Posts Tagged ‘memo’

As I noted in the previous post, we just turned in our open memo assignment last week. The completion of that assignment, while joyous with mimosas and pancakes, also signals that the end is near — the end of the quarter, and with that comes exams. So last week was my last fun week for a while. And it certainly was a fun week. After completing each 1L writing assignment, the law school hosts a party for all students: $20 for an open bar night somewhere. Last quarter it was the Party of the First Part and this quarter it was called The Over the Hump Party. I think last quarter’s party was probably more enjoyable, maybe partly because the venue for this quarter’s party was like an Indie Rock bar — sorry hipsters, but your music is lame. It was especially lame since all most people wanted to do was throw back some drinks, have a good time, and maybe head out onto the dance floor for some good old-fashioned bump and grind. And Indie Rock is most certainly NOT conducive to bumping and grinding, thats’ for sure.

Anyway, the day after the Hump Party was Friday, which means Wine Mess Day. But this was an extra special wine mess. Almost immediately after “the mess” (held an hour later this week) was the Law School Musical, which was hilarious. For those who are unfamiliar with what a Law School Musical consists of, basically, its a chance when students get to make fun of, and other students get to laugh at, all the things we deal with on a daily basis. The jokes this year included putting a giant Chinese dragon-like elephant on stage when discussing OCI and the economy …. the economy thereby being likened to “the elephant in the room.” So clever. Other jokes were just unabashed attacks on the idiosyncrasies and quirks of most of our professors, equally clever and hilarious. And literally nothing was sacred — attacks on the way they dress, their national origin, their senses of humor (or lack thereof), their age, and weight were all fair game. One might think that professors get pretty upset with all this laughter at their expense (indeed, I have since learned that many professors forego attending for this very reason), but given the level of humiliation they put all of us through 5 days a week, I really don’t care that much. Plus, one of the cardinal rules of having a decent sense of humor, I think, is being able to laugh at yourself.

Anyway, after those fun events, and after recovering from a splitting hangover headache, it was time to focus back on school. Yes, exams are coming, and this quarter they cover twice as much material as last quarter. So I’m back to being the library on a consistent (and perhaps constant) basis — outlining, reviewing notes, reading supplements, etc. in an effort to try to make this quarter’s grades just a bit better than the last. So goodbye for now, fun. Hope to see you again possibly in March?

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?

I confess I’m having trouble coming up with blog topics so I apologize in advance for what will no doubt be a rambling, disjointed post. I mean, how many different ways are there to say that things are fine and about what I expected? I’m busier than I’ve ever been, but I’m working more or less by rote at this point. I’m out of class by 4PM most days. Then I come home, occasionally swinging by D’Agostino on the way, and make dinner. I’ll goof off on the Internet for a little while and then by 6PM, I settle in with coffee (or what was formerly coffee before I subjected it to vast amounts of sugar and French vanilla creamer) and attack my pile of reading.

Whether or not I’ve finished, I close my books around midnight and get ready for bed. My bedtime routine consists of first pre-heating my bed (electric blanket courtesy of my dad who couldn’t deal with the fact that my heaters only work when the planets are in alignment – thanks, dad!), then washing my face, brushing my teeth, removing my contacts, and crawling into bed. (Usually I’ve been in my pajamas for hours at this point. Normal clothes are the first things to go when I get home.) I’m one of those freaks who can’t fall asleep without ambient noise so I usually pop in a DVD of Friends and fall asleep before the Rembrandts are finished playing.

Thursdays are easy days. Class is over by noon and I usually spend the afternoon reading only for my Friday morning writing class. The reading is pretty light so I goof off for the rest of the day and occasionally decide to grace Bar Review with my presence.

Friday morning I have legal writing at 11AM which is a low-key class with only about 12 people in it. When that’s over with, I head home and plan my weekend. If I have a lot going on, I start my reading Friday afternoon. I generally don’t go out and party on both Friday and Saturday night since I’m usually completely useless the entire next day.

This week and weekend will be tricky as my best friend who lives in LA is vacationing in New York and I obviously want to see her as much as possible while still getting all my work done. She sent me an excel spreadsheet with her entire itinerary mapped out (I love how organized she is!) and I’m to insert myself into her schedule wherever I can. She gets here Wednesday and I’m taking her to a free drinks/food event I was invited to in Murray Hill that night. Since legal writing is canceled this week due to individual conferences for our first memo feedback (oh by the way, I turned in my first memo last night), I’m going to meet her downtown for lunch at my favorite sushi place. Friday night, her brother is throwing a party at his west village apartment so I’ll go to that. Saturday night we’ll hit the bars and she’ll stay over my place. Sunday I expect we’ll get brunch and at some point that day she’ll return to her brother’s. By my calculations, that leaves me a few hours Friday, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon/evening in which to get my reading done. Totally doable. I hope.

So yeah, the memo. Fortunately I was crazy OCD about making sure my outline was really beefed up so the writing part wasn’t too bad at all. The day it was due all my classmates were complaining about how the 6-page limit was too short and how they had to basically halve their memos to get it within the limit. That gave me pause a bit because I had no trouble keeping my outline to 6 pages even. I wondered what crucial bits of analysis I missed, but quickly brushed it aside because I hit all the points of my outline and my instructor saw the outline and suggested a few cursory changes. I figure she’d let me know if some vital piece of analysis was missing…

I also had a minor freakout in the eleventh hour when I noticed something about the case that, in the real world, would have invalidated the entire assignment. I wondered if she put that in there to sort of trick us up or see if we would notice. But then I thought I should resist the temptation to point it out since it was outside the scope of the assignment. In the end, I decided to pretend I was a real lawyer given a real assignment and point out the issue in a footnote. Hopefully she won’t penalize me for straying a bit outside the question she asked us to consider since the footnote is the only mention of the outside issue.

In any event, my first law school writing assignment is finished. Writing class is canceled for the next two weeks so we can meet with the instructor individually so she can give us feedback. Then we’ll have rewrites due. Then we’ll have our second and final memo assigned (open universe as opposed to this one which was limited to 6 cases she gave us).

My next challenge will be sitting down and starting my course outlines. I feel as though any extra time I have should be devoted to self-maintenance (sleep, exercise, etc.) but working on these outlines will require me to find time in my schedule that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately it looks like I’ll have to cut into the weekend time that’s currently devoted to pretending I’m not in law school.

But not this weekend of course.