot of T.V., which is, granted, probably the worst of all options, but at least we spend some time in each others' company this way.

If you're on break yourself, happy vacation!

Comp-You-Serve?

Someone asked me this week whether lots of people use computers in class, and how that affects the class environment. A few observations:

* Yes, most people use computers to "take notes" during class. [Assuming, of course, that the professor allows computers...at least here, professors have the option to forbid use of computers in class. Most don't care.] I'd say maybe 90% of students use computers...maybe 95%? A few holdouts take notes in old-school notebooks. One aspiring academic writes with fountain pens in leather-bound journals, which is just adorable and very Yale.

* As you might expect, "taking notes" with a computer can mean a lot more than just writing down what's being said in class. The best multitaskers among us usually have their notes, a handful of internet tabs, and at least two or three gchat conversations going on at the same time. Sometimes I throw a spreadsheet or a reading for another class into the mix (in one class in particular each semester so far, distractions have been sorely needed).

Of course, it might be the case that people don't concentrate as much/tune out the conversation more often when they're focused on their screen rather than what's going on in class and sometimes that puts you at risk of an embarrassingly out-of-the-blue cold calling. Honestly, it's usually a risk I'm willing to face head-on. If I didn't do *something* else during class, I'd probably go insane, even in my most engaging courses that I love. Contracts last semester was WAY more fun when 50% of our class was simultaneously in a gchatroom, commenting on what was being said in class - very meta.

There are obviously trade-offs, and certainly some things can go wrong (as is always the case with technology). So, a few things to be mindful of - for some reason, they all have to do with gchat:

* It's generally not a good idea to video chat (even silently) w/ your significant other during class, especially if you're not sitting in the back row. Even if you're just taking/sending static pictures of yourselves with your build in iCam, it's a little (or a lot?) weird.

* Don't forget to turn off the sound for your IMs. You don't want to be the one to make it obvious to the professor that nobody's paying full attention.

* When the (online) conversation gets really good/funny, be mindful of the conversation that's going on in person...you don't want to crack a smile when the discussion has turned to abortion, rape, civil rights abuses, or dying horrible deaths.

* Be careful about leaving your gchat convos up on your screen during break, or when a particularly leery neighbor is perched nearby. I had a terribly awkward incident last week (the content of which I won't reveal here, because it's just so ridiculous) that really drove home this lesson. [In other words, do as I say, not as I do...]

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A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Law School

Well, a funny thing happened at the law school. Namely, I (and many many other people) went to go see the annual Parody Show run by the Harvard Law Drama Club this week. This year, it was entitled "The Hark Knight".* There was signing, dancing, a lot of jokes about Alan Dershowitz, and a prolonged musical goodbye to Dean Kagan called "Farewell My Dean" set to the tune of "Come On Ilene." The plot focused on our ex-dean as she schemed to place herself on the Supreme Court by kidnapping Justice Stevens. Tonight was the last show, so I'm not ruining the ending for anyone when I say that she renounced her evil plan at the last moment after a heart-warming letter writing campaign by the students coordinated by Bruce Arraign/Batman. The people in it from my section were incredibly talented, and everyone had a good time. It was really impressive to see HLS students act and joke their way through three hours of script.

SB, does YLS do a parody?




* Last year, it was "Harry Issue Spotter and the Goblet of Breyer."