I had my first 'oh shit' moment yesterday. In civil procedure we were reading the famous case (among law students) Pennoyer v Neff and the guy whom the teacher had asked to give a summary to the class was coming up with all this narrative information that I totally missed.

The land was used for logging? Neff lived in California? What? I was flipping through the casebook, assuming my reading & retention skills had gotten very lax very quickly. Then I couldn't find the references, so I was fully confounded.

After class I asked the guy where those tidbits were -- he admitted they were not in the casebook, he had done separate research on the web. Aha ... my self-esteem was restored.

08 Sep 04