"What if we went to a *real* law school?!?"

The Invisible Man law student advises prospective law students worried about bad grades on final exams affecting them: "...just go to Yale and take every course pass/fail." [NB: Technically, it's honors/pass, but he gets the idea.]

To those of you out there taking traditional law school finals, I salute 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.

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."

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 . . .

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.

***

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.

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.

Today is D-Day

Not as in "divorce day," which apparently describes what happens in the first week(s) of January every year in the UK (and maybe in the US?)...instead, the first exam of my law school career. [Cat's already had hers, I believe, but since I haven't seen her online/talked to her since, I'm assuming it killed her, until notified otherwise. I am very sad. Perhaps too sad to take my own exam??]

Let's just say that I haven't done much studying. Weeks spent at my parents' house and my former house, respectively, proved less-than-productive in the best way (got to sleep, see lots of friends, do lots of shopping, eat lots of good food, etc.). However, I may have heeded upperclassmen's "Don't Study! It's pass/pass!" advice a *bit* too much...so today is crunch time. I'll let you know if I am in fact the first person in 50 years to fail Guido Calabresi's torts class [but since we don't get our "grades" back till March/April, pardon the delay in passing along word of my demise].

Wish me luck.

Examing

So, classes are done and the real work now begins - studying for exams. Unlike SB, our first semester isn't pass/pass. We have actual gradations (although far fewer of them than 1L's here last year.) I'm trying to make a plan. I'm trying to stay out of vacation mode, in which I watch 7 hours of Law and Order a day. I'm trying to keep my apartment clean, myself in reasonably good health and shape, and my family happy. I know, I know....grossly unrealistic.

No one will tell us what the grading curve will be, which I think is actually decreasing anxiety. One of our professors has said that between 40-10% of us will get honors, and another has said that only 3/80 will. Of course, that same professor mentioned that if he announced he was only giving out one "H", that would be enough for your average HLS student to fight for it. I'm not 100% sure that he's wrong. Overall, my classmates seem remarkably calm about the prospect of exams. Of course, that may well change once we get closer to the actual exam date.

On a non-school note, the holidays are here! I'm (unsuccessfully) trying to figure out how to buy Christmas presents for all my three zillion relatives with a law-student income. I tried hard to figure out a place to put a very very tiny Christmas tree in my very very very tiny apartment, but no luck. I think I may go with the "Christmas bush" option instead. Or maybe just a wreath. Hmm...these decisions suddenly seem so much more important than exams....

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!