Lawschool Journal
Week 10 12/1/02
It is officially December! I have no idea how I’m going to buy presents in time. My last exam is on the 20th. I’ll just have to make Cedar go shopping (tee hee hee).
Alright, coming up on week 10. Last week was officially hell. We had a paper due for BLS (Basic Legal Skills) on Monday so none of us did reading for any of our other classes. This paper took WAY too much mental energy. The reason was because we had to formulate a rule from a group of really disparate cases. We were doing the kind of thing a judge does, and it was hard. I didn’t even end up liking my paper much (I liked my other paper more). So that paper was a bear. In the meantime, these other classes decided to ramp up the reading (professors always get a little crazy when exams are coming up). So I was pretty far behind. I’m caught up now (after three days of reading!). But of course I’m going to try and do some job things this week since I’d like an internship with a judge this summer. When things start heating up I tell myself two things to keep myself happy (and I am happy!): 1) I’m in law school because I want to be and 2) I only have 3 weeks until I get a nice big vacation. Even when you are doing something you like and want to do, if you are doing too much of it it becomes stressful. Such is life. And that is why we have vacations.
I didn’t tell you how the client counseling competition went. Well it was good fun. We went two nights (my partner Emily and I). The first night I was a tad nervous, but everything went fine. The client was a guy who had signed onto a movie and he hadn’t been told it was a porn movie, so he wanted legal advice about the contract he signed. (Great topic!) The judges didn’t give us hardly any feedback (except for our scores which were decent). The second night I felt really relaxed and it was more fun. Also our judges were really nice and gave us lots of good feedback. I talked with them afterwards at the reception. One was a prosecutor and wanted us both to work for the prosecutor’s office next summer. I didn’t say no, but prosecuting has not been an interest of mine. If nothing else happens, I would certainly consider it, at the very least for the experience (I could then say, with good reason, that I didn’t want to be a prosecutor). My section did really well and had 3 of the top 5 client counselors. Go 6! (that is my section number).
In January my friend Aviva and I are going to compete in the Mediation competition. I’m REALLY excited about that one. For some reason I think I would be good at it. I could be totally wrong and really suck, but I still think it will be fun.
So this week is the last week of classes, then we have a week to study, then finals. I have Contracts on the 16th and Civ Pro on the 18th. Torts is a take home exam due on the 20th. They schedule the 1L exams all nice and staggered. So sweet of them.
So I’ll be studying a lot for the next week. I’m glad these exams are only 10% of our grade (for Torts and Civ Pro it doesn’t count at all if it is a worse grade than your final). These are really practice, and that is just fine by me. People say law school exams are a horse of a different color, so it is great to have practice. BTW, they are open book, but since we are under such a time crunch, we pretty much learn the stuff anyway and use the book to supplement here and there.
I haven’t worked out in a couple weeks (stupid paper!), but I think this week I’ll start again.
In closing, here is an actual quote from a trial:
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.
(From a book called Disorder in the Court)
