On the Doan Docket

I always was a huge fan of hands on learning, whether playing with chemicals in chemistry lab or doing Congressional simulations in my political science classes. So naturally I get excited when I get to play lawyer in law school. There are times when I complain about how much work it is, but it's a lot more fun and I think useful to apply all of these concepts into practice. Here are the things I'm working on this week:

-Writing a memo to a senior partner about whether or not our client is liable for the near hot tub drowning of a 10 year old boy who trespassed onto our client's property.

-Preparing oral arguments with 4 other people in my class to prove that the defendants should hand over two geological studies in a toxic water contaminiation case. 10 minutes of debate on each side infront of other students who play judges and clerks = a lot of fun.

-And of course a few weeks ago there was another memo about whether or not our client could suspend or modify her child support payments so that she could go to the Peace Corps in Guatemala.

I've heard people complain that they came to law school to learn about real people with real problems, not represent fictional clients (I know, future lawyers complaining? shocking!). As much as I agree that we should not forget the real problems that exist outside of our bubble of law school, I think that the clinics, panels, teach ins, and many other programs that our law school provide an avenue for that. However, our classes should be teaching us the fundamental concepts and theories. I'm not sure how we can actually effect "real people with real problems" in class. It's vital to get practice with hypotheticals before we could ever go out and save the world. Plus, it's kind of fun, at least as fun as writing +10 page research memos can be.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Yesterday all of us cheered when we opened up our email inboxes and saw an email with the topic, "Contracts Class Cancelled." I know I did my little happy dance from my apartment. Yet, that joy quickly subsided as soon as I actually opened the email, scrolled down, and read that my professor was in the hospital.

All of a sudden, I felt like Cory Matthew, the main character on "Boy Meets World." There was an episode where Cory wished that his teacher, Mr. Feeny, would get sick so his class wouldn't have to take their exams. He soons learns that Mr. Feeny is actually admitted into a hospital, and Cory feels really guilty. Life really does imitate art, or at least kid's tv programming.

Even though our class knows that we didn't create our professor's illness, I think we all feel really bad now for all those days when we sat there hoping that our professor wouldn't show up and we wouldn't have to sit through 2 hours of confusion.

If torts (different subject, I know) has really taught me anything, it's that accidents and other bad things can happen to anyone at anytime. And you should really be grateful of everyone around you, even your quirky contracts professor who often confuses you. I hope everything turns out alright and I'm sending a lot of positive thoughts her way.

Privatizing my Education

I can safely say that my family is a public education family. Both of my parents went to the University of Minnesota (along with all of my mom's 7 siblings), my brother goes to UC Berkeley, and I've had other family members attend other public schools like University of Wisconsin. So after attending 17 years of public education myself, I have to admit that a little part of my felt like I was selling out when I decided to attend a private school for law school.

I shortly convinced myself that I was being silly, as any future lawyer can justify anything in her head. I'm still a firm believer in the public education system, and spotted an externship at the counsel for the Department of Education that I might want to apply to down the road. But alas, the best option out of the schools I got into happened to be private.

Now that I'm here, I'm starting to notice differences. I've discussed this with Alex, who also went from UCLA to working with students at Syracuse and he's definitely noticed difference. I'm trying to decipher how many of the differences stem from the fact that I'm at a private school and how much of it is just law school in general. Smaller classes and free printing probably just come with the law school turf. But I'm guessing going to a private school lends itself to all the catered lunches, shuttles that run to the school, all the "free" stuff like book bags, mugs, and tshirts, and really annoying undergrads (not to stereotype all kids who go to American/private undergrads but after riding the shuttle with them, oh man).

Overall, I think my route worked for me (which of course easy to say in retrospect and because I don't know otherwise). Going to a big public school like UCLA definitely made me more resourceful and independent. I think it also made me appreciate the different types of perks that I get in law school. While some people are complaining that we don't have free coffee or that the complimentary printer is broken again, I don't come into a school with the expectation that I'll be getting either of those things handed to me.

I think in the end, the quality of education between the private and public shcool systems are comparable. There are a lot of state schools that rank very highly in the law school ranks. But the main differences come in the outside things and each system has strengths in different areas.

A Sneak Peak

Yesterday I received an instant message from a high school friend who I hadn't talked to in a while. He asked how law school was and I asked him about his life. Then he told me that someone was suing him for defamation, libel, and $40,000 in damages. AHA! That's where the instant message came from.

Though I can't say for certain, I really doubt there's any merit to this lawsuit. Nonetheless, I had to tell my friend that I wasn't allowed to give legal advice and that he should seek guidance elsewhere. I'm not sure where it's written down, but we are all explictly told that you're not allowed to practice law without a license (though accordingly to Legally Blonde, we can do it with supervision).

At this moment, I realized what the rest of my life might look like. The legal advice giver. "Can you review this contract for me?" "Hypothetically, if I did this, could I get in trouble?" "I can sue, right?" Hopefully I won't have to be anyone's 25 cent call from the county jail house.

I guess I should be happy that I've finally found a way to directly help people around me, even if it'll be a legal tip here or there. I've always been secretly jealous of people with technical and other practical skills. My friends and other people who somehow learned how to fix computers, invent working products, design websites, build things that didn't come out of an IKEA box, and other skills that were tangible. I mean, I always liked my major but I didn't feel like I could help people in my day to day life with my political science knowledge besides come election time when everyone asked me who to vote for or giving tours of the capitol.

So hopefully in a few years, I'll be the resident lawyer. Only one in either side of the family and one of the few amongst my friends so I'm sure I'll be getting many people coming out of the woodwork, like my friend yesterday, asking me for advice. I always liked being the go-to friend for advice, now I'm making a career out of it.

Highest Court in the Land

Reason #89219 why I love going to law school in Washington, DC: When you get sworn into the law fraternity, Phi Alpha Delta, you get a full on ceremony.

I don't know how they do it at other law schools, but nothing can beat being sworn into a law fraternity inside the halls of a Supreme Court by a Supreme Court Justice. Today hundreds of law students from the DC area (and even as far as Baltimore) came to the Supreme Court today in their suits. Even though I turned into a popsicle, standing outside the Supreme Court in some 40 degree weather in a skirt suit and waiting for 300 people to get through security, it was well worth it.

I've entered the grand marble hallways of the Supreme Court before, but this was my first as a law student. It means so much more now. As we were walking through the corridors, we pointed to the portraits of famous Justices, whose opinions we read every day. And the best part of all is seeing up close, another Justice whose opinion I just read yesterday.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg administered the PAD oath and all I must say is that she's awesome. Although my infamous book report from 3rd grade was about Justice O'Connor, Ginsburg is another female pioneer in the law field. It's so great to know that this really small and cute older woman goes head to head against much bigger male collegues. And even though the legal field is still dominated by men, as evidenced by the fact that she's outnumbered 8-1, I hope the Justice Ginsburg was happy to see that out of the hundreds of people she swore in today, probably over half were women. Who knows if one of the people I was standing around will be aruging infront of the Supreme Court one day or even sitting on that bench.

Prescription for Preventing the Panic Attack

It hit me. Week 10 and it hit me. Law school got really hard, really quickly (kind of like how it got really cold, really quickly). I started realizing everything I had to do and how little time I have to do it in and I almost had a panic attack. Another memo worth twice as much with half as much time to do it, double the amount of reading in almost all of my classes, the need to outline for impending finals, and no extra hours in the day.

Realizing that I didn't have time for a meltdown, I pretty much went into attack mode. Anyone who's been around me when I start to get sick knows how I go on the offensive: cups and cups of tea with ginger and other fluids, lots of sleep, no going out, etc. So I'm trying out the same type of offensive strategy for dealing with this insane amount of work infront of me.

So I made a plan of attack, a page in my notebook aptly titled "plan of attack," writing down what I need to do everyday and setting small goals so I don't feel so intimidated by my to-do list. I also took off all the quick links on my homepage that are distrctions for me. Facebook, gone. Craigslist, gone. ESPN.com, gone. AllRecipes, gone. Tetris, gone. I was debating whether or not to go on AIM hiatus but I realized that if I didn't talk to people and went into complete seclusion, I would go utterly insane. So I also tried to ensure that I do actually get some socialization/non-study time in on my calandar, but cut out things I was more ambivilent about. It was almost like a cleansing process, something I wish I had the motivation to do at times other than just crunch time.

Everyone likes having control in their life, but especially the control freaks like me. When I feel like the work is consuming me and controlling my life, it's a horrible feeling. Fortunately I think I'm starting to tip the balance of power back into my favor. I think this is something I've learned over the years (being a generally busy person) and probably good in the future for this line of work where people get easily overwhelmed by their work. I also went to church yesterday and prayed for some spiritual strength, so hopefully that will help too.

Socially Inept

I find myself acting stupidly around boys. Sometimes I get flustered when guys I don't know talk to me and I don't know how to respond. Not because I like them. It's actually quite the opposite problem. DC doesn't just happen to be our nation's capital, it is also allegedly one of the nation's singles capitals. Yet this factoid is completely wasted on me, as I am in a more than wonderful relationship.

So I am in an interesting position in my day to day life. It doesn't happen all that often, but occassionally when I'm riding the bus, out with my friends at a bar, or riding the elevator up to my class, a guy will strike up conversation with me. I've never been good at telling whether a person's just being nice or trying to hit on me so I don't know how to act accordingly. Basically I don't want to be the cold person if he's just trying to be nice and I don't want to be the cold person leading him on (I think this semi-irrational fear stems from an odd occurence when a guy in one of my classes at UCLA thought that we were in a relationship when I would just be nice and talk to him; traumatizing really).

Irrational fears aside, I do partly think that we have this societal distrust of people just talking to us, especially people of the opposite sex. Maybe our generation went a little overboard with the whole not talking to strangers thing to the point where we developed this subconscious notion that anyone who talks to us immediately wants something and/or is bad. I'll say hi or give the head nod to people in my apartment elevator but I sure know that I don't really acknowledge someone walking by me on the street.

And as an iPod owner myself, I just wonder how much worse this culture of isolation is going to get with white little earbuds always in our ears.