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....

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All Good Things Must Come to an End

Sorry for a period of relative (posting) inactivity. Luckily, the last week or so was spent in a state of relative intellectual inactivity (for both Cat & me, as both our schools had vacation until classes resumed yesterday).

Quick update: I spent "vacation" in Massachusetts. My last final (con law - which we could take anywhere in the world, thanks to the magic of the internet) was, somewhat ironically, on the morning of January 20th. After relatively blowing off that exam (reason explained more below) and watching the inaugural events while baking cookies, I had a few unencumbered days in Boston, give or take a few meetings and some summer job search nonsense. Got to see some people I love: my long-lost college roommate whose boyfriend just transferred to HLS; my former classmate who worked with me in DC last year and moved to Boston in August; Cat(!!) and her boyfriend; another friend who is doing his PhD at MIT [and who I know reads this - See, you're famous now!]. After a few more days of seeing friends and some volunteering, I had to come back Sunday evening, totally unprepared for the onslaught of beginning-of-semester craziness.

Buying books. Choosing classes. Starting clinic. Figuring out how to get paid for my TAing job. Figuring out how to get my student loan money refunded so I can pay rent. Lots of fun stuff.

In short: my new classes (two small 20ish person courses - one of which has VERY little to do with law, one large "black letter" class, and clinic) are awesome so far. Since I've only been to each one once, not too much to say yet...but I think it'll make a huge difference that we get to pick all our classes this semester - so I can't blame anyone but myself if I don't like the material/don't do the reading.

On the flip side, this semester will require some marginal amount of work beyond what was expected of us last semester (which was all "pass/fail"), since we now get graded with either "honors" or "pass." So I should redouble my efforts to stay caught up with reading, and to go to class regularly. I'll keep you updated as to how long that lasts...I have a feeling clinic might become a big time commitment that pushes some other things out, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing as my clinic involves doing stuff that I'm truly interested in.

A bunch of people have asked about how finals wrapped up. In sum: they're done, and not getting a grade makes it super-easy not to ever think about them again. In more detail:

Torts: First law school exam ever. More details here.

Contracts: Since contracts & procedure were both self-scheduled (we could take them any time we wanted between January 7th and January 21st), some people took this pretty early on to get it over with...our professor suggested that she'd do no more than take a cursory glance at our exams, so there wasn't much worry about knocking it out of the park. After reading over a couple of other people's/Lexis's outlines, I took this at 1am-3am one day. The fact pattern was truly interesting...I'd be interested to see the model answer, as I think there were a number of ways to go with it.

Procedure: It would not be an overstatement to call this the relative bane of my existence as far as exams went. We had to do a take-home essay before starting the timed portion, and I had kind of blissfully forgotten about that during the holidays. I ended up writing something relatively cogent (maybe?) examining the Guantanamo habeas proceedings from a feminist perspective. The actual timed portion of the exam (3.5 hours) had a rather extensive issue spotting question, and a relatively painless (read: we'd harped on the issue for DAYS in class) policy question. In the end, I kind of psyched myself out for this exam (the only one for which a professor is giving personalized feedback to everyone in the class, without students asking specifically)...but hopefully the extra two days of "studying" resulted in me not embarassing myself (meaning, after I actually read an outline, I knew that a state's attachment rule had nothing to do with the stapling/binding of filings).

Con Law: By the time the 20th rolled around, I was SUPER-glad that my professor had told us that he wasn't going to read our exams. He told us we didn't need to write anything, in fact. It was "for [us], not [him]," and if we wanted feedback, he'd give us comments...but there was no need to prove we knew con law on an exam, as he knew from our small group seminar that we all knew con law. Sweet. As a result, a few people just wrote "Thanks for a great semester!" or something similar...and the rest of us sort of halfway wrote something relating to the questions.

So yeah. That's the end of first semester 1L. Now we're in the big leagues, taking all our classes with 2Ls and 3Ls and getting more involved in activities and clinics. If the last two days are any indication, that's going to mean 10-12 hour days at school...no easy welcome to spring semester, I guess.

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Things I Did Not Know About Contracts (Until Now)

After two days of doing literally nothing productive other than grocery shopping and going to the gym, I am making myself study for contracts. It turns out (not exactly unpredictably) that I didn't learn all that much in contracts class. Here are some interesting things I have learned about contracts so far in my exam preparation:

Louisiana is the only state that has not signed onto the Uniform Commercial Code.

Generally, courts hold that in telephonic or face-to-face communications in which an offer is made, the offer lapses when the conversation terminates in the absence of a clear indication that the offer remains open beyond the conversation.

A party that was intoxicated when the contract was made may avoid the contract only if the other party had reason to know that, by reason of intoxication, the party was unable to understand the nature and consequences of the transaction or was unable to act in a reasonable manner in relation to the transaction.

Where a party's duty is conditioned on his own approval of the other party's performance, courts generally enforce such condition – even if the other party will suffer forfeiture – where approval concerns a matter of aesthetics or taste, and the disapproval is based on honest dissatisfaction.

Cool, eh?

***

p.s. It turns out, I didn't need to know any of those things for my contracts exam. Oh well.

Closing Out the Semester

At long last: five days until the end of classes this semester! It's a little surreal to think that only a few months ago we were brand new 1L's, and now we're about to finish up classes for this half of the year. Some of my section-mates and I were amazed the other day at the amount of stuff they've managed to cram into our heads over the course of the fall. I don't know that we've learned to think like lawyers yet, but we've certainly learned to think like law students (i.e. study...alcohol...sleep...coffee...repeat).* Just this morning I was reading this article in the NYT, and I thought "I DO know what declaring force majeure means when you want to break a contract!"

Of course, the semester is not quite over. We still have 22 days until exams. People have been complaining about this like mad. I can understand why no one wants to study over their holiday break, but I definitely prefer not to have to take my exams right now. I need a VERY lengthy session with my Property book, and I can't imagine hammering that session into the crazitude that's been the last month.

*Although in the interests of full disclosure, I rarely drink more than a glass of wine in one sitting anymore, and I usually go to bed by 10pm. Yes, I am a little old lady, but learning the law makes me really tired!

Too Hot for Cold Calls

One of the things that most, if not all, incoming law students are afraid of at the beginning of first semester is being “cold called” in class. Some people saw the movie “The Paper Chase” or read “1L” [personally, I refused to do either] and determined that professors want students to look stupid or screw up in front of the entire class. Luckily, at my school, that is most certainly not the case – although each professor has a different way of cold calling (or not), they’re generally a good-natured bunch, and the modified Socratic method actually does force you to learn quite a bit (which is good, in a semester where we’re graded pass/fail - or, as the Dean says, "pass/pass").

Each of my four professors has a different method for the use of cold calling. My torts professor, Guido (who S.G. wrote about here), likes to assign a section of the class to be “on call” for each section of cases. Supposedly, people sitting in that section are supposed to be extra-vigilant in their reading so that they’re ready to answer questions…but usually, so many people volunteer that everyone forgets who’s on call in the first place.

My procedure professor expects everyone to be prepared to talk about the reading, but he usually hints as to whom he’s planning to call on during the next class so that those people can be ready. In procedure, we’re often asked to take on the persona of a Supreme Court justice and give our opinion about how we’d have ruled on a particular case – to be put on the spot like that is sometimes scary, but it helps you really understand the underlying legal principles (and it can be fun to pretend to be Scalia or O’Connor...especially when it results in the professor doing impressions of the esteemed justices).

My small group class (with only 15 1L students) is constitutional law. For each day of class, only one person is on call. I’m on call tomorrow: I’m supposed to be the expert on the various affirmative action decisions of the Court. I’m a little worried I’ll get some of the dissenting opinions mixed up, but our professor isn't too aggressive, and the seminar style of the class means that everyone pitches in to help you out if you’re not sure of an answer – small group love.

In contracts, my professor calls on just one or two people a day, out of the blue – no warning. Today I ended up being on call for AN HOUR AND A HALF, and it went just fine since I’d done the reading. Talking with the professor about the arguments in the case definitely made me focus on the most important points, even if it meant that I was too busy participating in class that I didn’t get to take notes. [And, a friend of mine, who heard that I'd been put on call, decided it'd be funny to frantically gchat me for the entire time...hilarious.] Luckily, my small group members (with whom I have all my classes) sent me notes before I even left class...as the work piles on, we're realizing that it's a good idea to stick together to get stuff done. Speaking of work...back to my brief (due Monday! eek!)...

This Blog is Temporarily Suspended...So I Can Focus on the Economy

Well, not it's not *really* the economy...more like "geez, this is more work in a week than I've ever had to do before [except maybe when I wrote a 40-page graduate qualitative research paper in four days - but let's just say that was a BAD experience, in which I actually locked myself in my office, and one which I hope never to repeat again], so I probably won't have time to blog again before the weekend."

Things I gotta do:
* Twelve page memo (this only after reading 10 cases, about 400-500 pages total, maybe?) due Thursday
* Pleading written assignment due Thursday
* Compile a list of biographies for a journal-sponsored conference I signed up to help with
* Contracts reading for "tomorrow" which is really today since it's now 4:15 am; torts, procedure, and con law reading for Wednesday
* Secure at least one for-sure partner for my non-law-school-job, and work a bunch of other contacts

So....I hope you'll cut me some slack. I promise, my thoughts about Cat's school's new grading scheme are coming; plus, updates and other random stuff.

Training Day

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

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

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

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

**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Contract(s) Have You Made Today?

We didn't have Contracts the first week of school, because our professor is recovering from joint replacement, but when we finally had class on Tuesday, the most interesting part of the session (other than her assertion: "This will be the easiest. class. ever.") was when she asked a student, "When was the last time you made a contract?"

"Maybe last week," he said, "I just moved into my apartment, and I [had to deal with the devil incarnate that is] Comcast, to get internet and cable hooked up."

Pause.

"And, I guess...I bought a cup of coffee this morning."

Eventually, this conversation became so long and drawn out that I turned to browsing the internet and catching up on the news in class for the first time [in part, for reasons explained below], but it was generally interesting. Another student claimed she hadn't made a contract in the past 24 hours - the professor seemed unconvinced. Turns out said student walks to school, brings her own food for lunch, and doesn't buy anything. Ever.

***

One of the most trite things that you hear from current and former law students, I think, who are trying to explain what law school is like is that "you start to find the law in everything." I call shenanigans. At least, I hope that I can continue to try to refrain from finding the law in everything - I'll go crazy!

However, it's at times like these that I'm willing to assert my (abysmally minimal) legal training, and when I wish I knew what law I was looking for so that I could take advantage of it: AT&T hates us. At least their internet-"providing" division. We moved in August 27th, and here we are on September 12th without any internet signal [save for the smidge of a single bar I'm currently getting by sitting in the corner of the hallway floor...stealing a signal from our benevolent neighbors]. Suffice it to say, we're not pleased as punch.

Total time on the phone with AT&T: 4.5 hours

Total calls made to AT&T: 6, at least

Friends we've made at AT&T: 0 - Though Angel and Rodrigo were particularly nice, they didn't actually help resolve our problem. In fact, they had no idea what the problem was.

Times we've threatened to call Comcast instead, even though due to a fluke not of our doing, we can't actually get internet from Comcast without giving up our free cable: 2

Hopefully, a cable installer worth his/her salt will show up tomorrow morning at an ungodly hour (we've been told 8am - I'm holding out just an inkling of hope), and we'll no longer be sitting on the floor to connect with the rest of the world. Speaking of which, my butt is getting sore...