Thursday, November 29, 2007

John Tool Bag, Esquire

There is currently an old Chevrolet Malibu parked in the student lot with a tag that reads "ESQUIR."  I might not think twice about it if it was parked in the faculty lot, but it struck me as odd that some student decided it would be cool to get a premature self-congratulatory license plate.  This person is probably destined to fail out of law school and be stuck with the ESQUIR plate as a constant reminder of failure.

On another note, one more paper is finished.  I somehow cranked out almost 8,000 words in just a few days, a significant improvement over the 3,500 words in a few weeks pace I managed on my law review comment.  I really think footnoting consumes roughly 2/3 of the time I spend doing legal writing, so it's a lot faster when the professor doesn't care about footnoting or pincites at all.

Oh joy, exams await.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving for me came 3 1/2 hours late thanks to the guys in Judge Federalist's class who, in my absence, decided that having class today was a good idea. I'm still tracking down the culprits. I leave town for a week or so and overachievers start running the asylum!

Thanks to those who have been praying for me during the last few weeks. There are still good times and bad times in any given day but it is getting easier.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

How Bad Is It...

...when you interview with a firm and receive a rejection letter three business days later? Actually, that isn't so uncommon, especially at firms with quick turnaround times.

How about this...how bad is it when you know that same firm was still interviewing people at the time you received the rejection letter? Not only that, this is the one private firm in which you were genuinely interested through two cycles of OCI and dozens of mail merged resume/cover letter combos. It's essentially like they said "we so desperately do not want to work with you that we're willing to take the chance that the ten remaining candidates we haven't met yet are just as terrible as you."

I'll analogize it to dating, which is the only convincing analogy I've heard for the job search process. It's a lot like meeting a beautiful girl at a bar (I'm a guy here, not going to use the gender-neutral terminology), getting her phone number , and going on a date with her. You hit it off, have everything in common (including some rather unusual interests and qualities), and you end the night by taking her to your place to engage in some extracurricular activities. When you get to the door, she suddenly kicks you in the shin, throws a left hook into your ribs, knees you in the face, and runs away down the street. Two weeks later, you see her out at the bar with a short, fat guy who works as a janitor at the local Denny's.

It just can't be easy, can it?

Monday, November 19, 2007

Law Review Student Comment...Check

The first 3508 words of my law review student comment are finished. This will likely mean that tomorrow afternoon will be the last time I will know my own name for a little while. It's not that I haven't been able to drink in the past few weeks, but actually having some leisurely drinks for once without an impending deadline will be nice.

Oh wait, I still have to write a damn "pathfinder" (annotated bibliography) for Advanced Legal Research. It won't be intellectually challenging, but it's still just one more thing to do, paper to write, etc. Maybe I can have some "leisurely drinks" while reading more Establishment Clause cases and law review articles. This pathfinder is the only thing standing between me and holiday freedom, and by "holiday freedom," I mean finals. Oddly enough, I've always found finals to be relaxing relative to the normal semester because I'm not a person who can learn effectively by "studying" in the traditional sense. Such is the life of a 2L.

On a happier note, I actually did get a summer job offer a couple of weeks ago with the state attorney general's office. It's not a paid position, but the particular job (in the Opinions division) probably would have been one of my top choices if there was money involved. I have a couple of other promising interviews pending, including one with a private firm in my home county that is one of the only firms in the state with a local government law practice. This fact somehow escaped me until I was actually in the interview. Hopefully I didn't go overboard with the enthusiasm. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed about that one.

On another happier note, El Guapo has been coming to classes again since last Wednesday. A lot of law students attended a memorial service for his baby last Saturday. I was glad to see that so many made the effort to be there on a Saturday morning, even during this hectic time of the semester. The school is going to let El Guapo do his finals on a pass/fail basis, and the law review higher-ups pushed back his student comment due date. Hopefully things will be back to normal for El Guapo before too long.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Student Comment Bitching

Benefits of student comment:
1. only opportunity most of us have to get published at this point in our lives - degree of publication's benefit to resume is questionable
2. fulfills seminar requirement at our school - virtually meaningless for reasons explained below

Costs of student comment:
1. huge time investment
2. huge stress investment
3. kills the joy of studying/writing about an interesting topic
4. fulfills the seminar requirement - I counted this as a benefit as well, but seminars are essentially guaranteed A's, meaning that not taking one has a good chance of lowering your potential GPA. Think of it as an opportunity cost sort of idea. Students can still take a seminar, but doing that eliminates all the utility of having the student comment fulfill the requirement. It just doesn't strike me that removing the need to take a guaranteed A class is all that helpful. Perhaps I should have created a "neutral/meaningless benefits" category.

I'm not even that bitter about having to write this comment for some reason. I think it's largely useless unless it is selected for publication and probably useless even then. We've all seen how much putting law review on our resumes helped (zero). I'm at 2400/3500 words for the initial draft, and I just don't want to do it anymore. It hasn't even been that difficult so far, as I'm essentially going to turn in a 3500 word case discussion. This entire post reminds me of whining about something I have no good reason to not do, perhaps along the lines of the "but...but...I don't WANNA" argument. Blah.

Someone please make my comment finish writing itself so I can stop whining about it.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Laptop Attachment

Re:  potential ban on laptop use in class the faculty and administration are currently considering:

El Guapo:  if they made it an honor court violation [to use laptops in class], I would organize a protest

El Guapo:  everyone would turn in the person to their left and swamp the honor court with cases

Another Excuse for Not Updating

It's the end of the semester.

While that should be a sufficient explanation for the law students among us, especially those who have been through a fall 2L semester on a journal, but I will explain for Carl Icahn. Here is a list of things on the priority list over the past couple of weeks:

1. citecheck for law review (editing assignment double-checking someone's work)
2. law review student comment draft
3. 2 on campus interviews randomly stuck in the 12th week of the semester when all the others were in the first 5-6 weeks
4. 2 off-campus interviews in the neighboring medium-sized city area
5. on call in a couple of classes, meaning some actual preparation for class is involved
6. regular class schedule
7. getting new laptop and setting it up, part of the reason I haven't posted much in a while
8. dicking around at home trying to forget about 1-7
9. going out drinking
10. staying in drinking




...173. blogging

Sorry Carl.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Nothing's Well on the Eastern Front Update

Now that El Guapo has sent out his e-mail to law school friends, I feel OK sharing this with those who read our blog. Here is an excerpt from the e-mail that gives you the general idea:

My daughter, [name], died yesterday afternoon. She was 13 days old. Some of you have heard this by now and some haven't. This has nothing to do with how much we love you but more to do with the fact that the last 24 hours have been a blur and we just can't reach you all. Our families are here and our church has helped us so much.

I'm not sure what to say. El Guapo, you and your family are in our thoughts. I'm glad that you guys are surrounded by friends and family to help you through this. I look forward to the day when you'll be back, but don't make it too soon. Take care of your wife and yourself.

Wow. Sometimes real life puts law school in perspective.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Nothing's Well on the Eastern Front

Very bad news today in a friend's life.  It doesn't get much worse.  It's not my place to share the news right now, so look for another post soon.

Love Letter to My Law Review Student Comment

Dear Student Comment,

I wrote a poem for you.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'll fuck you with a garden rake.

Love,
Guy Fawkes

Does that sound too angry?

Edit: This post is made in memory of Law Bitches.