Benny, 3L

I've been back on campus now for a few days, and it feels like all the 3Ls have an acute case of senioritis. With only a couple of academic quarter left, people are definitely starting to think beyond law school, and are full steam ahead on all sorts of job applications. With the application deadline for our last co-op in a couple of weeks, people are definitely thinking strategically about where they want to end up after school. So, with the post-law school plans taking up so much time, and everyone taking a more -- how should I put this -- relaxed attitude toward academics, I am left with one burning question....

Why oh why am I taking 16 credits, plus working on the side?

This fall, I'm taking Negotiation, Immigration, Trusts & Estates, Corporations, and Predatory Lending on Trial (a seminar). I'm also working a day or two a week at my summer co-op employer, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, where I'm continuing to work on a few legal and policy projects. Being in the last year of law school, it's starting to dawn on me that I'm going to be a working stiff soon, and I really want to try to maximize what I get out of school, because this is, in all likelihood, the last time I'm going to be a student.

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ROADTRIP!

So my wife and I were supposed to go on a wondeful vacation to Portugal and Spain a couple of weeks ago, once I was done with my job at MassDOT. We had to postpone the trip until February, though, when my wife had to have some last minute surgery to repair a broken finger. We decided to go on a road trip instead, and visit my brother's family in Chicago (where they just moved to from Madison, WI). On the way there, we made quite a few stops, taking the northern route, and visited Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and Ann Arbor, with some very brief stops in between. On the way back, we took the route south of the great lakes, visiting my cousin in Cleveland, and friends in upstate New York. I can't imagine that any of you would be interested in seeing the route we took, but in case you are....

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What? Fall 2011, you say? While I'm about to start my third and final year of classes in a few short weeks on August 31, I'm starting to think ahead to post-graduation. First step: applying for jobs. This past week I sent in my first round of applications for judicial clerkships. While I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a post-graduate clerkship when I first started last school, the experience of working on the First Circuit convinced me that it's something that I'd be pretty good at. I should have all of my applications in within the next couple of weeks, but given how tight the job market is, I'm not holding my breath. Besides clerkships, I'm focusing my search on a few programs for entry level attorneys at government agencies, both state and federal. More updates to come.

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Co-op is going really well. I've worked on lots of really interesting and challenging projects the last few weeks, including some very complicated administrative law issues that I was totally unfamiliar with until a few days ago. Last night, we had an end of summer dinner for the Rappaport Fellowship, where all of 12 of the Rappaport Fellows in Law and Public Policy -- including 3 NUSL students -- spoke briefly about our experiences this summer. I've gone back and forth about whether I want to work in government after law school, and last night's event definitely swung my career pendulum back in the direction of government.

I'm reazing all of a sudden that my last day here at MassDOT is pretty soon (August 18), and that I have quite a few meaty projects to wrap up before then.

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As for the fall, there are a few classes that I know I'm going to take: Immigration; Negotiation; Corporations; and Predatory Lending on Trial (I think that's the class name....) As for my final class, I'm deciding between Trusts & Estates; Civil Trial Practice (I'll probably take that in the spring); First Amendment; and Law & Economic Development. I have a feeling that I'll end up shopping around for the first week before settling on a final schedule.

This past Thursday morning, fellow participants in the FASPE program dispersed to our homes or places of summer employment after a nearly two week journey that began in New York, and brought us to Berlin, Krakow, and the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. I extended my trip by a couple of days, visiting my grandmother's hometown of Dabrowa Gornicza, Poland, the the neighboring community of Bedzin.

Right now, I'm relaxing in my Krakow hostel, and I must admit, I'm as exhausted I've ever been, both physically and intellectually. The point of the program was to have the participants, as aspiring professionals in law and medicine, reflect on their ethical obligations. The Holocaust was clearly a human tragedy of epic proportions. Although it may sound obvious, the Holocaust also represented a historical lapse of ethical conduct on the part of the professionals that took part in its planning and execution. One of our stops on the trip was the Wannsee House, site of the Wannsee Conference, where 15 high level German bureaucrats worked out the details of Hitler's Final Solution to the Jewish question. Most striking, from the perspective of an aspiring lawyer, was that of those 15 individuals present at the conference, 8 of them were lawyers. Throughout our readings and discussions, we focused on the role that lawyers played in the events leading up to and including the Holocaust -- drafting legislation, implementing Hitler's directives, and prosecuting crimes and meting out punishment consistent with the Third Reich's political and ideological objectives.

What struck me throughout FASPE was the fact that the routine tasks that were necessary for the accomplishment of the Final Solution were often routine bureaucratic and legal in nature. Every German that played a role in the Holocaust did not operate a gas chamber or pull a trigger, but countless thousands filled out forms, drafted rules and regulations, and ensured that the routine tasks that were necessary for the successful implementation of the Final Solution were carried out.

This realization struck me in particular as we were touring Berlin. The building pictured below was erected by the Nazi government. Although it is apparently a good example of fascist Nazi architecture, the building stood out to me not as an example of Nazi architecture, but as a prototypical bureaucratic building, akin to something one sees in Washington, DC, the type of anonymous building where government officials make day to day decisions that on their face seem ordinary.

In the end, the program left me with as many questions as it did answers. After all, lawyers arguably owe a duty, above all else, to the law. However, lawyers during Hitler's Reich acted consistent with the law -- constitutional, statutory, and administrative -- of the Third Reich, including the Weimar Constitution. However, in doing so, they carried out one of the greatest crimes against humanity that the world has ever seen. As one of my classmates on the program pointed out, perhaps FASPE did not give us the tools to solve ethical problems as they arise in the legal profession. However, perhaps FASPE, by bringing us face to face with the consequences of these egregious professional lapses, enhanced our ability to perceive and identify ethical problems that may otherwise go unnoticed.

For all of you that are curious about the program (especially fellow NUSL students), I would highly recommend that you check out the website, and consider applying. For those of you that are interested in seeing some pictures from my trip, you can go here.

Obviously, I usually write from Boston. However, this week, I'm in New York, for the first leg of the FASPE program, which I think I may have written about briefly in the past. The program is an opportunity for law students to study the role that the legal profession played in the Holocaust, and there are about a dozen of us from law schools around the country. Today, we started off with a tour of the Museum of Jewish Heritage (the official sponsoring organization), and tomorrow we have more seminars and discussions, before heading over to JFK for our flight to Berlin. I'm not sure how my internet access is going to be in Europe, but hopefully I'll have a chance to post from Germany and/or Poland. The trip is a bit less than two weeks.

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Clearly, as a Boston sports fan, I can't help but write for at least a bit about the Celtics. I presume that a good number of you watched their Game 7 loss to the Lakers. It was very frustrating, all the more so because I think that this was the last run for this group of Celtics. Their age is definitely getting to them, and I just don't see them making another championship run with this cast of players next year. We shall see.

We're used to our fair share of crazy weather here in New England, especially in the winter, but as a I write this, I'm witnessing some of the craziest thunderstorms that I've ever seen in Boston. I stepped onto my back porch, and it looked like a monsoon. Literally buckets of rain falling from the sky, and crazy winds, too. Good thing I took the herbs I just planted off the ledge.

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Work was slow the first couple of days, but all of a sudden things have really picked up at MassDOT. It's a new agency, combining a bunch of agencies and authorities that were previously scattered throughout state government, which makes it an exciting place to work. My assignments range from short term research tasks and memos to a few long term projects that are probably going to take me most of the summer to complete. Overall, not only am I happy with the work I'm doing, but I'm also impressed with the people who work at MassDOT. State government -- transportation agencies in particular -- have a reputation of being disorganized and directionless. While MassDOT is certainly a large and complex organization, I feel like it's definitely an agency that's moving in the right direction, which makes it an exciting place to be for the summer.

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I'd like to enjoy my weekend hanging out with friends and not having to work too much, but with my FASPE trip less than two weeks away, I'm spending most of my free time reading. I have close to 1500 pages to read for the program, and have read about 350. So, yeah, I have a bit more reading to do.

Just finished my last exam of the quarter today, which means that I'm officially a 3L -- good stuff! Hard to believe that I'm two-thirds through law school I have one day off, before starting my co-op at MassDOT on Friday. I'll definitely make sure to blog about my experience there, so keep on checking here.

Papers are moving along, albeit slowly. I've turned in one, and have rough drafts for the other two. It'll all be over soon.

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Crazy to think that I'll be on co-op again this coming summer. It felt like only yesterday when I started my last co-op on the First Circuit. This summer I'm going to be a Rappaport Fellow at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), the state entity that oversees the Commonwealth's transit, highway, and aeronautics functions, as well as the Registry of Motor Vehicles. I'm going to be working in the General Counsel's Office, which is MassDOT's legal department, as well as getting involved in a few policy projects. The state's transportation underwent a massive reorganization within the last years, so it promises to be an exciting place to spend a summer.

I'm actually going to be starting a little bit earlier than my classmates because I'm taking a couple of weeks off from co-op in the middle of the summer to travel to Germany and Poland on a program called the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE). The program sends students from a variety of professional schools to study the role that their respective professions played in perpetuating and carrying out the Holocaust. I'm anticipating that it's going to be a really intense experience, and I'm actually going to take the opportunity to visit my grandmother's hometown in Poland, which nobody from my immediate family has visited. I'll be gone towards from the end of June through the beginning of July, and will try posting from the road.

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After this summer, I only have one co-op left, and I'm definitely thinking long and hard about what I want to do next winter. So many choices -- should I try my hand at a firm? If so, what kind? Or continue pursuing my interest in state/local government?

I'm feeling like each of my academic quarters at NUSL has it's own theme. The fall was all about being a Lawyering Fellow, with that activity taking up a large chunk of my time. This quarter is totally different, and with four classes plus an independent study, this quarter is all about papers. Two of my classes had optional papers instead of final exams, and I'm not totally sure what I was thinking, but I figured that doing term papers would be easier than have to study for an exam. I think I was wrong.

So right now, as the end of the quarter is two weeks away (or is it three?), I'm frantically trying to get these papers done. Luckily, all three professors that I'm writing papers for want to see outlines, then a first draft, and then a final draft. Although I'm not huge into outlining for papers, I'm finding that being forced to outline and provide a first draft is actually keeping me honest, and prevents me from procrastinating (kind of).

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So I finally made my long awaited trip to Minneapolis and Madison a couple of weekends ago, and it was a lot of fun. The Red Sox game was great (although it would have been a lot more fun had they not played like garbage. I'll be surprised if they end this season above .500). I ended up going with my brother, a family friend, and a friend that I hadn't seen in 12 (!) years. Made me feel old. Really old. Especially because it felt like I had seen this friend just the other day. Once I got back to Boston, I came down with a nasty flu, though. Not fun.

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So I saw that the new law school rankings came out the other day, and noticed that Northeastern is pretty much where we have been for a while. I think it's funny how much attention these rankings get, although I guess folks like to think there's an order to things. Funny thing is, I know lots of folks that are lawyers, and I'd be hard pressed to find much of a correlation between their careers and where they went to law school. I have one friend who went to a school that's lower ranked lower than NUSL, and he's had a successful career doing really interesting policy work. I also know a guy who went to a school that's way higher ranked than NUSL, and last I heard he's still hunting for a job. Go figure. So I guess, the point being, I'm not sure how much you can really take from a school being higher ranked, except that it's higher ranked. I know we all look at these lists and think they matter (after all, if something is higher on a list, it must mean something), but the deeper I get into law school, and the more lawyers I come across, the more I realize it's difficult to find any rational correlation between where people go to law school and what they end up doing.

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A classmate of mine and his wife had a baby a couple of weeks ago, and we visited them this weekend, delivering a NUSL onesie for the little one.

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Saw a great movie at the Madison Film Festival when we were out there called "Police, Adjective." Raises some really interesting themes, especially for those folks interested in the law (criminal law in particular). I'd definitely recommend it if it's showing where you are.

The last few days in the Boston area were kind of surreal. Last weekend through Monday, we had three straight days of rain (and not just light rain, but pretty steady heavy rain) that netted us over 10 inches of rain. I looked it up, and Boston averages a bit less than 4 inches of rain in March, the rainiest month of the year. Our basement got flooded with a few inches of water, so we've been spending the last couple of days cleaning up. Fun stuff.

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I am absolutely loving my classes this quarter. It's a really nice mix of things that I know a decent amount about and am hoping to deepen my knowledge on (Land Use; State & Local Government), and totally new topic areas (Law of Financial Institutions; Public Law & Public Policy, which is essentially a class about the role of the states Attorneys General). I'm finding Financial Institutions particularly interesting right now, especially in light of the current debate in Washington DC over the future of regulatory reform.

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I'm planning another trip to Madison -- but this time, it's going to include a side trip to Minneapolis to see the Red Sox play the Twins (my brother and I were able to get our hands on those tickets, so we'll make a little road trip out of this visit). Should be lots of fun. I also had my fantasy baseball draft a couple of weekends ago, and although I'm very happy with my team, I'll withhold talking about it here, as I don't want to bore everybody to death.

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Yesterday candidates for the 2012 Public Interest Law Scholarship (PILS) were on campus to tour the school and interview. It was lots of fun, and quite inspiring, to hear everybody's stories about why they want to attend law school, and Northeastern in particular.

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Speaking of which, is everybody out there hearing back from law schools?

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And who watched the Oscars a little over a week ago? For those of you who haven't seen The Hurt Locker, Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, I would highly recommend it. In addition to being a very powerful movie that has some very interesting observations about the Iraq War, it's also highly engrossing. A few months ago, I had the good fortune to see the movie at the Harvard Film Archive before it was widely released, and Bigelow was there to speak about it. Definitely worth seeing while it's still in the theatres.

Just a couple of days left at co-op, and I'm getting excited to be back on campus to start classes on March 1. Next week is a week off for me, and we're going to head down to New York for a few days for the second half of the week. We had tickets to see a taping of Stephen Colbert, but sadly, the taping was cancelled. Still, should be a fun time.

Next quarter is going to be a much more traditional academic quarter for me than last quarter, when a lot of my time (and credits) were devoted to being a Lawyering Fellow for LSSC. This coming quarter I'm planning on taking State & Local Government; Law of Financial Institutions; Land Use; and Quantitative Methods. I'm also trying to figure out if I am going to take a two-credit trial practice class, or maybe an independent study, but I'll have to wait and see on that once I'm back on campus.

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Next summer is taking shape, albeit slowly. I just found out the other day that I was selected the for the Rappaport Fellows Program in Law & Public Policy, which supports law school students that are pursuing summer placements in state and local government doing policy work. The next step for me is to secure a placement, but I have a few good leads, and I anticipate that I'll have something figured out within the next few months. I'm think that I want to work in either transportation policy, or municipal policy. We shall see.

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Baseball season starts soon -- yes! My brother, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, won a lottery for a chance to buy tickets to Minnesota Twins opening series in their new stadium, which is opening in a few short weeks. They're going to be playing the Red Sox, so if he's able to get tickets, I'm think that a weekend trip to the Upper Midwest may be in order.

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And what's going on with all you law school applicants out there? This is the time when most of you are starting to hear back from schools, so if you have any questions, just post 'em and I'll get back to you.