So this week will wrap up my final week of working at the DA's office. Unfortunately, the entire office has a retreat next week so I will come in for a celebratory lunch next Thursday and then my coop is complete. It's so bittersweet because I am in the middle of working on some really interesting cases and since they don't go to trial until January, I will miss the pinacle of my efforts. My time here has been so rewarding and if all goes well, I will be in another unit for my next coop (keep your fingers crossed for me)!

So since I have a few days to myself, I figured I would go ahead and get started with bar stuff. I know - I don't take the bar until July of 2008 but you can never be too early in preparing. In Georgia, we have to submit a background application before we can apply to sit for the bar - this is due December 5! Let me tell you, this application is 30 pages long and asks you anything and everything about where you've lived, where you've worked, what lines of credit you've had and the list goes on and on. Also, since I am hoping to work for a judge immediately after graduation, I need to follow up with all the application packets I've sent out.

So, I will let you know how that goes next week, but man, being a third year is exciting and demanding at the same time. Now that I'm getting close to graduation, the responsibilities keep mounting and hopefully, all this early work will pay off. Again, wish me luck! :-)

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

What a busy week; it's only the first week of the quarter!

I am doing some really cool things, but the coolest has to be teaching the Constitution. I may have miswritten earlier, but I am teaching 11th graders (not 12th) the Constitution. I am co-teaching with another law student and today was our first day. It was AWESOME!!!!!

The kids are a bit rowdy and they are very eager to learn more about the law and their rights! Today we told them that their semester culminates with a moot court competition and though we didn't give them all the details, it was exciting to see their little eyes light up when we told them that they were going to "play court."

Another exciting thing I did today was give my first tour to a group of prospective students. It was really fun to think back to my own experience of choosing a law school and provide that information to students who may apply to join our community here. One of the coolest things at NUSL (in my opinion) is our access to the undergraduate facilities. We have the Marino Center across the street from the law school. It is a world-class state of the art workout facility. Over the past year, I have lost thirty pounds by going over there on a regular basis (and eating right of course). It's a shame because when I go home, the access to fitness equipment is nowhere near the ease of getting in shape here. I never thought about that perk of NUSL until I gave the tour, but it has really been a blessing to have here! The prospective students that were in my tour definitely did their homework about NUSL because they didn't have a whole lot of questions. At least, I hope that was the reason they were so quiet. It was nice to see a group of well informed people coming to learn more about the "feel" of our world.

Finally, I told you all that I was taking Federal Courts last week (I think). From what I have experienced so far, I believe that this will be my most challenging course I have taken in law school thus far. You know what, I am excited about that. So often, we stay in our comfort zones and do things that we're familiar with. I have done that myself. After the first class on Tuesday, I felt exhausted and overwhelmed, but instead of dropping the course, I have decided that my last quarter of law school should be the most challenging. As I prepare for the bar (it seems to be the only thing I talk to my husband about lately), I want to be in that mindset that things that make you sweat are things that require more time and effort (and have the biggest payout). So, my feeling, well, my hope really, is that federal courts, accomplishes this goal. I hope I'm not crazy.

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 that you're having a great week - I just finished my last assignment for the week and at 7:45 PM on a Thursday, that is AWESOME!!!

Anyway, my last entry concerned finding housing in Boston and I received a great question that I felt warranted a follow up blog entry. The question regarded housing while on coop - what do NUSL students do if they're cooping out of town?

Well, as I think I mentioned, I have done all of my coops in the Atlanta area and my husband and I own a house there. So, what does that mean for my Boston housing when I'm away? Well, fortunately for me, my roommates have never charged me for my vacant room while I'm gone. So, my situation is not typical. What most students do at NUSL is sublet their apartment/house to law students on the other rotation or they simply pay rent while they're away (not the preferred option in my opinion).

I even know of one circumstance where there are four people who live in the house and two of them are on the fall/spring rotation (meaning they are on coop during these rotations) and the other two are on the summer/winter rotation. They have signed a lease that ensures they coop out of town and for the past two years, their situation has worked out flawlessly.

So, don't fret if you're worried about housing on coop. It works out and NUSL students will help you work it out.

If you all have other questions, please post a comment to my blog and I will either comment back or address your question in another blog.

Take care everyone!

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!!!

Hey folks,

I hope that this week has been good to you.

I'm writing this blog to you with sadness in my heart. I have thirteen days left at the NUSL community and quite frankly, I don't want to see it end. I am going to be on coop in Atlanta, but the days of wandering the halls of NUSL are ending for me.

I wanted to share just a few examples from this week that are going to make me really miss this place: (1) I fell off the bus earlier this week and at least five of my classmates offered to help me get (I mean hobble) around... even one great staff member offered to help me and I was just so humbled and grateful; (2) Just today, two people came up to me to tell me about jobs in Atlanta that they've come across in their own job searches and they wanted to make sure I had the heads up - only one other graduate (that I know of) is going to Atlanta after graduation; and (3) I gave a presentation today about my death penalty work that I've done in Advanced Legal Research and was told throughout the rest of the day how awesome my presentation was.

If you're thinking about NUSL, know this: you'll feel a great sense of community here if you want it - a community that I don't think you'll find anywhere else, you'll be around awesome students, faculty and staff members who will offer to help you in any way they can (and trust me, they'll follow through); and when it's all over, you'll wonder - through all the the reading, studying, and outlining, did I just wake up from a dream? Is it over already?

Folks, I simply love NUSL and am so sad that my time here has come to an end...so sad.

Maybe next week I'll be more chipper, but this week, I don't have anything to write about other than the fact that I will truly miss the place that has been awesome during the last three years.

I'll see you next week!

Hello out there,

I hope that everyone is doing well!

After 1100 miles and eighteen and a half hours, I am home! It was an amazing trip - one of my best friends flew to Boston to drive with me and how thankful I am for her! It was a great time to get catch up and begin the post finals relaxation process.

I took my last final last Wednesday, tied up loose ends, and left. As my post a few weeks ago mentioned, I am sad about leaving Northeastern. It's been such a wonderful community!

But now, the post-grad work begins. I need a job! I have a clerkship interview coming up (wish me luck) and I am very excited about that. I need to get some other leads though - I can't rest my future on one job interview. So, as I find my "lawyer" job, please keep your fingers crossed for me.

On another note entirely, my all-time favorite show, The Wire, is ending. I am also very sad about this. Not a lot of people watched this HBO show, but it is an amazing tale about the city of Baltimore and the intersections between the drug dealers, the police, the politicians, the schools, and the media. Any future lawyer would become hooked! In fact, one of my classmates told me about the show during my first year and it wasn't until I was in the thick of wedding planning that I actually took a look. If you haven't watched this show, watch it! You won't be disappointed.

And with that, I'll talk to you all later this week after I've begun my coop. Take care!

Hello everyone,

I hope this blog posting finds everyone out there doing well!

I wanted to share my experience about death row last week, but work at the Southern Center is incredibly busy and I haven't had time, so today's the day.

Last week, I went to one of Alabama's three death rows. I went to the one located in Atmore, Alabama. Though death row is located here, there are also prisoners in Atmore who have not been convicted of capital crimes. The trip there and back is equivalent to half of the drive to Boston from Atlanta (600 miles!). Yes, it was a long day!

I wanted to share some of my reflections with you about the entire experience. Some of this is based on the fact that my father worked at federal prisons his entire life and subsequently, I lived on prison reservations for a good chunk of my childhood. (A prison reservation is simply lower cost housing for prison employees.) So, I've seen quite a few prisons in my lifetime.

The first thing I noted was the physical condition of the prison. Half of the road leading up to the prison was paved and the other half was a dirt road. The paved road was replete with pot holes and made New York City's potholes seem mild. There was a tower right in front of the prison and there was no intercom system. So, we had to yell up to the guard and inform him we were visiting one of our clients. It was very strange. Once we got inside, I noticed the whole place just looked like it needed a good pressure washing. It just seemed very dirty, but perhaps that perception was colored by our purpose for the visit.

The entire trip was incredibly sad! One of the problems with the death penalty is that some people who are sentenced to it get emotionally and mentally tired of the appellate processes. As a result, they ask their support network (if they're lucky to have one) to help them end their lives sooner. I was unfortunately privvy to this sentiment and it made me feel an even greater sense of urgency to what the Southern Center stands for.

So, sorry that this blog is somewhat muddled, but my thoughts are all over the place after being able to put real faces and places to the death penalty. One thing is clear though, I am opposed to the death penalty and I am learning more and more about why I am not a fan. I will hopefully be sharing these reasons with you increasingly over the next few months of this coop.

Take care!

Hello everyone,

I hope that you had a good weekend. For those of you who celebrate the Easter holiday, I hope it went well! My weekend was filled with lots of yardwork - my body is so sore today! My husband and I are going to start a vegetable garden this spring. In order to make this work, I had to till the ground and put down fresh soil because planting vegetables in Georgia clay will not work. We're going to plant rosemary (I use it in everything), strawberries, tomatoes, and yellow squash. I am really excited, but glad to be here at coop not doing anything physically draining.

So, in remaining consistent with my blog topics (enough about gardening already), I wanted to let you all know about how hard last Friday was for me. I am totally the type of person who needs first-hand context to feel passion about my work. What I mean by this is that doing appellate work is fascinating legally, but somewhat removed from the client because at the appellate stage, you are reviewing the record for legal error and making an appeal to the appellate court to provide legal relief based on such error. I hope this is not too confusing. Anyway, last Friday, I asked one of the investigators here to share some stories with me about our clients.

While I cannot go into incredible detail about what was revealed to me, what I will say is that at least for the two clients I am working on now, their childhood lives were more horrific than I truly thought possible!!!!! Of course, I knew that there were some very difficult experiences out there, but it's different when it slaps you in the face like it did me. On a more positive note, that kind of revelation was just what I needed to incite the passion that I was looking for.

Have a good week everyone!

Hello everyone,

I hope that your week went very well! I have been extremely busy preparing to spend four days in Alabama for an evidentiary hearing. This is where we get to show the court our evidence supporting a life sentence instead of the death penalty. Lucky for me, a few very important legal issues have come up and I am being utilized to figure those issues out. It's very exciting! I love having that type of adrenaline rush.

Anyway, there are two very exciting things that have come up that I wanted to share with you:

The first thing is that Justice Breyer is going to be our main commencement speaker. Justice Breyer has been an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1994 and is generally known for being on the more "liberal leaning" side of the court. Plenty of people are super excited about his attendance, including me! I have to admit, I wasn't very nervous about speaking at graduation until this announcement was posted. I am still a bit nervous, but will work through that. I still have almost two months, right.

The second thing I wanted to share with you is that the Southern Center took on a Louisiana case a few years ago and the Supreme Court finally ruled on the case, IN OUR FAVOR. Here is a little synopsis that I am posting from the American Bar Associations' Criminal Justice Section and a link to the full opinion if you are interested. Last week was a GREAT week!!!

Snyder v. Louisiana

By a 7-2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court found that prosecutor Jim Williams improperly excluded blacks from the jury that convicted Allen Snyder of killing his estranged wife's companion. Snyder is black and the jurors were white. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, said the trial judge should have blocked Williams from striking a black juror. Justices Thomas and Scalia dissented. Thomas said he would not "second-guess" the judge. In a 4-3 decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that race had no part in the state's decisions involving black potential jurors.

During jury selection in the trial, Williams disqualified all five blacks in the pool of prospective jurors. The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that prosecutors may not exclude people from a jury solely because of their race. The court already had sent Snyder's case back to the Louisiana courts following a ruling in 2005 that bolstered the prohibition on race bias in jury selection.

The prosecutor's explanation for striking a prospective black juror was "suspicious," said Alito. The prospective juror's supervisor said he did not think a schedule conflict between the upcoming trial and the prospective juror's work would be a problem. In contrast, the prosecutor accepted white jurors who disclosed conflicting obligations "that appear to have been at least as serious as" the prospective black juror who was excused, Alito wrote.

Stephen Bright, Snyder's Atlanta-based lawyer, said the ruling shows there is broad agreement among the justices that courts must closely examine the reasons given for excusing potential jurors when racial motives might be present but not acknowledged. "The disturbing thing is that courts in Louisiana and elsewhere were just deferring to trial judges, no matter the reasons," Bright said. Snyder will get a new trial as a result of the ruling.

Click on the link below to access the full opinion. If you cannot click on the link, copy and paste it into your browser.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-10119.pdf

Hello everyone out there,

I hope that you had a great week last week!

My week was pretty busy - lots to report here!

First off, I had my first post-graduate job interview for a superior court two-year clerkship. The judge said that she called me in because of the diversity of my resume (from teaching to recruiting to becoming a law student) and that while she isn't currently in need of a clerk (her clerk has a few more months to fulfill), she wanted me in her pipeline. The interview went very well and I feel very confident about my interview performance. I do need a job sooner than six months though, so we'll see what happens.

On another front entirely, we went to Alabama last week to interview people for our upcoming evidentiary hearing. Through this visit I learned quite a few things.

First, people can get very damaged from sitting on a jury where the crime is death penalty eligible. Consequently, their willingness to help you can be impaired. I never thought about jurors feeling guilty after sentencing a person to die and to witness it was very enlightening and quite sad.

Second, there seems to be a serious need for community-wide education about the death penalty - people are strongly wedded to their ideas and they are largely based on myths...now, if you read my entries a few months ago, I was definitely ignorant about the death penalty, so now that I know more, I recognize this sentiment is a bit judgmental. It's just very frustrating and difficult to balance respect for people's ideas (and people who you need to help you!) and the fact that their ideas are often very far from reality. Add that to all the evidentiary rules and you have a very thin line that you're balancing on.

Finally, the reason I love the coop system so much is that you really do get a feel for what you want to do (or at least, what you don't want to do) as an attorney. I have realized during this coop that if I decided somewhere down the road to practice anti-death penalty work, it would have to be at the trial level. The trial level can be fascinating - from selecting jurors to determining a defense theory. So, that's the revelation for the week.

The evidentiary hearing is next week, so hopefully there will be lots to share then!

Take care!

Hello everyone out there,

I hope that you all are having a great week as I am. The weather in Atlanta has been awesome and I was very excited to be able to put my coat away! The unfortunateness is that it's supposed to get colder next week. Oh well, day by day it is.

So much is going on in my world right now... I'm heading to Alabama for another evidentiary hearing next week and this one promises to be very interesting. I am doing my part around here by helping all the attorneys get ready...it's nuts, but lots of fun!

I am also getting prepared for my the parole hearing in Montgomery on May 7...that should also be very interesting! I can't wait to tell you all about it!

On the school front, I am almost done with a first draft of my graduation speech and I am starting to get a little nervous about it. It's not often that a law student gets to speak in the presence of a Supreme Court Justice. In the real world when a lawyer prepares to argue in front of the High Court, there are weeks and weeks of mock oral arguments in front of colleagues to get you ready for your presentation and any question the Justices may ask of you. I am so glad that I am not preparing to be receiving any questions, but I am starting to get nervous nevertheless.

Finally, I still do not have a job post-graduation and graduation is one month from yesterday. I'm not too worried since most law school graduates don't have jobs before graduation, but it is still a point of contention. So, keep me in your minds.

I hope this email doesn't sound too depressing because that's now how I feel - I think that this sense of feeling anxious and a tad bit overwhelmed is normal for a third-year law student who has less than four weeks left.

So with that, I hope that those of you who have been accepted into NUSL will send me your questions about coming here that way I can write about things that will truly be helpful and insightful to you.

Take care!

Hello fellow readers,

I have been gone for a while and for that, I sincerely apologize. My life is completely and totally consumed with preparing for the Georgia bar! Mortgages, corporations, professional responsibility, contracts (and a host of other law subjects) now take up my entire world. While many of my colleagues likely wouldn't admit this, I have to say that two and a half weeks in, I kind of enjoy learning all that I have gained during law school. I really "feel" I know more than I think...we'll see though.

With that said, I received a friendly reminder that my blog fans wanted an update and I will do the best I can to continue to check in weekly, though one caveat - I'm not sure how good I'll be as July 29 and 30 inch closer.

Anyway, a few exciting things to share with you all:

First - Graduation was awesome! It was so nice to reconnect with classmates and spend a week enjoying graduation week events that were planned by an awesome committee of graduating 3Ls! Justice Breyer and Karl Klare (a professor at NUSL) gave really wonderful speeches and it was really amazing to have a Supreme Court Justice join us for the day. I also gave my graduation speech and I feel pretty good about it. It was a bit nerve wracking to follow Justice Breyer and a highly respected law professor, but I got through it. If you're at all interested, the video is posted here:

http://www.northeastern.edu/neuhome/videos/lawcommencement08/index.html

Second - I have accepted a contract position with Northeastern a month after I take the bar. I have some promising job leads in Georgia, but I must pass the bar to begin the formal hire processes. So, yes, I will be returning to Boston for three months to work at what is now called, my alma mater.

I hope that all of you who will be entering the NUSL class of 2011 are enjoying your summer and getting all the rest and relaxation that you can. The first few months of law school are exciting and exhausting, so if you want any advice for how you should be spending your time now, my personal advice is to R.E.S.T. That's just my $.02 though.

Anyway, that's all for now. I do hope that you continue to fare well!