Benny, 2L

Our Law Office finally (almost) wrapped up our year-long social justice project with a presentation yesterday to our client (the Mental Health Litigation Unit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services). We had a full room, thanks in part to cannolis from the North End and custard buns from Chinatown (nothing packs a room like free food). The presentation went off without a hitch, thanks to our Presentation Team, which put in a ton of hours the last couple of weeks to put together a fantastic product.

A few of us are now out on Cape Cod, relaxing a bit for what will probably be the last time before we enter pre-finals mode. A few of our professors have started to talk about what our finals will look like, and I'm beginning to realize that we only have about a month left in our first year. It's really nice being away from the hustle and bustle of the city and school, relaxing with friends, doing minimal amounts of work, and trying to get some rest.

Our next major assignment, due this week, is a final draft of our summary judgment memo. We are also going to have a chance to present oral arguments to our adjunct professor, which is the first time that we've really had an opportunity to engage in a quasi-adversarial situation in law school. It should be a lot of fun, especially because I'm going up against one of my best friends here at NUSL.

Alright -- off to Provincetown to watch some of the Final Four.

I'm not sure who actually reads my blog, but I'm guessing that if anyone reads it, it's prospective students. Approximately a year ago, I was in the same position as you -- weighing admission offers from various law schools. Being a 1L is definitely a stressful experience, and I think that the application process is a close second. There's lots of information coming at you from different directions, and lots of different factors to balance in making your decision.

It's important to remember that there is no right decision. Deciding where to go to law school, like the law itself, is a human decision, and there are pluses and minuses to every choice we make in life. But that said, you need to think about what is important to you in a law school. I picked Northeastern because I wanted to attend a school with a strong public interest tradition, a school that valued my ambitions, and I school that wasn't overly dependent on using competition to motivate it students.

That said, remember that wherever you choose to go to law school, you will be challenged. You will have long nights, the frustrations of group projects, and by this time next year, serious bags under your eyes (or at least I do). But at the same time, it is an amazing experience, and in these few short months, my perspective on where I came from, and where I'm going, has changed immeasurably.

Of course, if I were making the decision for you, all of you would be coming to Northeastern. The students are interesting and motivated, the professors never cease to amaze me, we have a beautiful new building and classrooms, and most importantly, NUSL stands on an ethic that I can truly get behind. In the end, though, the decision of where to go to law school is a profoundly personal one, so regardless of where you all choose to go, congratulations on getting this far in the process. As always, if you have questions about NUSL please don't hesitate to post them, and I'll make sure to answer them.

Hard to believe, but we only have one week of classes to go before reading week. It seems as if, all of a sudden, everybody is gearing up for finals -- outlining, taking practice exams, etc. Going through this process a second time will hopefully be a bit easier, because I have a sense of where to allocate my time. First semester I spent a lot of time putting together detailed outlines, and now I'm realizing that I, and many of my classmates, may have gone a bit overboard, or at least didn't put allocate our resources as efficiently as we could have.

Today is the nicest day we've had all year -- high 60s or lower 70s. Unfortunately, most of us are in the library or at home studying, not lucky enough to actually enjoy the weather. This is a long weekend, with Patriots Day (otherwise known as Marathon Monday) coming up. I actually have a couple of friends running this year, but I probably won't head down to watch the marathon because (you guessed it), I'll probably be studying.

So that said, I may not be posting as much over the next couple of weeks. But when I do emerge from this finals-induced cocoon, I will be a 2L, starting my co-op GBLS, ready to tell you about how I'm applying everything I've learned this year to real legal challenges and issues.

The Northeastern University campus has, all of a sudden, gotten really quiet, maybe because the undergrads are done with classes for the year, so it's just us poor law students and a mix of random graduate students that are still here on campus. It actually makes for a great studying atmosphere, and I've spend the last few days away from the law school building, and in the Snell Library, which is the main university library. Getting away from the somewhat hectic 1L finals mode is nice.

Just took a full contracts exam, and it went pretty well (but that may all change when we meet with our professor tomorrow to go over it). I'm realizing more and more that doing well on these exams is a well developed skill just like any other, and that fortunately doing well on them doesn't mean that you will (or won't) be a good lawyer. Our professors have basically said as much in class, and also recognize that exams only evaluate a pretty narrow set of skills.

So, a week from tomorrow, around 5 p.m., I and all of my classmates will officially be 2Ls -- pretty exciting stuff. As I sit here writing this blog entry, I'm wondering about all of you out there who have decided to make the journey to law school next year (either at NUSL, or any other law school). It's a tough slog, and a monumental challenge, but in the end, it's lots of fun, and will change you in ways you can only imagine right now as you prepare for your 1L year.