Fall Party E-Melee.

So once a semester, the Student Bar Association throws a massive party. It is usually at a semi-upscale locale, costs $25, and comes with 3 drink tickets. This year, ticket sales to me lagging dramatically, especially among the 1L class. Accordingly, I was called into action by the SBA President and Vice-President to write an email to the student body that would elicit a response likely to result in increased ticket sales. The following is the first of two emails I ended up sending.

----------------------------------------
Hello All,

If you are incapable of reading more than a few sentences, then I will offer a synopsis now: Go to the SBA Fall Party this Friday. If fun was quantifiable, it will be a ginormous amount of that stuff. 250 people went last year. I guarantee you will never go to a school event that can match that number. Buy your ticket in the student boulevard. $25 is really not that much if you've ever actually had a drink in this town. In short, the SBA will be putting on a clinic this Friday. What sort of clinic? How about a "good-times" clinic? How about a "rock your face off" clinic? That's the brief overview. Now, if you wish to tickle your frontal lobe, I encourage you to allow your eyes to saunter through the rest of this epic email.

I write to apprise you, in the most flowery way I can, of the awesomeness of the social interaction opportunity that confronts you on the final day of this week - a week thus far marked by great weather as we serenely transition into a growing sense and appearance of Autumn. Some people don't capitalize Autumn, that's really silly.

For the unfamiliar, I am one of your faithful correspondents from the benevolent organization known as __________. We've been markedly silent thus far in the semester, an unfortunate consequence of a few elements coalescing in such a way as to prevent us from sharing with you our pearls of wisdom, our summaries of skullduggery, and our wrap-ups of weekend warriordom. Namely, we're, like, really busy and shit.

But the time has come where our collective voice must be heard. Cover your eyes if your mind cannot handle some serious bad ass literatus. Yea – I just slant rhymed literatus – deal with it.

The event alluded to above (see: reference to awesomeness) is the SBA Fall Party this Friday at ______. in ______.

First: If you have somehow managed to escape all the fliers and people barking at you in the student boulevard, I can only conclude that you've been playing hooky for the past week and a half and you should seriously consider coming back to class.

Second: To the entering class of 2008: Lock it up.

For better or worse, this latest batch of aspiring J.D.-hunters have developed a reputation as an assortment of various shapes and sizes of Debbie and Donny Downers. I say "for better or worse" just to be polite. There is nothing "better" about being a downer. That leaves "worse" and I don't know what you're actually "worse" than. I just know it's rarely a good thing to be worse than someone at anything, unless it's "how to not be awesome." But if that was the case, then the class is doing a great job at being "better." You either get the drift or lost the plot.

The point I'm driving at is that somehow or another, the message has not been impressed enough upon the entering class that this event might quite literally rock collective socks off. I lost a sock* last year, best night of my life. As a self-anointed arbiter of awesome, I feel a certain amount of responsibility for this failure to impress. I hope to some day come to terms with this burden. I'll take it one at a time though, don't worry about me.

1Ls, I'm worried about you. I'm a cynic – I'm not sure you can be swayed at this point. But I want to be proven wrong. I want so many 1Ls at the Fall Party that I eventually have to kick myself in the ass (the cynic's version of a pat on the back) for being so damn witty and enticing in my emails. I want to be surrounded by so many 1Ls that I have synergetic flashbacks to Tarasoff factors. I want to meet so many 1Ls that it becomes really awkward next week when I can't remember your names and you swear to me that "we had the best conversation ever."

Third: For those of you concerned about the $25 price-tag, there is one incredibly obvious retort. Seriously, have you ever gone drinking in San Francisco? It's expensive all over. And happening places often have covers. Go anywhere semi-swank in this town and try to get in the door and back out, with 3 drinks under your belt, for under $25. Not going to happen.

Fourth: I understand that some of you have concerns about studies, or have other engagements in mind. I'm not here to hassle about the pros and cons of spending your Friday night studying when it's not even November. And I'm not going to quibble over the pros and cons of hanging out with a crap-ton (term of art) of cool people at a nice bar. You can throw your wall of excuses at me all you wish, I'll merely respond with the words a wise man once whispered in my ear, "Rule #76: no excuses, play like a champion." It might not have been a whisper, I may have had my ear pressed to a television that was showing Wedding Crashers. Nevertheless, truer words (insert dramatic pause) never spoken.

Fifth: Finally, I've devoted way too much time to this damn email. So it goes. If you made it this far, then you should know, I'm from Washington. Not many people know that. By virtue of hailing from the Pacific Northwest (Alaska is suspended from the club until further notice), I'm pretty sweet. Besides the wicked sweetness that I'll be bringing to the table, I have four of my back-home-crew rolling into town this weekend. I don't know if ______ will be able to handle that much awesome in one building, but we'll certainly test its limits. There's a good chance that they'll consume much of what passes for beer in _____ over the new few days, and that they will no longer be on speaking terms with their livers by the time they leave, but it's going to be so much fun that it won't really matter. I'm offering you yet another incentive to come to the Fall Party – come enjoy my friends, they're ridiculous and great.


It's late, I've never been a fan of proofreading. Apologies for any typos, grammar errors, or any semblance of jackassery that may have slipped through the cracks during the construction of this message.

Hope to see you all this Friday. That is all.

Until next time,

B3


* "Lost a sock" is the latest and greatest euphemism. It roughly translates to "got schmasted and had a glorious time. Dig it."

Moving On.

I think I'm going to quit The Job tomorrow.

With 14 units and extracurriculars, I'm putting in more time than I did first year. And since I lack the fear, and the drive, to actually put in the time and effort to stay on top of my reading. I've already fallen close to a collective hundred pages behind. As my friend put it, "I'm declaring reading bankruptcy" and just cutting my losses. So, I'm cutting my losses. I just hope it doesn't fuck my reference, that'd be weak x 10. The Boss just hired two other law clerks last week, so I'm hoping he actually lets me quit clean-break tomorrow, no 2-week notice or any of that. I'm crossing the fingers.

I mean, not only do I have classes to read for, I have beers I want to drink, a girl I'd like to make out with, and a jog I'd like to take every now and then.

Do you know what I've gotten from law school so far? 2 years of education, 16 tattoos, and 25 pounds. Fuck. Yes, I need a jog.

Business Law Background

So school is back and suddenly three weeks have already passed by. I'm constantly regretting my decision to work and take classes, such is life.

I assumed the position of Co-Social Chair for the Business Law Association. My sole motivation was to be have a position of authority regarding the organizing of Business Law's big ass Fall BBQ. I had to provide a short bio of myself to post on their group board. Here is all I had to say:

____ has almost no background or experience in business per se. He worked in a factory for six years, a movie theater for one day, and now a law firm since May '08. ____ does not want to practice transactional law. Instead, he would like to some day own and operate his own business. That business could be a law practice or a bar, either is fine and neither have to be located in this country as long as he can have a Guinness tap installed within a short walking distance. That is ____'s definition of "taking care of business.

Ugh.

It is not always unfair to think that lawyers are really lame.

Judicial Quote of the Day.

Found this nugget while conducting research on a boring topic:

"The fact that Holmgren and the class members performed the same duties as civil service employees has nothing to do with the price of tomatoes."

Sadly, my research topic dealt with civil servants, and not the price of tomatoes.

Ethics + Briefs.

For the life of me, I do not see myself ceasing with the giggles whenever my professional responsibility professor acknowledges violating one of the ethics rules.

The Boss had me read close to 140 pages yesterday in briefs, and wondered what was taking me so long to get it done. Apparently, reading every line on every page is not the norm. Duly noted.

First Solo Contact with a Client.

Memo

To: The Boss
From: The Law Clerk
Subject: Summary of phone call with Client X.
Date: June 6, 2008.

I called Client X at 3:05pm on June 6, 2008. I asked her whether she had received the Substitution of Attorney form that we faxed to her earlier in the week. She indicated that she had received it and is not happy about the arrangement.

She expressed a misunderstanding of her relationship with you. She said that she requested your services and contracted with you to take her case in case Mr. HerActualLawyer "could not be there." She seems to misunderstand the arrangement that you had with Mr. HerActualLawyer. She took issue with your characterization of the relationship as "consultant" and said that her understanding is that you were/are her attorney along with Mr. HerActualLawyer.

Her misapprehension of your role in her case was further highlighted when she said she feels her case has been "disregarded" by you, and mentioned that no "papers with the court" had been filed under your name. She is in the process of trying to secure another attorney. It was not clear whether her attempts to secure alternative counsel was in response to Mr. HerActualLawyer's substitution-out or your notice to substitute out. At several points she said "I want my money back," and said she hired you "on contingency." It was unclear whether she wanted the full retainer back, or just what is left of the refund as indicated in the substitution form. I assured her if she returns the substitution form by Monday, you will promptly send her the refund. She responded by saying she needs time to find another attorney for the case management conference on Tuesday. It appeared as if she was not informed of the case management conference potentially being delayed, and without confirmation of the order, I did not feel I should apprise her of the possibility.

She indicated that she would be willing to return the substitution form upon receipt of her money. I told her that you would return the refund upon receipt of the substitution form. She said she "needs time" and should have another attorney secured by "Monday or Tuesday."

I informed her that you would have to file a motion to withdraw if she did not return the substitution form by Monday. She said she wants all the paperwork that we have from her case, and threatened to go to the State Bar if the motion to withdraw was filed before she returned the substitution form and found another attorney.

She generally and at several points expressed dissatisfaction with the current situation, and moreover seemed distraught about her son's case. The conversation ended before I could ask if she definitively had any intention of returning the substitution form by Monday.

I did not want to take liberties in clarifying Client X's above mentioned misunderstandings and at this point I am unsure of whether a direct phone call from you would do much to assuage her frustration.

First Day at Work.

Either my boss is incredibly loose with the language, or he feels immediately comfortable with me. I'm thinking it's a little bit of both.

So today was my first day at The Office. I feel somewhat douchey even using that phrase, but I guess it was inevitable that I would have to actually start working at a firm, as opposed to just reading and talking about them endlessly. My boss is old, like wrinkly balls old. His lunch-date canceled on him today, so he offered to take me out. As soon as the elevator door closes and we're out of earshot of the other folks in his office, he says to me, "I'm really hungry. I had some great sex last night and played tennis this morning." I've never heard someone so old talking about sex other than Dr. Joyce. I had to chuckle. I mean I wanted to anyway because I think it's funny that he even said something like that on my first day in his office, but to not would red-flag him that I'm some sort of uptight asshat that I'd like to think I'm not. $10 bowl of beef noodle soup later, we're walking back and he's telling me about a twice-widowed Romanian ex-girlfriend of his that he hasn't seen in over 20 years and who happens to be coming into town soon, and how he's sure he's "her primary motivation to come visit." Had a good chuckle about that too. Then he did a 180 on the sidewalk to scope out a passing woman.

Kids, I might just be working for one of the bigger hornballs in this town.

And what better way to cap off a day at The Office? How about 3 chicken strips, 2 cheese sticks, 1 slice of pizza, and 1 Bud Light. Yup, just livin the dream.

The Beginning of the New.

School ended. 2 years down. Job starts tomorrow. Unpaid. That sucks. On Union Square. That's cool. California legalized gay marriage. That's awesome. The rest of the country will probably take a while to follow suit. That is not awesome. Beat the shit out of my liver this weekend with old friends. Old friends were cool, the beaten liver sucks. Broke the no-sex-streak. Only took 11 months. Hopefully the next streak doesn't last as long. Boring entry. This sucks. Dexter is cool though. Later.

Assert This Truth!

Sleep is so overrated. Who wants to catch Zs when you have an evidence final to take, now only 5 precious hours away.

I've been especially lax in my preparation for this final, which is incredibly counter-intuitive and downright retarded as it is a 4 unit bar class that makes up almost half of my graded units this semester. Meh, too late to worry about that part, I'm doing what I can at this point to salvage my grade. I'm shooting for a B and I'm banking on 3 things:

1) Very few gunners in the class - Most of the real hotshots on my class opted to take evidence first semester, so I'm getting off a little easier as far as competition is concerned.

2) Anecdotal evidence - Many people have told me they also didn't feel good at all about the material going into the exam and it turned out fine for them. Of course, this is likely the case for a few people for every law exam and there is the distinct possibility that the people who told me they "didn't feel comfortable" still knew a shit-ton (that's a term of art) more than I do right now.

3) Sheer consistency - No matter what level of preparation or comfort I've had with the material for any of my classes, almost all my grades have been in the B range. I study my brains out, B, I slack ass, B.

And on that note, back to the material.

Finals Have Arrived.

There is no denying it now, it is time to study for finals. I have two in-class and one take home. I kicked off the reading period proper-like last night. One bottle of Boone's Farm, one and a half Totino's, two episodes of Sex and the City, and 10 pages of His Excellency before passing out.

Remedies on the 29th, Evidence on the 7th, Arbitration on the 10th. After that? Still no job.

Job Hunt.

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
~Bertrand Russell

So one of the deals about being in a professional school is that you're supposed to be geared toward being professional, go figure. It is at this part that I officially suck. Specifically, while many of my classmates have been tracking down, interviewing for, and eventually obtaining jobs over the course of the year, I have not. I had a job-hunting plan in place since mid-Fall. I had planned on implementing it no later than January. The plan was to square away Friday afternoons as I didn't have class and I figured it'd be less of a brain drain than doing real classwork, so it a seemed reasonable plan. Fridays since then? 15. Fridays actually spent looking for a job? 0. This wouldn't be so troublesome if I had just slid the job-hunt-work to another day of the week, or made it up on different days here and there. But that didn't happen. Not a day, not even a half.

What was I doing that was so much more important? I could blame it on classwork, moot court, or student group obligations. But that would be a stretch. The truth is I've never had to conduct an actual "job search," I've never had to exist in a professional setting for more than a short stretch (thus am wholly unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the etiquette), and I've been plain fucking lazy about completing the proper documents and looking for places that might be smart enough to take me on.

And now, "desperate" would be the operative word. My primary criteria in an employer right now is receiving payment for my services. You would think this is rather simple, not so much at this stage in the game. I need a notch on the "experience" section of my resume, which gives employers leverage this close to summer. But I'm not worthless. I'm capable, not stupid, and I give a shit. These are valuable traits, I think. How the hell do I know. Personally, if I could get some cash by drinking whisky and cheap beer and having moot-court-esque arguments in bars around the city, I'd much rather be doing that. Guess fucking what, no one is hiring for that position. I know, it was shocking to me too.

Here's hoping I can land something soon and don't end up having to become more familiar with baristanese in order to afford rent this summer.

Law School Rankings.

Well, my school slipped off the top 100 in the US and World News Rankings last month. Saaaweet.

Law school rankings are like emotionally unavailable birds. When you're rationally thinking about it, you know they're no good. You know they are bound to bite you in the ass and disappoint you time and time again. Even after our high bar pass rate this year, our stellar reviews from the ABA, and our drastic improvement in the moot court competitions over the past couple of years, somehow these things don't add up to a strong reputation among the people who fill out those fucking surveys.

"Reputation" makes up 40% of a school's ranking. The most subjective factor is also the most important, that makes so much sense I think I'm gonna puke.

Moot Court Back in Action.

So after all the chaos that was my regional moot court competition, the organizers decided to throw us a bone and invite us as an exhibition team. This meant we didn't get to actually compete, that we have to help bailiff other rounds, but that at least we got a trip to D.C. on the school's dime and it turns out we were the only American school to get an exhibition team invitation. I'm sure it has to do with how badly we felt shafted at regionals and this invitation was their way of trying to buy us off. Well, I have my price, and it is room, board, and a plane ticket.

Since we weren't actually competing anymore, I took the opportunity to get shit-housed a couple of times. My team "argued" against schools from Ethiopia, Mexico, and France. Our judges don't get told that we're only exhibition teams, so when they did find out, they were usually quite surprised that we weren't still in the competition.

The last night there, I ended up in a hotel room for a South American sausage fest. Chilean dudes, Argentinian dudes, Uruguayan dudes, 1 UK/French dude, me, and 2 of my female teammates. They were pieces of meat, I had the least attractive accent in the room. Our shuttle departed at 5 am, our flight was at 7:45. I was told I was getting "out of control." No teeth lost, no shirts torn, all luggage packed: win.

Moot Court Shit Show.

So I'm pleased with my team's performance so far. From the sounds of it, the other pair of my took care of Stanford's ass in short order. My partner actually received a strong challenge from New College, I'm not really even sure who took that round. Moot court competitions are a funny little bitch like that. A school like Stanford has so much going for it that they don't need/want to invest in their advocacy program. Consequently, it is "student run" and 1Ls can apparently be on the teams. I wouldn't universally say that 1Ls aren't prepared for stiff moot court competition, but the reality is that if they haven't even completed their spring semester moot court program, chances are slim they've even received the minimum amount of guidance on how to structure an argument, how to deliver it, and how to carry oneself before the judges. New College on the other hand, chip on the shoulder I assume that they have, were very well prepared, knew the law well, and were able to simply and clearly present it to the judges. I'm left assuming that "schools with something to prove" are generally more geared to kicking ass at moot court competitions than T15 schools who really have nothing left to prove.

I think I may have been sharing eyes with one of the birds on the New College team, I dig sharing eyes with birds.

Besides all that mess, this competition has been a shit show as far as organization is concerned. I don't want to name names, so just let's just call him Fuckwad McTard. So Fuckwad, or Mr. McTard, was responsible on the execution of this event. He was able to secure about one-third of the required amount of judges, and a little better percentage of the bailiffs. This translated into all the team coaches having to "volunteer" as preliminary round judges. What the fuck is that? How fair is it to have coaches judging? Here's why that is retarded:

1. Familiarity with the Material

While there is certainly a variance in competence, some of these judges are clearly very invested in this competition. This translates into tougher questions that a regular judge, only familiar with the bench memo, would never think to ask. I'm not 100% opposed to tough questions, as I like the opportunity to shine, but still, not exactly kosher.

2. Incentive to Down-Score

Normally I might say, "well, that shit sucks, but at least it sucks for everyone." Nope, not the case here. Not all the rounds will have a coach participating as a judge. This might not mean much in the W-L columns, but it could mean a shit-ton when it comes to raw score tie-breakers. I don't want to bore you with the details, but I'll leave it at this: Coaches have an incentive to push other teams' score down in order to better the position of the team they coach in the event of a tie-breaker.

3. What the Fuck Happened to Being Anonymous?

So all the teams get told to show up to this meeting, an orientation thing of sorts. They tell us it will be our only chance to learn the numbers of all the teams, information which will not be released at any other point because "the information is confidential." So yea, it's so confidential that it makes sense to tell us at this meeting?

Before telling us the numbers, Fuckwad made sure to note: "are there any judges in the room? No? Okay, here are the teams..." Following the number reading, he asked all the coaches to stay after for a short meeting. That meeting was to tell all the coaches that they must judge, otherwise the competition might have to be cancelled.

WAIT A SECOND. Fuckwad made sure all the judges were out of the room before he read the numbers? But then decided to tell all the coaches that they needed to be judges? No Fuckwad, the room was not empty of judges, there were about as many judges as there are teams and you fail at life. I'm really dumbfounded at how McTard didn't realize that he was reciting team numbers to a group of people he was going subsequently ask to judge. Way to keep up that confidentiality asswipe.

I don't know man, I'm drinking some black velvet on the rocks right now. It tastes okay, I'll stop bitching now.

On With the Show.

My moot court competition is this weekend. While other teams get to travel to exciting places like New York, Boston, and New Orleans, by team gets to travel to Santa Clara - a city that is fairly and universally labeled by non-residents as “shitty.”

Sans the crap location, I am looking forward to finally getting on with the competition. Months of practice, arguing, writing, researching, more arguing, more revising, and here we are. Thank fucking goodness.

Next week I will be enjoying the snow and the mountains, wine, whisky, DVDs, and catching up on my readings. Eat your fucking heart out.

Follow the Rules, or Find the Barrel.

My remedies professor is quite often a riot. Regarding giving advice to a former student concerning the availability of punitive damages following a change in the law, my professor told him this:

Did you do discovery as provided by the statute? No? Well, you’re fucked.

With sophistry almost being a graduation requirement, you just have to love the honesty of that answer.

Ash Wednesday.

No matter how many years I've now seen it, I still get a crack out of telling at least a couple people, "Hey, you have some crap on your face."

But really, I am fairly surprised to see ash on some of my classmates' foreheads. I have this notion that one significant part of law school is tuning your mind to be relentlessly logical.

So here we are, spending hours upon hours a day reading cases, analyzing lines of reasoning, attacking opinions, challenging ways of thinking. Yet this same attack-dog mentality somehow fails to materialize among these folks when it comes to thinking about what the hell they're doing/believing in. Ash on your forehead tells me you believe the Easter story, it tells me you believe in Zombie Jesus. If this is the case, my faith in your abilities to competently advise a client have just hit the floor. I hope Zombie Jesus bites you in the fucking neck, using the ash on your face as a homing beacon, the irony would slay me.

Another downside to Ash Wednesday is finding out which pretty birds are Catholic. What a bummer. I could have gone for another year and a half of law school simultaneously staring at your bum and trying to understand Bush v. Gore, neither of which required me knowing you subscribe to the Pointy-Hat-Guy-is-the-Vicar-of-Christ religion. Yup, could have gone my whole pervey life without knowing that information.

On a final note, the sun has been down for roughly 2 and a half hours. You can wipe the soot off your face. Failure to do so means you are either ignorant of your own tribalistic ritual, a filthy hippie-esque character, or a low-level douche. Your pick. Go forth and prosper.