As I mentioned last week, bar preparation and job search stuff is getting the best of me. I worked on the bar background application for nine hours today... yes, NINE hours! Though this seems incredible, there is one reason why it took so much time. The bar wants to know where I've worked in the past TEN years. Well, I graduated from college seven years before I came to law school. This meant that my college jobs and the other four jobs I had before coming to law school needed to be on my application. I spent most of my day tracking down the names and numbers of people who I needed to put on my application. Though it took me a long time, it was fun catching up with people I haven't spoken to in some years.

On another note, this week was a great week on the job search front. As I told you all a few weeks ago, I am applying to become a law clerk for either a state court or superior court judge after graduation. I heard from FIVE judges this week, and it's only Wednesday! One judge was particularly impressed with NUSL's evaluation system and told me that in 30 years, he hasn't seen an application that is so professional and thorough. This judge has hired a clerk already but said he would "love" to hear from me next summer after I take the bar. Another judge scheduled an interview with me in March. She doesn't have any time until then to meet me and was more than willing to be flexible with my Boston-Atlanta-Boston-Atlanta schedule. This was good news for me. The other three informed me that they either did not hire law clerks or that they have already hired someone for next fall.

So though I wasn't necessarily early in sending my materials to judges, I was still early enough to get some "bites" from my applications which is good news! Hopefully I'll have more good news to share with you next week! Take care!

Hi there everyone,

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that your holiday is filled with good food and great fellowship with your family and friends! My husband and I planned on spending this holiday with my sister in Pennsylvania, but unfortunately, my car sprung a gas leak!!! So, we are still in Atlanta and my car is fixed, but we won't head back to Boston until Friday morning. Thank goodness for the small breaks we have between coop and classes. :-)

Anyway, I will keep this entry short because I really don't have much to discuss about school. I am really looking forward to my ***last*** academic quarter. One of the things that I am most looking forward to is teaching the Constitution to 12th grade high school students. It's a part of NUSL's Marshall Brennan Scholars program. I am also taking Federal Courts, Advanced Legal Research and Criminal Trial Practice. So I will hopefully have a lot to share about these classes when I return to class next week.

So again, enjoy your holiday and I'll write again soon.

Aisha

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry for the late blog posting. I spoke at an information session last Wednesday night for prospective students and from there, my week rocked, but my blog posting suffered. So, I apologize for that.

Anyway, I want to devote this topic to Boston housing. Coming from Atlanta, housing was definitely a concern for me because I had no idea where to live or how to go about finding a place to live where I would feel comfortable.

So, the first thing I did was look at the email that the admissions office sent that included a brief overview of Boston neighborhoods. Given that NUSL is in Roxbury, I wanted to live somewhere relatively close. I narrowed my search to Jamaica Plain because not only is it close, but many law students live in Jamaica Plain and it's very close to both the bus that drops you off right in front of NUSL and the orange line which stops on campus.

So, once I knew which neighborhood I wanted to live in, I started my hunt on craigslist. I love this website! Not only has it been great for selling and buying things, but I found a great and affordable apartment pretty quickly by using it. I found a lovely couple living in Jamaica Plain who consistently rent a bedroom in their house to graduate students. I lived with them during my first year and it was a great experience.

My second year, I moved to Dorchester. Dorchester is a bit far from NUSL and I wouldn't recommend living in this neighborhood without a car, but I chose to live here so that I could live with my friend who needed some help with childcare.

My third year, I moved back to Jamaica Plain and I currently live with two of my classmates. My friend in Dorchester was having her third child and I really wanted to be closer to school so that I could spend more time with my classmates for my last year of law school.

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every living situation I have been in. It took some courage to move here and live with people I didn't know, but it ended up working out. Many of my friends who also came to NUSL from out of town did something similar to me, but all of us have our own unique stories. If you're moving here from out of town, please don't hesitate to contact current students for assistance. We're a friendly bunch at NUSL.

Have a great week!

Hello everyone,

I hope this week has been good to you with the celebration of our very own Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. I spent the holiday in New York City with some Teach For America friends and it was awesome! It's amazing how much Harlem has changed... I think 20 people asked to braid my hair as soon as I got off the train - that was different. But, I saw the lovely Apollo and all the other great things Harlem has to offer like the food and eclectic people. I took the bus that is frequently called the "Chinatown bus" to get there from Boston and it was awesome! Nothing better than a $20 ride to get you to the Big Apple for a small law school getaway...

Anyway, I wanted to write this week and update you all on my coop process and how it's been going. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, I was very torn between doing another coop at a District Attorney's office and doing a public defense coop. As I told you, I decided to apply to juvenile prosecution & defense and some civil litigation firms.

Given I am creating my own coop, I started by sending out my resume to some organizations that I researched on Westlaw. (Just as an aside, if you plan on completing a coop with a firm that NUSL has a connection with, you cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT contact them on your own!!! These are the rules!)

Given all of the places I am interested in are in Georgia and not on the list, I threw my name in the hat for the Georgia Department of Education and other small firms that do defense work. None of those panned out for various reasons, however, I did call up my first coop employer (a Georgia state judge) and she was very instrumental in helping me figure out a strategy. NUSL does have relationships with several Georgia employers that conduct general defense work. The judge told me that completing a defense coop would be great for my future hopes of attaining a clerkship and that having experience on both sides of criminal matters would ultimately make me more marketable. Nothing like a great network of experienced lawyers and judges to remind you of the bigger picture.

So, tomorrow morning, I am participating in our formal coop process (for the first time) and trying my hand at public interest criminal defense work. Wish me luck! Hopefully in the next two weeks, I can officially tell you where I will complete my last coop.

Have a great rest of your week and weekend!!!

Hello everyone,

I hope that since my last posting, you have been doing well!

So I wanted to write and give you an update on my coop. I decided to go to an organization that deals with criminal defense in the context of the death penalty. I am going to the Southern Center for Human Rights to work on appeals for death penalty defendants. I know - I go from one extreme to the other, don't I? I am very excited to be going to this organization. I know it's weird to use the word exciting in the realm of the death penalty, but to me, it's going to be exciting.

I became interested in death penalty work after working on my Advanced Legal Research project this quarter. Essentially, I am working on a project that looks at how insular minorities, (and in my case, I am looking at women and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender ("GBLT") people) intersect with the death penalty. I have found some incredible research that suggests that prosecutors use sexuality in an arguably discriminatory manner when seeking the death penalty for gay defendants, and that female defendants are often not sentenced to the death penalty because of the fact that death penalty statutes purposely limit the realm of the death penalty to crimes that men are more likely to commit. I am still in the thick of my research, but it's fascinating.

So, I am co-oped everyone and ridiculously excited about the fact!

Hello cyberspace,

I hope that everyone who reads my blog is doing well!

There are so many things I need to update you on and I apologize that I am so late with this posting, but my computer has been on the fritz. It's finally fixed and I am extremely thankful for that. Though my hard drive wasn't affected, please let this be your reminder to BACK UP YOUR FILES! I was so anxious waiting to hear whether I'd lost everything or not...I didn't lose a thing and am feeling extremely lucky!

Okay, so the first update that I need to tell you about is our second evidentiary hearing in Birmingham, Alabama. This hearing was much shorter than the first one that I attended, but it was much more interesting. I hate that I cannot get into any detail (as I've said all quarter), but I can't.

What I will say is this: if you are an attorney working in a culture that's different from yours, the importance of understanding that culture is extremely important; it can mean the difference between winning and losing or gaining support and losing support. NUSL does a great job of imparting this principle to first year students through the Legal Skills in a Social Context program. Because we all have different experiences and biases based on our upbringing and background, working through how these characteristics may play out in your "lawyering" approach can truly mean a world of difference in terms of how effective a lawyer you'll be.

My second update is that I conducted my parole hearing last Wednesday in Montgomery, Alabama. This experience was by far my most exciting one on this coop. My clients' presentation was very straightforward and I was feeling very confident about my ability to effectively represent her until I received some unfortunate news a week before the hearing. While I cannot go into the details of this, let's just say that my client had a stellar record and she received a citation that tarnished her record.

When I walked into the hearing, I was slightly intimidated because of the layout of the room. The board sits high up (kind of like three judges would in a courtroom) and I had to walk to the podium in the middle of the room with a microphone. Before I started speaking, the board just asked me if I was aware of my clients' infraction. Instead of responding right away, I asked them if I may introduce myself before getting to the merits of her situation. They allowed me to do that and after my introduction, I told them what I knew of the situation, how we prepared to handle it, and how my client recognized the seriousness of her actions. While the board decided not to grant my client parole, they did say they would revisit the possibility of parole in six months.

This is a huge feat for a few reasons! First, the board told me that they planned on allowing my client to finish out her year and a half sentence without parole at all! From what my coop employer told me, the board tends to have their minds made up prior to hearing from a representative; the fact that my presentation changed their minds was truly a first. Secondly, the board generally will revisit a clients' parole eligibility within another year or a year and a half. The fact that they are revisiting my clients' case in six months is another first according to my coop employer. So, overall, I am extremely excited for the result and am very happy for my client!!!!

Finally, the day after my parole hearing, my supervisors and I travelled back to Alabama's death row to meet with some of our clients. We spent six hours "on the yard" visiting with them. Let me just say that I think the movie "Dead Man Walking" does a great job of providing viewers with the "feel" of a death row - it is slightly depressing because the feel of the place is just so bleak. I will also add though that I really enjoyed seeing some of the clients whose claims I'd worked on and it was nice to finally put faces with names.

On Friday, I ended my coop and now I am in the thick of applying for post-graduate jobs and getting prepared for graduation (only 9 days until the big day)! Wish the class of 2008 luck as we prepare to end our three-year law school tenure. I'll chat with you all next week.