Started Law School Proper

Well, I started regular law school classes yesterday. As of today I have met all my professors, and they all seem like pretty good people. They all expect a lot out of me, but that's just the nature of law school in general, and I can't fault them for that. Our school has a strict grading curve, so my work will be judged on the work of others. I don't like grading curves because it's possible that I can write the third greatest work known to mankind and still end up third in class if two other people by pure coincidence happen to write numbers 1 and 2. I can write a perfectly good, well-reasoned, cogent exam, and still screw up. I don't like that, but I have no other choice than to deal with it.

I volunteered to be the first victim of my entire session of this semester of law school on Monday. I volunteered to take the first case. I think I did rather well under the pressure. I like talking in class and I don't worry about giving the wrong answers. I expect that some of what I say will be either wrong or at least not what the professor had in mind, but I'm fine with that. I don't know everything, and the best I can do is put in as much time and effort as I can to do as well as I can.

The workload isn't so bad thus far. I put in 12.5 hours yesterday and about 10 hours today. I would have put in closer to 11.5, but my torts professor told me to read the entire section on battery instead of just the section dealing with the elements for Wednesday. Turns out we won't get to intent till Thursday, so I ended up doing both Wednesday's and Thursday's assignment last night. I was rather frustrated with the whole thing, but I feel better now that I saved myself some time tonight. Unfortunately, I'm stuck here at school until the bus comes.

Let me be clear about something. Law is not, in any way, shape, or form, an easy subject to study. It asks a lot of difficult questions, which you won't always have the right answers to. Even your best logic can leave you wondering what the hell just went on. Also, the rules that are put forth in these casebooks sometimes end up contradicting each other. This is by design, I'm guessing so we can see how the system is flawed. These are my initial thoughts. I'll let you know how things are going later on when I have a better idea of the hell I'm going to put myself through.

One last note... you will HATE civil procedure. It is nasty. The statutes you have to read are written in a language that no mere mortal can comprehend. The words don't fit together well and apparently the people that wrote them had no clue what a runon sentence was. That's just the beginning of it. The Supreme Court has been shown to conflict with itself on several occasions when it comes to procedure. I expect this will come back to haunt me on exam day.

Orientation week...

Well, this is my first week of law school. It's orientation week and they sure are trying their best to keep us busy. Orientation and Legal Research and Writing runs from 2:00-6:15pm and introduces us to briefing cases, legal reasoning, and other fun stuff, most of which I learned in Law Preview. They have us briefing cases already and reading chapters out of our LRW books. Full classes don't start till next week and then things get really interesting.

Now for a gripe. The mass transit system for Detroit completely sucks. I use SMART to travel to school because gas prices are so damn high and with no income to speak of, things are not going to be easy. I save money wherever I can now and transportation is a biggie. Yesterday I tried to catch the 510 Van Dyke bus at Michigan and Griswold and the driver refused to stop, leaving me stranded at the corner for another 1.5 hours before another 510 came along. The driver was apparently a bastard.

Today was smoother, but I still don't like the way the bus schedules work. They're all pretty much hacked together with no connection to when buses arrive and leave at transfer points. Consequently, this leaves me standing there with my hands in my pockets for 30 minutes at times while I wait for another bus. What's worse is that the bus that runs down 14 mile shuts down at 7:00 pretty much, so I have to walk home 1.5 miles every day. What a perfectly good way to piss someone off.

In any case, I've gotten my reading assignments for my classes. They're a bit long, but not too daunting. The dean of the law school gave a speech on how we should reread our cases 3 times and if we think we understand what's going on in the cases, something's wrong with us. He says we shouldn't understand them. Well, the cases I've briefed so far I feel I understand quite well. They are quite well articulated and aren't difficult to understand in my opinion. I'm sure it will get more difficult and frustrating, but that's what law's all about. My problem is that if I still feel I understand what's going on that means something's wrong with me? That doesn't make any sense to me.

He's also encouraging study groups, but the thing is, I've never done well in study groups. Invariably I'm the one who works his ass off with one other person usually, while the other two slack off and screw me over. Needless to say, that's one piece of advice I'm probably not going to take. I know of tons of other people who have worked their way through first year alone and did just fine. Granted, this will make outlining a long and arduous process, but that's law school. It's supposed to be long and arduous. I'd be upset if it were easy because one of the reasons I went was for a challenge, and a challenge is what I expect.

My Last Day of Work

Well, I have closed another chapter in the book that is my life. Today was my last day at my job. Law school starts Monday and I will have no time to remain on at my workplace. As it is, I'll be lucky to survive the hectic schedule that is law school. We had a pretty good time.

I had a couple service calls today, but nothing major. Then at the end of the day, we had cake and beer, and my coworkers and boss gave me a card. We swapped stories for awhile, then I turned my stuff in, got my stuff together, and took the long walk to my car. It's a sort of bittersweet thing I guess. On one hand, I'm sad to go, because I liked working there. On the other hand, it's a happy occassion because I'm moving on to do what I really want to do with my life.

So, that being said, here we go. Monday starts the rest of my life, and I'm both excited and apprehensive about the experience. Wish me luck. Watashi wa ganbarimasu!

One week more...

Well, this is it, my last week of freedom for quite some time. I haven't really figured out how I'm going to spend it yet, but I will try to think of some fun stuff to do. I've got all my books ordered, most of which have arrived, to the tune of $750 for everything (and that's only for 1st semester, but a couple of them can be reused in second semester). My schedule has me in torts, contracts A, civil procedure A, criminal law, and legal research and writing. I go Monday through Friday, but only have one class on Friday and that's LRW. Registration is set, my financial aid is squared away, and I've got health insurance for anything catastrophic that could potentially happen. Next week starts orientation and legal research and writing from 2:00pm-6:15pm. The following week starts classes in full swing.

I will still be updating this blog throughout law school, though the updates may be rather sparse, as I will be quite busy working 12 hours a day reading, writing briefs, outlining, etc. Still, I will do my best to keep you all informed of how it's going and anything interesting I've learned from the experience. This is going to be an experience unlike any other and I'm looking forward to it with both eagerness and apprehension.