I’d like to post a non-aggressive response to one of my commenters from last week. I’m sorry if my posts seem to be ongoing and endless rants, especially if those rants are particularly depressing or “fatalistic.” The fact of the matter is this: I dislike law school so far. I don’t think this is in any way a remarkable or groundbreaking insight. In fact, I think perhaps the majority of people who attend law school hate 1L year, which does not reflect on their success or quality of life later on down the road as lawyers. Maybe I take it a little far sometimes. My only excuse: poetic (or narrative) license. It’s easy to insert a little drama here and there, especially once the ball gets rolling in writing these posts and one steps back and thinks about how ridiculous and upsetting the whole law school regime is. In fact, if you do enjoy law school as a 1L, we have a term for you: gunner. Or, if not a gunner, just one of those people who enjoys talking about the law so much you find time to talk about it at lunch, during breaks between classes, while watching sports or drinking on the weekends, before my morning coffee, etc.

In short, these are the people who enjoy the law so much that they often ruin my day by trying to talk about it all the time. We have a name for these people here in the University of Chicago’s class of 2012: “The Intellectual Table.” There is literally a table of students that gather in our lounge area every day to discuss and read the law while most others are chatting about their weekends or just generally hanging out. On the opposite side of the cerebral spectrum within our class, there is another group. This group enjoys thinking about pretty much everything else other than the law — things such as the most recent episode of “Jersey Shore” (also ruining my day), late-night outings in Chicago, etc. We also have a name for these people in our class: “The Frat.”

I know, it is kind of sad that our class has formed this silly cliques and, as a side note, I am a proud abstainer from the quiet and yet ever-present “rivalry.” But, I feel it’s just bound to happen in a class so small where everyone knows everyone else. Certainly, there are probably more cliques out there that I am neglecting (it’s actually very sad), but, to me, these are the most prominent … or perhaps the groups who are each other’s most exact opposites. I imagine them like the Jets and Sharks in “West Side Story.” Not hardened street thugs. But, rather, singing and dancing law students — prancing around one another in some kind of faux-knife fight, except instead of knives, the only weapons we have are … well, nothing. I guess “The Intellectual Table” has their books and “The Frat” has maybe their gym weights or something. Furthermore, I can’t think of any star-crossed lovers or anything within each of these groups (a Maria and Tony) … I might be able to, but I’d rather spend my morning working on this awful memo or reading for tomorrow’s classes.

In any case, the point is: nobody enjoys 1L year, unless you’re part of “The Intellectual Table” (let’s call them the Sharks … for no particular reason). If you are, please don’t ruin my day and talk about law school unless it is absolutely necessary … even then, watch out. Point #2: law school is like “West Side Story”??? I dunno, I’m still working on that hypothesis.

In high school and college, everyone dated everyone. The term ’slut’ was reserved for only the most egregious offenders. Primarily, females who openly slept with more than ten people or males who openly slept with more than twenty. At Harvard Law School, it seems the number for females is two.

A female HLS 1L has purportedly slept with two other HLS 1Ls. While I think any person who sleeps with two Harvard Law males is an idiot, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the rampant ’slut’ accusations. We are Harvard Law students after all. Quite possibly the most intelligent group of law students and we resort to treating a woman poorly because she slept with two of us? What the fuck guys?

I understand that, in our culture, women are the guardians of sex. According to my crappy college psych textbook, since men require less mental stimuli to enjoy sex, they generally have a smaller emotional investment the act. Because of this disparity, women are socially expected to sleep with less men, as they have to open themselves up emotionally to partake. One would think, given the act’s standard 1:1 ratio, that the same amount of men have slept with the same amount of women.

And personally, I have mixed feelings about the double standard. At this point in my life, I have an urge to sleep with every moderately attractive woman I meet. I’m probably accurately defined as a slut; I’ve certainly slept with more than two HLS females. That said, I’m never going to care about someone who just up and lets me sleep with them. As such, I hold women to a higher standard than men.

Regardless, every single HLS 1L who has called this classmate a slut is a certifiable idiot. I’ll be the first to admit that lawcest is extremely unprofessional and always a mistake, but so is churning a harmless situation until it becomes something that could damage someone’s career.

–

On grades, I did better than I anticipated: two HPs. This does not prove that I’m intelligent, it only proves that law school is a gigantic joke. I gave each class a few days but primarily, I just focused on any material that seemed of particular importance to the professor. I already committed my entire summer to one employer but in retrospect, I probably could have done even better if I waited. I hear only about a quarter of the 1Ls will find reputable firm work this summer so I shouldn’t be complaining.

From the dawn of time man has sought to extinguish creatures large and small. Whether it be for food, clothing, or just the thrill of the hunt, the human race has attained its position of supremacy in the animal kingdom on the basis of its intelligence, guile, and opposable thumbs. But there are some feats of hunting that even we are no match for: I speak specifically of hunting mice in New York City.

You’ve followed my travails so I don’t have to tell you that I’ve tried everything. You’ll believe me when I tell you this is my very last resort. While I may have come up short in this epic battle for control of Studio Soleil, there is one creature that historically has never failed.

Meet my latest weapon, Six.

I spent a few hours on Thursday down at NYU Law (which is beautiful, by the way, and makes CLS look like a toaster) for their Public Interest Fair (we don’t have our own, but they let New York-area students leech off of theirs). I had an interview at 11AM and then I wanted to sit around picking the brain of one of the ADA’s who had a table there. The interview went well, I was very on. But I have approximately zero desire to work at the organization in question. I only gave their website a cursory glance before firing off an application. The night before the interview (and well past the deadline to cancel) I actually dug through their website and learned about their mission. Turns out I didn’t actually agree with a lot of their principles. But I figured interview practice never hurts. I left the fair around 3PM and headed up to my old neighborhood on the upper east side.

I got her from the ASPCA on 92nd Street. The people there are wonderful. I could not have asked for a better adoption experience. I went into the reception area and was greeted by a young, blond woman with a cheerful disposition and she helped me get my initial paperwork in order. Following that, an almost-elderly woman who volunteered as an adoption intake assistant (AIS) came to introduce me to some cats. She asked what I was looking for in a cat and I told her I wanted one that was no younger than ten. Incredulously, she asked, “Ten years old?” I nodded and she replied, “Why??” I told her that I felt sorry for older cats because no one seemed to want them and I didn’t mind so why not?

From that moment on I was paraded around the building like a war hero just returning home from battle. My AIS would stop every orange-shirted person she saw to tell them that THIS young lady wanted a cat that was ten years old and isn’t that special?

So then she brought me through the glass doors and sat me down to introduce me to Paulette. She was a very sweet lap cat. I don’t know what about me struck the AIS as someone who wanted a lap cat, but I wasn’t feeling any connection. And she was getting black hair all over my clothes. And she was only seven. So I asked to see some more cats. I met a giant fur ball named Brandy and caught a quick glimpse of my future. After I determined that I didn’t have a spare eight hours per day to spend vacuuming, my AIS led me upstairs and I saw a few more nice-looking cats in their glass habitats. No one really struck my fancy in the first room so we proceeded on to the second room where my congregation of AISes had grown to three. As they were definitely up there in years, I suspect they were particularly moved by my strict no youngins requirement.

I met a pretty white cat named Spot that they all seemed to adore although I could not for the life of me figure out why. He wasn’t friendly and when he was let out of his cabinet, he strutted around picking fights with all the other cabinetted cats. After Spot was put away, they showed me Shelley, who I had remembered from the ASPCA website. She was adorable. When they let her out, she came right to me and let me pick her up. I stood there holding her for a long while and knew she would be the one I would take home. She was apparently an ASPCA-worker favorite and everyone was especially nice to me when they found out I was taking her. At thirteen years old, she was the oldest cat I saw and probably the oldest one they had. She had her problems as old cats tend to have (a controlled-by-medication case of hypothyroidism), but she was small and perfect and I had to have her.

I brought her home, re-named her Six (not after the Blossom character), and she immediately went about inspecting everything. When bedtime came, I was surprised that she was still spry enough to make the leap from the floor to my bed. It being her first night and all, I allowed this transgression, but when I awoke in the middle of the night to her sitting on my chest I had a paranoid moment when I thought she was trying to kill me. This morning I put her little cat bed the ASPCA gave me on top of my bed and placed her in it. Ever since then whenever she jumps up onto my bed, she walks straight into her own and plops right down.

As I sit here alternating between writing this post and researching my issue for my moot court brief, she’s sitting under my chair quietly and calmly in a matter befitting someone of her years. As a Very Serious Law Student I’m happy with what a low-maintenance companion she’s turning out to be.

And so the time has come again …. I’m not getting too terribly down in this post (partially because I learned my lesson from last quarter that it does no good), but I have come to a terrible realization within the past week: my life is over. Well, it might not be over completely, but it certainly will be for the next few months, which is both a discouraging as well as enlightening (or liberating) thought.

This epiphany first came to me over the weekend while working on this quarter’s memo. It’s an open memo, which is significantly different from last quarter’s closed memo: closed meaning the materials were provided and no outside research was needed … open meaning all the research is on us. This is a particularly daunting task for me (or perhaps for everyone here since everyone is pretty F-ing smart) because I sometimes find myself enjoying research. I know, how lame, right? But I try to challenge myself to exhaust my research possibilities, which results in endless hours of reading, shepardizing (not sure if I need to put that little ® sign there or not, haha), and (not so) costly printing … thanks, law school for the free printing. Anyway, once the memo is done, then comes the time to begin outlining again (or maybe I should start before the memo is due). After exams for this quarter are done, I’ll probably begin outlining for our 2-quarter-long classes over spring break, and then finish off the 1L marathon with four exams (two 2-quarter exams, and two 1-quarter exams).

After that, work starts. Since there are only 10 weeks between the end of spring finals and the beginning of UChicago’s new “improved” Fall OCI, I can’t really ask for time off that I might spend working on our journals’ writing competition. So after the busiest and most stressful time of year (spring exams) I can look forward to absolutely no time for relaxation and, instead, working (probably full-time) while also struggling to finish this writing competition assignment as best I can.

Once work is over, then comes OCI and, from what I have heard, this month-long endeavor is by no means free of stress. Especially given the current market, I don’t think I can fully rely on OCI to get a job and will, thus, also result to mass mailing my resume and other materials out to dozens of firms. You see, in my world, I often assume the worst. This helps me cope when the worst (inevitably) comes true, but also allows me to get that much more excited when (less often) it does not come true.

Anyway, the point is, law school (indeed, the profession of law itself) seems to be a series of tests — all of them in essence being represented by the following maxim: “work hard, so that later you can work harder.” This only seems to let up slightly once becoming (at the earliest) a senior associate or perhaps a partner (or, at the latest, retired). But I don’t yet know enough about the practice of law to speak to that. For now, there is no end in sight …. be careful what you wish for.

Second semester is progressing nicely…as far as classes go anyway. I still have no summer job. I still don’t have grades, which means many of my applications are incomplete. I got an offer to work for a county prosecutor’s office in New Jersey, but that would mean living with my parents and commuting with my mom all summer since I stupidly sold my car last year in preparation for law school. I have nothing against my parents, but it would be impossible to live in their house for three whole months with no car and therefore no freedom. I happen to have been born to the most over-protective parents in the universe and the fact that I’m 25 (and rapidly approaching 26) seems to have had no effect on their hovering tendencies. (I am referring to them in the plural, which unfairly casts my father in this light. He’s actually always been quite reasonable. It’s my mom who still waits up for me when I go out.)

Constitutional law is a lot of work. And I don’t just mean the reading. I have to use my brain more than I’m generally comfortable with. And the professor expects us to have a working knowledge of American history. I suppose that isn’t too unreasonable a request considering I majored in history and concentrated in American…but that was years ago. I forgot everything I learned in the college the moment I traipsed across that platform, grabbed my diploma, and shook the college president’s hand. Actually, I probably started forgetting everything when senior year started. But anyway, I kind of like the class. I definitely like the professor. She’s very bubbly and in love with her subject.

Property is all right. The cases tend to be short and to the point. I guess the problem isn’t that property isn’t interesting, it’s that I just don’t care. The professor is great though. He’s very lively.

But criminal law is the best. It’s at 8 in the damn morning Wednesday through Friday, but it’s totally worth it. My professor is a real-live sitting judge and he is hilarious.

But in general I’m kind of over the whole law school thing. Don’t get wrong, I’m still glad I’m here, I still like it and all. I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else right now. Well. Except maybe actually practicing law. But after working hard all first semester by staying on top of my reading only to be met with exams that had little to do with anything I learned, it’s hard to stay motivated to actually do my reading at all this semester. There’s still the fear of Being Called On, but it just doesn’t have the same force it did last semester.

And I’m over the whole student lifestyle too. I was never one of those losers who wished they could be back in the protective womb of college or – God forbid – even high school. I loved the Real World. I hate being a student. Aside from the obvious poverty factor, the student life is a very self-involved one. You’re not contributing to any product or service. It’s all about you, you, you all the time. Granted, I’m my most favorite thing to think about, but I can’t wait to get back to work.

Actually.

I’m probably looking at this all wrong. I have the rest of my life to work. I should consider this a vacation of sorts. I mean, the worst vacation ever, but a vacation nonetheless.

Edited to add: A shout out to my friend Jorge! There. I did it. :-p

As I have noted in previous posts, this quarter has been extremely different from last quarter for me. But I think that is also the case for most people. And I think I know why: grades. During the first quarter, everyone seemed to be gunning, at least to a certain degree, since we’re all at least a little bit worried about job prospects and no one really knew how things would turn out (who’s good at test-taking, who’s smart at the law … though perhaps might not show it during class, etc.). Now that grades have been out for some time, I think some people (including myself) have fallen into a sort of indifferent bliss as to grades and have accepted their mediocrity at a very well respected school. For me, and I think for others as well, there are simply just crazy smart people here that I pretty much know I cannot compete with. I think I knew that coming in, however. I got a spot at Chicago Law by working really fuckin hard — not by being particularly smart. And so, since the really smart people here work very hard as well, and there are only a finite amount of hours in a day I can (or care to) spend time studying the law, there’s only so much I can do to try to compete with these clearly smarter and more gifted classmates.

I think this sentiment has now permeated a bit more throughout my class. People who seemed somewhat standoffish or arrogant in first quarter have eased off some and everyone seems more approachable and a bit friendlier this quarter. Of course, this could be because everyone knows each other better than before, but I prefer to believe in my theory. However, there is still a large amount of competition, I believe. Those who did not do as well as they had liked (myself included) may be more determined than ever to study their asses off to try to make up for last quarter (which is something like only 10% of our final 1L grades) and/or do their best to get on Law Review or something.

So for now, I have chosen the happy middle ground. Yes, I am fairly disappointed with my performance last quarter. But then again, if my law school career were to end right now (like if I had the average grades I got in first quarter) I would be fairly happy still anyway. Additionally, I, like most people here … I think, am not really terribly interested in performing ridiculously well in any case. Yes, it might open up a few more doors or make some career paths (such as academia) open up more readily. But I am in no way interested in academia and I think the most grades would matter for me would be if I maybe wanted some kind of clerkship (which I am undecided about) or in securing a prestigious firm job. And, in the end, it doesn’t seem like at least good jobs are necessarily reserved for the top 10% of our class, but I could be wrong …. it HAS happened before, however rare.

This is a general rant that has been building internally since I started law school. I’ve alluded to it often and maybe even given it a modicum of attention on the blog. I’m speaking, of course, of the hypocritical behavior possessed by nearly all law professors. With slight exception, I’ve found each of the following rules to be true:

1. You hold us to a strict attendance policy where you punish those of us who show up a moment or two late by Socrating our obviously flustered asses, but nobody screams at you and disparages your intelligence when you show up seven minutes late because you lost track of time sitting in your office fucking around on the internet.

2. You continue speaking long after the class period has ended and you know damn well what time it is. You say something like, “I’ll give you back the time next class” – but you that never happens. And because we are all now late to our next class, we will be Socraticly pillaged by our next professor. See Rule 1.

3. Heaven forbid our cell phone goes off in your class. You think it’s funny to harass the student who forgot to silence their phone, but nobody can discipline you when you rudely take a five minute phone call from your fat-ass wife. I’m sure she fucking loves Gargoyles but perhaps you two can discuss this later? At a time when I’m not paying $500 an hour?

4. You are routinely asked basic questions by us that you fail to answer or comprehend yet you lose your shit when we misinterpret your outrageously complex hypotheticals.

5. You didn’t cover the material in class but it’s still on the exam? Remember that first day in class when you told us that we needed you to decipher the oh so complicated cases? Truth is, the material is not difficult and you are extremely overpaid.

Law professors do not respect their students. They get their jollies off treating us like shit. Yet they demand us to show them a huge amount of admiration. I understand that they are the authority and the teacher, but I feel like I would learn much more if I could have a respectful dialog about the issues with my professors.

I’m not engaged in class, I’m assaulted in class. I don’t care about the law, I care about not looking stupid in class.

In undergrad we had a glorious six weeks of uninterrupted vacation between fall and spring semesters. We called it “wintersession.” What made it so magnificent was that it was enough time to completely forget about school and all the obligations inherent, yet not so much time that it required you to get your ass out the door and get a job. There was one regrettable wintersession sophomore year where I stayed on campus and endured record-breaking cold in Massachusetts (seriously, my weatherbug said -14 one morning). I had decided to take an intensive Spanish class during that six weeks and my menopausal profesora insisted on keeping the windows open during the class which met five days a week from 8:30AM to 1:30PM. But my other three wintersessions were spent languishing in front of my parents’ television and hanging out with old high school friends who happened to be in the area.

Law school break is a different beast. All told it was about two and a half weeks, much of which was spent feverishly hunting down summer job opportunities. The slew of cover letters seemed endless as did the trips to school in the frigid weather to use the printers. Still, I did use the lack of classes and deadlines as an opportunity to catch up on some long-missed sleep. Some days I festered in bed until 4PM rising only at long last because my stomach demanded it.

But despite this Guinness record-rivaling exercise in human laziness, I’ve begun spring semester more tired than I’ve ever been in all of law school (all five months of it). Last semester it surprised me how awake I felt all the time because I’ve always been one to be in bed by 10PM when I had work the next day. Despite never getting to bed before midnight (which itself is considerably earlier than many of my classmates), I always felt alert and ready during fall semester. Even during finals when I subsisted primarily on Coke Zero and Twizzlers I still felt like I could concentrate on studying without getting too distracted by tiredness and agitation.

But now? I feel so exhausted all the time. I no longer approach my reading with enthusiasm but with the dread of facing the orthodontist on braces-tightening day. I can’t tell if my new core subjects (property, constitutional law, criminal law) are just fantastically boring compared to the old ones (ha!) or if I’m just sick of it all. I’m still glad I’m here and I still like law school generally so I’m not really sure what’s going on.

We have an extra class – an elective – piled onto the core courseload which may have something to do with it. My Wednesdays are horrible with class from 8AM practically all the way through to 4:10PM. Tuesdays are made horrible by preparation for Wednesdays.

What’s especially surprising (and disconcerting) about this change in my overall body chemistry is that I’ve been doing cardio every day – and the whole point was to increase my energy levels!

I just don’t know.

To start off, I think I accidentally omitted a critical point from my last post. Regarding money and such, given the current economy (oh no! another “economy” post … please, stick with me) the metaphorical “buck” has to stop somewhere — and it certainly cannot be with young, impressionable early 20-something pre-law students. What I mean is, so many college undergraduates, or recent graduates (myself included, in both instances), view becoming a lawyer as a very lofty and prestigious goal. Everyone often hears about doctors and lawyers being coupled together when referring to “good” careers. So, from the get go, many young people are pressured by their parents or mentors to follow on of these paths (I suppose, business being the other desired career field).

To add to this idealism of becoming a lawyer, so many law schools publish radically skewed statistics regarding employment and salaries of graduates, in an effort, I guess, to recruit young graduates to come to their school and fund their programs via the extremely high tuition payments I mentioned in my last post.

To be honest, it is very disturbing to me how some institutions are able to influence young people into giving over tens of thousands of dollars (perhaps over $100K or $150K) in loans, which cannot be bypassed by filing for bankruptcy, in return for a law degree that perhaps will not further their career goals much more than if they had foregone law school altogether. There seems to be a certain amount of preying on eager young adults and it seems that perhaps some kind of regulation or oversight is necessary.

There may be some fairly strict ABA policies in place now that limit the amount of increase in accredited schools, but maybe more is needed. For instance, maybe some schools just need to be shut down (in the extreme), or maybe there should be some oversight body that ensures schools are distributing realistic employment statistics and data that actually reflects a graduate’s prospects. Again, given the state of the legal market, the environment may be ripe for producing a significant portion of our generation (or perhaps 5-10 years) of graduates entirely and quite literally lost in debt. The buck has to stop somewhere and I find it very troublesome to place that responsibility on those just beginning their professional lives when so much more could be done by those with much more experience and with much more control in their, as well as others’, professional lives.

Also, grades came out. Earlier in the year, I think some upperclassman sent out an email something to the effect of: “Don’t worry 1Ls. Somewhere in the wilderness when you were born, a wolf howled and there and forever determined your law school GPA.” How true. I don’t want to say that all law schools grades are entirely random so as not to discredit anyone’s hard work and persistence (especially those with really good grades), but I will say this: remember that Elements class that I was so sure to fail in??? Yeah, somehow, someway, I managed to get an A. So, once again, law school grades are, as far as I am concerned, random.

In all reality, Harvard Law School is still on break. The current “classes” are a joke. Being at Harvard though, where apparently everyone is required to take everything seriously, we remain just as miserable as pre-break. But I’m not going to bore you with details about what Harvard Law School thinks we should know about becoming a lawyer. Instead I’m going to talk about drugs at HLS.

There is a the bizarre pothead siutation at HLS. I went to a state school so I’ve obviously enjoyed my fair share of the drug, but there is a group of HLS students numbering in the high thirties who seem, as a whole, to take the drug far more seriously than any entity I’ve ever encountered. The strangest thing about it all? They aren’t any more mellow than the rest of us! They are just as gunnerish as their non-pothead colleagues; they merely smell substantially worse.

The potheads are, of course, better than their hyper Adderall abusing counterparts. (Note: I used Adderall a few times last semester, though not out of academic concern.) Combining additional alertness and paranoia with the intense stress of law school creates a terrible, wicked beast. I’ve often stumbled into these people in the library, where they surround themselves with seemingly random books, taking up as much space as possible. They are the same guys who walked into the open book exams with a more useless than not, hand-bound, two-hundred page outline. They are also the people who answer class questions completely without logic.

It’s not a bad strategy though, as the professors do not seem to know how to handle completely illogical answers. They just move on and call on someone else. It’s far better than someone who gives a stupid yet nearly accurate answer, which the professor uses an excuse to explore parts of the issue that nobody gives two shits about.

And so I get to what I actually want to talk about. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ALL DOING? I’ve read about the FBI and the CIA asking about drug use as frivolous as pot and Adderall and forcing applicants to take a polygraph to confirm their answers. In the toughest legal job market in history, it seems extremely stupid to basically opt out of a large quantity of job opportunities.

You are probably wondering now – “But you just said you did the drugs too.” Yeah but I already have paying summer employment at a firm. I’m doing very well in school. I’m not one of the bottom barrel HLS students who are not going to get biglaw. Unless the government starts doubling salaries, I have no interest in working in the public sector. Quite frankly, even if I wanted to work for the government, my $2000+ loan payment would prevent such dreams from coming to fruition.

I don’t even know what I’m trying to say with this post. I suppose I’ll leave it at:

Never do drugs in excess. If you are going to do drugs, make sure you will not need to work for the government in the future.

God I suck.