What Questions Do You Have for Us?

Now that our 2L year is over (well, except for those papers-without-due-dates that SB is still working on), we figure you've heard enough of what we've thought to tell you...so, like in a law firm interview, we thought we'd ask you, our loyal readers, "What questions do you have for us?"

We reserve the right not to answer questions that we might deem too personal, for example, but everything is at least up for discussion. Ask away in the comments; we look forward to hearing from you!

***

Professors Say the Darndest Things . . .

An exchange between a student and an older professor in class today:

Student: Is it OK if we use short-hand on our exams? Like DPC for Due Process Clause?

Professor: Yes, but please don't write your exams like you Twitter.

Swamped

HLS has many many amazing opportunities. Too many opportunities. So many, in fact, that some version of the following scenario will arise inevitably during any HLS student's career:

The scenario: A friend of yours who plays some important role in an organization on campus will approach you. He/she will have a particular look in his/her eye that is hard to describe but impossible to mistake once you've seen it. You know that organization has a particularly annoying and large task to accomplish in the near future. You also know that if you add one more thing to your To-Do list, you will Low Pass all your classes.

The solution:

1. Run in the opposite direction. The problem is that in a class with 500 people, many of whom will know you and also play important roles in institutions on campus, this gets physically draining after a while.
   
2. Practice what you learned in D.A.R.E., and "just say no."

Trust me, I know. Over the course of this semester, I failed to say "no" sufficiently firmly. Several times. Low passes here I come?

Lies They Tell You at HLS

I don't want to give you the wrong impression. Attending HLS is great. I (sorry SB) would not have gone to another school, even a "better school," had I known at the time I was picking schools what I know now. Still, there are some things that they tell you at HLS that are flatly not true. Specifically:

1. "The competition is over." This was told to me, and every other 1L on the first day of orientation by no less a paragon of truth than Elena Kagan. I am 100% certain I have never been in a more competitive environment. It's possible that a more competitive environment exists, but I don't know of one, and I would not voluntarily be part of such an environment if I did discover it.

2. "1L year is the hardest year of law school." This, actually, may not be a lie, but if it's true for you, I don't think you're doing law school right. 1L year is the boring year where they make you take a bunch of things you're probably not interested in. I am confused by people who work the hardest in 1L year, because it seems unlikely to me (although I admit, not impossible) that anyone really wanted to come to law school to learn a lot about feudal property systems and how to sue someone for a slip-and-fall. I'm taking harder classes 2L year, doing more activities, and sleeping less than I did 1L year. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

So, now that I've given you two lies, I'll list a truth. They are right when they say Harvard is the "New York City" of law schools - both in that it is exciting, dynamic, populated by people with very very different interests, and has an incredibly wide range of opportunities, but also in that it can be impersonal, hectic, and lacking in a support system. There's not a week that goes by, though, that I'm not grateful to be here.

Clerkships Post One

Today was the kickoff to the "search for the judicial clerkship" season, and everything is not totally well in Harvard Clerkship Land. We were told some fairly dispiriting numbers about how many of us would get clerkships in the new economic climate, and warned to keep our expectations within reason. I think the problem for many of us is that we don't know what would or would not be reasonable. I know I'm not clerking on the Supreme Court, but is it crazy to apply for a district clerkship? Should I be looking at state courts in the area I grew up? However, the clerkship folks told us that we could come in for a "blunt and realistic" assessment. That sounds approximately as much fun as going to the dentist . . . but it's really good that the Career Service does that for you.

On the bright side, it's somehow comforting (even though by rights it should be terrifying) that so many of my classmates are going to go through the process with me. It feels like we're all in this boat together, although I guess it should also feel like not all of us are going to reach the shore on the other side and it's time to start bashing each other over the head with our paddles. Nevertheless, it doesn't feel that way. Over the next several months, we're going to be sucking up the courage to go ask for letters of recommendation, worrying about our grades, and trying to determine whether we'd be willing to move to a state that we'd never set foot in before for a better clerkship together. Somehow, that seems like a bonding experience.

Spring Term Begins!

And winter term just ended . . . on Saturday. That's right - we took our exams on Saturday, got an entire day of vacation, and now start the spring semester today. I am woefully unprepared, and it is going to be really embarrassing if I have to pass on a cold call on the first day of class. Reflecting further on this, I will end my post here, and go back to my reading.

Whoa-o, We're Halfway There!

Tomorrow (technically, today) marks the first day of our fourth semester of law school, meaning we're halfway done. Crazy.

Earlier today, my roommate described our law school career as such: "It's like a mountain. We got to the top, so it's all downhill from here."

Another friend agreed, saying, "It's like a week, and it's Wednesday afternoon. We just have to get through Thursday, and then we can coast all through Friday."

Whatever the schematic, it's a bit sobering to think we're now halfway-educated wannabe lawyers. I can't even competently pick classes for this semester or my outfit for tomorrow, nonetheless do anything for a hypothetical real-life client that will exist sometime in the future. Regardless, mini milestones like this give us time to pause and reflect on just how blessed we are to be here...coasting toward Friday or careening down a mountain. :)

***

Winter Term!

It's winter term at HLS, and that means we are [shockingly] having lots of fun. Most people do something exciting over winter term, like take a class in an unusual and interesting area of the law, or work on a paper they are passionate about. I have a friend who is in another city, working on a cool internship for the month. The classes are intensive - about 3-4 hours a day, 5 days a week - but compared the schedule of a typical HLS student, that's not too much out of the ordinary. Plus, some how it's easier to just concentrate on one subject intensively rather than juggling several at the same time. So, we're catching up on seeing friends, watching TV shows, and (in my case) reading lots and lots of mystery novels. I suddenly realized that I hadn't read much John Grisham before law school, and decided I had to rectify that problem immediately.

In the spirit of having fun, here are some suggestions for some cheap-ish things to do in Cambridge this winter. I would say be sure to go out well-wrapped up, but it actually hasn't gotten super cold here.

1. Awesomely, MIT has a lindy hop dance session every Wednesday night.

2. The Harvard Natural History museum is free to Harvard students, and has these amazingly realistic glass flowers.

3. The Boston Celtic Music Festival is happening this weekend!

4 . The List Art Museum at MIT is super impressive, although it's unfortunately closed until February.

5. Burdick's hot chocolate is delicious, and not that expensive as a treat.

6. I love the Harvard Bookstore. It has a great used book section, and they often have interesting authors come speak.

Ours are Not the Only Wacky Law Schools

Not exactly in response to one of my earlier posts but somewhat on point, a professor at Suffolk thinks that us professional school students aren't getting enough schooling in the traditional ways of the law:

It would be a step in the right direction (but only a small one) if law schools were to revive and require the discrete Agency course and relegate to the extra curricular “subjects” such as these: Climate Change Justice (taught at Harvard), Social Justice Lawyering (University of North Carolina), Law and Literature: Murder (University of North Carolina), Social Disparities in Health (Colorado), Wal-Mart (Colorado), Law & Literature: Race and Gender (Duke), Sexual Orientation and the Law (Duke), Ethics in Literature (Yale), Civil Disobedience (Suffolk), and Critical Race Theory (Suffolk).

It's an interesting article, on the whole, about the "de-professionalization of the American law school." I'm not sure I'd want to attend the author's proposed " bare-bones, back-to-basics for-profit law school," though...nothing billed as "boot-camp-like" is an automatically good thing in my book.

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.

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!

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 . . .

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.

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?

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!

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 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.

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.