How cool is this... a Boston law firm donated the money it would have used to buy client gifts to a local charity that helps needy children in the Boston area.
Boston law firm forgoes gifts to clients, donates $10,000
Even when times are tough in the legal profession, it's nice to see that they still remember those in their own community are having a tough time too!
A little late, but here's a funny version of Twas the Night Before Christmas translated into legalese:
Twas the Night Before Christmas, Legal Version
Thanks to TaxProf Blog.
Nothing like working during the holidays while everyone else is off on vacation. I'm so bored I'm about ready to stare at the phone and will it to ring with just the power of my mind. Since I don't need my concentration to do anything else, I can give it my total concentration and maybe this time it will work.
Granted, today isn't as bad as December 24th when I had to work. On Christmas Eve, the phone rang twice, once was a personal call for me and the second time was a wrong number. No noise in the hallways (and I work at a major university). No cars in the parking lot except mine and maybe five others. And the only places open to eat were Chinese or Pizza takeout.
On the plus side, I am reading every last post on Solosez for the past three weeks. Maybe I'll learn something new about the law while I'm twiddling my thumbs. I'm also ready to start re-reading Guerilla Tactics for Getting the Legal Job of Your Dreams.
I know I should be doing my reading for the upcoming semester for law school. That would require me to bring in my textbooks to work. Ugh. Not yet. Maybe next week.
Nothing like procrastination when you have nothing else to do.
Over at Underdog Blog is a great post about how the legal profession is a service industry and a good way to learn how to be a great lawyer is to gain some experience in a service industry.
Waiting tables seems to be a good way to make one a better trial lawyer. Waiters and waitresses (collectively, "waiters") face customer complaints all the time. Will the waiter learn to diffuse such situations with empathy and humor and to let customer problems roll off the back? At least some do. Waiters often find themselves in between customers and chefs, and trial lawyers often find themselves between clients and judges, clients and prosecutors, and clients and opposing witnesses.
Check out: Does waiting tables make one a better trial lawyer?
This Christmas was my best ever. Why? Because I got a Nintendo Wii !!!! My husband totally surprised me because I was sure he wasn't going to get it for me and yet, there it was on Christmas morning, all wrapped up in a pretty package! He's a good guy!
Yes, it's mindless entertainment, but at least I was able to get off my butt and have some fun at the same time. Although my arms are tired from the Olympic swimming games.
I'm hoping it will be a fun stress-reliever for law school.
Total hours playing Wii over the holiday weekend: 15
Total hours reading for law school over the holiday weekend: 0
If you graduated tomorrow with your J.D., could you actually practice law (assuming that you passed the bar)?
One of the things I find frustrating about law school is that it doesn't necessarily teach me what I need to know to run out and practice law upon graduation. There are books and mentors to help with some of that, but law school itself isn't a trade-school, per se. It's more of a foundation builder, at least from what I've learned thus far.
In theory, when someone graduates from medical school, they can go right out and be a doctor including diagnosing patients and writing prescriptions. But when someone graduates from law school, that's not necessarily the case.
The reason I bring this up is because someone commented on one of my posts that you shouldn't go to law school and get a JD unless you want to become a lawyer. I don't necessarily agree with that.
While I personally want to practice law when I graduate, there are successful people who get their J.D. for reasons other than becoming a lawyer. It makes their reasons for going to law school no less valid because they want to be something other than a lawyer. Some people need to go through the process of law school to figure out what exactly they want to do with their legal education.
I have professors who never practiced law - some of whom would be no less nervous than I would be trying a case in court. There are business people who never practice law, including directors of companies, human resource managers, and other staff. There are writers, lobbyists, actors, career coaches, school administrators, librarians, recruiters, consultants, and researchers: all of whom have never actually practiced law. People go to law school for various reasons. Who am I to judge them for doing so.
I currently work with a man who went to medical school and has a M.D. but never became a doctor - instead he works as a research consultant at a university. He's very happy with what he does for a living. What's the difference between that and going to law school to be something other than a practicing lawyer?
Law school so far has taught me how to research legal topics and how to think analytically (or at least my passing grades make me assume as much.) But if my neighbor called me up and asked me to help her get a divorce, I'd be lost. Create a will? Only if it were a fill-in-the-blank software program. I might be able to eke out a legal brief or an office memo. And maybe I could do some research. But if someone wanted me to represent them in court, I wouldn't know where to start.
Law school isn't for everyone. And it's very expensive. But as long as you know that going in and you're making an informed decision, then your reasons for going are your own.
Law school isn't the end all of everything. It is a start. And law school is for whomever feels they need to be there, for whatever reason they have.
Last night I asked my husband if he would move overseas if I decided to join the Foreign Service. He said no - not even if it was England. He said he wouldn't stand in my way if that was my life's ambition.
He said I could go but to make sure to send my paycheck home to him. I asked him if we'd stay married and he said yes. I said, "So what... I'll live overseas, send you my paychecks, and you'll fly over twice a year for 'marital relations' "?
He just grinned.
Here's an idea I hadn't thought of for when I graduate: joining the foreign service. While I was perusing the web, I saw this article at Law and More: JD Class of '09, Employed/Unemployed Associates - Foreign Service Is Hiring.
While not your typical path as a governmental lawyer, it is an attractive option, especially when there are so few jobs to begin with. But it's not a cake-walk to get in. According to the New York Times, about 12,000 to 15,000 apply each year with only 450 accepted.Okay, the money will never be there. But a career in the Foreign Service provides intellectual stimulation, broadening experiences worldwide, and useful contacts. And "they" are hiring.
Holidays suck, for the most part. Oh yes, there's the general cheer, goodwill, and an occasional sentimental moment. But in general, holidays are not fun. And I'm not just saying that in a random way. They suck royally. And for a law student, now that exams are done, I can't hide from the holidays behind my textbook claiming I have to study. No.... instead, I get full frontal holiday stress.
Let's face it, despite what law school says, I am NOT on vacation and this is not a "break"!
Aside from having to spend the holidays rushing like a madwoman between family functions, figuring out what food to bring, and freaking out about whether or not I got the "right" gift for someone, the holidays in general this year have been just plain unpleasant.
I'm constantly tripping over the Christmas tree in the middle of our living room. There was gift wrap paper rolls and name tags scattered around my living room as I tried to wrap gifts this weekend. I gave up and wrapped half the gifts in gift bags.
We were forced out into the cold weather on Saturday because we needed to return my nephew's police car as the red flashing light didn't work properly. The Saturday before Christmas at a department store is no place for sane people - and I won't even mention the enormous customer service counter lines. I was stunned when my husband offered to go with me, because he has little patience for holiday crowds. On the plus side, we ended up buying my nephew a new police car PLUS a fire truck. Both are fabulously noisy with flashing lights - which aunts and uncles can get away with!
There's been almost no time to finish my normal stuff around the house which piled up from exam time when I couldn't get to it. Dust coats almost every crack and crevice in my house. I found a few mini-cobwebs on the dining room wall. In fact, it has taken me a whole week to wash sheets and towels, and I still have a load in the washer.
Add to that trying to coordinate with my husband as to what gifts we still need to get (which ended up in an unpleasant battle) and more than the foot of snow outside (which prevented my car from leaving the driveway). Then we had to remove the snow from the driveway and sidewalks. My husband used the riding mower with a front blade to do the heavy work and I used the shovel to clear out the front walk, front porch, and a path for the dog in the back yard (he's shorter than the snow.) Sounds easy but it was bitterly cold and I lost sensation in my cheeks more than once. Note: Jeans are not the appropriate cold weather gear when shovelling snow!!!
There was so much snow that we had to trek to my in-laws in my husband's four-wheel drive because their road hasn't been plowed, just to get them out of their house. We took them to a holiday concert but almost froze to death just walking to the car. Gotta love the blustery winds and windchill of -10 degrees!
At work we have a holiday cookie exchange on this morning, but I haven't had any time to make cookies and store-bought are forbidden in a cookie exchange. I'd protest but I'm too exhausted. Next year, maybe I'll just pay my mom to make some and fake them as my own.
Personally, the best holiday would be to sleep in, relax, stay indoors, have blueberry pancakes, open gifts, and watch "A Christmas Story" all day.
I'm almost looking forward for classes to begin again so I can hide behind my textbooks and tell the family I can't make it to family functions again!
Dear Santa -
This year I've been a good girl, for the most part. So here's my Christmas list for an aging law ingenue:
Just remember, Santa, I've been GOOD, despite any allegations to the contrary! Cookies and other sundries will be available upon your arrival!
PT-LawMom is donating to charity this year and needs your help! In addition to her regular donation, for every comment she receives on her posts about her charities, she will donate an extra 25 cents to the charity (for a maximum of $40). Here are the posts so far:
Help me give my money away - Day One
Help me give my money away - Day Two
Help me do some good - day three!
It's not too late! Go visit PT-LawMom and comment away!
I can't take credit for this wonderful word, but the guys in my husband's club have a saying about anything that needs to get done: "It will happen automagically."
Somewhere, somehow, things will just magically happen. No effort on anyone's part, of course, will be needed. In fact, no one needs to put any thought into it either. That's why it's auto-magic.
Now if I can only automagically pass the bar and get an actual legal job.
Over at PrawfsBlawg is an article entitled Legal Education Bubble. The general idea the author proposes is that there are possibly too many law students and, like the auto industry that has just collapsed from being too bloated and not selling enough cars, law schools will implode by educating too many law students when there simply is not enough jobs to go around. In addition, the author suggests that law students may find that the high cost of law school simply isn't worth it.
...job prospects for many law-school graduates were less than stellar even before the recent economic difficulties. Will prospective law students increasingly conclude that the costs of the degree are not worth the benefits?
One thing I have learned about exams is to never, ever talk about them with someone from your class when you are done. You will spend hours needlessly freaking out when you hear that your classmate gave a different answer than you did. Most of the time, I will have written the right answer (hence, why I'm still in law school), but post exam, if I hear that someone else answered an exam question in a different way I start to panic.
One guy followed me out of the exam room the other day. I tried to do the pleasantries like, "Wow, it's cold outside!" or "Glad we have a long break after this!" And then he started talking about the exam questions. My heart rate started to speed up. He asked how I felt about the last essay and I said something vague like "I thought it was hard..." hoping he would let it go. But he had to go and start dissecting the essay question. As we walked toward his car I just kept nodding and saying "Uh-huh" while mentally trying to block him out.
I know some people decompress from exams in different ways than I do (which involves weeping in a corner while rocking myself - okay maybe not, but sometimes I feel like it). His way must be to talk it through. He's a nice guy but I was so grateful his car was next to the building and mine was three blocks away. I wonder if he noticed when I sprinted towards mine as I made my escape.
Do yourself a favor, don't dissect your exams until after you get your grades, and even then, don't do it with a classmate!
And for those "well-meaning" family members and friends who ask how I think I did on my exams, do you think saying "It was so hard I think I freakin' flunked" while sobbing like a wounded moose would get them to stop asking? I mean, come on, after a gruelling exam where I come out feeling more stupid than when I walked in, do you REALLY want to know how I think I did??? I'm tight as a wire to begin with, please don't add to it by asking me about my exams. For me, I never guess how I did. I always assume I flunked until I hear otherwise from the great god of grades.
Finals, once again, are over! Thank goodness!
The last one was a killer. Okay, it was only Constitutional Law, but the professor seemed to think that on the multiple choice, the crazier the answer the better! Basically, he'd give three completely wrong answers and then one that was just way out there, but since the other three were totally wrong, the fourth one must have been the right one. I think he just enjoyed messing with our heads.
I'm hoping the bar questions aren't like that.
What was worse is that two of his essay questions were about things we spent FIVE MINUTES in class on. I'm grateful I paid attention in class, but COME ON! Don't you think you should be testing us on things we learned about all term instead of the five minute segment on Election law?
I'm just grateful it's all over! I will now be heading into the corner to weep for a few minutes before I head off to enjoy my term break.
In my constant attempt to do anything that will distract me from studying, I have found this great blog post at A Public Defender entitled, "10 things I didn't learn in law school."
What better way to find out what I'm missing that from someone who's already been through the law school journey. Enjoy...
It's interesting how little focus I have on my upcoming exam. Instead of studying, I'm again surfing the net. So today's topic is about what to do as a law student when you have no job offers (especially with a bad economy.)
I found this great article called "Advice for the Lawlorn" in Lawjobs.com's Career Center. A 3L law student bemoans the fact that their job offer was rescinded by a Big Law firm in New York City. The columnist replies:
The first thing you need to do is accept the fact that you may not be working at a New York BigLaw firm right out of law school. You need to continue to send out your resumes but not only to the New York BigLaw firms but also to firms in the tri-state area and firms of all sizes. And you need to start looking at alternatives to law firms.
...it's nasty out there and who knows when it is going to get nice again, so for now you need to do anything and everything you can to keep up your spirits and continue to send out resumes and meet with people and network and bug your law school's career services office and do anything and everything you can.
Over at Legal Profession Blog is a great post entitled "Beyond IRAC: Law School Exam Taking Tips".
My favorite has to be the following:
It also cracks me up when he mentions poor handwriting. Last week, my Con Law professor spent ten minutes in our review class explaining the torturous process we would have to endure if he can't read our handwriting on the exam. Good thing I signed up for laptop exams.... I get nervous handwriting exams and the pain of doing an essay by hand is worse than answering the actual essay.3. Don't try to be funny. Trust me. Even though my class is one-part stand-up comedy to two parts substance, I get no comic relief from witticisms (even your repeating my own) in the exam. It doesn't hurt you; it just wastes your valuable time.
Let's face it... the economy sucks.
Last night my husband and I were watching the History Channel show 70's Fever. It was creepy how similar the 1970's are compared to now.
The following is an article from PrawfsBlog about laptops in the classroom from a professor's perspective:
"Hello and what's your laptop policy?"
I actually feel mixed about the use of laptops in the classroom.
For those students who use it for taking notes, I think it's great! In fact, I just had to take a final quiz in my writing class this week. The professor made us write it out by hand, with an ink pen. It was sheer torture! So I completely understand the need to have laptops!
For those students who use it to chat with their friends and have flashing graphics going off in front of me - stop it!!! It's annoying. It's one thing to try to quietly check your e-mail on the sly. It's quite another to have dancing graphics or flashing pictures blaze across your screen. It's distracting and downright rude to your neighbors.
I highly doubt as lawyers we'll get away with checking the Entertainment Weekly site in court. So for those of you students doing it in class, wean yourself off it now.
I turned my final paper in along with my first paper re-write. I felt a huge weight lift off my chest and the rapid, panic-induced panting I've been doing is starting to subside.
I found it interesting that when I was doing my re-write of my first paper for extra credit, the errors I had made seemed monumental when I first read the professor's comments. Granted, my grade wasn't horrible by any means, but I was crushed when I originally saw all the blue ink scrawled across the page. But when I opened it back up to do the re-write, I found that many of the errors were simple fixes, not the huge errors in judgement I thought I had made. Maybe I'm actually learning something here in law school?
I'm hoping my final paper didn't have too many errors. I resisted the temptation to steam opem envelope to review my paper one final time. I met with the professor a few weeks ago on it and she said I need to be more confident about my writing. For example, she said sometimes I include too much because I'm worried I'm not including enough. She said it takes time to learn when to stop writing. Her motto is clean and simple gets the job done. She's obviously a big proponent of the Plain English movement in law.
Now the only thing I have left to do for the term is to take a small test tonight in Writing (we get to re-write complex sentences into plain English) and to take my final exam in Con Law, which is more than a week from now.
How many times do you review your final draft before you put it away for good?
I finished my final paper today. Or at least I think I did. I keep double checking it. And then tweaking it. And then double checking it again. And then I have to go back and reformat the table of contents every time I tweak it.
It's now sealed in an envelope and will soon be on its way to be dropped off to the professor.
I'm tempted to check it one more time....
Having a long holiday between classes and exams is not helpful.
Two weeks ago, I kept thinking that I'll study "tomorrow" which turned into another "tomorrow" and now "tomorrow" is this week. All that extra time and I managed to do squat. Now I have a paper due on Thursday along with a re-write and then an exam next week. I think I do better with short deadlines - helps me focus more. I know I'll be scribbling like mad tonight to finish up my papers.
Being a non-traditional student, I have to compartmentalize my life. So much time for work, so much time for school, so much time for home. If I'm given more time than I need, I flounder. For example, over the holiday I didn't study and I didn't manage to get any more housework done either. Groceries are way over-due as well, unless you like living on ramen noodles and peanut butter.
So now it's crunch time for exams, which I like. I do better under pressure.
This Thanksgiving weekend sucked. Here's a synopsis of our fun:
Why do holiday's suck? Maybe we'll get all the bad stuff out of the way now so Christmas will be a breeze!
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