The LAW SCHOOL Chronicles

[Ironic Mustache]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

You're a Mexican.

Touche.

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by thekremlin

Did you just compare AP to a huge bag of flaccid cocks?

If so, thanks. It's good for AP to see: AP, Huge, and cock(s) mentioned in the same sentence.

I think I learned this editing trick from repug: "compare AP['s] huge cock. . . ."

[Ironic Mustache]

Law school actually doesn't appear to be as outrageous as I thought, as long as you're on top of shit. There is a SHIT-TON of work but I'm getting better at recognizing how much of it is actually important. They throw an outrageous amount of material at you and then expect you to know what to remember and what to completely disregard. The two options are:

-Remember all of it
-Learn to distinguish

Remembering all of it is actually a negative. The workload is manageable if you know what you're supposed to know and can get rid of the rest. If not, you mostly likely aren't "getting it." It's brutal if you're not sure (in that case, you memorizing everything makes you look even more like you don't know what you're doing).

Note: Including class time I put in between 13-15 hours per day into studying. A big part of this is determining what to exclude.

It's definitely possible to study a 3-4 page case for like 5 hours and not understand the relevant facts at all. I have been able to fend off professors thus far but have seen otherwise "smart" people reduced nearly to tears by professors who are trying to make a specific point. Not understanding relevancy is the law school equivalent of bleeding out of your asshole in the midst of a great white feeding frenzy. The evil professors feed on this and will continuously question you for the entire hour and fifteen minutes, knowing the whole time that you're completely at a loss as to the main concept. I've had a couple of hour-and-15-minute classes where 90% of the questions were directed at one person who just didn't "get it." It's like watching someone getting waterboarded.

Other than that, all is well.

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

There is a SHIT-TON of work but I'm getting better at recognizing how much of it is actually important.

This is the battle and it takes a while to get this. Congrats at getting it this early in the game.

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

Note: Including class time I put in between 13-15 hours per day into studying. A big part of this is determining what to exclude.

It's definitely possible to study a case for like 5 hours and not understand the relevant facts at all.

Um, I take back the above mentioned "congrats." That's a lot of time in both examples. Maybe soon. At least you know what you're looking for.

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

I have been able to fend off professors thus far but have seen otherwise "smart" people reduced nearly to tears by professors who are trying to make a specific point. Not understanding relevancy is the law school equivalent of bleeding out of your asshole in the midst of a great white feeding frenzy. The evil professors feed on this and will continuously question you for the entire hour and fifteen minutes, knowing the whole time that you're completely at a loss as to the main concept. I've had a couple of hour and 15 minute classes where 90% of the questions were directed at one person who just didn't "get it." It's like watching someone getting waterboarded.

Other than that, all is well.

Expect to get called on once or twice per class per semester at first. Socratic completely loses it's effect in a room full of people who can all play the game. That'll happen sooner than expected. You'll notice when the class gangs up on the instructor to move on and quit wasting an hour and 15 minutes on somebody who doesn't know. That always frustrated me. Spending 1.25 hours drilling some poor sap who fucking has no clue. How are you supposed to benefit from learning from somebody else who doesn't know and get's toyed with while giving wrong answers? Yeah fucking thanks prof I just took two pages of notes over wrong material because you wanted to dick with somebody all class.

I'm pretty sure AP has mentioned it before: There's not a lot of difference in ability between the top of the class and the bottom of the class. You're all pretty damned good with few exceptions. You should have a better idea where you stand in January.

Unless classroom prep is a significant part of your grade, don't worry about getting humiliated. You're not supposed to know jack shit at this point. The instructor is going to ask you shit that you obviously couldn't possibly know --that has little to with the relevancy of the facts or law of a case. The dynamic will change when over half of you can summarize facts effortlessly, repeat the holding, how the facts applied to the law, and when the prof tries to change things with hypotheticals, not get caught up in that.

The hard part is knowing when to admit that you just don't know. "It depends on . . . . . ." is almost always the correct way to start an explanation to a hypothetical.

[Ironic Mustache]

As an example, we started synthesizing cases for memos (legal writing) and I noticed that a lot of my classmates were completely briefing every case regardless of the relevance of a lot of the facts. Including the extraneous material not only seems like a complete waste of time but in a real-life situation, seems like an enormous and costly waste of time to the assigner. A brief isn't a summary of the case, it's a summary of the relevant factors of a case. I can see where people might be afraid of leaving something out; however, isn't the assigner relying on you not to do that?

As an employer would you ever rely on a brief if you didn't trust the associate to include everything relevant? Further, how long would said associate work for you if they gave you briefs that were nearly as long as the cases?

[Ironic Mustache]

In keeping with the theme of rants:

Civil Procedure: I've recently been agonizing over several cases regarding personal jurisdiction only to find that what I was being taught, was only being taught for the purpose of learning why it's wrong.

Shot-out to AP for telling me that last week, though, you're dangerously close to to neg reps for not specifically telling me why.

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

As an employer would you ever rely on a brief if you didn't trust the associate to include everything relevant? Further, how long would said associate work for you if they gave you briefs that were nearly as long as the cases?

You probably don't want the answer to that.

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

Shot-out to AP for telling me that last week, though, you're dangerously close to to neg reps for not specifically telling me why.

I did, you just didn't comprehend it. Pennoyer, I don't believe was ever followed. Believe it or not, there's not a shitload of cases going up to the U.S. Supreme Court over this matter. The next time they see it, I'm pretty sure they came up with a different result. Before you started classes, AP said ignore pennoyer. Pay attention to Int'l Show and World Wide Volkswagen. It's all about minimum contacts and stream of commerce.

[Ironic Mustache]

Yeah we just talked about Shoe and VW. There was a small discussion about Hess v Pawloski (or something like that), but that was only to talk about why implied consent isn't so great.

[thekremlin]

This thread is SO BORING for people who aren't lawyers or in law school. IM, haven't you started a food-fight in the campus cafeteria or staged a daring painty raid on Beta Omega Omega Beta house yet?

[Saint DH]

Speak for yourself you arrogant cocksucker.

I think this thread is interesting.

[vaga1220 *]

I do like molecules

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

As an employer would you ever rely on a brief if you didn't trust the associate to include everything relevant? Further, how long would said associate work for you if they gave you briefs that were nearly as long as the cases?

I'll go ahead and answer this anyway. DON'T EVER CONFUSE WHAT YOU'RE DOING IN LAW SCHOOL WITH WHAT LAWYERS DO. -----NEVER.

We don't do case briefs. You will do your last one probably this semester. After that you'll just start taking a few notes. Then when you get lazy, you'll write in the margins of the book.

I'm more likely to give a clerk/baby lawyer a file with a sticky note on it saying what to do and how much time to expend. It would say "prep an answer to the lawsuit and add a motion to transfer venue on this. See the 'Robinson' matter from 2003 as a guide."

Then it will get more and more involved gradually to the point that I'd take a new file and say "here, take care of this." To the point that it becomes "do you have enough work to keep the new guys busy?"

Being the lawyer is knowing what to do and when to do it. It's harder than it sounds. I get asked by individuals for a form for this or a form for that all of the time for people who are going to try to represent themselves. Sometimes it's like telling an engineer you want to build a suspension bridge and asking what kind of pencil you need to use.


And this thread should be moved over to the hall of fame.

[Ironic Mustache]

Originally Posted by angry pancake

I'll go ahead and answer this anyway. DON'T EVER CONFUSE WHAT YOU'RE DOING IN LAW SCHOOL WITH WHAT LAWYERS DO. -----NEVER.

We don't do case briefs. You will do your last one probably this semester. After that you'll just start taking a few notes. Then when you get lazy, you'll write in the margins of the book.

Thank fucking god. With regard to briefs, I'm starting to move away from them already. I was under the impression (and told explicitly) that I would still need this skill later on. "Book briefing" is way more efficient. I'm assuming in the next few months I'll start exclusively just highlighting procedural history (if relevant), issue (if explicitly stated, if not, margin note), significant reasoning/cases cited, and holding. After that I'll write out the rule and be on my way.

Originally Posted by angry pancake

Being the lawyer is knowing what to do and when to do it.

Actually relevant to being a law student.

Originally Posted by angry pancake

It's harder than it sounds. I get asked by individuals for a form for this or a form for that all of the time for people who are going to try to represent themselves. Sometimes it's like telling an engineer you want to build a suspension bridge and asking what kind of pencil you need to use.

This is why good lawyers get paid what they do.

Originally Posted by angry pancake

And this thread should be moved over to the hall of fame.

Quoted for emphasis.

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

I was under the impression (and told explicitly) that I would still need this skill later on. "Book briefing" is way more efficient.

I have no idea why anybody would tell you briefing cases is important later on. But I heard the same thing. You get told a lot of shit. You might want to stick to what got you there. I think the IRAC method was pretty much was a guide for people who couldn't get their thoughts together on paper. It might come in handy for some people at times and as a guide it will get you through.

Like AP, you probably will have lots of instructors who never practiced law a day in their life. They suck. Most of the better will have been in the world outside academia. My Civ Pro instructor thought he was a bad ass because he clerked for Rehnquist (Florida International University College of Law) he served on the committee who wrote those rules. However, he fancied himself as a Constitutional guru and moved on to much more elite places like Creighton and Florida International (10). The dude didn't know shit about con law or federal anything. Never practiced a day in his life and was widely mocked by a couple of other conlaw instructors who would tell him "I don't recall ever seeing your name in the reporters." Nah, he writes books and shit. Will Rice (Faculty | St. Mary's Law) beside being a pretty cool dude, doesn't know jack shit about torts or insurance law. He freely admits that he never took evidence in law school yet always wanted to talk about it. He legitimately does not know the difference between "Clear and Convincing evidence" and "Circumstantial evidence". Um, you'll know how fucking bizarre that is eventually. He would go so far out on a limb to try to make a point that he could never bring it back in. BTW, his bio say Order of the Coif 1997, not true. I'd pretty much disregard anything that guy ever says regarding law. But one of the most likable dudes every in any area. So don't be surprised if some of these guys really don't know outside of researching and writing. We also had a guy who got the job for being Mexican (Brian Leiter's Law School Reports: St. Mary's Law Dean Not Renewed) He was openly referred to as "Coach Piatt" as his classes were similar to those taught by the high school basketball coach. The article is kind to him. He was ran out of Texas Tech and the folks at St. Mary's thought he was an idiot as well and he pretty much hired his friends from past jobs.

Anyway I digress. A lot of your professors don't know shit about the outside world. Others you should listen to when they say something. A cool friend of mine and former classmate Michelle (College of Law | Michelle Kwon) now is at Tennessee Law and probably knows more about Tax Law than anybody alive. She's turned down an appointment to the Tax Court Bench before heading to Knoxville. We both had Tax with Phelan in 1996, and we both thought the final may have well been written in Portguese. When an instructor who has never practiced a day in their life tells you that you need to know something as a lawyer, forget it. When they guys who have a several page list of cases they argued and are publish by Westlaw, and when they say you don't need this. Listen to them.

In the spring semester of your third year an instructor is going to call on somebody who will ask the instructor "is this on the bar exam?" "No." "No? Then I really don't care."

Here's a few further head's up. Ignore the Slaughterhouse Cases and Palko. You should start to see a pattern when you spend time on things only for historical value befoer moving on to relevant law.

[Ironic Mustache]

Quick question about pulling important info out of cases. What else should I be looking for with regard to what the reasoning was behind why the rulings came out the way they did:

-Precedent
-Current statute
-Public policy (including economic advantage)

Are there more major categories I'm missing or am I just fucked for being subject to the whim of my professors' hypotheticals? I pretty much never feel like I've actually considered EVERYTHING, and that feels like a pretty big flaw.

I was sure I had everything accounted for the other day (agreeing with the opinion), only to have the professor invent some ridiculous argument for the other side that almost started making sense because he was better at arguing it than me. At the end of class he eventually gave in and confessed to agreeing with the majority. How the shit do you develop the skill of learning to think about things you don't already think about?

[angry pancake]

Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache

Quick question about pulling important info out of cases. What else should I be looking for with regard to what the reasoning was behind why the rulings came out the way they did:

-Precedent
-Current statute
-Public policy (including economic advantage)

Are there more major categories I'm missing or am I just fucked for being subject to the whim of my professors' hypotheticals? I pretty much never feel like I've actually considered EVERYTHING, and that feels like a pretty big flaw.

I was sure I had everything accounted for the other day (agreeing with the opinion), only to have the professor invent some ridiculous argument for the other side that almost started making sense because he was better at arguing it than me. At the end of class he eventually gave in and confessed to agreeing with the majority. How the shit do you develop the skill of learning to think about things you don't already think about?

Some of it is simple development of the concept. So a little history is maybe worth knowing so when you're an old fuck like AP you can say, remember back when we used to get two sets of interrogatories? You might see a pattern develop in where you spend a little bit of back ground time before getting into the meat and potatoes. That's in most classes. Example personal jurisdiction has been going on for fucking forever. So there's more to talk about. 12(b)(6) dismissal is still kind of new relatively. Don't know if you got to Palsgraff yet in Torts, if I read it today, I could repeat most of it back. But fuck if I could tell you what it was about. I'd probably guess "personal responsibility on a train platform." But it's a bizarre case that get's into proximate cause and forseeable plaintiffs etc. It goes in all sorts of directions. And hopefully all of those conflicting ideas get cleared up in the next few cases. Proximate cause because a little more clear, forseeability is easier to predict.

Don't get too bogged down on public policy, etc. for rationalizing these. Just keep in mind how the fuck can you be tested over the holding in pennoyer on an essay case? Or better yet, on a scantron? Given a fact pattern, you need to know what's the [b]current[/u] law applicable to the fact pattern in December. Keep in mind how can you be tested over this.

Now to be fair, you have no fucking clue. You've never seen a law school final exam stuck in front of you. Here's the scoop for the first time. It's slightly more difficult than taking the LSAT cold. I had a multiple choice exam for civ pro as my first final. It wasn't really that taxing intellectually. If I had all day I probably would have come close to acing it. But the fact of the matter is that I had 4 hours to take the exam. The exam was 650 multiple choice questions and over 200 pages long. No body could fucking finish it in 4 hours. Expect to be pushed to decide and decide quick in your first year. To that extent, you need to hit the softballs out of the park, because your classmates will. Focus on the big picture. There's a lot you don't know yet, but as you go it will make more sense. For example, unless it's case specific to what you went over in the case book or class, don't get bogged down in facts. It's hard to give you a fact pattern over 12(b)(6) unless you know from facts in a case that it's something that relief can't be granted. The bulk of what is important is what you'll spend the least amount of time on. Some things are very mechanical. Just something to store away on 12(b)(6), most of the time it starts with a state pleading --which is typically notice (read: vague) Plaintiff's Petition that gets removed to federal court. Many times the state pleading are insufficient on a federal standard. So the Plaintiff has to amend the Petition if they choose not to remand or the remand is denied. But as a practical matter, the Plaintiff can allow the case to be dismissed and refiled in State Court by cutting out the federal question (if that was cause for removal on several causes). Or to be prudent, cut out the fed question in amended petition and then ask for a remand. DIGRESS: Discovery deadlines are discovery deadlines and you compute time the way the rules say you do for example.

Anyway short answer for your first semester: In order it's more important to know: Bizarre facts applied to Current statute; Rules; and the rest. In the rock, paper, scissors of the legal world, Statute crushes all else. Rules come next. For example (hypothetical). Statute saying venue for contract must be in place where contract entered into will always trump a rule of procedure that says it can be in the place where defendant resides. Statute saying you must provide the court with address of party trumps rule that says party must disclose address to other party in discovery. (these are actual Texas procedure vs. Rules).

Awe fuck it. AP have caught the drunked and goes to sleep now.

[Ironic Mustache]

First month down. Law school still blows, but for different reasons. There's more work than before because they've added projects. Fortunately it only takes me about half as much time to read cases so I'm still spending the same amount of time on everything.

The day finally came where I was caught completely off guard and made an ass out of myself. It was in a particularly boring Civil Procedure class with my least favorite teacher (by far). I zoned out for maybe 3 minutes and completely lost track of the conversation. I got snapped out of it by hearing my name get called to answer a question I had not heard. Having to have a professor repeat a question and then still getting it wrong is not impressive. Luckily shortly thereafter, another student sounded at least as dumb when he said, "the Judge used some weird word for fax. Fax-i-mile [spelled phonetically] or something."

The first year BS has already gotten old. I can't wait for this shit to be over.

[Repugnant Abomination]

Way to not be impressive.

[Ironic Mustache]

In my defense, no one is really that impressive right now. It's the professor's job to make you look bad. I'm just basically doing their job for them.

[Saint DH]

I thought long and hard about going to law school when I was first in school. I'm glad I didnt considering I fucking hate reading. Still, mad props to you. Good luck and godspeed my friend. Keep us updated, young shyster.

[angry pancake]

"Facsimile" is a word commonly used you tard. Most people call it a fax for short when spoken. But get used to seeing the proper name for a fax.

Edit: congratulations for having your cases arrive at least in the 20th century.

[Dent]

I think IM knows what a facsimile is

[angry pancake]

Dent, I graduated 2nd in my class from law school in 1997. Made partner in a 350+ lawyer firm in 2004, started my own firm in 2007, and gave more in tips in 2012 than you'll probably ever make, so suck my cock before I buy you and sell you to Kremlin.

Edit: the above has nothing to do with dent being correct.

[Dent]

what are you going on about?
lol

[Ironic Mustache]

Originally Posted by angry pancake

"Facsimile" is a word commonly used you tard. Most people call it a fax for short when spoken. But get used to seeing the proper name for a fax.

Edit: congratulations for having your cases arrive at least in the 20th century.

Yeah, I was pointing out that he sounded stupid for not knowing that.

The shitty part about getting up to date cases is that they're for some reason way fucking longer and not in my supplement.