Posts Tagged ‘classes’

It’s kind of like being in the eye of the hurricane. I feel this eerie calm right now but I know it’s only a matter of time before everything begins to get insane. My next five con law classes are all canceled. Since there are double-long crim law sessions this week and next to look forward to (making up for snow days), this gift from our con law professor couldn’t have come at a better time.

My oral argument is happening in mid-April and I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing to prepare. All I’ve done so far is read my opponent’s brief. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about the fact that I don’t recognize most of the cases he cited. We only have about three or four cases in common, actually. By Monday we’re supposed to submit three questions we expect the panel of alumni judges to ask us as well as three we expect them to ask our opponent. Having never done anything like this before, I really have no idea what I should expect to be asked. I expect my brief to have spoken for itself! At the very least, I expect them to have read my brief!

I’ll be so happy when this ordeal is over. A month from now, not only will the oral argument be behind me but classes will be as well and I’ll have just begun exam period. It’ll also be around my 26th birthday. Last year, I decided that I wasn’t going to get any older than 25. I figured that this would be the year I officially start lying about my age. But I’ve warmed to the idea of 26 and have had a change of heart. 26 will be a banner year for me. 1L will be behind me and I’ll have adjusted to this whole law school thing.

Let’s see, what else is going on…oh! One of my best friends from college is coming out to New York from Chicago in a couple weeks. She’s the one who graciously donated her couch when I flew out for Northwestern’s admitted students weekend last year. She showed me around Chicago and I came to appreciate what an awesome city it is – that God-awful deep dish pizza aside. She’s a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Northwestern so maybe I’ll subject her sciencey brain to a law school class or something.

It’s gotten cold in New York again. I’m back in hibernation mode. It was really beautiful during spring break and I foolishly convinced myself it was going to stay that way. But I think my superintendent shut off the heat again for the year because my studio is functioning like an icebox.

I’ve begun outlining the courses. I can’t believe it’s that time again. This semester seems shorter than last somehow. There are just four weeks left of class! Four weeks, then exams, and then 1L is over.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Four weeks still translates to a lot to do.

So fantastic news. We didn’t actually get our Legal Methods exams back, but the professor sent out a mass email detailing the good news and the bad. The good news – and it certainly is good – is that for the first time in years, no one failed the exam! Yes that’s right. We are rock stars. The bad news? None of us mentioned any facts. And apparently facts are important when you’re a lawyer? (According to the professor, “Ours is a fact-dependant profession and this I either failed to convey or you declined to learn.” I think from now on any time a professor calls on me, I’ll respond with, “I declined to learn that.”) Ah well. Failing Legal Methods would be an inconvenient humiliation I just did not need right now. So I’m happy.

Know what else makes me happy? Writing class! The first five minutes of class was productive: we were informed that our memo outlines are now due a week later (which gives me back my weekend) and the actual memos are due four days later. The rest of class we spent eating Halloween candy and building things with Play Doh from our writing instructor. It was a pretty good class.

Oh, the first memo! I got it back. She had individual conferences with all of us to discuss what we did right and what we could improve. Apparently I got confused about the structure and I need to re-arrange the whole thing, but she said my analysis was “great.” Re-writes aren’t required, but I’ll probably do them. I really like our writing instructor (see above re: candy and Play Doh) so I don’t want her to think I’m not taking her class seriously (even though see above: candy and Play Doh).

The other interesting thing going on for 1Ls is choosing our spring elective. We have three required classes next semester (property, constitutional law, and criminal law) and we get to choose our fourth out of seven options. It’s some kind of lottery system where we rank all seven options in order of preference and the Registrar endeavors to assign as many of us to our top choices as possible. I have it narrowed down to two top choices. One is a class that sounds really fun. It meets three times a week for an hour each session and you spend the first two classes learning about some aspect of lawyering and then the third class you actually apply what you learned by assuming the role of an attorney in a given situation (like a custody battle, for example). The other class is all about statutory interpretation. The reason I’m considering it is that it feels like it might be more useful in the long run and more impressive to a judge (I want a clerkship after graduation). The other thing to consider is that for the first class, we’re graded on a paper and a final exam. For the second class, we have two papers and a final exam. (Now that I think about it, that should end the debate right there.)

So I’m not sure what to do. Do I take the fun-sounding class with the less harsh grading? That class is guaranteed to be huge and maybe I should think about taking the statutory interpretation class which will be much smaller. The powers that be keep telling us we should be cultivating relationships with faculty for letters of recommendation down the road and that would be easier to do in a 20-person class rather than a 100-person class. Then again, next semester I’ll be taking four classes instead of three and I already feel like I couldn’t handle any more coursework so maybe I should try to take it easy with the elective. Decisions, decisions.

Then again. Maybe I should just take intellectual property.

Any 2Ls or 3Ls have advice?

Legal Methods is over! Our last class was great. Sure, it wasn’t a party like another section’s last class. Or canceled like another section’s last class. We had cases to discuss and scholars’ statutory interpretation philosophies to debate. But when we had finished our substantive discussion, Professor LM wrapped up with a speech reflecting on all the work we’d done in the past three weeks, what he hoped we’d learned in the class, what he hoped we’d learn in law school, and what he hoped we’d do in our law careers. It was really inspiring and when he was finished the whole room erupted in applause. I’ve always wanted to be in a class where everyone applauded the professor at the end.

My legal writing section celebrated the end of Legal Methods with a Columbia-sponsored happy hour. I wonder how long this drinking-on-Columbia’s-tab thing will last. I hope for at least a little while longer since I haven’t really been able to take advantage much yet. I doubt all the myriad extracurricular organizations are finished trying to woo us. At least, if the ENDLESS BARRAGE OF LISTSERV EMAILS IS ANY INDICATOR!

Speaking of, I haven’t really come across anything I feel like joining. I’m sure employers don’t care, but I was hoping to find something interesting to join, at least for the social aspect. Apparently we have a softball club. Once upon a time (i.e. before puberty) I was really good at sports. I even played on a pee-wee hockey team. But if the past 15 years are any indication, I now suck at all things athletic. Unless yoga and pilates count. Which, let’s face it, they do not. But I think I might like to play softball. They said all skill levels are welcome…but maybe there’s something in the law school’s anti-discrimination policy that makes them say that. Anyway, I’ll think about it some more.

So, I think I’ve been sufficiently acclimated to this thing called law school. True, unlike a lot of other 1Ls, I haven’t gotten very far on any of my substantive classes, but my LM class consisted of more course hours than my full schedule so I’m looking forward to more free time.

I’ve heard mostly good things about my professors, but Professor Torts is on loan from the University of Chicago so he was a bit of a scary wildcard. (I heard they actually give out C’s at Chicago.) But he isn’t nearly as intimidating as I’d pictured. He kind of dances around the room and Socraticizes us in a friendly, non-threatening manner. He treats it as more of a conversation rather than a test. Torts cases are always interesting; today’s theme was obnoxious children, including one case where an adult woman sued a five year old. Awesome.

Civil Procedure…well to be honest, I’m kind of loving it. I found the reading to be really interesting. I’m definitely a rule-oriented person so I think I’ll be one of those rare people for whom Civ Pro really appeals. The professor seems nice enough. He ended class a bit early today so he could fly down to DC to do something for a former high school classmate of his…Sonia something or other.

Contracts is my small section. There are fewer than 40 people in this class. I don’t really have any thoughts on Contracts yet. It’s too soon to write it off, obviously, but I was less in love with the material than with Civ Pro, if that says anything. True, there is little that is more gorily exciting than botched plastic surgery, but the issues of law themselves just appeal to me less. So far anyway. It’s obviously way too soon to make any kind of definitive judgment.

But in any event, so far so good.