Archive for November, 2009

I decided to start a series of posts where I confirm or deny all the various myths I heard prior to coming to law school. Judging by the 1L posts out there in the blogging world, I think my experience is a bit different from the majority experience so as usual, take everything I say with a whole pile of salt.

So to begin, I’ll start with one rumor that I refused to believe at first: that in the heap of obligations thrown at you during 1L year, one class will necessarily fall to the bottom of your priority list. You will slack off in this class. You won’t prepare diligent notes and just hope to get by on your charm if called on.

So…fact or fiction?

FACT!

I took this advice with my usual eye roll and thought: Well that won’t be me. If I can work a full time job, I can sure as hell manage the reading for a few classes. And for a long time I did! But around mid-October I started to let my contracts reading just slip by. I’m only on call on Mondays and she hasn’t called on a single person (who didn’t raise his or her hand) who wasn’t on call for their day.

Then I would get called on in torts and feel safe for a few weeks. So since there were no huge consequences, I didn’t feel too pressured to really read the reading too closely. I’d catch up on How I Met Your Mother or Glee or Friday Night Lights.

And in civil procedure…well I think he’s trying to take out the easy-to-pronounce last names first. He has a highlighter that he takes to the seating chart, but with my phonetically unpalatable last name, I’m pretty confident that the semester will end without me getting called on once in that class. I don’t feel guilty since I’ve raised my hand three or four times.

So even though I was pretty cocky about being able to keep on top of everything, it turns out that the casualty class was one of the things 2Ls warned me about that was actually true. And it’s not that I CAN’T keep on top of the workload. I just…well, without the possibility of the social humiliation of being caught unprepared, there just isn’t much motivation to read every little word for every little class.

Casualty classes for tomorrow? Oh, all of them. I got a chance to go see a play downtown for free so naturally I took it.

And I have a fish now! A friend of mine won him for me at this half-bar, half-carnival place above the bowling alley in Union Square a couple weeks ago. His name is Stuart.

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Well, it came and went . . . all too fast, if you ask me. While I did manage to go home for the joyous holiday, I sadly spent most of my time in front of my computer screen . . . outlining. I think I talked to my friends from home more over gmail chat, facebook chat, and skype than face-to-face. I went out one night — and by “go out” I mean, I had a bunch of wine and beer on Thanksgiving Day, when I only outlined and studied for 2-3 hours during the morning before the actual meal. That’s as opposed to the 5-6 hours (maybe even more some days) that I spent otherwise. So, as you can see, Thanksgiving break pretty much sucked for me. The good news is: I’m just about all done outlining for both my exams coming up, which may be more than some can say at this point. All in all, I should be looking forward to a lighter workload for the next couple of days, until I decide to take some practice exams. Then those will fill my days.

Other good news: I realized that elements isn’t necessarily that terribly confusing now looking back on it. I think what happened was I got so carried away typing away like mad during class, that I was not able to stop and think about the actual lessons behind each class session. In going back over all the principles taught, I was able to comprehend many (most?) of them and am feeling a bit more confident because of that. Some of the more complicated economics-based principles elude me still, but that’s ok, I nonetheless feel a TON better about this class that previously had me wanting to hide in a hole and never come out (or maybe just move the Trinidad and open up a bicycle rental shop).

So with all this exam craziness circling, I also envision a world where I am able to send out a decent amount of resumes, cover letters, writing samples, etc., in hopes of finding a job this coming summer. Not sure how this will pan out and things are looking dimmer than I might have first hoped since some of my contacts/ties in big firms (possibly Biglaw firms, not sure where the distinction is from “Biglaw” to “Midlaw” or whatever) have basically said: “Come back next year.”

All in all, law school seems to be a cycle of stress, at least for me. I either seem way behind or I seem a little bit ahead . . . and when I’m ahead I can’t help but thinking there’s something more I could be doing (hornbooks, E&Es, treatises, etc.) to push myself over the top. After all, I was never really one of those kids that was able to go into an exam and just ace it; quite the opposite actually. I often had to put in more work than most, but also ended up with higher grades than most. Here, everyone is just crazy smart and so I fear (and probably expect) that all this intense amount of work is necessary just to keep my head above water. But I’ll let you know after exams come back.

I took a break from law school over the Thanksgiving holiday. A real break. From Tuesday evening to Friday evening I was in New Jersey visiting family. I didn’t bring a single law school book with me. It felt wonderful. On Wednesday I spent the day with my cousin’s new baby and Thursday the whole extended family gathered for dinner. When I wasn’t getting career advice from my uncle or getting beaten up by my 12-year-old cousin, I played with the kids and pretended I wasn’t a big deal serious law student. It was awesome. Friday I lazed about all day watching movies with the parents and eventually boarded the bus back to the city. I definitely needed the recharge.

This coming week is the last week of classes for 1Ls at CLS. Legal practice workshop ended last week so my classes are finished on Thursday. After that begins Finals Hell. This semester I only have three exams spaced apart by five days each so it won’t be too bad. I think my civil procedure exam is a four hour in class final and my other two are both eight hour take homes. I confess I haven’t really done too much to study for them just yet. I outlined one chapter of torts but that was only because I had to for my study group. Other than that, my outlines for my classes consist of syllabi split up by cases with no actual content in any of them. I keep intending to start but then classes get in the way. And now jobs.

There are four summer jobs that I really, really want. They’re all in government. If I don’t get any of them then I don’t care what I do so my plan is to apply all over the map. I’m doing well saving my student loan pennies so with that on top of the guaranteed summer funding from CLS (which I still need to apply for) should enable me to survive an unpaid summer internship.

I had meetings last week with my writing instructor and a career counselor. I wanted to make sure my first memo was in writing sample shape and then get my resume reviewed. Other than a few minor changes, both memo and resume are in good shape. If grades were no issue (as opposed to THE issue) I’d be sailing into this job application thing with something approaching total confidence. I’ve not only been in the working world, but I’ve successfully transitioned between two completely different jobs midway through. I think I’m pretty great at interviewing (boys’ parents love me), and I’ve been on both sides of the interviewing table which is an added plus.

But I keep hearing that all of that would only be icing on the cake and that it’s the grades that are really determinative. And who the hell knows about grades! Like all other 1Ls, I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to do on exams. And since I can only study to the best of my ability, I’m not going to spend a whole heck of a lot of time stressing about that fact. Although, it might comfort other CLS 1Ls to know that I do not plan to kill myself studying, that I plan to sleep at least eight hours every single night all through finals season, that I don’t plan to set foot in the library, and that I might just not bother finishing my torts outline at all. Chances are, whatever you’re doing to prepare for finals, you’re doing more than me.

So the job market has everyone freaking out, right? One negative consequence of this (or perhaps positive if you are an advocate for “true” learning) is that people think they need to do EXTRA well on first-year exams to have a competitive shot at decent firm work. The result is more people are studying harder, which might lead to pushing the curve of classes up higher than they might have been, say, 10 years ago when grades arguably mattered MUCH less. So, actually, it’s kind of funny — presently, students might “know” the law better, or perform better on law exams, than did these people 10 years ago, who nonetheless received a higher actual grade . . . again, all due to the dreaded curve. So some people, including myself, are kind of freaking out at this point. Although are grades count for next to nothing this quarter, it would still be nice to know that, by performing well this quarter, you’ve found an effective study method and that by continuing this method you might be able to better ensure quality grades later in the year.

More than just the freak out with respect to grades, people are sweating jobs in general. Everyone seems to be hearing different things through the grapevine and I’m caught in the middle, stressing like crazy when people tell me I’m screwed and sighing with relief when people tell me things will be fine. So many different law sites have so many different stats, numbers, anecdotes, etc., about who got what jobs from where and what school they attend, it’s pretty much a mess trying to keep track of it all. That, combined with the predictions of whether the economy will pick up, whether we will see a “double-dip” kind of economic recession, whether legal employment tends to pick up before other types of employment fields, etc., just makes it absolutely mind-numbing to try to worry about things at this point.

For me, while I am stressing, I’ve got some pretty good things going so far, I think. I can always go back to the job I had last summer. I was pretty good at it as a pre-law student and could probably just OWN it after a year’s writing, research, and general law training. But, while I was good at it, that’s not the kind of work I really want to pursue. I know most people say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter what you do after your first year. Just do something you might enjoy and get a good writing sample out of it.” Fine, but again, I’d prefer to diversify by experiences and not go back into the same thing I did last summer.

Other than that, I’ve got some legal contacts back in my home town I might be able to utilize that could work out, we’ll just have to wait and see. The problem with school is that, largely, your grades will define what kind of jobs you will be competitive for and those don’t come out until after I plan to apply to most places. So it’s like betting on my own success when I don’t yet have ANY clue as to like a measuring stick of how I’ll perform.

Anyway, stress abounds. Happy Thanksgiving y’all.