We can whine about which parts from the book were left out. We can disagree about the casting and whether this was a better movie than the last one. We can argue whether the kids are too old to play fourteen-year-olds.
But I think we can all agree that Moody’s magical eye should not be making motor/electronic noises when it zooms in on people. It’s freaking magic, people. C’mon.
This is a proud day for me. I have just discovered that this site is the first Google result for screw law school.
I am the winner of everything. Bow down and kiss the ring.
From Property: “People today are not big on testamentary freedom. If I held a rally today for testamentary freedom… [sounding resigned] …well, there wouldn’t be a great turnout. I will, though, if you all promise to come.”
Criminal Law [discussing Terry stop-and-frisks]: “It’s very bad police work to get shot by somebody.”
Shortly before I left for class this morning, I got a phone call from someone looking for an “easy lawyer.” I have no idea what that was about, but let’s get one thing straight: I am most certainly not a lawyer.
That is all.
I’m in the mid-semester slump. Y’know, where you watch TV instead of reading, or you try to do work but end up zoning out in front of the computer for the better part of an hour. You start reading but can’t concentrate from the beginning to the end of the sentence, so you end up going over each paragraph five times. You install Linux on your laptop one day, just for the hell of it. (Okay, that one’s just me.)
And it came just when the workload finally goes nuclear. Along with the usual reading, I have the final draft of a closed memo, the first draft of the dreaded open memo, outlining, studying, practice tests, and a summer job search hanging over my head.
Things aren’t all bad, though. I’m reading cases about twice as fast as I did at the beginning of the year. I’ve stuck to my plan of getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night. I’ve managed to manage my stress pretty well so far, though that will probably change once exams get a little closer. I really do like law school. I just wish they let up on the pressure every once in a while to let us catch up on things.
Still, I’m eating like crap, and I know I’ve become more boring since I’ve been in law school. I try not to subject friends and family to a lot of law-talk, but that’s pretty much all I think about nowadays, so I have even less to say than usual. I’m cranky and whiny and I bitch a lot. But that’s just life as a 1L, I guess.
Two months. I can do this.
Here’s my theory about law school: no one really knows what they’re doing. They’re all just really good at pretending. To some extent, this is probably just wishful thinking, but then again, maybe not . . .
I know an upperclassman who had my Criminal Law professor his 1L year. He got an A in the class and told me and a few of my sectionmates that he believed his high grade came from citing case names in his answer. Well, we had a review session with that professor last week, and it turns out that he doesn’t care one bit about whether we cite cases. We won’t get any points for it; the best they can do is act as a convenient shorthand, but a short description of the case will work just as well.
Now, I don’t doubt that this upperclassman had good intentions. He has good grades and is obviously doing something right. He just doesn’t know what.
So the 3L-to-1L summer job advice session next Thursday? I’ll be there, but I’ll also be taking the advice with a grain of salt.
I skipped classes on Friday and went home for a friend’s wedding. Perfect timing–the never-ending schoolwork was starting to get to me. So I spent my weekend getting dressed up, riding around in a limo, drinking, dancing, forgetting people’s names, and generally making an ass out of myself. Now I come back, and for some reason my work is still here. Crap. I’d better read blogs until it gives up and goes away.
I’m pretty sure the fates are trying to prevent me from drifting back into full-fledged computer nerdity. I even have proof. See?
Proof #1: SCO finally states what they’re suing IBM for, but the court document is sealed, so I can’t spend hours ridiculing it.
Proof #2: This talk just happened to be scheduled during my only evening class:
Is the GPL Impotent? A Talk by Greg Aharonian
Mr. Aharonian is gearing up for a legal battle against the US Justice
Department, where he is challenging the legality and constitutionality of
software copyright law. He welcomes anyone who wishes to debate his views.
Coincidences? Doubtful.
I sometimes amuse myself while reading by imagining what the judges would say if they didn’t have to worry about little things like the reputation of the judiciary and having respect for the parties. Here’s an example, from Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42:
Frank Chambers was convicted of two robberies, based partly on evidence the police found during a search of the car he was riding in. He challenged the admission of this evidence, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. After holding that the warrantless search of the car was constitutional because the police has probable cause, Justice White starts to feel bad for Chambers. Poor guy just had his appeal crushed. He probably feels real down-in-the-dumps right now. “Hey man,” White wants to say, “buck up. Things aren’t that bad. You just have to look on the bright side!” He then demonstrates. After stating that there’s no real difference between searching the car at the time of the arrest and driving it to the police station first, Justice White notes that the police were actually doing the owner a favor:
All occupants in the car were arrested in the dark parking lot in the middle of the night. A careful search at that point was impractical and perhaps not safe for the officers, and it would serve the owner’s convenience and the safety of his car to have the vehicle and the keys together at the station house.
“See, you don’t have to catch a ride back to your car now!” White doesn’t say. “Well, I guess that’s because you’re going to jail, but if you weren’t, you’d really be happy now. When I was young, we had to walk uphill through a blizzard to get back to our cars after we were convicted of robbery with evidence found during a warrantless search. You should thank the police for being so considerate.”
“Kids these days. They take everything for granted.”
“I concur,” says Justice Stewart. “It’s that ‘rock and roll’ music they’re all listening to nowadays. Turns their minds into mush. I miss The Big Bopper.”
Justice Harlan chimes in: “Stewart, you’re such a square. Not all rock music is the devil’s work. That Les Zeppelin fellow, for instance, is quite the guitar whiz. ‘Lots of people talk, but few of them know, the soul of a woman was created belooooww. . . Waaah-aaah, waaaahh-ahh [with the required air-guitar and Robert Plant hip-thrusting] . . .’”
“. . .” says Justice Blackmun, who took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Today is November 1. This may not mean anything to you, but to 560-some Harvard 1Ls, it means that the summer job search has officially begun. We can make appointments with Career Services and the Office for Public Interest Advising. We can attend any of the 4,877 talks, panels, workshops, and discussions that are scheduled over the next three weeks. We can spend hours reformatting our resumes, making the “Harvard Law School” as prominent as possible to hide our complete lack of relevant experience. We can skip classes to work on cover letters. We can think of new ways to casually work our job offers into conversation. And of course, we can stop pretending we’re considering public interest work and spend the next few months begging for jobs from every big-city law firm that has ever hired a 1L.
Happy November 1st, y’all.