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". 

Law School Lingo [John]

So as I sit here and attempt to understand what is going on is Property, I wanted everyone to know that I think the hardest subject to grasp the lingo of is definitely property. This does not mean it is has the hardest concepts--but rather just the terminology. Currently we are discussing Estates. We have gone from the fee simple absolute, to life estates and then to a fee tail which is commonly referred to as a fee simple conditional. The terminology gets even worse with types of estates such as "fee simple determinable" and "fee simple subject to a condition subsequent." And finally we learn words such as "inter vivos" and "life estate pur autre vie."

I totally understand the wide variety of unique terminology...I see it in every class. But when I saw a type of estate called fee simple subject to a condition subsequent, I freaked out. Couldn't we cut this 7 word estate into something mangeable with only 3 words.

Gotto love eminent domain [John]

So a few weeks ago we discussed the Kelo decision in property class. I dont know why we jumped immediately to that, but we did. Anyway, as we all know, it was one of the most blatant judicial activism moves in the 21st century. After reading O'Connor's scathing dissent, there is no doubt in my mind that they incorrectly ruled. Now, years later, the Kelo house is still a bulldozed lot and the City of New London has not began the economic development that they claimed was "absolutely necessary" for the future of the city.

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!  

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.