Ira, 3L

This is an all-business blog today; classes, the Journal, TA'ing, and life goes on unabated. Unrelenting.

C'est la vie.

Yesterday we upper-level students submitted our applications for Winter co-ops. I applied to a good number, and hopefully will start hearing about interviews next week. This co-op, whatever it ends up being, will be my last co-op and I hope to make it an educational and memorable experience.

I am also going through clerkship interviews right now. Very exciting, a little nerve-wracking (especially with the turnaround time), and, honestly, fun. I'll let you know how things went, once all is said and done.

Other than above, helping manage and edit the Journal, and assisting 1Ls with their legal research and writing, I attend class. And class, ironically, is starting to seem more and more like what I do in between everything else. One of my classes, Trusts & Estates, is very interesting. Beyond reminding me that I once took property law, T&E covers the laws governing what happens to a person's property and assets after they die. The subject matter and facts of the cases we read are both morbid, fascinating, and occasionally sad. All and all, I'm glad I took it: Beyond preparing me for the bar, it's nice to study law outside my general interests of criminal justice and civil rights.

More to come...

Posted by Ira at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Late, yet again. For those readers that wait with bated breath every Wednesday for my newest blog (if you even knew that Wednesday is our official deadline), I apologize. I have no excuse for my general tardiness, merely an over-developed and occasionally dysfunctional system of re-prioritizing and procrastinating. But in almost two years, blogging about my law school experience has yet to fall by the wayside. And this week is not the week for it to start.

Well, sort of. This week I am determined--DETERMINED, I tell you--to write about something other than law school or the law. Or being a lawyer. Or applying to be a lawyer. Or even being in court. No, law school and the law permeates so much of my life--so much of law students' and lawyers' lives--that I am often given mandates at parties to not talk about the law. Not about class, not about legislation, not about representing people in court. Of course, when you spend almost every waking hour for nigh three years of living and breathing the law, it is somewhat understandable that there is a difficulty to detach.

After sitting at my computer for a good ten minutes, trying hard to come up with something other than the law to discuss, thinking things like, "Dear lord, hopefully I was more interesting than this before law school. Hopefully, I had awesome, riveting things to talk about before I only spouted statutes, cases, rights and reasonable standards," I decided that what is needed--what the world needs--is comedy. Good old-fashioned, satirical, offensive comedy.

However, this being a school-sponsored blog, offensiveness and ribaldry is probably not the way to go. No matter how funny. So, instead, here's a story. If you find it even marginally funny, I can be hired for birthdays, weddings, bar/bat mitzvah's and the like. Just contact me through the comment system below.

Note: Offensive jokes cost more due to the liability of people throwing things at me and the general damage to my public character and reputation.

As many readers likely know, I have a Great Dane. Emmitt is a massive dog both in proportions and personality. He turns five years old next month (about 1/2 to 3/4 of a Dane's average lifespan), but is still very much all puppy. Emmitt weighs in around 140 lbs., but the ridge of his back comes above my kitchen counter tops. In short, he is a pony. A pony that quite naively believes every living creature is his friend.

Taking Emmitt for walks is always a publicizing event. As one cannot help but notice him--nearly three and a half feet tall at the shoulder and dark grey with splotches of black all over his coat and milky white feet--people often stop to gawk, ask if I have a saddle for him, ask if he's a horse. People even stop in traffic. It doesn't help that an extra-tall Great Dane can put his face in your face without jumping, and is not afraid of cars.

One day, I'm walking him through the neighborhood when we happen upon a woman taking her four-year old daughter for a walk. The woman asks what kind of dog he is, and then if her daughter can pet him. "Brave," I think to myself. Most people admire/stare/study from a good distance. I make Emmitt sit down. He's a smart, gentle dog. He took to training real easy and complies. As he sits there, just about eye to eye with this little girl, she starts petting him on the head and cheek with an open, stiff palm. Almost an abrasive rubbing, like someone who doesn't know how to softly pet. I figure, what the heck, it's a little girl and she's enjoying herself. Emmitt is a good sport.

Then, as she continues to pat at his face, he looks up at me confused. Then back down at the little girl. Then up at me, then back down. He seems to not be sure what exactly is going on. Suddenly, as she continues to pet away, Emmitt raises a paw and punches the little girl right in the face.

It wasn't malicious, or even playful as I've seen him do with dogs. He stayed seated the entire time. Emmitt raised his paw and mimicked the four-year-old, patting her in the cheek just like she kept doing to him. He literally mirrored her movement back. I think he thought that's what he was supposed to do.

I, however, freaked. I was positive the mother was going to sue me, call the police, get angry and yell. After all, when we picked her little girl up off the ground she had a slight abrasion on her cheek where my dog had just Jack Johnson-ed her.

The little girl never cried, the mother laughed it off (laughs which I returned nervously), and then finished their walk. I apologized again and then Emmitt and I high-tailed it out of there. We now live 750 miles and seven states away.

My dog punched a four-year-old in the face.

Posted by Ira at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What a first week. The first in a while that feels like two.

Let's hope it's not a trend.

All my classes are great. I am particularly interested in International Criminal Justice and Section 1983 Litigation. There is so much to learn in every class I'm taking, but those two in particular strike a reverberating chord. Section 1983 Litigation, for the un-indoctrinated, refers to the federal law (42 U.S.C s 1983) that allows a person to sue officials (generally, the police or local government entities) for violating their civil rights while acting "under the color of law." The latter means, in short, that the official violated the rights while acting as an official agent (even if s/he wasn't authorized to do so). A common (and inflammatory) example is police brutality and the excessive use of force (e.g., Rodney King). The class is taught by a NUSL alumnus, the widely renowned civil rights attorney Howard Freidman.

I have also met with the 1Ls who I will assist this year as they learn legal research and writing. I blew through much of the first instruction at top speed, as I was given limited time with them. So, I look forward to working more with them. Legal research and writing are vastly, hugely, Grand Canyon-like important in the law. They are, of course, not everything, but they go a great deal into the ability to communicate effectively within the legal industry and make accurate, successful arguments. Thus, employers are bent on finding law students who can research and write really well.

Nothing new on the clerkship job front. Just more turning in of applications. Just more waiting.

We also had the first meeting of the Law Journal yesterday, and, as the Managing Editor, I spent a great deal of time talking to the interested 2Ls and 3Ls about the commitment the Journal requires. And it does. We are still hoping to publish the next issue (our second issue!) before the year is out, and have a great deal of work on the articles to make them publication worthy. Also, we are simultaneously planning next Spring's Symposium (and thus, next year's issue), which will be on Second Amendment Issues after the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Heller. That opinion determined that the right to bear arms is an individual right, and not one (as understood and argued by many) merely pertaining to membership in a militia. I'll talk more about that as we develop the topic.

More to come.

Posted by Ira at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)