As an entering 1L I have tried to insulate myself from other people's opinions about what law school is like. UCLA will assume I know nothing about law school on my first day so I want to live up to that ideal.

Avoiding these opinions has turned out to be curiously difficult. Telling people you're headed to law school is apparently an opportunity for them to share their views on the legal profession. NOT THAT I MIND. I'm just not clear why it invites this type of response, more so than "I'm getting a PhD in medieval studies"

For example, recently I was traveling for 2 weeks in South America with random civilians so I had many variations on the stock "what do you do for work" conversation. I just said "I'm starting law school in August".

The standard responses settle into two categories:

It's impossible. "You're going to be overwhelmed by the workload." "You're going to have a tough time finding work after graduation." "What makes you think you'll do well?"

It's foolhardy. "Why on earth would you do that??" "My [close relative] went to [important law school] and she hated being a lawyer." "Joining the dark side, eh?"

Best of all, there's apparently no way to respond. If I gently say "oh, I'm sure it's not THAT bad" I'm given the pitying gaze that people save for the hopelessly deluded.

02 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 3

The top civilian question: "what kind of law will you study?"

The top answer from me: "no idea".

Recently I ran into a college acquaintance and law school graduate. Aside from being unusually positive about the life of a law student (optimism is already rare) he observed that people tended to approach law school either as vocational school or grad school.

His view was that attempting to prepare for a law specialty during school is pretty useless, since everything you know about practicing law will be taught to you on the job. He advocated the grad school approach -- take the classes that appeal to you. Ignore everything else.

05 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 0

I found out today from the handy UCLA Parking website that I got a space in a campus garage very close to the law school. Ahhh.

Women don't seem to derive the same deep satisfaction from securing a well-located parking space as men do. Why is this. I like knowing that even if I'm flunking out, I'll still have quality parking.

05 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 1

Here are some reasons.

Because I need to expand my territory.

Because it seemed more intellectually challenging than buying a liquor store, which I considered. Briefly.

Because I have the time & the interest & the ability.

Because it seems fun.

Because I'm not looking for a grad degree to give me direction in life.

Because I've already had a successful career in a different field.

Because I don't want to repeat myself.

09 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 0

In the 9 months since I took the LSAT, I have minimized my exposure to most information about law school and can say today I am almost totally ignorant about what happens at law school, the terminology, the work, etc.

Not that ignorance is a badge of honor. But I prefer to let the experience just be what it is, instead of building up a bunch of assumptions that will be largely incorrect.

I seem to be in the minority however. There's definitely a whole category of books, websites and other materials designed to frighten people headed to law school.

I guess I can't get worked up about it. How bad could it be? It's school.

10 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 0

A new Microsoft product for taking notes, which I considered for school. It has a few clever ideas but like most MS products those ideas are crushed under the hulking mass of the rest of the program.

I like software to be lean & mean. You can trust it. The designers & programmers had a clear idea what they were trying to do, and it's less likely to have functional problems. It may be a little homely but it will not let you down.

I have MS products I like & use (eg Excel) but they always have to shove in a bunch of useless widgets. Consequently any first-generation MS program is usually a huge mess.

As for lean & mean, I will use a basic word processor (WordPad or WordPerfect) and I'm trying an information organizer called Zoot.

10 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 2

The class of 07 is divided into 8 sections of about 40 people (I'm in #7).

Orientation at UCLA consists of some low-density "information sessions" interspersed with scheduled feedings.

A special emphasis is given to warnings against becoming an alcoholic while in law school.

You get a free sippy cup for the library. I lost mine within 1 hour of receiving it.

Also access cards for Lexis and Westlaw. They're both online case databases, I have no idea what the difference is.

Otherwise the UCLA campus & facilities are pretty awesome, and I mean that in the true sense of 'creating awe'. I went to college on the east coast (Harvard) where the student facilities were rooted in the Puritan ethic of simple & functional.

Compared to Harvard, UCLA is Disneyland. The student union has a store that sells at least 100 varieties of snowboards. Upstairs is a US Post Office, Kinko's, travel agency, large videogame room, and a salon where you can get your bikini wax. Down the hall is a Krispy Kreme.

I have reading assignments for Monday. Yes after 12+ yrs, I have homework again.

20 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 0

"Beyoncé Knowles earning $4.7 million as part of her five-year endorsement deal with L'Oréal. In return, she's required to tell L'Oréal if she makes any radical changes to her hair and she must keep her hair 'in excellent condition'."

20 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 0

Here is the single most interesting item from orientation:

UCLA has a policy on classes of larger than 40 people that grades be assigned on a strict curve -- 20% of the class gets A's, 60% B's and 20% C's.

I guess this is a shock to the system for folks who came from massively grade-inflated colleges. To me, restoring statistical value to the A is a worthy goal. The last time I got a C was in 5th grade for 'behavior'. Fortunately in 6th grade they stopped evaluating that category.

20 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 3

Speaking of grading on the curve: though the IOC is at pains to note that the Olympics is a competition between individuals, not nations, newspapers nevertheless publish the daily ranking of the nations by medal count.

I was thinking today that the medal count is rather misleading since it doesn't take into account the population or wealth of nations. We would EXPECT that the US and China would be at the front of the pack, since we are wealthy and they are populous.

Thus I created my new MB Olympic Ranking, which runs as follows.

1) total up the medals, no weighting for gold vs silver vs bronze (since the difference between the three comes down to essentially random factors of environment, personal condition, judging, etc) Ignore countries with fewer than 5 medals.

2) I got population figures from the UN and calculated a medals per capita index. I got GDP per capita figures from the US govt and calculated medals per GDP per capita index also.

3) I normalized the indexes (or indices, if you prefer) to 1 in each category by dividing through by the lowest index value in the category (thus the "best" score is a 1.0 and they go up from there)

4) I multiplied the two adjusted indexes to create a composite score.

So what we get is a medal ranking weighted by a country's available human & capital resources.

Who's the man now?? All hail BELARUS!!

23 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 1

I have four classes: Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law and Lawyering Skills. The first three involve large heavy casebooks. The 4th is a hands-on class where we apparently will learn skills like case briefing, writing complaints & motions, research, etc.

Torts is about how injuries (of which there is an amazing diversity) are converted into money -- who pays and why.
Civil procedure covers the life of a civil lawsuit, from inception to completion.
Criminal law is about why & how certain acts are criminalized, and what it takes to establish guilt or innocence.

The workload is not, dare I say it, especially taxing as yet. For each class session we usually have one case assigned, maybe a total of 10-12 pages of reading, though it's usually worthwhile to go through more than once.

The one essential habit that I've picked up is immediately looking up any unknown legal term as I come across it, some of which are common ('certiorari') and others superfluous ('ambit')

The other is taking as few notes as possible during class. I personally get more out of giving my full attention to the lecture rather than taking oodles of notes. Also, it's pretty clear that these classes are not like a history or literature class where you move along a one-way track -- it's more like the snowball model, where you have a key concept that grows and refines as you watch it progress through sample cases.

I expected to be more confused than I am. Since last Friday, I actually feel like I've learned something -- not much, to be sure, but measurable progress has been made.

27 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 1

As I was preparing for the LSAT last fall there seemed to be endless debate among people not in law school about how predictive the LSAT really is (not that these people are in any position to offer evidence) The conventional wisdom seemed to be that it tests skills that are irrelevant in law school.

If you're planning to take the LSAT, I'm here to tell you that it just ain't so: even after a week of classes it's clear that the question types on the LSAT are well-chosen to be similar to reasoning patterns you use every day in law school.

Reading comprehension - the cases you read are not long but they contain small, important details. You can't just skim over things and get it.

Logical reasoning - most of the cases come from the appellate courts, so there's often a line of reasoning leading to one decision, then the appeals court finds flaws in the reasoning, and puts forward their own theory.

Logic games - believe it or not, these are relevant too. When you read criminal statutes or rules of procedure, you have these interlocking requirements and conditions that all have to be reasoned out to get to the right result.

31 Aug 04 ::: Comments: 1

"The state of Illinois sued the Dave Matthews Band on Tuesday for allegedly dumping up to 800 pounds of liquid human waste from a bus into the Chicago River, dousing a tour boat filled with passengers."

02 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

Anxiety of the unknown has dissipated among the 1L class, probably to be replaced shortly by anxiety over the exam. Law school classes each have one final exam, which is your whole grade.

However, they're all open-book and previous exams are posted online by the professors (as well as student answers) Being a curious character I checked them out this week, not because I am a exam-hounding loser but because being a sparse note-taker it gives me some guidance. The largest part of each exam involves a lengthy hypothetical case that you're asked to diassemble & put back together in stages. Seems reasonable.

The single exception is Legal Skills, which has several graded writing assignments through the semester and then a final exam & grade at the end of the year.

Otherwise, the students seem to be acclimated to their instructors (and vice versa) at this point. My favorite class so far is civil procedure. While I could quibble about a few habits of my professors I have to say overall the teaching quality is excellent. When I went to college, half my professors were bored by being there and the other half were barely functional in English. So the little things don't bother me.

03 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

A federal lawsuit from 1990 concerning gays in the military:

High Tech Gays v. DISCO (Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office)

04 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

There were a lot of not especially well-tailored suits wandering the halls today so I asked what the deal was. On-campus interviewing for 2nd year summer jobs.

What I gather is the 2nd summer job at a firm is often an audition for a permanent position so the pressure is on! NOW!!

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to participate in this process next year because I would find it entirely too absurd. Not that I disagree that looking the part is an important step towards getting the part. But there's something about putting students in suits that's a little disingenuous and sad (not pathetic sad, wistful sad, the hard laser of reality lighting up the dim recesses of what folks see as 'the future')

07 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 1

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 ::: Comments: 1

The torts professor paused class today to give an amusing view of the scaled grading process. Paraphrasing him:

"Your grade only reflects your performance relative to other class members on one exam on one day. Yes, 20% will get Cs, and 20% will get As.

"But if I took all the faculty of UCLA and gave them the exam, 20% would get Cs and 20% would get As.

"If I gave the exam to all Nobel laureates, 20% would get Cs and 20% would get As.

"There is no such thing as a 'hard' or 'easy' exam, since if you find it hard, chances are everyone else does too. The worst that can happen is on the basis of grades, you will be rejected by certain law firms for certain jobs. So what?"

I imagine there are some students who would take issue with the last bit. I thought it was a worthwhile reminder that the real downside of graduating from a top-flight law school is pretty slim.

09 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

I'm not dead yet, nobody is actually. Next week looks to be a little busier, with some extra reading and a couple short writing assignments, but 1L has still been entirely reasonable in its demands.

One word we have yet to hear meaningfully intoned is 'justice'. Not that I came to indulge some (in my case nonexistent) ideal about justice. But even the name of law school draws the distinction: though we'd probably all say that one of the highest ideals of the legal system is implementing "justice", we're not going to "justice school".

I took the most popular undergrad course at Harvard, called Justice, wherein a government professor occupied 15 weeks lecturing about various philosophical concepts of justice through history. As you can tell a lot of it stayed with me.

The various court opinions we've read so far will talk about "fairness" and considerations of morals and social policy but they stay far away from the J-word.

I think the answer is hidden in plain view: the legal system may produce justice as a side effect, but it is not (and could not be) designed to do so. For instance, civil procedure is described by the teacher as a means of dispute resolution -- not a means of producing justice in disputes.

And maybe "resolution" contains the clue: what law provides is solutions. One thing I'm gratified by is how concrete legal education is: there's no hundreds of pages of theory occasionally punctuated by a case that happens to illustrate some ideal behavior. The textbooks are built around the history of actual cases, actual opinions, actual mistakes, actual resolutions.

And what you quickly see is that part of the nature of law is that it's full of holes, some small, some large. Cases roll into those holes and humans have to kind of tow them out of the ditch using logic and common sense and other reasonable but fallible faculties of judgment.

Indeed, part of a successful judicial opinion is that it fills as few holes as needed to resolve the case, and leaves the rest open to another day -- so they can be addressed under the practical requirements of a future case, and not solved as some kind of thought experiment in the present.

10 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 1

Colorado is considering changing its electoral vote rules to distribute them proportionately by the popular vote, instead of winner take all. Were you aware that states could independently change their elector policy? I sure wasn't.

Even if every state adopted this policy it wouldn't address a more fundamental problem, which is that not every vote is equal in a national election. Though it's unclear whether this is truly a flaw, as the framers of the constitution wanted small states to be somewhat overrepresented in the electoral college, as they are in congress.

The most valuable vote in America is one cast in Wyoming, where they have 3 electoral votes for a population of 500,000, or one for every 167,000 people. At the bottom of the list is Texas, with one electoral vote for every 650,000 people, roughly four times as many.

Here's a list of what every individual resident's vote is worth relative to the 'gold standard' of Wyoming.

13 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

The professors sometimes make (good-natured?) barbs about each others' classes. Professor Civil Procedure, being the most deadpan, is also the most successful at this.

An aside on Torts, while reviewing a personal injury case: "So you're taking Torts right? Duty, breach, causation, damages. I just taught you the whole class."

After a student observed that a Civ Pro word also appeared in Criminal Law: "It means something different there. Who knows what that class is about anyways?"

14 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 2

Rosh Hashanah is not a national holiday but in LA it might as well be. All our classes were cancelled on Thursday.

This week we had our first two writing assignments, a research project and a memorandum. The teaching assistant was at great pains to insist that we use actual law library books for the research, and not look it up online (which is exactly the same data)

I did the project online and then double checked my work by using the books: it came out the same. There are advantages of using the books to find cases in certain topic areas, because it encourages you to browse in areas you might not have thought of on your own. But getting the cases themselves is much easier online.

The other problem with the books is that generations of law students before you have had the same assignment and have helpfully circled all the cases you need to complete the assignment. No such passive cheating online.

The memo was to practice writing in a heavily structured "objective memorandum" format. Whether actual law firms use this structure, who knows. I doubt it -- it's tedious to read, the format specifies that you state your conclusion 5 separate times.

Today I availed myself of a professor's office hours for the first time. He teaches criminal law, which to me is the most confusing class, but he told me it'll continue to be confusing and that I shouldn't worry, as I have a good grasp of the material. I do? Half the answers I volunteer in class are incorrect. Ah, he says, but at least you show evidence of thinking. It's the people who have said nothing for 4 weeks that he worries about.

17 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

I hate to be a rat but ... a telemarketer (raising money for some shady Democratic organization whose non-profit status was not verifiable) called me today and I said:

"uh, I'm on the national do not call list."
"We have our own list."
"Well, there's a national list now."
"I wasn't aware of that."

Sure buddy. I pried the name of his employer out of him but when he realized what was happening he wouldn't give me the phone number. Nevertheless I had enough information to file a complaint at www.donotcall.gov. I expect indictments to be handed down shortly.

19 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

Another twist on the undergraduate grading motif is all exam grading at law school is done anonymously. When you take an exam (either in bluebooks or, more prevalently these days, on your laptop) you are given a number to put on your exam and the teacher grades the number, not the name. The records office is the only one who knows which names go to which numbers.

According to the student handbook it's a serious offense to include any information in your exam that might imply your identity ("Ever since I was a young man growing up in Singapore ... ")

The result is that brown-nosing as a competitive sport is non-existent. Being nice to a professor, or for that matter being an ass, has no bearing on your final evaluation. He or she will never know.

21 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

Last night I had pork for dinner. This is relevant because I've noticed a correlation between eating pork and having really strange, vivid dreams later on in the evening.

Anyhow, hours after eating the pork, I had a dream that a classmate & I were going to lunch and had somehow finagled Prof Torts into going with us. (Not that we have some waking fantasy to have lunch with him.) Shortly after we get to the restaurant, Prof Torts disappears. We wait a reasonable time and then, mystified, go ahead with our meal.

As we leave, Prof Torts stumbles towards the entrance, now staggeringly drunk. We pause to consider the signficance of his newfound alcohol depedency, and in the near term, how to return him to his afternoon classes with the least fuss.

23 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 0

I had a magic moment today: I read the following paragraph and it seemed like a concise, clear example of english-language prose.

"An elementary and fundamental requirement of due process in any proceeding which is to be accorded finality is notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections. The notice must be of such nature as reasonably to convey the required information and it must afford a reasonable time for those intersted to make their appearance. But if with due regard for the practicalities and peculiarities of the case these conditions are reasonably met the constitutional requirements are satisfied."

24 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 2

When you see a warning like this, regardless of how ridiculous, it's safe to infer:

1) somebody attempted the action depicted (rocking the vending machine)
2) they offered the explanation given (expectation of free soda)
3) they were injured (by a falling vending machine) and filed a claim to recover damages.

25 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 3

I'm in a negative mood this week. I considered cutting my afternoon class so I could leave school at noon (I didn't). I suspect it's the quickly-shortening daylight hours messing with my brain.

One substantive point of law school that bothers me is how many assignments are ungraded --- namely all of them, except the final exam. Forget about whether it makes sense to weight a final exam that much. I just find it hard to get excited about revising a paper that has no bearing whatsoever on my grade. If I spend time on it and do a great job, it has the same effect as if I'd just blown it off until the last minute.

29 Sep 04 ::: Comments: 3

The undergraduates have arrived back at UCLA this week so every line on campus is now considerably longer. How is it they can get properly educated starting school so late? Sheesh.

The UCLA daily newspaper (what's it called? The Daily Bruin or something? Are bruins typically a daily occurrence in nature?) is almost indistinguishable from The Onion except that it's, you know, real.

The Onion, you see, exists on two distinct levels of satire. One is its take on the news of the day. The other, which I believe goes over the head of most of us city dwellers, is its parody of small-town papers with their overblown opinion pieces, "local color" columns written by local characters, fascination with minute goings-on not really suitable for journalistic coverage, etc.

Student newspapers I suppose are exempt from some of this scrutiny because despite being meant sincerely, we assume that they're published by people who don't know any better. In the meantime, I savor the feature articles about the outrageous difficulty of purchasing bedsheets in Westwood Village, and the editorial cartoons drawn with ball-point pen on dining hall napkins.

01 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

I don't know what you got in your absentee ballot to remind you how to fill in the card properly, but this is what we in California got. A puppy and a poem. This is the kind of thing that makes me vote against tax increases.

01 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 1

Come to think of it, I did vote against two taxes. One of them was a tax on people who make more than $1 million per year to support public mental health services. The other was a phone line tax to improve emergency response services.

I always vote against these types of taxes because a tax should tend to fall on the people who benefit from it. Right? Don't we all benefit from social improvements like mental health and emergency response infrastucture? If it's such a great idea, the legislature can find a place for it in their budget. Otherwise it's just freestanding taxation attaching itself to wherever it can find a home.

01 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 6

The supreme court is entering its eleventh year with the same justices -- the only longer streak was the 12 yrs from 1811-1823; the longest streak in this century was 6 yrs (1975-1981)

While we like to blame republican presidents for the heavy-duty conservatives on the court, let us remember: William Rehnquist was confirmed 68-26 by a democrat-controlled senate in 1971. Antonin Scalia was confirmed 98-0 by a democrat-controlled senate in 1986. Clarence Thomas was confirmed 52-48 by a democrat-controlled senate in 1991 (a straight party-line vote except for, uh, 10 democrats)

Hm, what do you think the chances are the current republican-controlled senate will return the favor as justices inevitably begin to step down in the next few years.

03 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

Contrary to conventional wisdom, legal opinions are not full of portmanteaux like "thereupon" "hereinafter" "notwithstanding" etc. (You're more likely to see those in contracts.) No, the greatest linguistic tic of the legal scholar is the phrase "as to".

"As to" roughly translated means "with respect to" or "pertaining to". It's really a conjunction, and can be useful in a variety of contexts. The state of mind as to the act of robbery. The damages as to the original act of negligence.

However. Reliance on "as to" means that judges & law professors start unnecessarily converting verbs into adjectives. So instead of "Did that answer your question?" you'll sometimes hear "Was that responsive as to your question?" Further down the line, "what was your decision as to eating lunch?" "is there consensus as to ordering another keg?" And so on.

06 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

The Onion on the overruling of certain Patriot act searches:

"That's the way these things happen. First, they overturn one little clause, then they whittle away at the rest. Before you know it, our civil liberties will be totally restored."

06 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

I've been looking into the topic of "jurisdiction stripping". Congress is attempting to pass a law (Marriage Protection Act) forbidding the federal court system from hearing cases on the validity of gay marriage. In general, though federal judges don't encourage it, congress does have the power to add or remove topics from the jurisdiction of federal courts.

However, the issue is unlikely to come up through the courts on those grounds. As our presidential candidates are at pains to note, marriage is historically a state issue and the states need to decide for themselves (this fact allows candidates to take whatever position on gay marriage they want without having to back it up with action -- the president has no power to set marriage laws)

Still, thanks to the full faith & credit clause of the constitution, gay marriage may not be a federal issue but it's certainly a national issue. As soon as ONE STATE fully legalizes it (eg Massachusetts has authorized it, but it's still in the midst of legal & state constitutional challenges) those marriages will have to accepted by all the other states as legit under the FF&C clause.

The net effect is gay marriage will be legal everywhere, even if marriage licenses are not available everywhere. Even if many states pass laws preventing gay marriage from originating in that state, FF&C will let them in through the side door.

Once legislatures figure that out, they will run to amend their laws to close the FF&C loophole, by saying "we accept FF&C except for gay marriage". And there is the federal constitutional issue.

Historically the supreme court has not been generous to states attempting to trim federally-granted constitutional rights down to state parameters. It has also not been generous to laws that discriminate, which goes back to the significance of the Lawrence v Texas decision last year, which struck down the Texas anti-sodomy laws. What the court was really saying is "you can't make laws that selectively target gays".

Eventually the Supreme Court will probably hear a case involving an FF&C restriction that targets gays and if they apply Lawrence as precedent, it'll be a real dust-up on the bench.

08 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 1

The halfway mark of the first semester of law school. That really wasn't so bad. I guess that's why they have finals in the 2nd half, to maintain a high level of suspense.

Attention is slowly shifting to the exams, which are your entire grade in the class. Law school has a reputation for being cutthroat and competitive. UCLA is pretty mild in this regard but it's an inevitable result of the curve grading system: the goal is not to be good in absolute terms, what's important is being better than your classmates.

Everyone is starting to negotiate that gray area between being overly self-reliant (and missing important points of law) and being overly generous with one's study materials (and potentially giving away a competitive advantage)

I know it sounds horrible. But consider. Law exams are entirely open-book. So one's net performance is going to be a combination of a) the quality of the materials you prepare & bring to the exam and b) what you actually write. If you come up with the greatest torts exam technique ever, it doesn't benefit you to share it.

Believe me, there are people who have an intuitive grasp of all the material who will be weak on the exam; and there are people with a so-so grasp of the material who will prepare great exam materials and ace it. The exam is not a test of being a lawyer. It is a test of specific analysis & writing skills in a limited time interval. To do well, you can't gloss over the executional aspects.

08 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

To those who wonder how the US economy can absorb thousands of law school grads each year, one answer is because lawyers get disillusioned and leave the profession with apparently great regularity.

This leads to a body of written work that might be termed the literature of complaint (perhaps literature of whining is more apt)

These are the books and articles (frequently written anonymously) that all feature a protagonist who, while incredibly successful & important as a lawyer, wakes up one day and realizes its great tragic emptiness. Blah blah etc.

1. These tales speak to no fundamental misery intrinsic to the legal profession, but rather the naive and uninformed expectations carried into the profession by folks who should've known better. I mean, long hours, long meetings, eccentric senior partners, absorption of your life -- this is exactly the experience big law firms promise. Everyone knows this. So then you take a job there and you're surprised when that's exactly what it's like?

2. These ex-lawyers are sufficiently vocal in their discontent that they give the impression there are no happy lawyers. Logic implies there are plenty of firm partners who are busy and rich and like it that way. Those guys don't, as a rule, publish often -- "I'm a Rich Lawyer and Life is Good".

3. So why do disgruntled lawyers feel so impelled to share their suffering? Part of it must be their primal scream against the world in retaliation for their powerlessness. The other is to bend the ear of sympathetic law students, lawyers and ex-lawyers. Misery has always loved company. I guess there is satisfaction in thinking you're revealing The Big Lie Nobody Knows!! But everyone knows.

These guys have no one but themselves to blame for poor career choices. So many jobs in America are awful, repetitive, back-breaking, soul-dulling work. People find some happiness in them because they're dependent on them.

For a white guy (it's always a white guy) with the huge privileges of education and massive compensation to blather on about how it's not fulfilling to him ... I suppose he's entitled to his angst, but angst is itself a luxury most can't afford.

These tales of woe end up circling around a sermon on the importance of "freedom" or "autonomy" or "what's really important". Translation: "it's taken me 8 years to realize that even as a well-paid lawyer, it's a cash flow business, not a capital business. You don't end up amassing some war chest that you can live off of. I chose to develop an expensive lifestyle -- which you think I'm owed, because I'm an important lawyer -- with ongoing obligations and I've become totally dependent on those large ongoing checks."

And for these colossal personal mistakes of common sense, financial prudence and self-awareness, the legal profession at large is held accountable. Very strange.

15 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

There are a wide variety of commercial outlines, case briefs and supplemental textbooks to attract the law student dollar. At the beginning of the term I though "why would I want extra reading?" but now 9 weeks in, I have caved and bought a few.

The problem is, the main textbook in any class is invariably a casebook. From what I can tell, casebooks have developed an idiomatic and not entirely logical format. Cases, usually from appellate courts, are edited down for length and then the casebook editor adds a section of "notes and questions" on the end. Not much space (if any) is given to explaining the doctrine that the case is about -- your best bet is to get a hint from the section heading at the top of each page ("oh right, I'm in Informed Consent ...")

The other problem with casebooks is they're, you know, full of cases. What's good is these are real opinions. What's bad is the judge was not writing the case for your benefit, law student, so teasing out the signficance sometimes seems like a long drive for a short day at the beach.

Anyhow. The supplements, if nothing else, confirm that you actually are following what's going on correctly because they just give you the doctrine and the applications, and often -- this is very helpful -- hypothetical situations to answer questions about. The final exam is going to be full of hypos, not appellate court opinions, that's for sure.

19 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

Today I got back a writing assignment from civil procedure that I totally missed the boat on. The funny thing is, in my first draft I answered the question more accurately, and the night before it was due totally rewrote it, thinking I'd found a sneaky trick. Tricky only to me, apparently.

However, if I missed the boat, it left the dock without too many people on it. The professor told the class with characteristic gentleness that it was not our finest hour (perhaps most tellingly, he didn't bother writing comments on the papers after he got to a certain point in the pile)

Yay for ungraded work!

19 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

Prof Crim, devout Red Sox fan, was absent with "the flu" yesterday (the day after game 5 went almost 6 hrs) and predicts that he will likewise be absent tomorrow (after game 7 is played tonight). Meanwhile the 2 lectures he managed this week were "mystifying clouds of words". If the Red Sox go to the world series he might as well take a leave of absence, he's no use to us in this condition.

Meanwhile I got gossip this morning that a classmate who sits in front of me in Torts has dropped out of law school altogether. There hasn't even been a graded assignment yet and this guy threw in the towel. I guess if I'd already paid I'd have stuck it out and see how I did on the exams, but ... to each his own.

20 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

I've stumbled into my first significant disagreement with an instructor: a memo assignment pertaining to California law about negligent infliction of emotional distress.

I was born with a gene that gave me a low threshold of pain for illogical reasoning. It gets in my brain and makes me crazy, and I cannot let it go until I conclusively win or lose. I almost don't care which: while it's nice to be right, it's the ambiguity that drives me nuts, and it's the certainty I want, not the affirmation that I was on the right side.

Generally this has been a positive in my career, but not always. Certainly there are plenty of times I wish I could've said "whatever" and moved on (and probably should have) Over time I've learned more about how to present ideas with tact and clarity. Also the importance of picking your battles.

In this dispute, I'm quite sure I'm on the right side. Other students agree with me, but -- the professor and the teaching assistant do not. On some level I feel I should drop it. Yet it's a non-trivial issue affecting everyone who takes the course. Hard to know what to do.

23 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

I figured out what to do. Turns out the judge who wrote the opinion in the case which is the source of the below-referenced disagreement is alive & well and working as a legal consultant in San Diego. Dude even has his own website. So I emailed him. We'll see what happens.

24 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 1

Prof Civ Pro (imagine deadpan delivery): "Federal rule 21 is my favorite. Misjoinder and non-joinder. Just because if I ever leave teaching to have a drag queen act, that would be a great name. Miss Joinder."

Update: Prof Civ Pro informs me he has used the joke for 10 years. I guess we always forget that every professor's act has been honed by many years of trial & error.

25 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

I didn't hear back from the judge. (though I may still -- there are generational differences in how often people check email. I only get my postal mail once a week) The professor ended up agreeing with me on one of the cases in contention. It will not lead to any curricular re-evaluation of the assignment but at least I wasn't smokin' dope.

Some days at law school I get caught in the gap between my curiosity about topics and the whole "don't rock the boat" principle familiar to me and anyone else who has held down a job. I mean, law school is just another work environment, and the people working there have the same motivations -- wanna get paid, wanna get a good performance review, wanna get hired back next year.

I myself don't have anything to lose by making hay out of certain topics, but it doesn't mean it's going to rise to a level approximating interest for anyone else. It would be nice to think professors cared about every allegedly brilliant idea students came up with, but what's in it for them?

It's another application of the principle I used to call "your emergency is not my emergency" back when I was working. The conundrum is, you can't do your job (or your studies or whatever) without the help of other people, but you can't necessarily get them to pay attention either, since whatever is the most important thing to you may rank low on their list.

When I learn about something new, I want to find out all sorts of things about it. But the guy who's been teaching the first-year course for 22 yrs is maybe not quite as fulfilled by the inquiries as I am.

28 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

A fair number of fiirst year students seem to have bypassed any anxiety about exams and moved on to anxiety what they will do for work next summer. There are two schools of thought on the issue:

1) since you have completed a whopping one year of law school, you are not tremendously useful to anyone so whatever job you could get is going to be pretty menial, strictly of the resume-padding sort, not of the meaningful learning sort.

2) law firms recruit on-campus during the fall of second year for summer jobs AFTER second year. These are considered important because they tend to lead to offers for jobs after graduation. Thus doing something interesting THIS summer gives you an advantage during interviews next fall.

I tend to believe (1). But that's mostly because I don't plan to participate in (2). The law firm recruiting process resembles the baseball draft, where kids coming out of school are put into the minor leagues to see how they perform before they get an offer to join the majors.

To fully buy into (2), you have to sorta believe that what you do the summer after your first year has major consequences for potentially the next 20 years of your professional life. That seems a stretch, doesn't it.

30 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 1

2/3 done with fall semester.

30 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

Why will I not participate in on-campus recruiting next fall? I have no interest in working at a big law firm.

This is not a position of idealism. Except for a couple isolated exceptions, every lawyer I've met who worked at a big firm I found to be an insufferable idiot. Every lawyer whom I liked and respected (or hired to represent me) has been an independent practitioner or ran their own firm.

As a first-year this position will earn you a mixture of pity and contempt. But I have different motivations for being in law school than many of my classmates, and thus different goals for what I want to do with the degree afterwards.

One major difference is that I already had my "work terrible hours to pay your dues" career experience when I worked in the technology business in the 90s. It was totally worthwhile and totally necessary. I recommend it to all my classmates whose previous work experience may be, shall we say, somewhat light. But having done it once, why would I want to do it again?

Not that I think that because I worked for some years in an unrelated field that should give me some kind of shortcut into the legal field. No, I start at the bottom with everyone else. But the specific costs & specific benefits of working at a large firm do not appeal to me.

NB. A recent insight into big-firm marketing: a second-year student was talking to me about how she had just been flown to New York for a 2nd interview. She was extremely amazed & excited that THEY PAID for her plane ticket & hotel! Woohoo, a free trip! I gently suggested that the trip was not, in the long term, free; she insisted quite firmly that it was. It's great to be new to the working world, I hear they have free coffee and pencils too.

30 Oct 04 ::: Comments: 0

I don't care who you vote for. But please do it. My Argentine friend was telling me it's an actual federal crime there to not vote. They don't come out to your house and put you in manacles, but they make a note on your record and the next time you have business with the law ... look out.

I don't know who will win. Regardless of the polls showing them nationally even, the electoral college math is still a little tricky for Kerry. My prediction is that if Bush wins, at the electoral level he'll win decisively -- more than 30 votes. If Kerry wins, he will be squeaking it out in less than 20 votes.

02 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 0

... great Casey has struck out.

02 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 0

That was a pretty thorough rout of the democratic ticket wasn't it. Not just the president, but both houses of congress too. John Edwards can't even go back to his old senate seat, they gave it to someone else.

I don't fear the republican rule that much if only because I don't think democrats have done much to push it back in the last 4 yrs. So what's really going to be different? Bush got into office in 2000, promised everyone a straight-up republican-style presidency, and he delivered. Whereas the democrats, time and again, just rolled over and rubber-stamped it.

Now, at least, there's one advantage: when shit hits the fan, republicans will not be able to shrug and say "ah well, if it weren't for the democrats ..." Maybe, just maybe, one party reaped what it sowed; and the other got enough rope to hang itself three times over.

On the bright side, only 18 or so months until the formation of Hillary's exploratory committee.

03 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 76

Prof Civ Pro: "I don't know how to teach discovery. It's like 7th grade sex education class. They put all the parts up on the blackboard but it doesn't really give you a sense of what it's really like. But, I'll put the parts up anyways."

03 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 0

Like just about everyone headed to LA for law school, up until the time I arrived I was thinking entertainment law would be a good specialty. After 10 weeks, having learned nothing about entertainment law and almost nothing about all other law, I have lost all interest.

No one, not a one -- and this includes a number of entertainment attorneys -- has suggested that there is anything novel or interesting about the legal aspect of entertainment law. What pleasure there is seems entirely derived from the refracted glory of your clients (eg the most recent American Idol winner) or your subject matter (eg the most recent crap Lifetime movie) But it does pay well. Yeah, it better.

04 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 4

The time has arrived to begin the time-honored law student exam preparation habit of "outlining". Since all exams are open-book and you can bring notes, the outline serves as your personal guide to the course as you muddle through the exam. Traditionally this is sold as a lengthy, time-consuming project.

So far I haven't found that to be the case -- the two outlines I've done took about 4-5 hrs each -- but I am an extremely minimal note-taker. Something really extra-special has to happen for me to be sufficiently moved to write it down. So my outline process basically involves moving all my notes into into a single orderly document.

Whereas judging from the constant tapping of laptop keyboards all around me, most folks will wind up the semester with dozens and dozens of pages of notes. So the process of plowing through and finding the outline within will necessarily be more complicated.

The person who has not done themselves any favors is the Stenographer. Every class, they have typed pretty much every word the professor said into their laptop, and they will end the class not with notes, but with a transcript. Then they can re-read the transcript and start, you know, taking notes. I realize everyone learns differently but that just seems masochistic.

I've also heard tales of 20 and 30 page outlines. What possible use is that in a time-sensitive exam situation? I can't imagine how you have time to leisurely thumb through a massively overweight outline.

04 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 4

Some have suggested the ambitious push this year to get gay marriage noticed as a national issue backfired: conservative voters turned out en masse to approve constitutional provisions blocking it, and while they were there, touched the screen on behalf of W.

So I was wondering, why is there so much resistance to gay marriage? Recently I heard Sen Rick Santorum on the radio asking -- if we let gays get married, who's next? Bigamists? Shepherds? etc. The slippery slope argument.

I regret to admit the Senator made me think: why do we have an intuitive sense that some groups "deserve" civil rights but that others don't? What informs that intuition? Gay marriage backers don't endorse bigamous marriage. But is that based on anything but the same kind of arbitrary morality that leads others to oppose gay marriage to begin with?

So I arrived at the question that may be so red it's blue: when we award civil rights to groups, are we performing some kind of compensatory calculation?

05 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 2

I just read the thirteen cases provided for our graded memo. My eyes are crossing.

But my tip for you tonight: unpublished opinions on Lexis are gold for research. I found a couple that neatly summarize the reasoning of the main cases I had to read. Is that lazy? Good research is all about laziness. The last thing you want to do is have to froth up a legal argument unsupported by authority. My main lesson from my last memo is: don't think too hard. The answer has been hidden in plain view.

06 Nov 04 ::: Comments: 0

I became a member of the California Bar this week. Pay toll, $76. I have really no idea why it's necessary to charge law students for this privilege. Apparently you have to register within 90 days of arriving at law school or you get to pay $150. So I was driven by no positive benefit, simply the annoyance of having to pay $74 extra for something about as useful to a 1L as tonsils.