Some People Just Deserve What They Get

I was in court today watching a rearrangement for a defendant who was entering into a plea agreement. The judge was going through the traditional colloquy:

Judge: Are you under the influence of drugs?

Defendant: No.

Judge: Are you currently taking any prescription medications?

Defendant: Yes.

Judge: You are? [You dumbass! A simple "no" is all you are supposed to say.] Which medications are you currently taking?

Me (thinking): Please say something great like oxycotin, codene, or something great that will get you in even more trouble or invalidate your plea agreement!!!! Please!

Defendant: Valtrex.

Defendant's Husband (from the audience): WHAT?!?!?!

Judge: Do we need to take a short recess?

It doesn't have to be like this

I went to Kentucky the other weekend to be in a friend's wedding. His sister was a 1L at UK and some people were asking us about law school. They were asking how hard the school work is in law school. I found myself explaining time and again that law school really isn't that hard. By that I mean, the classes aren't that hard. Make a good faith effort at reading and take good notes and you can get your B to A- and move on with your life. Take good notes and barely read and you can get a C to B and become a lawyer in three years anyway. Even here, you have a choice, it doesn't have to be hard to get through law school.

Let's say you decide to make a good faith effort at this law school thing. If you're smart, you can leave it alone, work 30 hours a week including actual going to class, and finish somewhere in the top 30%. [channeling John Belushi here] But noooooo.

If you get that high, odds are, you're an overachiever anyway. You want to be somebody. That's why you went to law school right? Oh yeah, that and the obligatory "making a difference in the world" thing. So what do you do?

You spend 80 hours over your summer break after your 9-5 clerkship writing a note for the hope that you will get selected for the "prestigious" honor of law review.

You then spend 4-5 more hours a week on average doing menial work for the law review so that some professor can publish an article that maybe the 10 other professorts in their specialty will read. This time can stretch as high as 15-20 hours if the professor who sent the article is well known enough in the field to send in a half done article and get published anyway.

If you are really a sucker, you can get bonus points for trying out for a minimal position on managing board which ups your work without really helping your resume like Phaedrus and myself.

You then try out for trial ad. Now if you don't try out, you have several hours of easy pass/fail trial ad classes ahead of you. If you do try out you get a minimum number of hours to audition for the chance to work your ass off.

Then comes moot court. If you try out for all three it is the sucker trifecta! You can spend hours upon hours writing and revising a brief that they won't give you the grade on and spend more hours preparing for oral arguments for which you recieve scores that absent a standard are meaningless.

All in all I think I've spent more time on "prestigious" extra curriculars in law school than on actual classes. Which brings me back to El Guapo's first rule of law school: If they say its prestigious, RUN!

Why can't I follow rule #1?

All this is to say kiddies, becoming a lawyer is easy. Turning off the switch to the ambition that made you want to be a lawyer is hard.

Law Review: Outlook on Another Year as a Peon

One has to wonder what drives law review editors after managing board elections are over.  I'll weigh the pros and cons of currently being a law review junior editor who will not be on next year's managing board.

Pros

1.  looks reasonably good on resume

2.  less work than most of the managing board positions

3.  might be able to coerce friends on managing board to give me lots of "Best Editor" awards to fill resume space

4.  knowledge that I will have memorized most of the Bluebook by the time I graduate

Cons

1.  doesn't look as good on resume as a managing board position

2.  employers, particularly those familiar with this law review, will interpret "Senior Editor" title as a sign of laziness or intrinsic personality flaw, regardless of the fact that I actively sought a position with more responsibility

3.  10-15 hours of infuriating work most weeks in addition to normal school-related activities (this can be a con because I have reason to believe the work of the positions I wanted is less "infuriating" than the work of a junior/senior editor)

4.  waiting in line for moot court partners who are monopolizing the only two available copiers to reproduce every single sample brief in the library

5.  prospect of Phaedrus telling me to "add authority" next year for the statement "the sky is blue" (or "litigation is expensive," an ADD AUTHORITY gem from my last assignment)

6.  no recognition for the effort I put forth and the damn good work it produces

7.  unproductive (read:  pointless, yet inevitable) feelings of resentment and superiority toward next year's managing board

8.  the reward for doing good work really IS more work (see, e.g., how they managed to stack most of the best junior editors on an assignment involving sources from Texas in the mid-1800s, very few of which are actually accessible to people outside of Wharton County, Texas)

9. knowledge that I will have memorized the Bluebook by the time I graduate (yes, it's also a con)

I really wonder how they motivate those senior editors.  Let's not delude ourselves.  I'm guessing that less than 5% of law review junior editors (or whatever they're called at other schools) actually enjoy the work.  Right now, my only motivations are my personal desire to associate my name with good work, the regret I encounter when I could have done a better job, and the idea that I will get kicked off law review if I stop turning in assignments.  The latter wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that I would have to take it off my resume.

An Open Letter

Dear [Friend and Fellow Aspiring Law Review Managing Board Member]:

We have been friends for a little more than one year.  While we are not the closest of friends, I would like to think that we enjoy spending time around each other (usually in a large group).  I also think we respect each other enough to avoid actions that could adversely impact the other party's resume.

I noticed that you have recently signed up to run for one of the same law review managing board positions as me.  While there is no limit to the number of positions for which each individual may run, I wish you would have considered the potential impact of your decision to run for this particular position.  

The potential result is that neither of us will get elected to the position.  This explanation will be easier to read in the following list form:

1.  Law review elections are likely to be a giant orgy of popularity contests akin to junior high SGA elections.  

2.  Several of our mutual friends are on law review, and they probably form a sufficient voting block to get someone from the group elected to almost any position on the managing board even if they don't discuss their votes in advance.

By the third step, even someone without the slightest knowledge of who we are (or perhaps someone who deludes himself into thinking the junior editors will generally vote for the "best" candidates, not their friends) should see where this is going.  

Technically, we are not allowed to campaign or form voting agreements, and I am not suggesting that we should have done either of those things.  However, I had the forethought to avoid running for another position for which you were already signed up because I did not want to split our group's votes.  I just wish you would have taken the same consideration for me as I had for you when I decided not to run for the other position in question.  

Some people would call this "gamesmanship" with all the accompanying negative connotations, but I call it common sense in this particular set of circumstances.  I don't think there is anything dubious or dirty about not wanting to split the votes of our friends.  I am particularly qualified for this position, perhaps more qualified than the other candidates and definitely more qualified than I am for any other position, and I will be very disappointed if neither of us gets elected.  I am not angry at you for running, as it is your privilege as a junior editor to run for whatever positions you want, but it would have been nice if you had chosen one for which I am not running.

Sincerely,

Guy Fawkes

Evaluating the semester

Grade Distributions came out recently (the registrar prints out a sheet of how many people go what grade in each class). While my overall GPA and class rank for the fall semester was exceptional, my performances in my classes was pretty poor. Honestly, I got one of the lowest grades in one class. While I would like to attribute my performance to a number of distractions (interviews, law review, football, etc.), truth is that the buck stops here so to speak. Somehow, I was at the top of the middle of the curve in every class (with one or two exceptions). Again, I would like to attribute this to many factors: taking classes I wasn't interested in because they have a high grade distribution, taking 16 hours, having classes where everyone was in the top 10% of their class, the professor's vision problems while grading my paper, etc. I don't think I can do that. Truth is, I dropped the ball. Fact is, despite my overall poor performance (in my Type A opinion), I somehow managed to be at the very top of the class right at the benchmark number. What does this say? Frankly, it says that there is a good deal of gamesmanship in being at the top of your class. I think, after all, taking classes that did not interest me because they had a high grade distribution paid off. Even though it may have lowered my performance (maybe), that lowered performance was still better than most of the law school. I wonder why everyone hasn't caught on to this? I've heard a lot of "this is a BAR class." To me, that translates to "this is a low curve class." Then again, I think I have the determination and independence to learn BAR material in a bar prep course (as most professors have told me to do- that is, instead of taking BAR classes for the sake of taking BAR classes).

I'm a bit down, but I really shouldn't be. I expect better of myself and seeing how I did in each class really made me contrite. Last thing I need is a downer right now. There's law review, moot court is kicking my ass and writing my name on the board, I'm a research assistant for a prof. who is "loan sharking" me for more research, and I took an outside commitment to research and edit a Thompson West Treatise, oh yeah- there is still the law review comment which is too promising to give up on. I will finish all of this by March 14. But, that will have me ripe for studying for finals and right now my class preparation is Zero. I'm screwed.

Crown Passed

I was in the law review office just now and saw something on the office sign up sheets that almost made me pass out. Phaedrus, you are, the biggest sucker of them all.

Biggest Sucker of All

I told myself when I entered the moot court competition I didn't have to win. I told myself that I just wanted to do well enough to make the board. I wish I knew how to go just as hard as needed.

I find myself wearing dents in my sofa briefing cases that are off the beaten path and organizing this argument for one hour of credit when I have WAAAAY to much stuff due this semester already.

Why can't I just take easy, high credit classes that get you to the JD quicker? Why am I such a sucker for competitions?

Oh, and I picked up a job on the side. Good work. Good experience. I just wish I had time to do it!