Final Quarter
Welcome to my last quarter ever of law school!
This quarter should be pretty good. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the quality of my classes. My Bus Orgs class (8:15am - 9:20am) is the most pleasantly surprising. That is a pretty early time and most early classes I’ve taken have been terrible. But Professor Ngugi is a young, enthusiastic guy who has a talent of balancing lectures with discussions. He keeps discussions on topic, which is difficult to do well.
And, perhaps of most import, is the fact that I only have 1 exam (for Bus Orgs). (Of course the exam is two days after my birthday.) My other two classes, Death and Gift Taxation (DGT), and Access to Justice (AtJ), do not have finals. Those classes’ grades are based on problem sets, papers and projects.
DGT has been a very practical class in which we go through problem sets and figure out tax liability for various estate or gift scenarios. It is actually a little bit fun, though the first problem set took a LONG time. I think it has the steep learning curve. Since Estate Planning is one of my interests this class should be very useful (an alum I talked to who practices estate planning told me that DGT was the most useful class she took. She even had and used the text book from the class.)
In other estate planning news, the Washington Legislature is coming up with a new estate tax since its old estate tax was recently overthrown by the state Supreme Court. In a local article in the Seattle P-I, the Gates family gave some statements supporting the estate tax as a fair and less regressive way to tax. Washington currently relies heavily on the sales tax and local property taxes. I thought it was interesting that the Gates family made that statement. It was “family-owned” business owners that were complaining in the article. I’m not sure, but I believe there are tax exemptions anyway for family-owned businesses passed at death. So what are they complaining about? I’m not sure.
I spent last weekend writing a paper for PR (Professional Responsibility - which I took last quarter, but the paper wasn’t due until the second week of this quarter). That was annoying and it made my week very busy. But this past weekend was great. Cedar and I had a nice lazy day on Saturday (well, we did our taxes, but that didn’t take very long). I baked some cookies, and read a book (for fun). Sunday I played ultimate for the first time in 9 months.
(In this picture I turfed the disc, but I think it was my only turnover)
It was great! My knee didn’t hurt. It helped that the ground was like a sponge. I’m sore today, but everything appears functional. Cedar played very well, I even got pictures!
Cedar also got a great picture of Bob laying out:
Wolfe commented on my last entry regarding my use of the word “geek” to describe myself as an “estate planning geek.” He pointed out that the better word would be “wonk.” I agree.
I am hereby, officially, a budding “estate planning wonk.”
I had some good developments on the job front. I met with an immigration lawyer and talked with her about her job. I really liked the sound of the kind of work she did. She also gave me 7 other people to contact, three of which I’ve heard back from about meeting. Somewhat more exciting is that she wants to hire me part-time, though sporadically, this quarter to help with her growing solo-practice. I hope I get to help her as I’d really like to get some practical experience.
So that’s encouraging.
The weather has been a little weird (lots of snow in the mountains), but spring time is upon us, as those with allergies could tell you (I only get very mild allergies, I feel lucky. Seattle is supposed to be pretty horrible for pollen counts.)
I love spring! Even more I love being almost done with law school. I graduate June 12th, start the bar review class June 13th, and take the bar July 26-28. Then Cedar and I plan to take a vacation of some sort (probably a road trip here and there).
