a law student blog ::fighting the hypo, so you don’t have to ::
Submit your very own Haiku honoring (slandering?) your 1L Appellate Brief. All schools welcome.
Here’s mine:
You red clad devil.
Your page limit frustrates me.
Can’t wait to burn you.*
* after I submit you, get a grade, and get you back, of course. you don’t get off that easy.
Another quintessentially law school experience…
So, we’re taking a vacation to the Outer Banks this summer with some friends. Like many, we found a property online and booked it. Last night - about a week later - I received the rental agreement in the mail. I read every. single. word. of it. It all looked pretty straight forward, but I got a kick out of this sentence: “Most homes are served by septic systems.” (emphasis added) Visions of Mrs. Rush and her port-o-john trap door danced in my head. It’s even got the Hadley Rule covered: “… in no event shall Owner be held liable for any consequential or secondary damages.”
J. Louis May over The Legal Scoop has this good rundown of the challenges of course selection (something many of us here at Fight The Hypo are grappling with). The primary issue being: Do I take a course that’s not required but is tested on the Bar or should I pursue classes more directly relate to where I intend to practice or classes I’m more interested in?
He writes:
So, what is the “right way” to plan your legal education? I admit that my degree has been highly focused on preparation to litigate. I have taken courses such as Interviewing & Counseling, Negotiations & Dispute Resolutions, Evidence, Trial Practice and Mediation Clinic. As a result, I feel that I’m prepared for my role as an advocate for my clients. What I am not prepared for is the Comprehensive Tennessee Bar Exam. Conspicuously absent from my transcript are such fundamentals as Business Associations, Mergers & Acquisitions or Tax Law. The result? This summer, and the BAR/BRI process will be a daunting and critical process. I’d be hard pressed to define exactly what it means to be a “fiduciary” or what duties accompany such a title.
Those of you who are just setting out on your law school adventure, keep these things in mind. If someone had really discussed the realities of my course scheduling with me my first year, I’d have thought twice before excitedly joining the advocacy concentration.
Note also this previous post on The Legal Scoop blog.
This post is neither a homage to Judge Richard Posner and the Law and Economics movement nor a critique of it. That will come this summer – I’ve purchased two books (one for, one against the movement) to read and provide comment. So, sorry.
Wherever I come down philosophically on the law and economics movement, I can say that the first-year evening law school student – any 1L, really - does rely on a scare resource the allocation of which also, in part, animates that movement. The resource is time and the lack of it often dictates that efficiency and urgency trump substance and reflection (money, clearly, is another). This is not a complaint post (I pulled my hair out on that last week). Rather, I’m simply pointing out that time is expended in areas where one wouldn’t, prior to starting school, think it would be spent.
The general rule I’ve found, so far: time allocation does not necessarily increase for a class that is worth more credits. Say what?
Continue reading ‘Law and Economics For The 1L: Time Allocation’
Yesterday, I had what I’m convinced is a universal law school experience.
Last night, a classmate walked into the atrium outside our Torts class carrying a King Cake. That day at work, one of his clients (from New Orleans) had sent it to him as a thanks for his hard work. Some of us (including me) weren’t sure what a King Cake was, but quickly learned that it “is a ring of twisted bread similar to that used in brioche, topped with icing or sugar, usually coloured purple, green, and gold (the traditional Carnival colors) with food colouring.” The cake contains a trinket, most commonly (since 1950, at least) a small plastic baby. Whoever gets the trinket in his or her piece of cake, gets the privilege of being king of the party or has to bring the cake next year (or any number of traditions depending on context).
Anyway, you see where I’m going. One by one our classmates, when they heard the backstory of the King Cake, asked, “what if you bite into it and break your tooth.” To this, the owner of the King Cake proudly pointed out, “That’s why they printed this disclaimer on the packaging.” Clearly, he had thought of it too and checked it out.
Later that night, I explained to another classmate about the cake, what it was, why the guy brought it. He said, “What if someone breaks a tooth?”
Welcome to a new way of thinking where the first question is not “what does it taste like?” but “can the baker get sued for sticking a plastic baby in it?”
Last night was one of those nights for me. If you’re a law student - or have ever been one - you know what I’m talking about…
a paper due in a week that you have no idea how to write (or research)…
50 pages of case reading staring you down…
just received below average grades (in your estimation) in two classes (thankfully, just mid-terms, but still)…
It seems like there’s no time. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to back yourself into thinking it can’t humanly be done - or, more dangerously, that YOU can’t get it done. At least that’s what I can feel like - nearly arriving at your wit’s end, wanting to throw in the towel.
And then it kind of dawns on you (even if you don’t want to believe it): somehow you’re going to make this happen and you’re going to get through it. To get to this epiphany though you need patience. Sometimes the supply of that precious commodity is more plentiful than others. Incidentally, I’m not suggesting law school is unique in this way or perhaps even worth this kind of heartburn.
What do you do when you just never get to that point, though?
So, our grades are trickling in… finally. Still waiting on two, though.
I’m still a bit miffed that I had to pay for my second semester of law school before knowing how I did in the first semester, but I guess I’ll just have to get over it.
Needless to say, I’ve had several discussions with people about how significant first-semester law school grades really are. Frankly, I’ve never put much stock in grades so long as mine were As or Bs. I did what I thought was the minimum I could do to get by and tried not to exert myself too much. Consequently, I mostly coasted through (i.e. squandered) undergrad and was fortunate enough to get by with decent grades. I don’t share that to toot my own horn. Quite the contrary - it was a terrible way to do it and I deeply regret the time and money I wasted doing it that way.
So, this whole “grades are everything” mentality is quite new to me - a) because I’ve never studied as hard as I have for law school classes and b) I’ve never before felt as though I was competing against my classmates. Grades were just what they were. Law school is different, so I’m told. Everything’s graded on a curve, so everything is “competing against your classmates.” I understand the concept; I don’t really like it.
When I try to detach from the whole thing, therefore, it’s difficult to get a good perspective. So, I’ve turned to some trusted sources (and some have turned to me) and here’s what I’ve learned and heard… Continue reading ‘Making Sense of First-Year Law School Grades’
