'I have more questions than you have answers.'

I answered questions for about 30 minutes in class the other day. The professor for civil procedure is probably the toughest on the students and the class has more of an 'academic boot camp' feel to it than the others. I handled the questions pretty well. At one point the professor attempted to create a hypothetical to elicit a certain response from me. I answered all his questions correctly. He just didn't ask the question the right way to get the answer he wanted. He finally laughed, phrased the question correctly and as I was thinking about the answer he said 'See, I have more questions than you have answers.'

I laughed because it was painfully true as my mind raced to find an appropriate answer.

After rephrases and the scribbled out drawings on the board about who lived where during whatever time period and what state the parties all lived in I got a little confused and fumbled on the last answer. I did my best to work through it and I think I did alright.

Next weekend is Halloween. For whatever reason California Western students take this holiday really, really seriously. They treat it like a Catholic treats Fat Tuesday before lent. I guess there is a parallel (admittedly not the best analog, but I like it so shut up) there in that after Halloween everyone gives up their freedom to go out and starts putting in 8-12 hours a day, every day, until finals.

Some students haven't caught on quite yet to how hard this work load is. You can get away with not reading or not briefing once or twice but its painful to catch back up. If you don't read or brief for a class and do nothing to learn the material otherwise you have effectively put it off for another day. It takes about 50-60 hours per week of going to class and studying outside of class to learn and know the material cold. To learn it well enough to answer any kind of questions you could get away with 40. So lets just say 50 hours/ week. If you only put in 30 hours for a week you've backlogged 20 hours of learning for yourself. If you do that two weeks in a row you have a 40 hour backlog.

Thats not to say it isn't irrecoverable. Its just going to be an excruciating experience.

I played soccer all through high school pretty competitively. Our coach, who we not so affectionately called, 'the soccer Nazi', would make us run 60-50-40s. You have 60 seconds to run a lap around the field and without stopping you have 50 seconds to run the next lap and without stopping you have 40 seconds to run the last lap which leaves you breathless, dead tired and wondering why you ever thought soccer was fun.

The fall semester feels about the same. The beginning is 40 hours/week, the middle is 50 hours/week and the end is 60 hours/week to the finish. I think the school recommends 70 hours/ week for the whole semester or something ungodly like that but that would probably leave you with the social and networking skills of a turnip.

My outlines are looking good. My tutors like them and have given me their input. I'm going to start taking practice tests this weekend.

One last sprint to the finish.

Y'all be hatin' and I see why

cause you don't know me.

Love ATL.

Sleepless in San Diego

I'm usually lights out and asleep before midnight but for whatever reason I'm wide awake and figured I'd make a post.

I had a few bad days last week. Monday and Tuesday it felt like my brain went on an involuntary mental vacation. I tried to grind through it but just came home retaining nothing. Wednesday onward went fine.

I've started working with other classmates. Up until now I've been working on my own and going to the tutoring sessions. I like working with others but its only good for outlining and reinforcing old material or clearing up questions or ambiguities in the classes or the readings. I'm definitely at a point where I need to review and memorize the material from the start of the semester up to this point so I can start working on hypotheticals in November.

Here is my break down class by class:

Legal skills -

This class is still lame. We've only really learned bluebook citations. Beyond that we work on IREAC. Its a particular structure for writing memos and essays for law school exams. Its nothing you couldn't learn on your own in a whopping 15 minutes. Its worth less than the other classes. Unfortunately that doesn't make it entirely worthless to GPA and maybe getting a summer internship or clerkship.

My biggest motivating factor for this class is that the professor recently came from a pretty nice firm and knows what employers want in a writing sample. Hopefully I can pull an A and get a writing sample out of it.

Contracts -

This class is a lot of black letter law.

Criminal Law -

I think our professor made a mistake. He hurried through 'attempt' and made it seem unimportant. It took talking to the tutor and pouring over the reading to figure out that this will probably be worth big points on the exam.

Property -

It is the easiest class but after reading ahead I think it might become one of the most difficult. I got called on the other day to answer questions. I did pretty well. I inadvertently used a common word that has a legal definition. The professor corrected me. One of the disadvantages to reading ahead a few classes is that you forget what you read when the class rolls around. It didn't matter. I had my brief and the case highlighted and color coded in a way that gave me all the answers and refreshed my memory.

Civil Procedure -

I answered all the questions in my Glannons study aid and it helps a lot to answer questions in class. I have a question for the professor that I'll probably ask him about when class is over.

Some random thoughts:

I'm not nearly social enough. I have friends and I get invited out I just choose not to go anywhere. I like working on law school problems with people but when it comes to going out for drinks or whatever I'd rather not spend the money. I've made some cycling and surfing friends around the city but its not quite the same as the law school social scene which can have a distinct 'high school' feel to it. I am pretty certain every law school has that same feel after talking to my friends at other schools.

I guess the hot 'blawg' topic has been whether or not to trust school sponsored blogs. Several law schools have these now and California Western is no exception. Most potential law students want an accurate view of what a law school is like so here is my take on internet resources and developing an authentic view of a law school.

School sponsored blogs-

School sponsored blogs are probably an OK source to get a preliminary idea of what attending a law school is like. Take it with a grain of salt. The authors aren't going to say anything to shake the boat about the professors, administration, career services or whatever or they likely wouldn't be asked to blog in the first place.

Independent non-anonymous blogs-

These are likely to have some good information and have impartial opinions about the school. Some of them have the same issue that the school sponsored blogs have though in that their authors might not share negative experiences they have to avoid real life road bumps.

Anonymous blogs-

Some are great and some are just rumor mills.

Blogs in general are pretty bad. They are usually a single view point with no alternative perspectives. This one is probably no exception. At least I'm honest about it. Heh.

Message boards-

These are an excellent way to get to know students at any law school in the country. A lot of the users are anonymous but will reveal themselves if you integrate with the community. They'll give honest opinions. The downside is that on any massive law school message board you'll run into 'if you're not top 14 you're worthless' trolls.

Epinions, Yahoo! Answers, Yelp, whatever your favorite ratings site is-

Yahoo! Answers is usually a cesspit of stupid. Epinions I know very little about. Yelp is generally pretty good for restaurants and getting my haircut but I don't know if I would go there for advice about law school. The ratings on these kinds of cites seem to be either one star or five. I suspect that the only people to actually go out of their way to fill out a rating and write something about their school are those that are either overjoyed with their law school choice or are super disgruntled that they failed out or that they hate studying law.

Law school numbers, US News and World Report, Princeton Review-

These are very useful. They are written by competent individuals who know the law school geography intimately. I wouldn't get too caught up in law school rankings. USNWR does not weight bar passage very highly and thats definitely a crucial part of becoming a lawyer. Always look at the different metrics these kinds of organizations use and make sure it fits with what you are looking for. Princeton review costs money but its not hard to find a free password. Law school numbers last I checked just gave a statistics only representation of a law school's make-up.

The above mostly just states the obvious. The potential law school student is really their own best filter.

Time for bed.

Mornin'!

The morning routine:

1) get up at 6, hit the snooze button.

2) actually get up at 6:15

3) make coffee

4) read news/ whatever until the coffee is done.

5) review brief, notes and reading for first class over 2-3 cups of coffee

6) bike to class

Yesterday I got called on to answer questions in criminal law. I finally made it through socratic questioning without saying something dumb, stuttering, or rushing through answers nervously. Woo hooooooooo!

Sick as a dog

I didn't feel well all of last week and Friday it finally turned into full blown illness. I've had a fever of about 100 from Thursday night through to today.

Just because you're sick in law school doesn't give you a free pass to quit doing work. I planned on going to the library this weekend and working on legal skills until the cows come home but I don't think its a good idea for me to ride my bike around like this. I've taken the opportunity to review and outline for all my classes. Here is an update, class by class, of what I work on.

Legal Skills:

I hate this class. Its time consuming and the lectures are worthless recitals of powerpoint slides. The handholding through writing a research paper makes me especially agitated. In every other class you are presented with material (tons of it) and the professor guides you through it. That is not the case for this class. They spoon feed you everything.

The first assignment was a disaster. They pitted all the 1Ls against each other in a competition for the same books. The professor for whatever reason didn't see this as a problem until the due date came up and almost no one had turned in the assignment due to the line for books. Then the rules changed and we were allowed to use online resources. We will likely never use those books again. I think it would have been far more beneficial to get acquainted with lexis and westlaw than it was to waste hours waiting on books in the library.

Pros: I got better at writing out citations.

Cons: The ratio of time spent to material learned is all out of whack. The bluebook has mistakes in it and you have to find an overburdened TA to show you the correct way to cite. The professor seems to think this is high school.

Criminal Law:

This is a great course. Everything is clear and concise. My outline looks good and the hypotheticals are fun. The TA for the course is a brilliant guy and he is excellent about picking out and mapping out what we need to know for the exam.

Pros: The hypotheticals are like interesting puzzles you get to solve. The TA is fantastic.

Cons: It is sometimes ambiguous regarding what we need to know for the exam and tangents the professor goes off on because its something of interest to him.

Contracts:

I understand the material in this class the best. Its all really clear and my outline looks good. We just finished up consideration.

Pros: The professor is great at clearing up misconceptions after class.

Cons: This isn't a con for me so much as it is for everyone else. The professor presents the material in a really intuitive sort of way which gives the illusion of understanding to a lot of students. If you read the material and think about it though you still have lots of black letter law to memorize for the exam. It doesn't matter that it seems intuitive, you get points based on what you can put down on paper. You have to do the reading and the supplement reading to understand what the reading says about the law.

Property:

This class goes at a slow pace. I enjoy it the most. The material is really cool and the professor is excellent. I felt bad being sick in his class and visibly struggling to pay attention this week.

Pros: The slow pace allows you to keep up with reading in other classes. The readings given to you get straight to a clear point about the law regarding property. The TA is wonderful an reviews outlines.

Cons: There really are no cons to this class.

Civil Procedure:

I read and read and read and I think I get 'it' then I go to class and realize I know nothing. This is somehow my worst class. There are set rules that come into play in the timeline of an action. It seems very cut and dry until you get in there and the professor asks questions until you have completely lost track of what the rule is and your brain feels like it melted out your ears.

Pros: The rules are easy to memorize.

Cons: The application of the rules is difficult. The professor has a tendency to follow a bad thread with a student who gets called on and didn't read or didn't understand the material. The professor tries (often in vain) to lead students through to the correct answers. I wish he would question less and lecture more. The more bad answers he gets out of students the more confused I get about the correct answer .

The above has taken over my life. I work from 6am - 6pm every weekday only taking a break to eat for 10 minutes or so in the morning and at lunch. The weekends I sleep in and generally do about 4 hours/ Saturday and Sunday.

UCSD and CWSL Update:

The student news paper (The Commentary) had a big article about the relationship between UCSD and CWSL. I would provide a link to the article but after a lazy google search for it I couldn't find one.

UCSD set up a committee to work out a merger with CWSL.

http://gradlife.ucsd.edu/2009/04/gsa-announcements/

Its looks more and more like a done deal. I suppose there is something holding up the process though.

Worthy of a blog post?

Rumor mills in law schools generate ideas ranging from reasonable to completely insane. Usually they spawn out of the 1Ls mishearing or misrepresenting something from a 2 or 3L.

This rumor came from UCSD. My significant other landed a research position at UCSD. Their boss/peer there talked about California Western becoming a part of UCSD. I'm inclined to believe him.

After some quick googling it turns out this rumor has been around for ages. Who knows if it will ever come to fruition? It would certainly be a phenomenal experience for California Western students to have access to UCSD resources and UCSD could benefit their mission having their own brand of lawyers.

Anyway, this is the best I can do for a 'source':

http://jollylawger.com/?p=107

Week 3 Down

I've made it this far relatively unscathed. Then again its 1:30 in the morning on a Friday (I guess now its Saturday morning) drilling civil procedure. Its a very straight forward class. Its a series of rules that come into play at various points in a law suit's timeline. So long as you know when they are triggered you're good to go.

Although, the professor for the class is a bit unmerciful at times. If he thinks you didn't do the reading or brief a case he'll make sure you're embarrassed to the point of never making the error again.

Everything else is going swimmingly. I tend make friends a little slower than everyone else. I have no idea why. I guess its just shyness on some level. It seems like there is a constant element of networking that makes it difficult to tell if you're dealing with a person who is genuinely interested in what you have to say rather than what you have to offer. That said I've made a bunch of friends and I have a great time at all the social things the school does. I think the most fun I've had was after the final from the summer course. Right after everyone walked to The Local and just kind of hung out.

A random civil procedure side note: After looking up a bunch of rules I don't think there are any repercussions for a defense attorney to just use 12(b)(6), failure to make a claim upon which relief can be granted, no matter what. I don't see why attorneys don't just go for it no matter how bogus their reasoning is behind it. It can only help or leave you where you started.

I'll be back at it in the morning.

Goodnight!