a 1L no more and other law school news

My first year of law school is officially over. Yay!

The feeling of accomplishment is immense. I can only imagine how good it will feel to get that JD in hand come 2012...

The exam period was daunting, but I survived. No word yet on grades; they'll be weeks in the coming.

In the midst of it, though, I was dealt a major set-back: with two exams down and one to go, my laptop died. It wasn't completely without warning; Mr. Lappy had been giving me fits when powering up and when waking from sleep, so I had been regularly backing-up my Absolutely Essential data, but I haven't yet managed to save all of my digital photos or archived e-mails. Alas, I remain hopeful that I can salvage those things some way or another.

Luckily, my trusty old ThinkPad, with his dead battery and held-on-by-one-screw-screen came to the rescue so that I didn't have to hand-write my Constitutional Law exam. He'll serve my portable computing needs for the summer, and at home I can share hubby's desktop, and by mid-August I should be able to save up for a new laptop. I will not, however, be buying another HP. Instead, I'm looking to custom build with AVADirect, so that I can tailor my computer for doing what I need it to do: helping me to be a better law student and someday-soon-lawyer.

So, with my 1L year behind me, I'm all geared up for a busy summer. I've got my judicial internship, and not one but 2 part-time law clerk jobs for local small firms. And I'm taking a summer externship class. Although summer school means I'll be super-busy, it will be a good thing because I'll start my 2L year with more credits than students who don't do summer school, which will mean a lighter class-load at some point in my law school career. On top of that, the externship meets Tulane's "skills course" requirement, which is a fancy way of saying that you can't graduate without doing hands-on legal work for class credit. By getting that requirement out of the way now, it will be one less thing to worry about down the road.

The externship involves two components: classroom and field placement. During May and June I'll have class 1-2 times per week, and then during July I'll be working in the Family Law Unit at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. Classes start on Thursday, so I haven't really had much of a break, and the way things are looking I'm not likely to get much of one.

Not that I really mind working through the summer. I'll get some great experience and it will feel good to be working again, but I hope that at some point we can plan a few weekend trips here and there to visit friends and family in Mississippi...

yikes

Let's hope this won't be my fate!

Unlike poor Mr. Parker, I feel I've got Constitutional Law in the bag. It's Property Law and the Rule Against Perpetuities that just might kill me...

h/t to Josh Blackman

mental marathon

The curse is come upon me,

the curse of law school exams, that is. When TLS will test not merely my aptitude for applying the principles of the Uniform Commercial Code, Constitutional Law, and Property Law to hypothetical fact patterns, but also my mental endurance.

The exam period, which began on Thursday, is like a mental marathon. The challenge is to have a working understanding of the legal doctrines and rules we've been learning all semester, not merely in the abstract, but in order to apply those doctrines and rules to new facts and predict an outcome during the three hour exam. The pressure is enormous, not only because of the massive amount of law we've covered over the last 16 weeks which must be condensed into something that is mentally digestible, but also because in law school one's entire grade for the semester rests on that final exam. Nevermind if you've come to every class, done all your homework, and participated in class discussions; it doesn't count towards your GPA. All that counts is your performance during those stress-filled three hours of testing.

I've been working diligently since classes were over on Wednesday. And I'm secure in the knowledge that, in the end, it will all be alright. I'm not going to fail. I will have my J.D. in 2012, and with it I will carve out a satisfying, meaningful career path for myself.

But I can't help but feel the pressure. And I sincerely wish to do my very best on all 3 exams. So, I've been putting in 9+ hour days of studying, and I will continue to do so until May 3rd, the day of the last exam. For this reason the law school exam period is like a marathon.

It's exhausting. And it's excruciating to be locked up in the climate controlled library, day in and day out, while all I want to do is revel in the glorious New Orleans spring time. I feel like the Lady of Shallot: trapped in the tower of the TLS library while shadows of the world pass me by, damned if I quit weaving the web of my study guide to go down to the Camelot that is the French Quarter.

I am half sick of shadows.

If I can just persevere, though, it will all be over two weeks from tomorrow. And then I'll be able to enjoy a much-needed 3½ month break from the rigors of law school.

fare thee well, LRW

Last night, as of 8pm, my appellate brief -- one of the formative rites of passage of the first year of law school -- was finalized & bluebooked. (I've been merrily reviewing & revising since Tuesday when I finished my drafting.) Today, it's not yet noon and already the brief has been proofread, the table of contents & table of authorities checked-and-double-checked, and the whole thing copied and professionally spiral-bound. And it's not due until 12noon tomorrow. WooHoo!

It feels so good to have successfully not procrastinated to the last possible minute. Thank heavens I'm not still writing, which would leave me scrambling to get it copied and bound tomorrow morning. I'm so proud of my time-management skills!

The feeling is extra sweet because it marks my last weighty assignment for LRW (Legal Research and Writing; we're big on acronyms in law school). All that's left for the class, after Spring Break, is oral argument. And I'm not sweating that. Even though public speaking is not my forte, 'tis something I've become more accustomed to through the years, and after becoming intimately familiar with my argument 'lo these last 6 weeks of researching and writing, talking about the case and the precedent will be a cake walk. Add to that the fact that oral argument only counts for 5% of my grade, and I'm simply not all too concerned about it.

Now, with LRW moving to the background, I can take a short time to relax and then focus all my energies on preparing for final exams.

to burn cool and collected

The pressure is mounting as my first year of law school draws to a close: the last major writing project of the year (which counts for 40% of the grade for that class) is due on Monday, March 22nd. Then it's oral arguments, followed all too quickly by final exams, replete with the arduous process of outlining. (Outlining is law-student lingo for preparing a study-guide since most exams are open-note, and to benefit from the process of doing so even for those exams that aren't.)

After exams, we're free to work for the summer, and the expectation is that we do legal work, even if it's on a volunteer basis, so as to get some Real World experience. Fortunately, I already have Real World legal experience, and I already have two paying jobs lined up for the summer. I'll be working as a judicial intern at the Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeal for a small stipend, and I'll be doing some part-time contract work for a small law office in Metairie. I hope to get another part-time gig lined up, too, simply to expand my network of local attorneys and to add some more breadth to my legal experience. All in all, though, I'm relatively isolated from the stress of finding a summer job, which is a great relief.

As for the school work, I'm trying my best to stay on top of things, and I think I'm doing well enough. My brief is completely drafted, giving me 5 days still for revising, copying, and binding. (We're required to professionally bind the document as if we were really submitting a brief to a Federal Court of Appeals.) So that is good. I'm sufficiently caught up on my reading, too.

But I'm not pushing myself too hard. For instance, I haven't started outlining yet, even though it would be best to have done so. Instead, I'm taking steps to actively avoid burn-out: taking breaks to go for a walk, making time to cook and eat real food, and getting plenty of sleep. I've yet to know whether this will be a fatal error, or if it will prove to be the best strategy.

Apparently it's working enough to at least affect a calm exterior: classmates remark on my serenity. Little do they know how furiously the anxiety churns within. But I'll fight through it, so that even as the heat turns up (literally and figuratively as NOLA says goodbye to winter) I'll keep my composure.

alive and well in 2010

Well, I survived exams and the holidays. Exams were difficult, but I studied so much and worked so hard I don't think I could have done any better for my part. The question that remains, then, is how hard my cohort studied, and how the grades will be distributed along the curve. Only time will tell, but I'll be waiting with bated breath until grades are released at the end of the month.

For now, week 2 of the new semester, I'm trying to get acclimated to a new schedule. It's a lighter load than last semester (3 substantive classes instead of 4), which is a relief, but that doesn't mean I'll be any less stressed, for my classes this term promise to be even more dense and tedious than those of the last term. Contracts II: Sales, and Property Law will both be tedious, and Constitutional Law will be the most interesting, but it will require a great deal of time and effort. (How could it not be with a textbook that's 1962 pages long?) And it is the one and only class for which the exam will be closed book and closed notes.

So, here we go again.

Aside from school, the holidays offered a much needed and welcomed break from the stress and mind-numbing pace of law school. Over the two-week mini-vacation I was able to do a lot of relaxing, and enjoy a lot of good food and good company, the memories of which will help to sustain me over the next few months as I stumble back into the fray of the Second Semester...

of practice, perfection, and patience

Twice since arriving at Tulane I've been told that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to "master" a skill. Apparently, that works out to about five years....

If that's true, I've already mastered the practice of law. I mean, sure I wasn't Licensed By The State, but I know from living in a law office day in and day out for five years what it takes to be a good lawyer. I've been there and done that every step of the way along with those who were duly licensed, with the exception of the Official Courtroom Proceedings...

I'm loving law school because it's school - challenging and rewarding - but I miss the actual practice of law. This is actually encouraging, however, because it has me totally convinced that I'm on the right path. If I find myself eager to find a law office job and again do Real Legal Work, then most certainly law school was, in spite of all the doubt and worry and difficulty of the past few weeks and months, really and truly a Good Idea.

For the time being, however, it's back to the books. School has been demanding lately (as if that's anything new), and the sorry part is that it's going to get much, much worse before it gets any better. For the past two weeks we were busy and distracted with the stress of practice exams. Although they were only practice and not for any kind of grade, to benefit from it one had to put forth something resembling the effort and time required to prepare for a Real Law School Exam. This week brought our first Real Research Writing Project Deadline, as well as the first session of a Career Development mini-course.

And all the while I'm still reading cases and learning doctrines, because practice makes perfect.

But what I miss is the day-to-day practice of law in the Real World. I'm caught up in the Ivory Tower in a way that I've never actually before been. (It used to be, in my previous scholastic endeavors, that my law office wage-earning work kept me firmly tethered to the Real World, but now I find myself steeped in the academy in a way that borders on suffocation.) What I'm doing now - right now - doesn't matter to anyone. No one is depending on me to do something with a piece of paper that will have a lasting, meaningful impact on someone's life course. I'm just reading cases long decided, and analyzing and writing about hypothetical legal problems. All the while there's Real Legal Problems happening, out there in the Real World, but they are wholly disconnected from my current endeavors.

So I'll continue diligently working, in eager anticipation of the day when the Law School Hazing is over and I can start taking baby-steps into the Real World as a Real Lawyer...

you know you're a law student if

you dream of IRAC formatting and BlueBook citations.

Such is my life lately.

initial impressions

So far, so good. A week and a day into the Law School Experience, and I don't hate it yet.

Sure enough, I was feeling absolutely overwhelmed at the beginning of the first week, but as the days slowly pass by I feel as though I'm settling into a groove of intense focus and acute diligence. If I can keep up the momentum, I think I'll be okay.

My classes are all great, and if I'm crazy for thinking that, so be it; but I'm totally enjoying this. From Contracts to Criminal Law, Civil Procedure and Torts. The Legal Research and Writing class is the only one that's at all dull. (And it doesn't help that it's at 4pm, which just happens to be the time every day when my mind kicks out of high gear after go-go-going since 6am.)

All of my professors are awesome, and in that regard I feel I am very fortunate; others I've talked with have at least one professor they would rather not have. Perhaps my insanely positive attitude helps in this regard.

The atmosphere here is one of congeniality amongst the students and absolute support from the faculty. None of that Socratic humiliation here. Sure, the Socratic method is utilized, but it is with rhyme and reason and with no intent other than to help us orally articulate our budding legal minds.

And the competition among the students is barely palpable beneath the surface. Sure we will be ranked at the end of the year, but right now we're all just struggling to stay alfoat, and thus more than willing to help one another. From my perspective, the rankings are little to compete over, because in the end it will boil down to each individual's dedication, diligence, and natural capacity for legal reasoning.

The campus itself is spectacular. I feel as if I have finally arrived to a place where I belong. I've never been to a school like this: an old, prestigious university, with oak-lined lanes and old stone buildings. And yet it is the kind of place I've always imagined myself belonging. It's as if I have always known I would someday, somehow get to a place like Tulane, steeped in history and beauty and busting at the seams for all the knowledge it has to offer me, but I never quite knew how it would happen that I might find myself in such a place. And yet here I am, and it's difficult to convince myself that this is, in fact, my campus. In time familiarity and comfort will replace the intimidation and novelty, and I'll feel as at home here as I ever did at JSU.

In some ways I feel like it's 1997 and I'm a freshman all over again, and in some ways that is true; amongst the upperclassmen, the faculty and staff, I'm just another new face. But I'm making friends. The variety of people I've encountered is stunning. It stands in stark contrast to my experience at JSU, where folks seemed to have been pressed from a half-dozen or so molds. At Tulane, my fellow 1Ls come from all over the country and the world, they're of all age groups (I'm not the only married student for a change! And some are even parents, too!), and there's a variety of ethnic and cultural groups represented.

It's odd to find myself here, coming from JSU. There, it was obvious that I did not belong, and I had become accustomed to being the odd student out. Here the situation is wholly different; I feel as if I belong, and I feel a sense of camaraderie with all of my fellow 1Ls. But at the same time, I feel acutely aware of my difference. I'm the girl who only completed the 9th grade. I'm the one who took the alternative route: GED to junior college, and then to university and now law school. I don't have the common bonds that many of the younger students share: high school prom, graduation, moving away to college, dorm life, and so on and so forth. My path has been one less traveled, and yet I've arrived just the same. The differences between myself and my classmates at JSU were both external and internal; here the difference is almost wholly internal, and so it is a different sort of chasm to navigate in order to cultivate friendships. And I'm positive that I'll leave Tulane with several friends for life, which were a rare commodity at JSU.

All in all, I'm completely enamored. This is absolutely one of the best decisions of my life, and the most satisfying, awesome thing about it is that I'm here thanks to little more than my wits and my perseverance.

There's a ton of work waiting for me, and it's going to be a challenge, but one I'll be able to meet, and in the end I'll be so much better for it. So, bring it on, I say.

getting oriented

Today was the first day of orientation, and it stands out in my mind as little more than a blur of new faces walking through the humid August air, like myself, trying to make sense of the fact that their 1L journey has begun. This, punctuated by gems such as this quote from Charles Hamilton Houston: "A lawyer is either a social engineer or a parasite on society," which, together, cumulatively served as poignant reminders of the fact that I am on the right path after all.

So at this point I'm feeling confident and good, because if there's anything I want to do in this life it's to help "engineer society" in virtuous, meaningful ways. And much of the substance of today's programs re-convinced me of my ability to do that, especially once I'm armed with that TLS degree and all that I shall endure to obtain it.

I have more to share, but I'm exhausted from my efforts to take in and retain some meaningful portion of the deluge of information which swept over me today, not to mention the physical exertion of walking to and fro all the day long, and I simply must get some rest so that I can be prepared to do it again tomorrow.

More impressions will follow...