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.  

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.  

Yes, It Appears They Are Serious...

Echoing what John said yesterday, Torts can be very frustrating. In a case I read tonight, a school district was held liable in a claim by a student from a different school district. What happened was the Defendant school district wrote a letter recommending a former employer of theirs for a position in Plaintiff's school district. He was hired. Plaintiff was later sexually molested by this guy and she sued the Defendant school district for recommending him for the position. The court found that the Defendant had a duty of care to the Plaintiff because it was foreseeable that this guy could have caused harm to a student at his new position 

Hmmm... bit of a stretch. By this logic, pretty much everyone has a duty of care to everyone else, even if they've never met them and their actions have nothing to do with them. I guess if the end goal is to create a society where the government either directly or indirectly (through coercing a third party) compensates all citizens for anything that goes wrong in their lives, this opinion makes for very good policy. If you think those policy ends are total hogwash, this opinion is a nightmare.  

By the way, this decision was from the California Supreme Court in case you were wondering. All the landmark tort cases come from California. Not many big cases expanding the scope of tort law coming out of Texas or South Carolina.      

Third Week Law Student v. Oliver Wendell Holmes

I have been so busy the last few days that it has been impossible to create a post. I am trying to stick to my schedule of staying 2 days ahead on all the reading, but it is turning out to be quite the undertaking. Last night, the Torts reading for next Monday included 8 cases that needed to be read and briefed. I got home from class at about 1:30. Factor in 30 minutes for dinner and 45 minutes to watch Sarah Palin totally renew my faith in politics, and I did not get done with my work until after midnight. 

So far, I would have to say that Contracts is the most challenging course. Not so much because the material is any more complicated than Torts or Civ Pro (in reality con law is actually quite simple and basic once you cut to the essence of the opinions), but because of the professor. He constantly challenges what we read in the case book. When I am reading the cases, I read them several times to gain a full understanding of the facts, the issue, the holding, and the reasoning. I then read over my brief a few times, commit the new law coming out of the case to memory, think about why it makes sense and is the correct resolution given the facts, and move on to the next one. 

This has been quite an effective strategy so far in Torts and Civ Pro. My strong ability to identify the issue in a case, and to fully understand the holding and the reasoning of the court, has served me well in those courses. I have already on several occasions been able to distinguish myself during class discussions through my mastery of these aspects of the opinion.

However, in contracts, the professor is constantly throwing a monkey wrench into my neat, orderly, and concise way of understanding the cases. I find the pattern has become quite familiar. After he has thoroughly traumatized a student, and ultimately managed to pull the court's holding and reasoning out of them, you can almost feel a collective sigh of relief in the classroom. Every student is thinking the same thing: "Finally! Now that we have identified the law, we understand it, we can probably (hopefully) apply it to different fact patterns, its time to move on. We've escaped this case!"  Not so fast...

The professor will then always come back with the question, "so, now that we understand it, tell me why the decision is incorrect?" Everyone's face just drops at this point. We've just spent the last 40 minutes working very hard to understand why and how this opinion became the law, and now we have to punch holes in the dam we just built. It has become the job of a third week law student to pick apart the legal reasoning of Benjamin Cardozo, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and all the other greatest legal minds in American history. Not an easy task to say the least. 

Last week I discussed how invigorating it was just to be able to get to the point where I could follow the reasoning of these legal giants. But now, it is my task to pick and prod at them, to critique THEIR reasoning and understanding of the law. It does not get any more difficult than that. I am finding it to be the most intellectually challenging exercise of my life. At times it physically hurts my head, but I suppose thinking about the material from this type of critical perspective will ultimately be of great assistance to me when trying to master it.      

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?      

Reading the Cases

I am trying to stay 2 days ahead on reading (completing assignments due Wednesday on Monday, assignments for Thursday on Tuesday, etc). Much easier said than done. The cases are very interesting and it is by far the most intellectually stimulating work I have ever done. However, working the cases through is a very slow and tedious process. It's mostly because the judges are trying to take very specific facts and produce grand abstractions which can then be applied to different, yet comparable situations. This often produces results that are very difficult to wrap your mind around. Unfortunately, however, these abstractions are essentially what you must learn in law school. They are the tests and standards you must apply to the hypothetical fact patterns that appear on the exams. A student's ability to apply these "rules" to different circumstances is pretty much the sole determiner of his/her grades. 

The reading also comes slowly (and this just might be a pet peeve of mine) because a lot of the cases are very old, and some of the terminology is difficult to work around. At some points, when reading 19th Century cases, it feels very much like trying to get through Shakespeare (which I was never much good at).

The work is  hard, but it's fun and its exhilarating. There's no greater rush then reading a case, re-reading the case, doing your brief, and all of a sudden the light bulb goes off, and you actually understand what the hell this crusty, old judge is thinking and why he is thinking it. If there is anything more exciting than being able to get in to a Supreme Court justice's mind and actually follow their train of thought, I don't know what it is.  

This is indeed a very exciting time. 

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. 

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!    

Day 2 of Orientation: Just waiting around [Eugene]

I made my first sacrifice for law school last night. Instead of watching my beloved NY Giants preseason game against the Browns (a game in which I later found out the Giants starters scored 30 points in the first quarter!!!), I sat quietly in my room and read.  This is likely to be the first of many sacrifices I will have to make this year. I hope the Giants can forgive me. 

Odd schedule for Day 2. I do not have to be in until 2:30 today. Honestly, I would much rather go in the morning and get out at 12:00, than have to go at 2:30 and get out at 5:30.  I have such nervous energy right now, this waiting around all day to attend events and seminars is just brutal.

Also, for my Civil Procedure class (meeting for the first time on Thursday), I have been assigned to read  A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr. It's an excellent book. I am having a lot of trouble putting it down, especially when the alternative is briefing cases. For anyone out there with some time on their hands, I highly recommend it.     

'Jump Start' Day at NYLS [Eugene]

I attended an event called 'Jump Start' at NYLS today. I had an opportunity to take an early library tour, buy books, and take a picture for my student ID card. I also received my fall semester schedule. My courses will include Torts (4 credits), Contracts (4 credits), Civ Pro (4 credits) and Legal Research and Writing (3 credits).  It was a nice opportunity to get a head start on some administrative stuff so I won't have to be bogged down with it next week at orientation. Just two observations: 

1. On the library tour we got our introduction to Westlaw, which is pretty much the official legal research database for the world. All law students have unlimited access to it throughout the duration of their time in school. One person described Westlaw to me as being like an intravenous drug. In law school they give you unlimited access to it and make you completely dependent on it for the rest of your career. When you leave school and begin to practice, however, the Westlaw service is anything but free and unlimited. I heard a horror story today about a 2L who obtained a summer associate position at a prestigious law firm. One afternoon during the summer the 2L was asked to do some simple research for an associate. The 2L's afternoon of research on Westlaw cost the firm $20,000. We were told today that on average it costs law firms $10 per minute to use Westlaw. So I am beginning to see why all 1L's must take some sort of legal research course.  It appears that one of the most important skills a lawyer can possess is the ability to efficiently and effectively conduct legal research. 
   
   
2. One main theme jumps out at me as I begin to examine my course schedule. The amount of time spent in class is simply not that rigorous. I will be in a classroom with an instructor for an average of about 3 hours a day, for 5 days a week. 15 hours a week is no more than the average undergraduate spends in the classroom. This is great, right? However, something tells me that all the law schools in the country didn't get together and say, "Gee, all the poor law students need plenty of rest and downtime, so lets not over-burden them with too much class time." You do not learn the law in the classroom. You learn the law in the depths of the library, when its just you and your case book, reading and briefing cases for infinite amounts of hours. In class, professors guide your reading and give you the questions you need to be asking yourself when you are reading the cases. The real work, however, does not begin until you leave the classroom.   
   

IRAC... or DRAC [Eugene]

I am very glad John brought up IRAC. Although, I have not started school yet, it is something that I am already very familiar with. The good people over at Law Preview warned my class two weeks ago that all of our law schools would try to indoctrinate us into the legal analysis method  that is IRAC. It seems like Catholic has already begun, and its only the third day.

To be completely honest, the Law Preview instructors did not have much nice to say about IRAC. In fact, they flat out thumbed their noses at it. To quote the Law Preview text book: 

Praised for its simplicity, IRAC has helped hundreds of thousands of students survive their law school exams. But if you are interested in doing more than just surviving your exams - if you want to conquer them - then you will see how using this methodology is far too limiting for students who want to earn a top spot in their class

Ouch! Law Preview instead recommends their own equally cheesy acronym for law students wishing to do legal analysis: DRAC. This supposedly superior approach lists the 4 steps of analysis as 1.)Dispute, 2.) Rule 3.) Arguments, 4.) Conclusion. The key difference here is in step 3. In IRAC, so they say, simply applying the legal issue to the case you are discussing unnecessarily limits the scope of your analysis, whereas laying out all the potential arguments that each party could possibly make in a dispute (the DRAC way) will broaden your analysis to include not only factual issues, but also legal and public policy issues as well, and therefore give you a more complete and more correct answer. 

Yeah, whatever all that means! However, DRAC is essentially the big scoop that Law Preview offers its students. So for anyone out there who is planning on attending law school in '09 or later and was thinking of taking Law Preview, I just saved you $1,200. 

 

What is Law School En Banc?

Law School En Banc is a blog written by two students entering their first year of law school in August 2008. John is going to Catholic University Law in Washington, D.C. while Eugene is going to New York Law in Manhattan, NY. Since the 1L curriculum is mainly consistent among law schools nationwide, we felt it would be interesting to compare side-by-side our daily experiences: two law schools, two cities, two different perspectives. Each day we will blog about our experiences in-and-out of law school from the classes we take to the forums we attend. Politics will only be discussed when it relates to our experiences at school, so we suspect all the time.