The Mutually Shared Delusion

As I look back on my old posts here from 9 months ago, I can't help but blush a little. The excitement and optimism about the law and being a lawyer is just dripping from all the writing. It was a time of blissful ignorance and naivete. There was a feeling that everything was at my fingertips and I was seizing the day. Unfortunately, there was no day to be seized. I'm not sure that everyone, even some in the legal community, understand how times have changed. My corporations teacher starts nearly every sentence with "when you are a corporate lawyer." She gives us helpful hints and things to think about when we are in practice and working on putting together "big deals." If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny. No one in that room is going to be a corporate lawyer, working on big deals for multinational clients. At least not for the foreseeable future. They'll be lucky to find volunteer work with the City government this summer.

Despite this inconvenient truth, time marches on at NYLS. Everyone lives in a mutually shared delusion. The faculty and administration pretends they are preparing students for a legal career. The students pretend that they are preparing themselves for that legal career. On my more cynical days, I tend to think the powers that be at NYLS know how dire the situation is, but purposefully coordinate their activities so as to keep it a secret from the vast majority of students, who have not been exposed to the realities of the legal market in 2009. Other days I think they are just as blind as the poor students whose tuition money they take. Perhaps they are in denial of the fact that the school is simply not relevant and has nothing to offer students in this market.

That might seem a bit harsh. But consider this. My class at NYLS has 420 students in it. To finish in the top 10 people in a class that size I think everyone would acknowledge is quite a special accomplishment. Yet, of those ten people (of which I am one, and I know most of the other 9), 1 received a job offer for next summer from a big Manhattan law firm. If the school cannot secure jobs for the top ten people in its class, why does the school exist? It should probably just close up shop. Perhaps this a little unfair because from what I understand even schools like Harvard and Yale are having trouble placing their students this year. However, it is not an unreasonable or unjustified thought.

Maybe things will get better. Maybe they won't. The fact is that the legal profession has imploded and there is absolutely nothing that recent grads or those in law school now can do about it. The fast track to prosperity for those who worked hard and finished at the top of their law school class does not exist anymore. Even if you assume that things will eventually improve, everyone's career has been set back years in terms of money and work experience. Some people just laugh it off, put their blinders down and just keep plugging along. I am jealous of them. However, I wonder how much of that is just for show. I can't imagine there is anyone in my position right now who is not also having a crisis of confidence.

So pardon me if the glow of the first year of law school has worn off. I've been there and done that. I had the Kingsfield-like Contracts teacher. I got an A from him. I learned about mens rea, personal jurisdiction, proximate cause, and adverse possession. I got A's in all those classes too (well except Torts). It was the most exhilarating and rewarding 9 months of my life. When I received those grades, it was the greatest sense of pride and self-accomplishment that I have ever felt. But looking back now however many months later, was it all worth it? Did it really matter as much as I thought it did at the time? Did it matter as much as every single person I went to for advice in my life told me it mattered? The answer is a resounding and unequivocal "no". It's virtually meaningless. I'll have to prove myself again this year all over again and hope that maybe next year some employer with throw me a crumb. Right now, my 1L GPA of 3.75 and $2.25 will buy me a subway ride to Brooklyn.

But hey, I have to get to bed early now. I am required to attend a conference early tomorrow about the emergence of a new duty in corporate law that directors owe shareholders (known as the duty of good faith). I'm told that it will come in handy for me when I am a big corporate lawyer. And the delusional continues....

Statutory Interpretation

Unlike torts, contracts, and property, criminal law is almost entirely statute-based. There are still many cases to be read. But unlike in the other courses, the cases are not read in order to discern what the law is. Instead, the purpose of the case readings is to provide examples and guidelines for how to interpret criminal statutes. Often times statutes can be quite ambiguous. When lawyers and judges are interpreting statutes, they need to consider the legislative history and the legislative purpose in order to understand what the statute means. For example, in criminal law, in order to be found guilty of a crime, there is almost always the requirement of a mental element (known as mens rea). It is not enough that a person does a criminal act, that person must also have a culpable state of mind at the time of the action (purposefully, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently to name a few). Sometimes statutes are silent as to what the mental requirement is. The usual common law practice is for court to assume that a mens rea requirement is implied in the text of a statute, and can only be nullified by the legislature specifically stating that there is no such requirement. However, interpretation can sometimes lead in another direction. Policy considerations sometimes can counteract common law assumptions. For example, if a law is passed that has clear public policy objectives (for example regulating the sale of prescription drugs), a court might discern that those objectives outweigh the potential harm done to an individual who is found strictly liable for breaking that law (finding a defendant guilty for simply committing the act without any consideration of fault or the reasonableness of their conduct). In these cases, courts will interpret the statute as not having a mens rea requirement unless the legislature specifically requires one. 

I understand that this can be confusing. That is precisely the point. Statutory interpretation is NOT easy and can be downright painful. But my extensive work with it in criminal law is providing me with another skill that every lawyer needs to have. I continue to be impressed at how well-rounded and complete the first year of law school is in teaching students all the required basics of being an effective lawyer.  

Client Interviews

Next week I will have my first client interview simulation. We have spent the last two classes going over all the important aspects of a client interview: establishing an attorney/client relationship, understanding the client's goals, ascertaining all the relevant facts, and setting out a work plan going forward. I tend to think it is going to be a lot harder than it looks. The lawyers in the sample interviews we have been shown make it look so easy, but it definitely will be more difficult for a student doing it for the first time. The lawyer really needs to be able to think quickly on his feet and draw all the important information out of the client. But hey, practice makes perfect and this is just a pure learning experience (not a graded assignment). I am interested to see how I do. 

P.S. Property does have some funny words. I think my new favorite word in the English language is "chattel". 

Jobs

I know several people who have become frantic about the summer job situation already. No matter how much the career counselors try to explain how meager (to put it kindly) the job market is for 1L's, many students have absurd expectations. While it would be a tremendous asset to gain experience working in the legal field during the summer after the first year, it is by no means as important as first year grades. I have heard stories already this semester of people staying up until 4 o'clock in the morning on school nights writing out 10 cover letters (for positions they have no chance of getting). I think they would be much better served studying criminal law until 12 o'clock and then going to bed. As someone who has gone through the horrific process of trying to find a job after college, I have come to recognize several traps. The most important is that in desperation, it is very easy to become painfully inefficient and waste tons of time. Logging into your school's jobs database and spending 4 hours emailing your resume and personalizing cover letters to 50 jobs that you barely bothered to read the job descriptions for may make you feel a little better inside (because you are "doing something"), but it is a complete waste of time. At this point, I am not positive of the best way to go about finding a summer job, but I know for sure that is not it. John is probably correct in this regard. Most students best chance at getting meaningful employment is through a pre-existing connection or contact. 

I hope to educate myself about the process more in the next few weeks and come up with my own plan for how to tackle the issue (but never at the expense of time needed to study). While it seems to be common sense that it should not be hard to find  a job when you are willing to work for free (as all first year law students SHOULD), in this hyper-competitive job market, who the hell knows. The fact that NYLS does not rank until after second semester in mid May, makes it considerably harder to distinguish yourself from the pack in February, March, and April. What can you put in your cover letter? "I know I am at the top of my class, trust me!"  

This process troubles and stresses me more than any looming 5 hour comprehensive exams. 

TGIF

The weekend is finally here (although the work never stops). This week has been particularly grueling since we had classes last Sunday. After my first semester, I have learned to appreciate these weekends early in the semester when you can actually relax and take Friday and Saturday night off. That unfortunately will change in about a month. Much less case reading for me this semester. Property is the only class where I am extensively reading cases for every class. Lots of theory-based stuff and essays for Leg/Reg and to a lesser extent Crim Law (which still has some case reading, but not exclusively). My Lawyering and Written/Oral Advocacy classes are overlapping somewhat right now in their content. Whereas last semester I was learning how to think like a lawyer, this semester I am more so learning how to actually be a lawyer. Enjoy the weekend.  

P.S.  23-13 Steelers (although I will be rooting hard for God's team). 

P.P.S. Congratulations, Michael Steele. You have an unenviable task. Let's get to work!  

Still Want to be a Lawyer?

I just came across this story on the Drudge Report. 

I am taking a class called Lawyering this semester that teaches students how to actually work as a lawyer. The first subject we are learning about is the client interview. Every student is going to have a simulated interview, one-on-one with a "client" (played by a professional actor). I am very much looking forward to it, and it should be a very enlightening experience. It is so easy for law students to get bogged down in reading cases and thinking conceptually and philosophically about the law (and that is important), but they forget that the law is essentially a people business. Cultivating relationships with clients and potential clients is probably the most important part of a lawyer's job. And in the case of the poor lawyer in the story above, the clients may sometimes even supply the fertilizer. =)  

Beating Bad Precedent

Well, the one very useful thing about reading a million cases in law school is that you definitely learn how to construct your own legal arguments. One of the more useful learning experiences is seeing how judges justify their decisions in cases that reverse precedent. I mention this because John said in his last post that he was writing a memo for a position that seemed to run contrary to the case law. From what I have seen so far, there are two ways to handle a situation like that. First, you distinguish the hell out of your case from the "bad cases". Sometimes this can be very difficult, and in case reading you can see brilliant judges straining to distinguish their case from "bad" precedent. "Well in that case, the defendant threw a tomato at the comedian, but in this case defendant threw a banana." Not overly persuasive is it? However, I have read cases where judges have made distinctions that are not much less ridiculous. The other way to do it is to embrace the bad cases and somehow construct an argument that makes it seem like your position is completely consistent with these cases. This is obviously extremely difficult to do. The great Benjamin Cardozo routinely employed this strategy in his decisions. Although, as my contracts teacher would say last semester, all Cardozo opinions should come with a disclaimer: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. 

I don't know about John, but I find it more interesting and a more worth while learning experience to argue for positions that appear to run contrary to all the case precedent.  I like having the odds stacked against me. I don't know... maybe I'm just a masochist. 

2nd Semester Classes

I will not be taking Con Law until next year. It is a two semester course at NYL that will span both semesters of the second year. Con Law was one of the subjects that was covered in Law Preview, which is meant to review all the traditional first year classes. I am not certain what a majority of law schools around the country do, but I would tend to think that NYL is more the exception than the rule in terms of the placement of Con Law in the curriculum. Con Law is a class that I have been looking forward to since I knew that I was going to attend law school. I am very interested to read about John's experiences with it this semester. For instance, I have long wondered how politically drive a class in Con Law would inevitably become. At NYL, for example, the professor who teaches Con Law is the former president of the ACLU. Given her background and obvious agenda, how could the class not become overtly political? Although its hard to imagine a former president of the (gulp) ACLU doing so, I would assume that in order for the class to work and to foster a learning environment, she would have to be fair and impartial. Although when it comes to Academia, nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to far left professors and their attempts to indoctrinate their students. We shall see.  

Good to be Back

The first semester is in the books. Contracts, Torts, and Civil Procedure are history. Now it is on to Property and Criminal Law. At least for me, second semester appears to be slightly less "conventional", and by that I mean less of the type of core first year courses that everyone knows. Aside from the previously mentioned Property and Crim Law, I am also taking Lawyering, Written & Oral Advocacy, and Legislation & Regulation. From what I understand, both Lawyering and Leg/Reg are relatively new courses at NYLS and the professors are still in the process of fine tuning them. We shall see. First semester was a very memorable experience, but it feels good to be starting over. Everything is once again new and exciting. I can already tell that Criminal Law is something very different from Torts/Contracts/Property. It seems much more philosophical (that can be a good thing and a bad thing). Reading 40 pages a night on the musings of various philosophers on "what is punishment" and "why do we punish" can be both intellectually stimulating, yet at the same time extremely tedious. I'll be very interested to see where the class goes. Let's get started!  

You Don't Scare Me

My contracts professor has built up quite a reputation these first 3 weeks of classes. After the near murder of the poor student last Tuesday, I see a lot of my classmates having trouble coming to grips with his rather in-your-face style of socratic method. Before class today, I overheard two girls sitting in the row behind me talking about how they were having trouble sleeping the night before contracts class because they were thinking about the seating chart and when he might get to their names. During today's discussion, he questioned (very politely I might add) another student who immediately went catatonic. After a full three minutes of awkward silence she told him that she had done the reading and prepared, but she was too nervous to function. 

I don't know why this is exactly (perhaps its just my personality), but my experience in the classroom seems to be dramatically different from most other students. I find the professor to be both amusing and challenging. I am one of the few people relaxed enough in class to recognize his incredibly dry sense of humor and get a chuckle out of his jokes. I volunteer every class because I desperately want to interact with him. I want him to know that I understand what he is saying, and I want him to challenge me (maybe I also want to let him know that he doesn't scare me). He has taken the liberty of referring to me as "Gene" instead of "Eugene" during class. Considering that I have never exchanged a word with him outside of the giant lecture hall, I suppose this might mean I have made an impression. Who knows though... maybe not. Maybe its just totally random. They do say law school is just a giant mind-f**k. I think there may be some truth to that. 

Pardon the language =).   

Civ Pro a Laughing Matter?

While in Starbucks between classes today, I was reading for my Civ Pro class. The section in the text dealt with the actual service of process (notifying someone that they are being sued) and what forms of service were acceptable and what were not. Evidently, courts go back and forth on what is appropriate "service" and in many instances must take it on a case by case basis. One of the confounding problems is that a lot of times people who do not want to be served can make it very difficult on the plaintiff/government to actually serve them. The book gave some examples of how people tried to avoid being served, how they were eventually served, and whether the court decided that was an appropriate form of service. This case caught my eye in particular. 

Defendant hid himself under his wife's petticoats and refused to receive the papers. The process-server saw him crouching there, so he put the papers on what seemed to be the defendant's shoulder, and went away. The Supreme Court rendered a decision which held that “where a person, to avoid service of summons, shelters himself in his wife’s petticoats, the laying of the papers on his shoulder will be sufficient service.”   

Maybe it's just me, but when I read this passage in Starbucks, I could not help but chuckle. The people around me probably thought I was crazy. I can't imagine it's every day that a law student reads something laugh-out-loud funny in their civil procedure textbook, so I thought I would document the occurrence.  

Do You Want to Be a Lawyer?

In Contracts today, I had a true Paper Chase moment, with my professor doing his best Charles Kingsfield impersonation (the movie is an absolute must see for anyone who is thinking about going to law school). We finished about 5 minutes early and the professor opened the floor up to questions. One poor, unsuspecting student raised his hand on the other side of the room. To be perfectly honest, I did not hear exactly what he asked, but I deduced that it was some sort of simple fact- based question regarding the Uniform Commercial Code. It appeared to be a question that he could have easily answered for himself if he had just gone back and looked at the previous reading assignment again. The professor just stared at the student for about 30 seconds before beginning the following line of questioning... 

"Did you do the reading?"

"You say you did the reading, but your question was not of the type that someone who did the reading would have asked."

"Have you paid attention for the last 90 minutes?"

"You say you have been paying attention, but your question is not of the type that someone who has been paying attention would ask."

"Do you take this class seriously?"

"Do you want to be a lawyer?"

"Would you like to apologize to your fellow classmates for wasting the last 5 minutes of this class with you silly question, when we could have spent it discussing intelligent questions?"

I understood what the professor was trying to do. In reality, the student was probably wasting everybody's time with the question. But that does not make the experience any less mortifying (God knows how the guy must have been feeling). The girl sitting next to me commented that she would not dare ask a question for the rest of the semester. 

I personally would not go that far. But as a general rule I think it will be very prudent for the rest of the semester if I think before speaking. 

Reflecting on the First Week of Classes

Many students complain about the LSAT. It is indeed one of the most difficult and most intellectually rigorous exams that most people will ever take. It seems cruel, unforgiving, and ultimately unnecessary. Most people think: "I can read... I can write... I certainly know how to argue... I know I can be a good lawyer regardless of what this stupid standardized test says!" Those thoughts ran through my head from time to time. As someone who received a very good score (but not elite), I found the test to be a very humbling experience; a real blow to my (what some would say) substantial ego. 

Unfortunately, after completing my first full week of classes; reading and briefing over 20 cases, and analyzing countless hypothetical scenarios, I am here to say that the LSAT does matter. The skills tested on the LSAT are exactly the skills you need to be successful in law school. Granted, I am a little rusty on the contents of the exam, but the one question type from the LSAT that immediately comes to mind is parallel reasoning. I found these questions to be particularly feverish and maddening when preparing for the test. The ability to answer those types of questions correctly, however, demonstrates the skill that is most important for being successful in law school. 

When judges read cases and make law, this is the skill they are using. They are looking at a very specific collection of facts and what they are doing is creating an abstract rule that can then be applied to a different set of circumstances. What lawyers do, when representing a client, is look into past case law and see if court precedent supports their clients case. It is very unusual that they would find a case that has exactly the same facts as theirs. So what they must do is examine similar cases for "parallel reasoning" that they can then apply to their client's case. Law students, on exams, are asked to demonstrate that exact skill as well. They are given hypothetical scenarios that are meant to spur thoughts of specific cases they have read in class that deal with the same legal issue. They are then asked to use parallel reasoning to apply the abstract rule from those cases to this new set of circumstances. 

LSAC is certainly much maligned. I don't think there is one law school applicant out there who didn't think LSAC was evil incarnate (at least at one time or another). But experience has now shown me that the council knows what its doing. If you can't do well on the LSAT, you can't do well in law school. I don't care how many high school or college speech and debate contests you won. 

No pressure though. 

Digging In to the Cases...

In law school, you recognize very quickly the types of cases you can expect to read in each class. For example, torts and contracts cases, generally grounded in the common law, are largely decided by state courts. Civil procedure cases, however, at least on the subject of jurisdiction, are largely Supreme Court Decisions. These are the cases where I actually recognize the names of the judges who wrote the opinions. This can be a good thing, and this can be a bad thing. Its good in the sense that it definitely adds to the learning experience if you understand the background and perspective of the judge who is writing the opinion. It is also a bad thing, because you evaluate the opinions with pre-conceived notions about the opinions. For example, today I was reading cases dealing with the subject of personal jurisdiction (when can a state can force a nonresident to appear and defend itself in the state's court). 

In the first case, the issue was whether or not plaintiff, a seriously injured mother and wife who was injured in an automobile accident could force a New York based automobile distributor to appear in court in Oklahoma. The majority ruled that since the company did not have minimum contacts in OK, the state did not have jurisdiction. Included in the casebook was a dissent by Justice William Brennan. I just thought to myself: "what a shock". The most notorious and liberal justice of the 20th Century siding against the corporation. He advocated for an extremely broad view of jurisdiction in his consent. 

However, the next case I read dealt with the same issue, this time whether or not Burger King could sue a Michigan resident in Florida. I was surprised to see that staying consistent with his previous legal opinion, Brennan sided with the giant corporation, Burger King, and argued that the company did in fact have authority to haul this Michigan citizen into court on its home turf in Florida.

I am often cynical when it comes to Supreme Court Judges. I tend to think that legal theory or philosophy doesn't really mean anything to them. It is just the tool they use for the purpose of imposing their political views on the country; not just liberal judges, but conservative judges as well. I was pleasantly surprised by Brennan's opinion in the second case, standing true to the principle he believed in, even though you could just tell deep down he was dying inside ruling for the corporation against the "little guy". 

Perhaps law school will strengthen my faith in the American judicial system.     

Student Organizations: To Join or Not to Join

Tomorrow is the Activities Fair. I will definitely stop in. It seems like a good opportunity to network, specifically with upperclassman, who may be able to offer exam outlines and/or career tips. I'll be very interested to talk with the students over at the Federalist Society table (I am assuming the school will put their table in the Men's room across the hall from the auditorium).

Law Preview advised very strongly against getting too involved in student groups during the first year. The grades are just so important, that most/all of your time must be spent studying. They also said that extracurricular activities just don't mean that much to employers (aside from Law Review of course, which is an incredibly prestigious accomplishment that will stay on your resume your entire career). They advised that if you are going to get involved in an activity, be one of those people who shows up for the free pizza/guest speaker once a month. Take on absolutely ZERO responsibilities. If you find yourself working late into the night on a Monday trying to book a speaker for your group's meeting that upcoming Friday instead of spending that time studying for Contracts, something has gone terribly wrong. 

Sounds like good advice to me. But, I can hardly resist lending my support, even if it is only moral support, to the Federalist Society. Their mere existence at a school like NYL is in itself a profile in courage. 

My only question is how many students actually belong to the NYL chapter of the Federalist Society? I am willing to take bets on this. I am going to set the over-under on the size of the group as 6 members. Any takers?      

Torts v. Contracts: The Law's Political Spectrum??

Perhaps I am going out on a limb here. Maybe my view is distorted because being such a political creature myself, I tend to see almost everything through the lens of politics and ideology. But after reading the introduction material to all my courses, perusing the first couple of cases in each book, and now having sat through my first torts class today, I can't help but making a few political observations.

The law of torts is extremely collectivist by nature. Someone is injured during the normal course of the their life by someone or something (perhaps a household appliance or an automobile) and there is the intrinsic assumption that this person is owed something from another individual or a larger entity (a corporation or the government). The law of torts commands that every person has a duty and an obligation to every other person, and that corporations and governments have duties to all of us. If someone is hit by Coca Cola truck, society has an obligation to compensate them for their bad luck. Coca Cola pays the damages directly, but consumers also share in the cost as Coca Cola compensates for the loss by raising the price of their products. Sounds collectivist to me.  

On the opposite side of this spectrum, I see contract law as very individualistic by nature. The right of two private parties to enter into a contract with one another on their own terms is an incredible source of individual freedom and liberty. There is no government intervention or paternalism that dictates what your contracts look like. It is completely up to private citizens to decide the nature of a contract and whether or not it is their personal prerogative to enter into it. In fact, the role of the courts in contracts law is largely to enforce contracts where they deem them to exist. The courts hold people personally responsible for the agreements they themselves created. There is no excuse-making on the behalf of the party that wants out of the deal, no sob-story or claims of oppression by the powerful against the weak. No, none of that at all. It's basically a matter of "you decided of your own free will to make this contract, and now you are responsible for the consequences of your own actions." This is the very essence of individualism and personal responsibility. 

Is torts law liberal? Is contracts law conservative? I obviously do not have definitive answers to those questions, and I am certain that even if there is a general rule, there will always be exceptions to it. But this observation is something that immediately jumped out at me while doing my introductory readings this past weekend. It is a hypothesis that I am definitely going to keep my eye on as my courses progress and I will test it as often as possible. 

Legal Writing: Law School's Ugly Step Child?

Today was the first official day of classes. I only had one class, Legal Reasoning and Writing. The professor said it will be the most important class we will take this year because reasoning and writing are the skills that all successful lawyers must master in order to be successful. Torts, Contracts, and Property will come and go and the grades will only matter for acquiring that first job after school. But in 5 years, no one is going to care what you got in those courses, all they are going to want to know is if you can reason and write. This was not the first time I had heard a speech like this from a bitter legal writing professor. At Law Preview, the Legal Research and Writing professor (the chairman of the writing department at Fordham Law) gave a very similar lecture. 

I have definitely observed that the writing departments at most law schools seem to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder. Most law schools send implicit and sometimes rather explicit messages that legal writing is not all that important. I have heard at some T-14 schools, the legal writing class in the first year is not even for credit. I even heard that at some Ivies the job of teaching the legal writing class falls to a 3L. This attitude towards legal writing was definitely reflected in the Law Preview class which offered a Legal Research and Writing session on the last Saturday (after 5 straight 10 hour days), and it was optional. Half the students who paid for my Law Preview session did not even show up on the Saturday.  

I am somewhat confused by this because I do believe the legal writing professors to be correct: the ability to write is the most important skill a lawyer can possibly possess. I am very perplexed by the fact that legal writing  is so marginalized and de-emphasized in law school, especially in the all important first year. It also seems that the more prestigious the school, the less emphasized legal writing actually is. Very strange. 

If anyone has any idea or even a theory as to what exactly the law schools are thinking here, I would love to hear it because I have given it a lot of thought, and it just doesn't make any sense to me.  

Time to Get to Work

Today was the last day of orientation. Classes finally start tomorrow (Legal Research and Writing, 9 am sharp). We had a ceremony today where all the 1L's took an oath to be upstanding law students, and eventually upstanding lawyers. It was a very classy event. I am now officially about to embark on my career as a lawyer.

I had my first Civ Pro "class" today... if you want to call it that. The professor went out of her way to hold everyone's hand. A lot of lecturing, and she only called on volunteers. She warned everyone though that the tone of the class would change very quickly and noticeably. I don't doubt it. I am looking forward to the challenge.   

This entire week has sort of felt like suspended animation. I have been raring to go, but the work has been slow coming in. I can tell the school has made a conscience effort to try to make the transition to law school slow and painless. I was anticipating more of a trial by fire. However, with all my syllabi posted online now, and a full slate of classes scheduled for next week, there is more work to do now than I could ever hope for. Its time to get started. Finally!    

Law School = Drugs, Alcohol, and Gay Marriage [Eugene]

Orientation is mercifully almost over. I had an interesting workshop this morning that dealt with the legal profession and substance abuse. Apparently I am about the enter a profession that has a disproportionate number of drug and alcohol abusers. Very encouraging. 

Anyways... the president of the NYC Lawyers Assistant Program (LAP) spoke to my section in great detail about his personal struggles with drugs and alcohol. Apparently he would represent drug dealers in the South Bronx, and he would subsequently get paid in product. After a while, when he was really strapped for cash and with a worsening addiction, he began stealing from his clients. Yikes! Perhaps a counter example to the lawyer = Superman analogy John brought up last week. 

In my faculty seminar section this week, we have been reading and discussing several cases dealing with engagement rings (who gets the ring in the event of no wedding?) Yesterday, the professor gave everyone a new hypothetical case to read and analyze and today we had a little mock court section. The hypothetical case changed several facts from the actual cases we read, most notably that the engagement ring was given from one woman, Cathy, to another, Tara. I know its Manhattan, and I realize this is a northeast law school, but is it so much to ask that I survive 2 days without having gay marriage thrown in my face??? Guess not.