joining the club

Several days ago the organization for older students at my school sent out email about a Happy Hour gathering. It sounded fun and so at the appointed time I showed up at the bar where the meeting was scheduled.

When I entered, I saw a very young looking woman sitting near the door, looking expectantly at the entering customers. I smiled tentatively at her, unsure as to whether she really belonged to the older students group, but unwilling to ask such a potentially rude question. She smiled back, and asked me if I was there for the meeting. I nodded, relieved. She introduced herself as the president of the club and suggested we get a table together while we waited for the others.

I found J. very friendly, but it became increasingly clear to me that she was substantially younger than me. Finally, unable to resist any longer, I asked her, "So, what did you do before law school?"

"Well," she replied apologetically, "not much, because I just graduated last June."

I was a little startled, but I told myself not to be narrow-minded about membership in the older students club, especially with the president of the club herself.

Our dinner came, and we continued chatting about law school, classes, and our lives before school. Then she looked at me, and said ever so casually, "It's really hard to come out here at school, isn't it?"

"Um," I sputtered, immediately debating how best to politely mention my husband without sounding either weirdly homophobic or terribly insecure, "yeah." Unsure how else to proceed, I knocked back the rest of my vodka tonic.

J. continued on, "I mean, I am very happy about Schwartzenegger, but I can't really talk about it much at school, you know?"

This was not exactly the followup question that I would have expected from her previous question.

J. smiled at me with genuine delight. "I'm so happy to have another member of the Republican club!"

I realized that this was not, in fact, the older students meeting.

I felt terrible as I explained my now-obvious mistake to J., as there was no way I was going to join the Republican club (or the Democratic one, for that matter), but she thought it was very funny. We stayed for another hour or so chatting.

I never did find the older students meeting.

it's that time

Shockingly and sneakily, the end of October has arrived, and with it a large whump of work on the shoulders of a bunch of already overworked 1L's. You may have noticed that my rate of posting has slowed, as has the rate of posting of the other law student blogs I read. Law school is showing its teeth.

The stress in the school has settled into the hallways like a layer of tule fog. There are more students who are sick, more students who miss class, and fewer students who raise their hands in class. Even those of us who love law school are weary.

Exams come at the beginning of December. One hundred percent of our grade in each course is based on our performance on a three hour anonymously-graded exam. All of the reading, all of the briefing, and all of the Socratic questioning mean nothing to the rank-obsessed legal world if we can't perform.

I quit my job and changed my life out of, among other things, a fascination with law. I love my classes and what I'm learning. But it's beginning to dawn on me that this intellectual exercise comes with a vicious coda.

Exams are a part of life. I'll get through them. I just hope that my admittedly somewhat dewy zeal for law isn't utterly crushed by the process.

it changes you

Before I started law school, a friend of mine warned me that I would never look at an uneven sidewalk the same way.

I laughed at the time.

Today a friend of mine emailed me this eBay auction.

My first thought was, "Did his ex-wife really manifest an intention to abandon those Beanie Babies?

Sheesh.

it's not just dramatic, it's downright ghastly

From today's Property reading assignment:

"Suppose that A and B, joint tenants, are killed while riding in a car struck by a train. When witnesses arrive, there are no signs of life in A; B is decapitated and blood is gushing from her neck in spurts. Does B survive A?"

My first answer to this macabre question was, I think, the common sense answer. "Did you really have to specify the spurting and the gushing? Ewwwww. I am not in medicine because I prefer to avoid spurting and gushing bodily fluids. Of course she's dead, and you can't say she survived A. She lost her head! Not alive, no way. Gone to Alphabet-Family heaven. Pushing up daises. Kicked the bucket. Gone."

But I am indeed entering a glorious profession. No, this isn't just an example out of the ghoulish minds of law school textbook writers. This is from a real case, Gray v. Sawyer, decided in 1952.

I looked up the case. Yes, my friends, lawyers and doctors debated whether B lived longer, and they decided that B, due to aforementioned spurting and gushing, lived a "fleeting moment" longer than her husband A. She did not have her head for that moment, sure, but who are we to be picky about the meaning of life? Her heart was beating, and the expert testimony doctors testified that she therefore lived longer than her dead husband.

I love law school. You can't make this stuff up.

the beauty of a good user interface

After suffering through research for LWR, I am ever so appreciative of those programmers and designers who provide seamless navigation tools to the rest of us. As you may recall, that class requires me to pretend that perfectly adequate indexing technology does not exist. We must do the work manually.

This presents me with a problem because I, unlike those well-established technologies, am not a perfectly adequate indexing technology. By indexing standards, I'm an awfully retarded and deficient computer. The Apple IIe that I played my first computer game on would laugh its scrawny little guts out at me.

Given my deficiency in indexing cases manually, I have resorted to ranking the law books by their user interfaces. This makes me feel like I have a modicum of control, though I swear that the computers in the library are giggling at me.

Statute book #1, your font is 10 point, not 12 point? Back of the line for you! I'll use your competitor, Statute book #2, even though #2 is so dusty that I sneeze. Appellate review book #294, you're too heavy. I pick the slimmer competitor's edition!

It's really pathetic what forced separation from technology has done to me.

And, because we're talking about LWR and user interfaces, I present to you a story of user interface design that seems remarkably topical to me. At least somebody can enjoy good technology.

in defense of the gunners

First, I have to confess I’m still not precisely sure what a gunner is. I’ve heard the term used to refer to students who fit in all of these categories:

1) students who raise their hands frequently, but don’t really make good points
2) students who raise their hands frequently and make good points
3) students who study a lot
4) students who have any sort of clear career ambition (a big law firm, a judicial clerkship, public interest law etc.) and are taking steps to reach those goals
5) students who manifest some combination of items 1-4.

Regardless of what the actual definition of a gunner is, it’s clear that gunners are the lepers of law school. Calling somebody a gunner is a terrible insult.

I like most of my fellow students. I’ve developed a friendship or at least a passing acquaintance with a lot of them. They’re smart, funny, and willing to help their fellow students.

There is, however, a small group of students that I prefer to avoid, and they aren’t the gunners.

These students rarely raise a hand in class. If they do raise a hand in class, it’s generally to offer an unfunny and weirdly cynical observation about the case. They are excessively concerned about what their fellow law students think of them. They whine. They complain about the competitiveness of other students, but then spend an enormous amount of time criticizing other students and examining their own positions in the law school social hierarchy. They derisively use the word ‘gunner’ in the hallways. They strike me as vacuous.

Gunners are many things, but they are not vacuous. Sure, sometimes they are socially incompetent. Sure, at times they’re irritating. And yes, I’ll blog about them because they can be unintentionally hilarious.

But the gunners have passion. They may not know how to express themselves well, but there is joy in what they do. They love the reading, they often are the ones who work in the free clinics, and they want to change the world or at least themselves. They are driven, they have goals, and they work hard. They care. I can tell you that I’d rather be stuck on a desert island with a gunner than one of the other group any day.

Social ineptitude eventually falls away. But passion, that’s hard to learn and harder to keep.

oh how i love salons

I really should have been studying for those two or three hours in which my toes were transformed and my eyebrows were waxed and my feet were massaged. We're more than halfway through the semester, and I probably should kick up the studying a notch.

I don't know all zillion different ways you can be charged for homicide, I haven't memorized the rules of personal jurisdiction, and I can't recite the difference between springing executory interests and shifting executory interests.

My toes, however, look fabulous.

a layman's guide

I've been reading a lot of Supreme Court cases lately. The cases are often wonderfully written and entertaining.

Today I read a famous jurisdiction case, Burnham v. Superior Court. I always aim to serve the public here, and so I present to you an unofficial translation of Burnham v. Superior Court.

Scalia: I'm totally right. I've got tradition behind me and everything. I rule. Yay me. (Scalia talks about tradition in transient jurisdictional analysis for pages and pages.)

Brennan: Ohmigod, you totally suck. Hahahaha. (Brennan writes, "Notwithstanding the nimble gymastics of Justice Scalia's opinion today, it is not faithful to our decision in Shaffer.")

Scalia: No, YOU suck. (Scalia writes, "Thus, despite the fact that he manages to work the word "rule" into his formulation, Justice Brennan's approach dos not establish a rule of law at all...")

Brennan: Um, whatever. (Brennan writes, "I believe that the approach adopted by Justice Scalia's opinion today ... is foreclosed by our decisions in International Shoe Co. .v Washington and Shaffer v. Heitner.)

Scalia: Brennan did a circular logic, Brennan did a circular logic! Doood. You're so not even a lawyer. (Scalia writes, "Justice Brennan's long journey is a circular one, leaving him, at the end of the day, in complete reliance upon the very factor he sought to avoid.")

White: Ohmigod. Scalia totally schooled you, Brennan. (White writes, "I join Parts I, II-A, II-B, and II-C of Justice Scalia's opinion.")

Stevens: Why can't we all just get along? (Justice Stevens writes, "... the historical evidence and consensus identified by Justice Scalia, the considerations of fairness identified by Justice Brennan, and the common sense displayed by Justice White, all combine to demonstrate that this is, indeed, a very easy case.")

Scalia: OK.

Brennan: OK.

White: OK.

Scalia: That petitioner dude, he totally sucks, doesn't he? (Scalia affirms the judgment against Mr. Burnham.)

White: Dooood. (White concurs with Scalia.)

Brennan: Me too! Me too! I don't like him either! But I didn't like him before Scalia didn't like him. (Brennan concurs with the judgment against Mr. Burnham.)

Stevens: Doesn't that give you the warm fuzzies? (Stevens concurs.)

All Justices together: Dooood. Mr. Burnham, you totally suck. We affirm on your ass.

i see dead people

Whenever I study property these days I feel that I really shouldn't be reading my casebook. Instead, I should watch I, Claudius. I should read about the poor, pitiable Bennet girls in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, who faced homelessness because their estate was entailed away to an odious male cousin. Perhaps I should read Shakespeare's plays, maybe As You Like It or Henry V.

Property is dramatic. The words themselves are very dry. "O to A for life, then to B and her heirs if B reaches 21." Or, "O to A for life, then to B and her heirs, but if B does not survive A to C and his heirs." These words don't have flair. They are simple.

But they have power. I read the words, but I see vicious family arguments, suspicious deaths, aborted births, castles, feudal armies, and bloody battles. I think of Richard III's young murdered nephews, or Henry VIII's brutal search for a male heir.

The common law had a first cry rule: a baby was considered to be a live birth if a special witness stationed outside of the birthing room heard that baby's first cry. Again, just a technical requirement, but chilling at the same time. Who knew what happened behind the door? Just surviving birth into a family governed by one of these estates was a significant accomplishment.

I'm not just reading a law book. I'm reading a ghost story.

another lawyer blog

I discovered a new-to-me blog yesterday, Ernie the Attorney, full of observations about his work and the law in general.

I knew I would like it after I saw that he has links to a book by Bruce Schneier (Schneier's book on cryptography is a classic), a book by the engineering cartoonist-hero Scott Adams, Apple stuff, and the First Amendment.

That's a felicitous combination in my (admittedly kinda geeky) world.

(Thanks to my fellow techie law student, Biting Tongue for the link.)

decisions, decisions

Next semester I have a choice for one of my classes. I can take either Employment Discrimination, Immigration Law, Tax (federal income tax), or Environmental Law. I have to decide which one I want next week.

I've pretty much ruled out Immigration. It's not that I'm not interested in the subject, because I am, but I've heard enough about the professor to think that I wouldn't like it. He's rumored to be an easy grader, which is good, but he's also rumored to be both extremely leftist and extremely politically intolerant. I don't particularly care what the politics of my professors are, but intolerance is annoying in any stripe. Furthermore, you're expected to do some work in one of his pet clinics. I think if it wasn't a requirement, I'd probably like it and perhaps even volunteer, but the idea of being required to work in one of his clinics bugs me. Given that I've never even met the man and he's already annoying me, I think it would be better if I stay out of his class.

Besides which, I'm equally interested in the others. Environmental Law and Tax are currently my top two choices.

Tax is rumored to be really hard. On the other hand, the reason it's rumored to be hard is that it includes a) math (even algebra!) and b) problem sets. This is causing a tremendous amount of consternation among the former Political Science majors in my section, but I think a little bit of math would be fun. Also, the professor is uniformly acknowledged to be an excellent teacher.

Environmental Law also has an excellent professor, and, um, I like nature and stuff. Granted, not the most logical reason for taking a class, but I think I'd like it.

Any opinions?

a little down time

Whenever Mr. MCLP talks in class, I stop typing. I like to think of it as a little mental break, a chance to relax and recover. Mr. MCLP is given to exuberant and extravagent leaps of legal logic. I know there isn't anything I'll miss.

Apparently the professors have noticed that as well, and they've been calling on him a lot less. However, they can't entirely ignore him as his hand waves to and fro like a flag carried by an overenthusiastic Boy Scout.

Today, Prof. Contracts finally gave in.

I had already moved into my little open-eyed nap, so I didn't hear Mr. MCLP's opening statement. I did, however, hear Prof. Contract's highly unusual interruption.

"No," he said. "We are not, in fact, concerned with euthanasia in this class."

Mr. MCLP, shocked by the interruption, protested, "But it has to do with what I was talking about."

Prof. Contracts sighed. "Sadly, that is the case. However, I submit to you that euthanasia has nothing to do what I was talking about."

We had been talking about a contract between a patient and a hospital, but nobody died, there was no discussion of euthanasia, and I still can't figure out how he got to euthanasia.

Mr. MCLP was not deterred, however, and gave one last try. "But you should be talking about euthanasia because that was what I was saying."

Prof. Contracts raised a quizzical eyebrow. "No," he said patiently, "I do not want to talk about euthanasia. However, at this point, I think you've convinced me that I should consider the subject for entirely different reasons."

I think the entire class shared his sentiment.

and the jury says...

I won! Here's how it broke down:

34% -- Murder
55% -- Manslaughter
10% -- Negligent homicide
1% -- Not guilty

I am pretty pleased with the results. In another exercise, this same group of people gave a man who caused permanent bodily injury to another man a six month prison term, so winning a multi-year prison term is a victory.

i write like a boy

Or so says the Gender Genie.

I copied and pasted a few of my entries into their little calculator, and the Genie said they were all male. Not only that, the Genie said they were overwhelmingly male, with a big spread between my girl points and my boy points. One entry had no girl points at all.

I wonder if their other "female" entries are super girly or something. Maybe I need to talk about mascara?

Thanks to Bekah for the link.

what a rush (part two)

On Friday I could barely eat lunch. I forced down a cracker and a slice of cheese, grabbed some fizzy water to settle my churning stomach, and went to class.

The common law pair went first, and they excelled. The prosecutor barely looked at his notes. He strode back and forth across the room, holding our attention. The defense didn’t walk around the room, but his legal arguments were concise and to the point. My stomach dropped even further.

Then the judge invited me up to the podium. The class looked me expectantly, and my hands started shaking terribly. Not knowing what else to do about that, I pressed them down hard against the podium so the class wouldn’t see. I waited one long second to gather my courage. Then my friend D. smiled encouragingly at me. It was as if bell had sounded.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," I began. And I was off.

When practicing my speech ahead of time, I constantly made mistakes. I found myself unable to remember the text of the statute that I was charging under. I stuttered and I stumbled. I tried to come up with little jokes, but they fell flat when spoken out loud in my empty room. I thought I’d never, ever be able make it through. "Oh well," I told myself, "you aren’t going to be a speaker-lawyer anyhow. Just get through this somehow."

Yet when was up there, something entirely unexpected happened. Out of nowhere, my Secret Lawyer Twin took charge. I felt like I was watching somebody else, somebody who was confident and well-spoken. That person didn’t stumble over a single word. She made all the little funny points I had planned but rejected, and, shock of shocks, they laughed. That person barely looked at her outline, looked the jury in the eyes, and smiled at them. Sentences were complete, not fragmented, and all legal points were hammered home.

I finished with a flourish, arguing for at least manslaughter. "If you think this man has acted merely recklessly, then you must find him guilty of manslaughter. But if you think this man has acted recklessly with extreme indifference to the value of human life, then you must find him guilty of murder!"

I won’t get the results until next week, so I can’t tell you how the class voted. I’ll consider manslaughter a victory; getting a conviction at all out of that crowd is difficult.

However, I've already won the real victory. I didn’t know I had a Secret Lawyer Twin, but I’m very, very pleased to have made her acquaintance.

what a rush (part one)

Yesterday in criminal law, I argued my first case before a jury. The jury was entirely composed of my classmates, and the judge was my professor, but it felt very, very real to me.

I found myself in this situation voluntarily when my professor asked for four students for an exercise a few days ago. My friend C., who sits next to me, volunteered. I didn’t, but when the professor asked me I didn’t mind.

The professor handed us a fact sheet describing the circumstances leading up to a homicide. We were split into prosecutor/defense pairs. One pair would argue under common law and the other under the Model Penal Code. The professor picked randomly and I was assigned Model Penal Code, prosecution. Our instructions were to prepare closing arguments to the case and present them to the class. The prosecutors were to argue for the harshest murder charge possible for their system, and the defense attorneys were to argue for either a not guilty verdict or the most lenient homicide charge possible.

I took the assignment, went back to my apartment, and panicked.

I’m not excessively shy, but the idea of trying to appeal to a group of my peers was terrifying. I had always figured I’d be a writer-lawyer, not a speaker-lawyer, that I’d slip comfortably into the silent ranks of the lawyers who draft contracts, wills, trusts, patent applications, and all of the other written documents that churn our society forward. Arguing in front of a jury was something those other lawyers did, those lawyers who were picked first for the team in junior high or the former class clowns. Juries, I always thought, wanted to see the kid who was voted most popular, not the kid with the dubious title of “Most Likely to Know Something Weird.”

My husband, as always the voice of reason, told me to practice. After all, he pointed out, public speaking is a skill, and few are born with it. So, grabbing hold of his advice, I threw myself into the assignment. For the first time in law school I fell behind in my reading in my other classes. I wrote out my speech several times and grappled with the language of the MPC. My husband argued it out with me, and by the time I was done, I was convinced the guy was completely guilty of murder. I wanted to throw the book at him, but whether I could persuade a class of young, liberal students in a liberal school in a liberal state was another thing. At least I knew the law thoroughly.

(I'll finish the rest tomorrow.)

that's what it's all about

Denise Howell over at Bag and Baggage knows all the cool links. Thanks go to her for introducing me to Public Defender Dude, a newish blog about the life of a public defender "in an urban area in California."

Great stuff.

the development of language

While waiting for my food in the cafeteria today, I heard the following snippet of conversation between two women who were apparently discussing one woman's scoundrel of an ex-boyfriend.

"Yes," the first woman said dramatically, "he did a Clinton on me!"

The second woman, visibly horrified, gasped, "He Clintoned you?"

The first woman nodded solemnly, and they both moved off to pay for their food.

I had no idea our former president had been turned into a verb.

smackdown

My very nice, very understanding, very accomodating property professor was in a bad mood.

Prof. Property started in the mellow, friendly way she usually starts. "A., can you tell me about Mannillo v. Gorski?" A. complied and stated the basic facts of the case.

Prof. Property then asked, "A., where was the complaint originally filed?" A. was clearly confused, but she hazarded an answer. "Um, the district court?"

Prof. Property moved into smackdown mode. "A., did you read the first line of the case?"

A. frantically paged through her book to find the first line of the case. "Uh, plaintiffs filed a complaint in the Chancery Division?"

Prof. Property nodded pleasantly. "Yes, that is true. A., what is the Chancery Division?"

A. clearly had no idea, and after stumbling through a few ideas, finally gave up.

Prof. Property frowned slightly, and said, "The Chancery is a court of equity. A., can you tell me what a court of equity is?"

Poor A. bravely muddled through an explanation that included the phrase, "A court where justice is done."

After letting A. struggle in vain for a few minutes, Prof. Property finally held up her hand. "Yes," she said drily, "we do hope it is a court where justice is done." Seeing as there was nothing further to be had from A., Prof. Property delivered the coup de grâce.

"A., do you have a legal dictionary?"

A. nodded.

"A., do you know how to use it?"