Family Lawyering

On the bus, my friend heard a 1L say that she wanted to be a divorce attorney. Although there are a lot of family law lawyers, you hardly ever hear people aspire to be a divorce attorney or more generally, any type of family law lawyer.

Over the summer, I worked on some family law cases in Santa Barbara for very wealthy clients. This semester in my clinic, I am working on family law cases for DC and Maryland clients who cannot afford legal services. The common denominator that I saw across the economic spectrum was that family law cases are so often nasty and heart-wrenching. Although litigation is never fun for any parties involved, the stakes of family law cases are often far more than money and the emotions run higher as it is one family member against another.

Yesterday I saw in the clinic office researching a tumultuous custody case. [Interestingly, The Practice had a very similar case this morning. I forgot how much I liked that show.] While the law is pretty straight forward, the facts are not. I never really thought that my family was crazy, but if I ever had that thought, I will just remember this case.

Lawyers generally have a bad reputation, but I think family law lawyers have it the worst. I have a lot of respect though for these lawyers, at least the good ones, like the ones in my office. At their very best, family law lawyers make the most out of bad situations and try to resolve things to everyone's best interest. They often also have to work as pseudo psychologists for people. Although I do not think I could do family law exclusively, I would not mind occasionally working on them. Please just never ask me to work on your case.

A DC Day & Debate

Sorry about no blog yesterday but it was a hectic and super political day. My journal had its symposium on energy law all day, which I had to sneak out of to help run an economic crisis panel we organized for 1Ls and then go to two classes. I came home to bake and ended the day hosting a mini-debate watching party. *collapses*

Even though it was a busy day, it was an enjoyable busy--especially watching the VP debate. I thought Biden did well and Palin . . . well, she did not crash and burn as many Dems thought (and hoped) she would. I think this flow chart is a great representation of her strategy to answering questions to avoid a repeat of her Couric-interview performance:

To give the McCain campaign a little credit, this would be the same strategy I would use to avoid disaster. In fact, it is pretty similar to how we trained candidates to answer questions during our student government endorsement hearings. Repeat question, compliment the student group asking the question, provide a way we relate, and if we have not successfully wasted away all of the time, try to answer the question. If we did not like the question or know the answer, we answered the question we wanted to get.

The difference between us and Palin, however, is that we only used this strategy when we got unfair questions from an opposing student groups [ie: who is your favorite lesbian author of color, true question Alex got]. None of the questions last night were unfair or out of the blue. We didn't wink, use horrible terms like Joe Sixpack, and oh yeah, we were running for student government positions and Sarah Palin is running for Vice President of the United States.

Crossing Cultures

I have another confession to make: I would probably pick Thai food over the food of my motherland. While my 'last meal' would probably be my mom's curry and eggrolls, on the whole, I am still a finicky Vietnamese food eater.

Conversely, Alex has grown to love Vietnamese food. So much so, he even made pho, the national Vietnamese dish, from scratch. (See picture) For those of you are less familiar, pho is most rice-noodle soup usually in a beef broth with lots of thinly cut meat. The broth is the most essential part since you have to cook beef, oxtails, and lots of spices together for hours. It is labor intensive and not many people cook Pho at home, but Alex had to do it.

Another part of him being more Vietnamese than I am is that he begs me to go to the Eden Center, the mini Little Saigon out in Virginia, with him on weekends. We went last weekend and he was in heaven getting his big bowl of pho and a durian shake for dessert. I still remember running upstairs whenever my dad ate durian because it smelled so bad; now is no different, I kept my distance.

Even though Vietnamese food is not my favorite, I have found that dating someone who embraces the culture so much does encourage me to eat more of it. I also like explaining what the different foods are, the snacks we ate as kids (Yum Yums, lychee jelly!), the traditions, etc. Funny how dating someone white may actually make me less 'white-washed.'

Of course I am also a fan of Alex's heritage. I have always self-identified with the German way of life (efficiency, industriousness) and am a huge fan of the Swedes. IKEA, Swedish meatballs, ABBA! What else do you need?

Confessions of a 'Bad TV' Addict

I have a confession to make: I am now hooked to Gossip Girl. Add that to my list of current addictions: Top Model, Real Housewives of Orange County (and soon Housewives of Atlanta, so excited), My Super Sweet 16, and other shallow, mindless television.

I do not talk about Top Model with Alex because he would endlessly taunt me about it. But I know that I am not alone. When I told my friend about my addiction to Gossip Girl and she told me that she loves it too, but don't tell her husband. Another confessed that she watches it the next day when she comes home from school so her boyfriend does not see that she watches it. She would even watch it online than Tivo as not to leave evidence.

I feel like we are those suburban soccer moms who are hiding our addictions to crystal meth. I would form a support group but I feel like it would be too large. Instead, I am just going to list my reasons why I think this addiction is not that bad (I know, first step: denial). But here is my rationalization:

• Being addicted to bad television is not as bad as other addictions like alcohol, prescription meds, pornography, gambling, etc. TV is free, not harmful to our bodies, and not doing any (major) psychological damage.
  
• It keeps me sane. After a long day of classes and cases in clinic, I just don't want to think. I want something that lets me relax, laugh, and gives me something to talk to my friends about outside of the law.
  
• It does not impede us from having a 'normal' life. I still get all my work done, I go out on weekends, I go to the gym (in fact, those tvs on the elliptical is probably how I got addicted to half these shows), I still talk to my family, etc.
• While I am not sure I would let my kids watch these shows if I was a parent, I am old enough not to be negatively influenced. In the same way my brother says that playing Grandtheft Auto is fine because he is not going to go out and shoot people or steal cars, I am fine watching these shows because I am not going to go out and do drugs, binge drink, or starve myself.

Manic Money Monday

Today Slate had an interesting article about how high-end prostitutes may be one of the groups to benefit from the economic turmoil. (FYI: did you know that about 40 percent of high-end sex transactions do not involve a sexual service?). The article also pointed out that another obvious group that would benefit from this economy is lawyers.

Funny, because a lot of people around my school do not feel that way, especially those graduating soon and going out into the job market. Even though most of us are very fortunate, it can still be nerve wracking, especially if you have a lot of law school debt.

As we were sitting around the journal office today, someone gasped when they saw that the bailout bill did not pass. Someone joked, "There goes another 500 points in the stock market," to which another person responded "No, it actually went down 600+" Right after that, someone who had been sitting on an office from his summer position went out in the hallway to finally accept. There was no way he was going to let his offer disappear.

I still remember last year how some graduating 3Ls were talking about how a lot of Atlanta banking firms were dissolving and their friends were losing jobs. They speculated that it was only going to get worse for some types of lawyers. While on the whole, it seems like most people will be alright, there is that nervousness that some people have that firms will scale back summer programs, delay new associates, or cut positions all together. Above the Law even has a firm watch to see who's cutting.

It's no wonder that when we opened up registration for our panel on how the law relates to the current economic situation, the event filled up very quickly. I'm interested in what they will say because I am still trying to figure this out. I have discovered that BBC breaks things down nicely (I am like a foreigner when it comes to understanding the US economy) and I downloaded podcasts to learn.

778 point drop in the Dow, the single biggest day drop ever. What a way to start the week. Alas I had all these fun things from the weekend to write about, but my day seemed so consumed by watching the financial situation, it was hard to ignore going back to reality.

New and Improved

Along with getting my absentee ballot and organizing my closet, finding a new blog template has been on my to-do list. I think it's more my style, but I will probably be tweaking things over the next few weeks. Any suggestions are welcome.

I honestly do not know how many people read this blog or come to the actual site as opposed to reading this on their feeds (which is how I stalk blogs). But I figured it was time to update the look of this page for myself. It is like those times when you change out of your pajamas into real clothes even though you probably will not see anyone that day, because it makes you feel better to be put together.

Changing my layout made me think about this blog generally. As did my friend, Eric D's reflection upon closing his blog. Why do I do this, what is the purpose, how long will this last? This is my 723rd post, and my college blog had 1,240 posts. Writing everyday can sometimes be a hassle and I thought about posting less, but I force myself to do it because I think self-reflection and putting general analysis into writing are good things (even if most of the posts are just about law school and politics). The fact that I can simultaneously update my friends and family across the country, create an archive of my life, and maybe even entertain people sometimes are definite bonuses. I will probably scale back or stop completely when I graduate from law school, but I will see.

[Note to self, these are on my blogging to-do list: Going to see Rainn Wilson (Dwight from the Office), Bad: UCLA football, Good: New UCLA bar, Trips to Little Saigon, or what we call Little Little Saigon, Sarah Palin]