Archive for August, 2009

Well, my best friend and I are all packed up and just about ready to hit the long road out to Chicago. I’ll try to do my best to detail the route a bit and keep you all up to date on the happenings, but I am not so sure how much Internet access I will have en route. The plan is as follows:

Vegas baby!!!! — though this first day’s drive won’t be a significant one, I figure a little serious partying with an old friend is most definitely in order. We also plan to meet up with some other college friends who happen to be there for the weekend or live near enough to make the drive out for a night (or two).

Denver — This drive, while much more substantial, I am hoping will prove scenic (as will the rest of the trip) and Denver is really the closest “next stop” on the trip, or at least one that I would think to be worth visiting (sorry Utah).

Nebraska — How many people can say they’ve partied for a bit in Nebraska? Being truthful. This stop might seem somewhat perplexing, but I figure a little quality time in the heartland of the country (i.e. Lincoln or Omaha) would be a nice time to slow it down a bit, especially after Vegas and Denver and especially before joining the stressful atmosphere of a 1L. Perhaps I’ll even be able to look back on this potentially relaxing and reflective time while in school and either think about how great life would be to just say, “Screw it!” and move out there to become a dairy farmer or how much life out there would suck, thereby lending me that much more motivation to study/get good grades/search hard for decent work or a strong beginning to a career as a lawyer. Ha ha.

Des Moines — Another short drive here but I think a little extra time in the aforementioned heartland of the country would be nice.

Madison — I have some family in Wisconsin and even though this stop is a little out of the way, or off the route, it would be great to see my family. I also understand that Madison is a pretty big party town. Either that or the University of Wisconsin at Madison is a pretty big party school. So my friend and I will be happy to spend a little extra time in this great metropolis; I think he even said that one of his friends he became acquainted with through his job will be meeting us there — apparently this man has a certain reputation for being involved in a moderate to large amount of partying in the Midwest (erring on the side of the large amount, of course).

Lastly, Chicago, my new home for the time being. More specifically, Hype Park. My main concern at this time is the security of my belongings. Driving across the country with pretty much my entire life stuffed in the back of a car is only accompanied with a certain amount of worry. Plus, once I arrive, I understand that Hyde Park is not the absolute best of neighborhoods, though apparently it doesn’t deserve the reputation it is awarded on some Internet sites/forums. Anyway, I’ll have to get all my stuff out hopefully within 1-2 hours to minimize some sort of street-side robbery.

Like I said, I’ll try to give updates while on the road! See you all in Chicago!

Everyone keeps talking about the doomsday economy were are currently in and how terrible OCIs (on-campus interviews) have been going. I hear all these law students say that they haven’t received any call-backs on their interviews, or summer associates not getting offered positions at their firms whereas in previous years that particular firm always hired all of their students, or even lawyers who were laid off from their firms detailing their experiences and how they might perceive that their law degree is now worthless (or not worth the money put into its acquisition). Even students attending schools like U of Chicago (and perhaps even Harvard) report less than optimistic viewpoints regarding their chances of landing the kind of employment they were looking for in going to law school or the kind of employment options that might have been available for someone in their position just a couple years ago.

In my case, I try to take control of as many variables as I can. That is, I try to leave nothing to chance. Even my pre-law advisor referred to me as a very “calculating” individual (I’m not sure if that was meant as a compliment). I suppose she is kind of right as I “calculated” my way to one of the best law schools in the country in taking a course load I thought I could successfully manage (i.e. get good grades during any particular term), applying to and accepting employment or volunteer roles I could put on my resume to make myself more marketable for schools (and perhaps firms later down the road), and studying my butt off for the LSAT, thank goodness I only took it once because I absolutely hated that dreadful test. Similarly, I plan to calculate my way toward a successful career. To me that means I need a combination of good grades from a reputable institution while establishing a strong network of contacts within, and even outside of, the legal industry. After all, as they say, it’s not what you know, but who you know (as an aside, I HATE it when people say that. It seems like something uneducated people say to reassure themselves. That and, “It’s not how hard you work, but how smart you work.”). Essentially, I figure I can at worst make decent grades with my work ethic. If I don’t make Law Review, no big deal, as long as I have this network of contacts to help me secure some career options. One of my friends who will be a 3L this year at UChicago even told me that the only reason she got the job she had this past summer was because she knew someone or had a friend of a friend or something in the firm.

Anyway, as of now, my contact list includes: fraternity brothers who are either lawyers or in law school, other contacts I have through my fraternity who are lawyers (friends of friends, people I have met at conventions, etc.), even one fraternity brother not affiliated within the legal arena (he’s a businessman) but who is WAY too smart and will most likely become much too powerful to not include on the list, family and friends of family who are lawyers, a few local attorneys and friends’ parents who are lawyers, lawyers in firms and offices in which I formerly worked (or the ones that might remember me), incoming 1Ls I have met at Admitted Students Weekends, and even the lawyer who interviewed me as a part of my Northwestern application.

Hopefully with some decently hard work put forth in studying and in adding to this list of people who might be able to help me secure employment, even if the economy is in as bad a shape as it currently is when it comes time for me to find work, I will be set to go.

Classes are well and thoroughly underway here. I’ve been through every class several times, and it’s been… fun? In an odd sort of way. Law really is fascinating, and my professors are absolutely incredible.

Observations:

-Civil Procedure is horrifically complicated and nuanced, and my professor’s approach is not helping (LOTS of material every day)

-Torts is going to be hilarious if only because of the crazy tangets the discussions can get on

-Contracts has barely even started, and I’m not sure we’ll be getting much direction in that course

-Criminal Law is extremely ‘heady’ – the syllabus makes it look like we’ll talk about our first actual crime sometime in November, and our second (and final) crime shortly thereafter.

The professors in these classes are some of the most intensely credentialed people I’ve ever encountered. Most are from top 3 law schools, several have clerked for Supreme Court justices… but each one still seems very down to earth and approachable. I get a strong sense that Virginia attracts students and professors who have an interest in maintaining a very social, positive environment.  The other students I’ve met are uniformly awesome – down to earth, intelligent, optimistic. No obvious crazy gunner behavior, most questions in class have been very reasonable… it’s actually kind of refreshing compared to the stereotypes I was expecting to encounter.

If there’s a ‘this economy’ cloud hanging over the school it has yet to touch the 1Ls. And the weekly keg was flowing today, softball is starting soon, and life is in general looking good – so far. We’ll see what week 2 brings!

Well, it happened. It took until the fourth day of class, but it happened. I was sitting there, minding my own business re-reading my notes for one of the assigned cases when out of NOWHERE, Prof. LM’s booming voice called out my name. I was chosen to be the lead-off victim for our class discussion that morning. All in all, it was pretty harmless. All I had to do was explain the facts of the case, correct myself when I messed one of them up, and then deal with a supplementary question. (I managed to get a laugh out of the class – even the professor – with my snarky answer to it.) The best part is that this has let me off the hook for at least a few days. It couldn’t have come at a better time either since I didn’t have time to do to the reading for the afternoon session. Okay, that’s a lie. I had the time, just not the inclination. But in my defense, this particular reading didn’t include any cases for which I’ll be responsible later, just a history lesson about the evolution of workplace safety legislation. And further, it was FIFTY pages long.

So now that I’m a little more accustomed to law school – at least so far as I can be since I haven’t started my real classes yet – I thought I’d offer up a few observations about law school that I’ve noticed so far.

Whenever the professor asks a question, one of three things happens in my head:

1.    I have no idea what the answer is.
2.    I know exactly what the answer is.
3.    I have no idea what the question is.

Unfortunately, the latter scenario is the case about 90% of the time. I felt so bad for a colleague of mine who was asked this ridiculous corn maze of a question and I thanked God (capital ‘G’) that I wasn’t the one under fire. Prof. LM then turned to another classmate whose hand was waving (a little too enthusiastically, if you ask me) and she answered his question – but not before rephrasing it into her own words. And when she did that, all of a sudden the question was perfectly clear! And the answer to it was, if not downright OBVIOUS, at least easy enough to bullshit.

So there is law school observation #1: Law professors ask questions in needlessly¹ complicated ways.

Something else I’ve noticed that actually bugs me a lot is the way many of my classmates answer questions posed to them by the professor. Most of them preface every answer they give with some variation of “I could be wrong, but,” or “I might be reading this the wrong way, but,” or “This could be way off, but,” et cetera.

BE CONFIDENT, PEOPLE!

No one, not the professor, and certainly not your classmates, expects you to have the right answer all the time. All of those prefaces are a GIVEN and therefore unnecessary.

I can’t speak for any other law student out there, but I’ll tell you that when one of my classmates is answering a question, be it factual or opinionated, I’m not judging his/her answer.² All I’m thinking is, ‘Whew! He didn’t call on me!’ Couching your answer in such wishy-washy wimpy language isn’t going to make a wrong answer any less wrong so you might as well shout it out with all the confidence you can gather.

And so, law school observation #2: 1Ls are really hesitant to say anything definitive.

One thing I learned in my pre-law school life is that in business, it doesn’t matter so much that you know what you’re talking about, just that you’re confident enough to persuade people that you do. And in a lot of ways I can understand this hesitation. I mean, what do we know about the law? No one wants to look stupid. But we’re only in classes with each other, other 1Ls. And the professor is not in the business of showing off that he knows the law better than we do; that much is obvious. What does he need to prove to us?

Anyway, those are just a couple things I noticed right off the bat. I’ll continue these observations as time plods on.

Things are going generally well. I find that I have no time for anything resembling my actual life these days, but I’m feeling good. Legal Methods ends next Friday and then the real games begin. I haven’t thought too much about extracurriculars I’d like to get involved with. Nothing I’ve come across so far really interests me particularly, but I’ll probably get involved with something just for the social aspect. A part of me is tempted to write off my classmates in any non-academic setting since I already have a bunch of friends in New York. But the more rational part of me knows that’s stupid  — that these are my future colleagues and cultivating relationships with them is as important as maintaining relationships with my non-law school friends. And besides, a lot of them are just downright cool.

But I guess balancing life and law school is a topic for another day.

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_{1. Well I don’t know if “needlessly” is a fair characterization. It’s possible that asking questions in this way prepares us to face a judge’s inquisition. Or perhaps it helps us learn. In any event, I recognize that they might have their reasons and being just a baby 1L I’m completely ignorant of them.}

_{2. It’s too soon for that. Once I’m more comfortable with law school, I’ll start fighting with my classmates a la undergrad. But for now, we’re all clueless.}