11:00am - After wandering around the campus taking pictures of different buildings, I manage to find my way to Harkness Commons, which has apparently been recently renovated and looks clean, well-lit, and modern. At the registration table I’m given a folder and a tote bag, which is actually pretty nice except for the Harvard crest and “HARVARD LAW SCHOOL” in huge letters on one side. I’m sure my mom will love it. I go upstairs to the cafeteria, pick out a decent brunch, and sit down at a table with a 1L tour guide. We talk for a bit, then she spots a few friends and brings them over to the table. They’re unaffiliated with the Admitted Students Weekend, so I take the opportunity to ask them about their experience at HLS. All of them recommend the dorms because they’re fairly cheap and good for meeting people, even though they’re old and ugly and the rooms in Gropius are small. Also, I learn that law school is indeed much like high school and that “Columbia sucks.”
12:00pm (or so) - I take a tour with a couple second-years (I think) who were 1L section-mates. They are extremely enthusiastic about Harvard, which turns out to be the case with almost all the students I talk to. We get to see a room in the Gropius dorms, which actually looks more spacious than I expected from an 8′ x 12′ box. It’s not much, but it’s livable.
1:00 - The Student Life Panel is kinda boring, truthfully. I don’t really remember much of what was said. At 2:00, Dean Elena Kagan takes some questions. Unfortunately, people lob her softballs like, “What are the advantages of Harvard Law School?” and “So I hear the students here are smart…” She does get to talk about the changes she hopes to make in the next three years, which seem to consist mostly of renovating buildings and hiring more professors (especially women).
3:00 - The Dean’s session ran over into the time reserved for faculty speakers, so I run over to catch Professor Martha Minow’s talk on “Privatization and Public Values: School Vouchers, Private Military Companies, and Faith-Based Initiatives.” It’s really good; Professor Minow carries on a discussion with us about the pros, cons, and potential constitutional violations of privatization of various public services — thought-provoking and very interesting.
4:00 - We’re still running late, but I make it to Professor Terry Fisher’s lecture: “Patents, Drugs, and the Health Crisis in Developing Countries.” The ideas are interesting, but by this point, I’m beat, and Professor Fisher speaks softly and slowly with a bit of a monotone (I believe he’s the Copyright professor that CM describes as a zombie). Too many speakers, not enough breaks; I drift off about halfway through his talk.
5:00 - I first run into CM on my way to the Student Organization Fair. Without the usual small-talk questions, I completely blank on something to say, and we resort to chasing after a slow-moving water cart before going our separate ways. CM, just as nice as you would expect, manages to avoid mocking me (out loud, at least) for fulfilling the computer nerd stereotype.
There are 30-some student organizations here. I manage to hit about half of them up for free stuff or candy and somehow end up talking to a good number of people. I don’t know what I want to get out of law school or which groups I’m actually interested in, but the representatives seem willing, sometimes eager, to talk to me about law school in general after giving me a short overview of what their group is and how many of their events feature Supreme Court Justices or free alcohol. Again, almost everyone seems enthusiastic, and a large number of them talk about how great Dean Kagan is. It sounds like she’s done a lot in her first 18 months and everyone is excited to have a Dean that seems to actually care about the students.
The American Constitution Society, the Harvard Democrats, and the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Journal are joining up for the “no-host” dinner afterward, so I follow them to the Harvard Commons restaurant/bar down the street. I eat a tasty cheeseburger (which the ACS ends up paying for–take that, “no-host”!), look at the nice selection of beers, and marvel at the accomplishments of my potential future classmates, who have all done amazing things but for the most part aren’t cocky about it. From one of the current students at my table, I learn that the Lincoln’s Inn is basically a $500 all-you-can-drink liquor bar, only differing from a fraternity in that “fraternity brothers generally know and like each other.” Burn. I also catch another dose of anti-Dershowitz backlash, which seems to be a fairly common sentiment among students. Over the weekend, I ran into several students who discouraged me from taking a class with Alan Dershowitz, because “a Criminal Law class with Dershowitz is more a class on Alan Dershowitz than on criminal law.” Everyone agreed that his war stories were incredibly interesting, but some felt that teaching took a back seat to amusing anecdotes in his classes.
8:00 - Dead tired, I stop by the Public Interest Dessert for some ice cream, hoping a little sugar will wake me up. While there, I meet another 0L who gets really excited when I admit that I too have no clue what I want to do with my future law degree. We both want to check out the the Hong Kong, which we hear is a spectacular dive bar, before going home, so we head over around 9:00. It’s too early to be busy, so we order our free drinks and grab a table. The Hong Kong isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. Things seem clean, there’s a nice selection, and, while the Chinese theme is cheesy, the Golden Tee machine is fully intact, which suggests that this isn’t nearly as much of a dive as advertised.
We leave shortly and my new friend proves himself the greatest person ever by offering me a ride back to my hotel, which is conveniently 1.5 miles from a subway station that is an hour’s ride from Harvard. It takes 20 minutes by car and I pass out the within a minute of getting in bed.
