Week 19 2/2/03

Oh the madness! Yup, it’s been busy around here. Quite busy. Overall I’ve been having a great time, though there have been ups and downs.

I’ll start with the mediation competition. As I mentioned my friend Aviva and I were partners. We competed twice: once on Tuesday and once on Wednesday(like everyone else). Four teams went on to the finals on Thursday (there were two winners instead of just one).

Aviva and I won both nights. Whether you went on to the finals on Thursday was based on your points not just on whether you won (obviously or Aviva and I would have competed again). The first night we competed against a couple of friends and everything was quite cordial. Aviva played the lawyer and I was the client. I played a bond analyst who was fired on some iffy circumstances and we were negotiating with the firm who fired me to get severance or my job back. We ended up getting a contract position and some back pay for the time I had been without work.

The next night we were against people we didn’t know. I was the lawyer and Aviva was the client. Aviva played the CEO of a fast food company. A jewish consumer sued us because our “Big Beefy Breakfast Biscuit” was actually made of pork not of beef (”beefy” was supposed to signify juicy and thick, not “made of beef”). This mediation was less cordial. The reason, which is a little funny, was that Aviva is herself jewish and she keeps kosher. So Aviva was peeved that the customer was blaming the company so fully. Aviva takes it upon herself, in real life, to find out whether she can eat certain foods, AND, according to her, people who keep kosher wouldn’t eat at a fast food restaurant anyway. But we managed to do alright, as we won again. We ended up agreeing to disclose the ingredients of our food, changing the name of the biscuit and donating money to cultural groups.

So, that very week (the 13th), I signed up for the contract drafting competition with my friend Kim. That isn’t over yet. That competition has two parts: the oral negotiations and the written contract. Two teams negotiate with each other in two face to face sessions, then they have 13 days to write a contract. The scenario was that Kim and I were negotiating on behalf of a flight attendants’ union for a new wage contract with the airline. The airline was facing bankruptcy so we had to take pretty big wage concessions in return for partial ownership of the company. We didn’t end up getting finished in our oral negotiations, but we just finished hammering out the details today. Now we are going to write the contract. So far this has been the most interesting competition. Kim and I both feel much more confident because we have two other competitions under our belts. Both nights of oral negotiations we were judged by attorneys practicing in the world. Kim and I won the first night but lost the second. The first night all three judges gave us the win and the second one judge did, so across the two nights we won 4 judges and the other team won 2. The other team were people we knew a little. They’ve been quite nice and good negotiators.

After the second night’s negotiation I was feeling frustrated because we hadn’t reached an agreement. I had thought we were supposed to, but I learned later that many people didn’t. A lot of people (including myself) were frustrated at the ambiguities in the problem we had been given: some people were interpreting numbers differently (for example, the airline needed to balance its books and different teams were doing that in very different ways). The next couple days I was in a bit of a doldrum. It seems the frustration at the ambiguities in the problem, a sickness that was trying to get me, and the winter weather all came together at once. Like everyone here I had a brief moment of doubt about the whole legal profession (there was a fair amount of cynicism emanating from the judges about negotiation and mediation, and I was worried that all negotiation was much more combative in the real world). But I felt better after a day or two.

I sent a few applications to some judges in Seattle for a summer externship. We’ll see what turns up, if anything. Next weekend I’m going down to Portland to a public service career fair. There should be some interesting employers to talk to down there. And I’ll get to wear my new suit, which is so cool! I got a gift certificate at Nordstrom’s for christmas (thanks Mom, George, Dad and Barbara!), so I bought a black wool power suit with a long jacket (down to my knees). Our friend Eric aptly named it the Matrix suit. Now all I need is cool sunglasses.

Though it has been raining some, the sun is setting later. Spring is coming! The cherry trees are already starting to blossom. I love mild winters!

In other news Dave our housemate is moving out. He found a place that fits his needs better. That works pretty well for us too since Eric (Cedar’s roommate from college) wants to come out to Seattle for his medical residency. Eric will probably get here in the summer (we’ll find out for sure in March whether Eric is coming here), so we’ll have to eat a few months’ rent. I’m sad because Sebastian, Dave’s dog, will be going too. It was nice having a dog around.

Oh, I got my Civ Pro grade last week. I got a B+ which wasn’t as exciting as the Contracts grade, but I’m pleased. Also, all these grades are only 10% of my grade so the finals in March will matter much more.

Next quarter I think I only have 4 classes again: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Property and BLS. I think it will be good fun.

Cedar has been the best ever. He goes to work, winning our daily bread, then he comes home and cooks for me. It’s really amazing when I think about it. I am so lucky because Cedar not only likes to cook, but he makes really yummy stuff. And he likes me! I couldn’t ask for more.

Well, I’ll let you know how the rest of the Contract Negotiation competition goes and how the Career Fair is too.

I decided that my motto for this quarter is:

“left . . . left . . . left-right-left” or

“the ants go marching one by one hurrah, hurrah” or

“mmm . . . beer”

depending on my mood. Every so often friends and I go to a bar on the Ave (a street near campus) and unwind. I still really like the people in my section, and in my class generally, though I hear that my section is one of the more fun less stressed out sections.

Stay tuned for the next episode of Law School: the trip for your mind!

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10