There is something incredibly satisfying about cresting that last foot-hill on the way to your favorite ski mountain. The snowbanks flanking the narrow one-lane road, rising high above the roof of the car, the smoke wafting from chimneys of lonely little houses that dot the landscape, the smell of clean air -- they invite you to forget about life and enjoy yourself the way you would if you were young again. In fact, around these parts, nature has done everything to encourage leaving your 9-5 life behind. There are no supermarkets, cars without snow tires do not exist, and a snowmobile raced me along the highway earlier. People say "Hello" to complete strangers and offer to help out-of-towners (without an ulterior motive). The self-service island at the gas station means that no less than three people will be out there helping you to pump your own gas, even though you'd prefer they didn't -- simply to make conversation. There are no cell-phones, because there are no cell phone towers (no signal) -- no matter how much the gentleman riding the chair in front of mine wants to think that waving his hand with the phone in it will change the situation. People take their time speaking, they even take their time driving, they take their time doing everything -- because there is no rat race. There is no finish line, real or imaginary that one has to cross. In a word -- this is paradise.

However, even paradise has its limits. Wireless internet is creeping steadily into most places where one can stay up here -- man's answer to nature's attempt at isolation. The feeling of guilt for having left my books and laptop at home the last time I was here lasted weeks, and so in an attempt to appease my subconscious, I brought them. This means that tonight, instead of listening to something called "The Skinkx" play at the local bar, while truly enjoying life with the locals, I will be writing the "facts" section of my motion in opposition to summary judgment for my writing class -- guaranteed to be about as much fun as repeatedly poking yourself in the eyeball with your pencil (please do not try this at home). It's a trade-off, a compromise, a way to straddle the divide between paradise and real life -- a way to enjoy the present and what the future will bring.

The moral of the story is simple: find your paradise and make sure you spend some time there, and if you have to bring your work with you -- at least wait until the lifts are closed before bringing it out.

One last thing: think snow! Because getting snowed-in in up here certainly wouldn't be the worst thing to ever happen to me.

Posted by Leon at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February has always been a pretty dull month. Skiing-wise it was always a bit of a let-down, because more than half of it is lost to President's day and school vacation weeks. For those of you who have yet to experience the joys of skiing during a school vacation week, let me save you the trouble and the money: put on your skis, your goggles and your helmet, then go out onto Storrow Drive, face the opposite way of traffic, and try to dodge traffic. Please note that the helmet is a very important part of this process. It also makes a lot of sense to have good medical insurance.

However, fear not -- NU has a solution: a vacation week in February that does not coincide with school vacation week! It is possible to see this as a negative -- no one else has their spring break this early, so if one was looking to get filmed by MTV while doing something inappropriate somewhere sunny, it's just not going to happen. I choose to see this as a positive, though. The mountains will be emptier, and the lodging will be cheaper. I can't wait.

As far as classes go -- not much has changed. Con Law still feels like moving around in a fog, but it is getting a little bit clearer. The different levels of scrutiny the courts apply in deciding whether something violates the Equal Protection Clause can be made to make sense, with enough effort. Crim had us shift from murder to rape -- just in case we weren't completely depressed about the levels of depravity in our society. What makes it worse, if that's even possible, is when you read a rape case and disagree with the outcome. A good example is a PA case where a 63 year-old's conviction for rape was overturned because the appeals court ruled that because he told the 14 year-old daughter of his girlfriend that she had a "choice" of either performing sexual acts on him or going back to juvenile hall he did not force her into anything, since she had a "choice" and all. My use of scare-quotes around the word choice should explain how I feel on the subject. Contracts has us moving into mistakes and misunderstandings -- which are always a good time. Imagine being in a room when two people think they are talking about the same thing, but aren't. Fun, right? Now imagine the same, but in a legal setting. It's like the age-old saying: the difference between comedy and tragedy is perspective. When you fall down, it's a tragedy, when someone else does, it's comedy.

LSSC gets its own paragraph. We handed in our latest draft of our project last week. There is still some research to be done and a lot of editing and re-writing, but it looks like we are in decent shape. The school asked for student suggestions on how to improve the program a while ago, which shows that they are willing to work to make it better. If it were up to me, however, I'd make it better by not making it mandatory (of course, it's not up to me). So, for me, LSSC is like cottage cheese -- I hate it, but someone thinks it's good for me, so I keep having it force fed to me. As I learned from my experience with Grandma and the cottage cheese -- it's better to just grin, bear it, and eat it quickly.

To all of you waiting to hear back from schools: try to relax... as hard as that is to do sometimes... in the end everything always works out!

Posted by Leon at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the risk of reversing the gravitational pull of the planet by making it stop spinning: I owe an apology to the state of New Jersey. I am going to go ahead and let that sink in for a second...

When last I mentioned that fine locale (known to some as the armpit of the country), I may have suggested that the state collectively owed me a new windshield. As some of you might remember, my windshield had a close personal encounter with a rock the size of Jason Giambi’s head. While this did not result in an immediate crack, I used my finely-tuned analytical skills, and a little something the lawyers like to call precedent, to deduce that the chip left behind would surely spread. I am positive it would have if I hadn’t written about it, but because I did -- the windshield remains completely crack-free. One could see this as a sign from above telling me that my analytical skills leave something to be desired, but I prefer to be positive and think that this is yet another time in my life when the laws of physics have failed to work in the way I expected them to (gravity being the first of many disagreements I had with those). At any rate, I apologize to the state of New Jersey... it does not owe me a windshield.

As you may have seen from Ira’s blog -- today was indeed NUSL’s Alumni Connections event. I think the most important thing to take away from an event like that is how many different areas of law were represented by graduates of this law school. From solo practitioners to government agencies to corporations big and small to big law firms and boutique firms concentrating in intellectual property, there was someone there to represent any area of law you can think of. It helps to remind those of us not necessarily interested in public-interest law that there are others like us, even at this school. It also allows us to pick the brains of those who came before us. From what courses to take to what co-ops help you in the long run to what the responsibilities of a general counsel to a start-up really entail -- the answers are out there, provided you have the questions.

While I vehemently disagree that it is all about who you know (I have to, as an engineer, I was born without the ability to small-talk), I can certainly agree that getting advice from people who are passionate about what they do and knowledgeable on how to get there is invaluable. Having been both the "schmoozer" and the "schmoozee" at events such as this, I offer only one piece of advice: be yourself. Ask questions you really want the answers to. Don’t approach it from a "how can this person help me later" standpoint, instead, approach it from a "what can I learn from this person" standpoint.

So, overall, my sincere thanks go out to the people that put this event together. Not only was it a resounding success in its own right, but it was a welcome break from the three C’s (Constitutional Law, Criminal Justice and Contracts) and that other course the name of which I do not even want to mention.

Posted by Leon at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All good things must come to an end. Why they have to come to an end at the hands of a member of the Manning family, I will never know. As we stood there, slack jawed after the Giants had just completed an improbable upset, I kept thinking one thing – this cannot possibly be happening. In the words of the inimitable Bill Simmons: "Eli Manning gave me the Manning face." This sentiment is sure to have been shared across many a football-watching household in these parts on Sunday night. The Patriots, the team that had been discussed as the best team ever assembled, had just lost to the Giants, a team that had been lucky to even be in the Superbowl. The team of destiny was taken down by a team led by "the other" Manning. How is this even remotely possible?

Looking back at it, not only was it possible, but an argument can be made that it was absolutely necessary. Much has been written about the new-found bravado of the Boston sports fan. Discussing this after the game on Sunday, we came to the conclusion that there were not ten actual New England fans that thought we might lose that game. The same way that there were not ten Red Sox fans that did not think they would come back and beat the Indians on their way to the World Series. In less than a decade we went from expecting our teams to lose in key situations to expecting them to win no matter what.

Earlier in the season, the Patriots had shirts made which read "Humble Pie" on the front and "I eat it" on the back. The coach got a shirt that read "I serve it" instead. Well, perhaps the Giants should have had a few of those coach’s shirts made as well. As for the fans… well, perhaps we need a little dose of reality and humility as well. And if this causes some members of the "pink hat"*** crowd to fall off the bandwagon, then perhaps it was worth it. I’d argue that this remains true even if we have to put up with a few "18-1" chants for a while.

In the law-school world, we’ve moved into murder and the various excuses that can "downgrade" it to manslaughter, which makes one wonder whether people go to law school in order to learn the law or in order to learn how to avoid culpability for their actions. Contracts reading for this evening involves agreements between family members, primarily spouses. I was happy to learn that my pre-law-school promise to regularly do the dishes (and the subsequent breach of this promise) cannot be seen as a breach of a contract, implied or otherwise, because the agreement did not change the nature of my marital relationship. To tell you the truth, I am not entirely sure I know what that means… other than: I don’t have to do the dishes.

***Clarification: there is nothing wrong with owning a pink hat, if that happens to be the color you like and you are a fan of the team. I use the term as a way of describing all the newfound Pats/Celts/Sox fans who have come out of the woodwork in recent years and will disappear again the second the teams stop winning regularly.

Posted by Leon at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)