Leon, 3L

One of my good friends from college, during a marathon procrastination session, figured out that he shared a name with the composer of a theme song to a popular 1980s show (it was set in a bar). Since this realization coincided with our school "gently prodding" us to set up personal websites (kind of a pre-historic facebook or myspace), my buddy decided to add this as an accomplishment of his. Imagine his surprise when he received an email a little while later that went something like this: "You know, that's funny, I could have sworn that it was I who wrote that theme song. Come to think of it, I keep getting the royalty checks, so it must have been me." The email was friendly and a great source of entertainment, but it brings up an important point: even in the very early stages of the internet, anything you put online can come back to haunt you.

I will not launch into a lecture about how you have to be careful about what you put on the Internet for three reasons:

1. Last I checked, I was no one's mother.
2. I have a publicly accessible blog, which I have used as a personal soap box for over nine months.
3. If you don't know that already, you are beyond help.

Sometimes, though, you don't have a choice. If you type in my name into your favorite search engine (and no, it's not the over-hyped and so far unspectacular Cuil) you will find out that:

I have over 30 years of experience in management consulting, marketing, information technology, product development and applied research. I was a combat navigator assigned to the 100th Bomb Group of the 8th Airforce during World War II. I am also an 84-year-old violinist who specializes in Klezmer music. Interestingly, I was a French artist who died in 1990. Making my grandmother extremely happy: I have a medical degree, and am a successful dermatologist in California.

Well, either that, or Leon Schwartz is a slightly more common name than I thought. No matter, the Sox just lost to the Angels for what feels like the 17th time this season (it's only the 7th, but who's counting?), and I have all this material to put on my resume...

Plus, I just realized there's no entry for Leon Schwartz in Wikipedia! This is a travesty that needs to be corrected before my account is banned, and so I best be going.

Posted by Leon at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are two weeks left to my summer internship, after which I will have just under two weeks before classes start. Having enjoyed the summer "job" immensely, I am not sure exactly how I am going to get myself into "ready to be in class" mode in under a month, but that is a problem for another day.

My non-work hours this past week were spent getting ready for our OCI process. OCI stands for On Campus Interviews (or at least I think it does), and is the process through which we apply for summer associate positions. Summer associateships are highly-coveted positions with mostly large-firms that not only help you see what working for a firm is like, but also can lead to post-graduate employment with the firm. So, the pressure to "not bonk" is definitely there. The biggest challenge, so far, has been attempting to convey my previous work experience in a way that doesn't put non-techies into a coma. This coma business is unfortunate, since most of the people kind enough to proof-read my resume for me are not techies, and have been dropping like flies.

The next step is something called "the bidding process", where we apply (on-line) to the firms we want to work for. Then, my understanding is, you sit, hope and pray to the deity of your choice that the firms are interested in having you work for them and call you in for the preliminary on-campus interview. If you do well there, you get a follow-up interview, which hopefully leads to an offer, and then world peace. Well, perhaps not that last part.

All firms are interested in your resume and your course and co-op evaluations. Some also would like a cover-letter which explains your interest in the firm. It's a pretty straight-forward process, and as someone with almost ten years of work experience, I should be kind of old-hat for me. Yet, it feels different and somewhat strange. I am chalking it up to being in a new field and moving on.

In other news, a tornado ripped through New Hampshire this past Thursday. We're certainly not in Kansas anymore, folks.

Posted by Leon at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Something called a HellBoy cuts off his horns. Of course, they grow back, which forces him to cut them off again. This must be somewhat more difficult for him than my weekly ritual of making my head look like a cue-ball, but that's not why I bring it up. I mention this little tidbit only because the conversation I just had with my wife about it is not the most nonsensical event of the today, and I think that's amazing.

The gentleman behind the counter at the local auto parts store, who after ringing up my purchase of a funnel, eight quarts of transmission fluid, a tub of degreaser and a grease-gun asked if I wanted a bag does not get the top prize either. I channeled my inner Mitch Hedberg and replied in the negative. "No, I juggle, but I can only juggle eight quarts, if I'm ever in here buying nine quarts, you go right ahead and bag them up."

That prize goes to an attorney, who shall remain nameless. His motion to dismiss floated across my desk and included a four-page-long legal argument which can best be described as a bowl of spaghetti -- you know it begins somewhere and ends somewhere, but it's not really possible to tell where. The best part was that it was all based on a single holding in a single case out of a district that is not ours. Better yet, the attorney misrepresented the holding. Actually reading the case very clearly shows that the court rules the opposite way of what the motion suggests. As best as I can tell, the attorney was expecting neither the prosecution nor the judge to actually look up the case cited in the memo. I am not exactly sure that a legal strategy that begins and ends with fingers crossed behind the back and a hope that "they don't notice" is a good one, but perhaps this is something that one understands better after he passes the bar and gains more real-world experience.

Posted by Leon at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I find myself in unfamiliar territory. Recent events unrelated to our nation's birth have me bound to this little place called New York City. In the interests of full disclosure, I should state now that I have what I consider a very healthy hatred for NYC. However, I have been known to make occasional trips to Gotham, usually clad head-to-toe in Red Sox gear (though not so much since 2004, for obvious reasons), and as such the trip itself cannot be said to be unfamiliar in any way. It is, instead, the mode of transportation chosen for this trip that is anything other than normal. You see, faithful reader, I have traded in the comfort, convenience and barely sub-sonic speed of my personal four-wheeled chariot for something called a bus. I am not sure if you have ever heard of it, but it is basically a plane without wings (which is therefore incapable of flight). The basic premise is that forty strangers agree to fork over varying sums of money to sit in close proximity to each other for four hours while someone drives them from point a to point b. Some of these strangers seem to have an aversion to showers and/or deodorants, which, I admit can become a problem. Now, the bus should not be confused with a train, which is like many buses strung together in a line with a magical place called the "bar car" somewhere in there. The bus is decidedly lacking in the "bar car" area. It does, however, have a restroom. Thank god for small favors.

In non-bus related news, work continues to now feel like work, and not like a break from school. I am juggling a prosecution memo (a report based on a case file discussing whether we should prosecute the individual and what he can be charged with), a couple of suppression hearings and most recently crafting an argument to extend the Belton car-search exception (allowing for warrantless searches of cars in some situations) to cover more situations than it currently does. This last task is especially interesting, since it involves the intersection of law and technology, and is an opportunity for the law to catch up.

In non-bus and non-work related news, we got our "grades" last week, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that not only will there not be a need for me to retake Constitutional Law, but that the professor somehow mistook my nonsensical drivel for a coherent answer -- always a bonus. I guess, it's official -- I'm a 2L. Feels good.

Posted by Leon at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)