Leon, 3L

Disclaimer: I hold no answers. I possess no inside knowledge. I have no idea why anyone should or should not go to law school. I do not know the key to surviving law school. And I certainly do not know the meaning of life. Now that I have sufficiently lowered the expectations, it is probably safe to proceed.

Why the Red Sox decided to go to the World Series during my first year of law school is incomprehensible. Part of me actually thinks this is some sort of a collaborative effort by the area law schools to make life tougher for us 1Ls (if it is - good job!). Good news is, they won game one. Schilling goes in game two tonight, and then the series goes to Colorado. So, here's the most important question in the world: when they play in Denver, without a DH, who do you sit? Papi? Lowell? Youk? Or put Lowell at short, Youk at third, Papi at first and sit Lugo? Put Youk in the outfield and sit J.D. "Hey, you can't boo me anymore because I hit a homerun once" Drew? I told you I had no answers.

Law school is a lot of work. In fact, it is the most work I have ever done in my life, and I worked for eight years between undergrad and here. The assignments are long, the reading is clear as mud and the time constraints brutal. This is what they warn you about, and it is true. However, it is not impossible to deal with it. First, you petition the powers that be to extend the day to 36 hours. When that doesn't work, you learn to take power-naps while you walk to and from class (occasionally being awakened by a violent collision with someone doing the same). Important thing to keep in mind is that it's fun.

When all the reading and all the lectures and all the notes fall into place, it is a glorious feeling. All of a sudden, everything makes sense, and all is logical. I'll let you know when that happens, but in the meantime, here's an actual transcript from an actual trial (taken from my civil procedure casebook):

Judge: Next witness.
Ms. Olchner: Your Honor, at this time I would like to swat Mr. Buck in the head with his client's deposition.
Judge: You mean read it?
Ms. O: No, sir. I mean to swat him in the head with it. Pursuant to Rule 32, I may use the deposition "for any purpose" and that is the purpose for which I want to use it.
Judge: Well, it does say that.
(pause)
Judge: There being no objection, you may proceed.
Ms. O: Thank you, Judge Hanes.
(Whereupon Ms. Olschner swatted Mr. Buck in the head with a deposition)
Mr. Buck: But Judge...
Judge: Next witness.
Mr. Buck: We object.
Judge: Sustained. Next witness.

You see, I told you: law school can be fun! Go sox!

And the Boston Red Sox are World Champions! That just never gets old.

In 2004 we forever said goodbye to chants of "1918! 1918!"
In 2007 we forever said goodbye to "talk to me in 86 years when you win your next one!"

Oh, and by the by, in case you haven't noticed, the Patriots are undefeated and winning their games by almost four touchdowns. It's not a bad time to be a sports fan in Boston.

Life is full of compromises. Law school is full of impossible compromises. Do you get all your reading done for class, or do you get enough sleep so you can better participate? Do you go to the really interesting lecture given by professor Enrich about arguing a case at the Supreme Court, or do you prepare for a quiz in Civil Procedure? Do you go the ACLU-sponsored David Cole lecture, or to the inexplicably time-conflicting Federalist society-sponsored presentation on the power of Congress over the Constitution?

Sometimes, the answer lies in something you actually learned. Take for example the concept of balancing considerations. The societal good that is exhibited by a certain action may mitigate the risk associated with it. I got to apply this concept this past weekend, as the risk of not getting enough sleep and falling hopelessly behind in all my reading was weighed against the societal good of my presence at a bar near Fenway for the last two games of the World Series. Societal good won, my voice lost, and I am still catching up on that reading, but it was, of course, totally worth it.

Of course, I did get cold-called in my Torts class, the morning after the clinching game (I swear, some professors just have a sixth sense for who to pick on and when), but I am told that my answers did not make people envision me piloting the Hindenburg, so I'm chalking this one up as a draw.

My first writing class taught me that a good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. In that same class, I also learned not to ingest my crayons and that girls dislike it when you pull their hair (kindergarten was a good time). Since a blog is really just a story that you write in chapters (though, admittedly without a clue as to what the next chapter entails), it would be nice to start it with some sort of contextual background, to provide a foundation. Well, you can thank the Red Sox, the Patriots and "unforeseen technical difficulties" for making sure we started on a nice random Thursday. Let’s see if we can’t make amends.

First, let’s address the proverbial elephant in the room: this is a busy time of the year for those looking to go to law school. Writing essays, filling out applications, and still managing whatever your life throws at you (work, school, etc). Unsolicited advice flying back and forth, the nerve-racking process of picking the schools to apply to, and then the schools to visit, and then, if you’re lucky to have a choice, the school to finally attend. Since I had to deal with it, I feel it only fair if I contribute to the level of stress in some way. Three pieces of unsolicited, completely personal, unaffiliated with anyone or anything advice:
1. Make sure to have plenty of people proof-reading your essays. Impose on family, friends, neighbors, strangers, even the crazy guy on the street corner that told you the world was ending. You don’t have to follow their advice, but it’s nice to have as many points of view as possible (who knows, maybe he is just a really stressed-out 1L).
2. Sit in on a class. I didn’t do enough of this, and it made it much more difficult for me to decide on which school to go to. By attending a 1L class you will see not only what the class itself is like, but also what the students in the school are like, and that can be very important. Just stay away from Civil Procedure classes, their lack of excitement will cause you to want to impale yourself in the eye with your pencil half-way through.
3. The only other thing to say is: relax. In the words of Van Wilder "worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere."

And now, for something completely different: law school is turning out to be pretty useful in real life. Having covered assumption of risk in my Torts class, I now know that I do not need to shovel all the snow off the sidewalk in front of my house after a snowstorm to prevent being liable to a neighbor who slips and falls on said sidewalk (he assumed the risk of walking on a snow-covered sidewalk). This is important in these parts, because it does snow quite a bit. Of course, I do not own a house, much less a sidewalk, but those are minor details. Property is teaching us the difference between leases, licenses and easements, which has made sure that any house I own in the future will be surrounded by a fence with razor wire on top of it, a moat with some alligators in it and "No Trespassing" signs every twenty feet. In the meantime, CivPro is reminding me precisely why I decided to forego three years of social activities, salary and sanity and try my hand at this law stuff. The dissenting opinion in one of our assigned cases showed a judge struggling to understand what this whole Internet thing is all about – just imagine the precedent he would have set if he found some other judges to agree with him!

I took the LSAT the same week that I proposed to my now-wife, which prompted a recently-divorced friend to call me what can most politely be described as a relatively unintelligent donkey. To this day, I am not sure which major event in my life he was referring to, but this brings up a good point: why does an engineer go to law school?

I can answer this question with no more authority or certainty than I could tell you why people fall in love. It just happens. One day you wake up and you realize that you want to be in law school. Perhaps it is because of law’s (sometimes) logical reasoning. Maybe you want to help those less fortunate than you. Perhaps you like money. Maybe the weight of law books appeals to you as a way to save on gym dues. Remember, also, that the quickest way to a doctorate degree is through law school (only three years)! Maybe you like wearing suits (something engineers never get to do). Perhaps your friends have disowned you for continuously playing the devil’s advocate and that got you thinking. Maybe you read a law blog and got excited (doubtful, but hey, stranger things have happened).

Regardless the reason, the problem for us engineers is that we don’t do feelings. So leaving a nice job, foregoing three years of salary and paying tuition plus living expenses just because you woke up one morning and realized you wanted to try this law “thing��? is not exactly our cup of tea. In fact, it’s downright crazy.

I guess my point is that sometimes crazy can be a good thing.

On a completely unrelated topic, I am going to break one of the rules we agreed to in my first posting. I now hold the answer to getting all your work done in law school. Unfortunately, it is quite costly once you run out of frequent-flyer miles. What you need is:
1. A round-trip plane ticket to a destination on the West coast (I prefer Seattle)
2. An airline that does not believe in providing you with your own TV (I prefer United)
3. The movie "License to Wed" to be the in-flight "entertainment" on the way there and "Hairspray" on the way back
4. A little bit of luck so you are not sitting next to a screaming baby

If there is a better way to make sure you have no distractions, I have not found it.

I am now off to work on my third (and one can only hope final) transition assignment for that quintessential Northeastern gift to a legal education: LSSC. Let’s just say I’m approaching it with the reluctance of Flick approaching that metal pole with his tongue in "A Christmas Story."

I think I speak for the entirety of the 1L class here at NEU when I say that the transition assignment I briefly mentioned in the last post has been the bane of our existence. The good news: it’s done, finished, completed and submitted. I think the celebratory sigh of relief immediately after the 5PM deadline last night could be heard and felt for miles away.

I hate complaining about assignments, because, frankly, what did you expect when you went to law school? A few pats on the back, some light reading and a nice diploma to put on your wall? Law school is a lot of work, and that’s the way it should be. This assignment, however, gave us the rather nebulous (to borrow a good word from a classmate) task of taking all the reading we have done for our LSSC (I think Ira did a good job describing this class in his blog, so I won’t repeat it here) class and applying their underlying concepts to the project we’ll be working on next semester. The frustrating part is that the concepts are big-picture lawyering-style type things, while the project is both narrow in scope and requires more research before we know what kind of lawyering can be applied to it. So, the entire fourteen-page memo felt like we were shoehorning an elephant into the back of a Volkswagen. And the elephant was angry. I’m done complaining now, I swear.

So, LSSC is wrapped-up, and we have three weeks to go before finals in the other classes. This means that while the rest of the world has four days of gorging on turkey and playing in the annual family football game which always results in some sort of contusion due to a carelessly placed elbow by uncoordinated Uncle Frank, we will be doing our homework, outlining our courses and starting to think about practice tests. It’s just as much fun, and there’s much less risk of bodily injury, which you can’t even sue over, because you consented to the touching by agreeing to play in the game. We’ll call this last statement a review of defenses to intentional torts. Non-lawyers call it annoying, while muttering some other words that would make a sailor blush.

Northeastern informs us that there’s now going to be a comment link (below this post, look to the right) to allow for interaction. I might be wrong, but my thoughts are that this is akin to putting a sign-up sheet for a pick-up basketball game in the middle of a ghost-town. In other words, expect crickets and tumbleweeds.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

I hate turkeys. They are ugly, big, loud and nasty birds who like to chase innocent little six-year-old future law students while creating an untold amount of emotional distress, not to mention the physical damage associated with scraped knees and bloody noses. (Can you tell I am in full review mode for finals? What gave it away?) Have you ever seen a turkey fly? It’s not pretty. They helicopter up, and then swoop down, with enough noise to make you think the world is ending. So, imagine my surprise when one of these graceless creatures wandered into traffic on my way to school the other day. I live in Boston, which, last I checked was a city. Moreover, it’s almost December, which in New England means snow, ice, wind and skiing; it does not mean turkeys. Turkeys in the middle of the road are simply not expected, and should not be allowed. This sets a bad precedent, as far as I am concerned.

Thanksgiving came and went, and much like every other member of a 1L class anywhere in this country, I spent the bulk of it writing outlines. Actually, that should read outline, singular, because the only thing I accomplished is my CivPro outline. While I have been told that a proper CivPro outline can stretch to as many as 40 pages (and sometimes spawns its own outline), I am just not that ambitious (or loquacious) and so mine is considerably shorter, which is impressive for a subject that deals with situations that prompt judges to write this: "Our principle task… is to determine what the New York courts would think the California courts would think on an issue about which neither has thought." I was pretty bummed about the outline taking up my entire break, but then I read that quote and instantly felt better.

Well, that, and I had some turkey, which means there’s at least one less of those buggers to potentially clog up traffic on my way home today. Trust me, when in law school, it’s good to appreciate the little things. Otherwise, you just think about all the work, and co-op applications and finals, and then, you just go crazy.

First things first, can someone with connections please tell the Patriots that it’s ok to win all their games by 46 points or more? My schedule does not allow for games that go to the wire. I can safely dedicate a quarter, maybe two to a game, but watching the whole thing results in borrowing time from somewhere else, and since I refuse to borrow it from studying, I am dipping into the sleep "reserves." At this point, I am not scheduled to sleep until January 7th. Oh, and for those of you who think the pats are cheaters, here’s a link: Sports Law Professor

In other news, it’s almost finals time. I won’t bore you with the details. Yes, there are exams in law school, yes they are tough, and yes people freak out. If someone does something totally nutty during one of my exams, I’ll be sure to share, even if it’s me.

In other, other news, we read an interesting case for Property, that I’d like to share (Intel Corp. v. Hamidi for those playing at home). The gist is that an ex-employee of Intel gets an employee directory and starts sending out emails to all the employees that disparage Intel’s hiring practices. Predictably, Intel sues, but on what grounds? Intel claims that Hamidi’s emails constitute a trespass to chattels, which is a fancy way of saying that they violate a property right associated with non-real (not land) property, which is a legalese way of saying someone’s messing with my stuff. The case is brought in California, which is fortuitous, because the Supreme Court of that state turns out to be reasonably versed in computers. As a software engineer (and until I get to write that Esq. at the end of my name, I will continue to claim to be one), nothing scares me more than a bunch of "outsiders" trying to regulate technology. The court splits four ways in their decision, but the casebook authors thought only three of those were important:

The majority explains that a trespass to chattels, under CA law, requires actual damages to the chattel (property in question). They use this to differentiate this case from those of spammers sued by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) whose computers crashed or were otherwise affected by the spam. Intel’s contention that the emails cause a loss of productivity, while legitimate, are not enough to be compensable under their theory of the case as trespass. Basically, with spammers, the objection is to the volume of the communication, whereas in this case, the objection is to the content. The court entertains the idea of expanding the law to cover this case, but decides that would be too radical a solution. The consequences of treating computer networks, and more importantly, websites as private property for which you need permission to "enter," can be catastrophic – imagine receiving an email with a link which you cannot click until you obtain permission from the owner of the site linked to.

The first dissenting opinion chooses to see it differently. As they see it, Intel’s objection is not to the content of the email, but the fact that the defendant is using Intel’s computers to deliver it. They decide that while authorities disagree on how to handle these cases, they do agree that the plaintiff should be able to preclude the defendant form repeatedly trespassing in this manner. Since Intel’s attempts at blocking the emails ultimately failed, the court sees an injunction as proper in this case. Without it, the law gives Intel a right to exclude unwanted communication, but does not give them a way to carry out this right.

The last dissenting opinion differentiates between the Internet and an intranet (a company’s internal network). They make analogies to driveways, which, while attached to public roadways, are not open to all sorts of protesters. A further analogy is made to a company’s mailroom, in that Hamidi, in sending his emails, is basically commandeering the mail cart, and delivering mail to each employee. So, if Hamidi were to send the emails to the employees at home, there would be no problem.

The law that comes out of the case is that, in CA, you need to prove damages in order to be able to sue in this situation, but there are more important questions. Did the court get it right? Why? Why not? Was one of the dissents better? Why do we care?

Mark Twain once gave a speech at the New England Society’s annual dinner (which inexplicably was held in New York), that contained the following quote:

"If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries -- the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top -- ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume."

With all due respect to one of America’s greatest authors – bull crap! The trees may look glorious indeed, but when I am chiseling out my car from its cocoon of ice, I fail to see the beauty. Furthermore, I’d like to send what the kids call a "shout out" to our dear friend Mr. Murphy, because true to his laws, my scraper was ensconced in my trunk this morning, which made this process that much more interesting and entertaining for the neighbors, as I am sure I was only one Moe and Larry away from a complete episode of the Three Stooges. Nyuk-nyuk!

In other news, we’re in the middle of what is called reading week. Perhaps a better name for it was given by my Torts professor when he called it hell week. The reason why this week is so tough is simple: there are no classes. It seems counter-intuitive at first, but in reality, when studying for finals, classes are actually more like breaks. They also help to organize the day into segments such as morning, afternoon and evening. Without classes, the hours of the day cease to have meaning, and everything runs together. For example, right now it’s close to midnight, but it feels like morning to me.

The good news is that at 1:00pm on Wednesday the 19th of December, 2007 our first semester of law school will have officially ended. We will have survived, and as the saying goes, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you into a lawyer. On second thought, that might not be quite right, but oh well. At any rate, finals will be over, and we will have our winter break to do with as we please. Well, except the monstrous amount of reading we have to do for our LSSC class, which is starting to behave like a rash that just won’t go away (our entire first week of spring semester is devoted to this class). Perhaps this is the appropriate time to mention that winter breaks in law school are not nearly as long as they are for most undergrads. We are off from the 20th of December to the 2nd of January, which is just long enough to taste freedom, but not long enough to not want to come back. I think they do this on purpose, like the intermission between acts in a play – make it too long and people don’t always come back.

In non-law-school news, the Patriots are playing the Jets this weekend. That was the punch-line, please provide your own joke.

"All this horsepower and no room to gallop." – Jim Carrey as Bruce Allmighty.

For those of you keeping score at home, I have now quoted the great Mark Twain exactly the same number of times as I have Jim Carrey. I think I’m going to go ahead and leave that off my list of accomplishments on my resume.

By the way, I take back what I said about no one reading these blogs. I do this not because Brian (with an I!) accused me of not only having something called a legal soul but also of pouring it out, which I am pretty certain would be a misdemeanor in 49 states (I do appreciate the sentiment, however), but because the mythical "powers that be" read my rather ineloquent complaint about ice storms and dumped a foot of snow on my head. The day before the first final of my legal career! Nice. Awesome. Thanks.

Don’t get me wrong – I love snow. First of all, snow means skiing, but it also allows for some of the most fun you can have in a car without being arrested. For instance: look, a donut***. So, imagine emerging from the library which closes due to the rapidly falling snow to find that the world around you has been covered in roughly six inches of fluffy snow. An empty parking lot served as my sandbox for a good ten minutes before I started attracting enough attention to charge admission, at which point I decided to wrap it up and go home. Two hours later, my three-mile long commute ended, and I was one of the lucky ones, as I’ve heard of people spending 7 hours sitting on busses, or having to dump their cars because they ran out of gas after idling for a few hours sitting in gridlock. So, to recap, snow = good, two hour commute home = bad.

Why does this happen? Why is it that the first real snowstorm of the year always makes people forget how to drive? This is New England, folks, it snows here every winter! Without fail, the first storm of the year always snarls traffic, confounds snowplows and wreaks general havoc. By March or April, with the last of the storms, all the drivers are pros at handling the white stuff, and everything flows smoothly, but by the time next winter rolls around, poof, the knowledge is gone and everyone acts like they have never seen snow before.

As a public service, and mostly in an attempt to prevent more two-hour long commutes home, I will now use this space to talk about proper driving technique in the snow, which can really be summed up in three words: No sudden movements.

This means no sudden stops, no sudden starts and no sudden turns. When you get stuck in some snow (and you will get stuck in snow at one point or another), rocking the car back and forth is the way to get unstuck, not mashing the gas pedal and pointing the steering wheel in the direction you want to go. Without divine intervention that will only lead to the spinning of a wheel, the smell of burning rubber and sometimes, if you are really lucky, a sideways shimmy into a snow bank which is entertaining for everyone but you. When starting from a stop pick something other than your lowest forward-facing gear, this reduces the torque applied to the wheels, and reduces the chances of them spinning in place. If your car picks your gears for you (I think the young kids call this an automatic), then read your manual to see if putting the lever into ‘2’ will allow you to actually start in second gear (most imports will, most domestics won’t). Here’s a special tip for SUV drivers: they call it four wheel drive, not four wheel stop, and there’s a reason for that which is self-explanatory, but you can try to prove everyone wrong, just make sure to have your insurance payments up to date.

One last tip: if you see a small four-door passing everyone by using the unplowed, snow-drift covered lane do not assume that you can do the same, because chances are that little car is equipped with all-wheel-drive, a manual transmission, a proper set of snow tires and someone who has not forgotten how to drive in the snow; all of which enable it to drive through the snow as if the roads were clear. I do admit, though, I derive entirely too much guilty pleasure out of watching people try to follow only to get themselves stuck, which inevitably leads to them mashing that gas pedal to try and get out....

*** Disclaimer: the driver in that link is not me, and it’s not my car, I don’t even know who it is, but I am sure that it is a professional driver on a closed course, using superhuman strength and powers, please do not attempt, product may glow in the dark, be harmful if swallowed, batteries not included, laws of physics still apply and all that jazz. Besides, that guy really needed more snow.

Choosing a law school is serious business. Quality of education, career prospects, interests of faculty and fellow students all play a role. Having just completed my first assignment for the "Spring" semester, may I humbly suggest that the length of winter break should also play a role in any decision? I realize this may put NU at a disadvantage, with a rather scant fourteen day break, but I am not here to recruit anyone to the institution I call home; I just report on what life is like inside its walls. I am also a bit miffed, to say the least, that it was not Crim or Constitution or Contracts that summoned me back to school exactly two weeks after the remnants of my brain were squeezed dry during my last final of the first semester. The culprit was instead LSSC, with a research plan to contemplate and execute and committees to form and "working rules" to re-establish. For those of us who have spent some time in the real world between undergrad and here – it is all a little too reminiscent of corporate team-building sessions – and that places us all a little too close to "trust falls with Ned from accounting."

Random notes from break (in no particular order):
1. The state of New Jersey owes me a windshield, as while I was traversing that magnificent stretch of parking lot known as the New Jersey Turnpike, an SUV the size of a small house kicked up what I can only assume was a rock of Martian origins directly into my windshield. Not only did this rock cause a crater which will require the windshield’s replacement, but it also obscured my view of the beautiful petrochemical refinery plants along the highway, and that is simply criminal.
2. There is no justifiable reason to show me a Jets game (even in NJ), when the Patriots are playing the Dolphins, their undefeated season is on the line, some records can be broken and the Jets are statistically eliminated from the playoffs until 2012 or so. None. I will not be swayed on this.
3. It’s good to feel human again, even if it’s only for two weeks.

And in case you are wondering what I was doing in New Jersey for a part of my break… let’s just say that married life is full of compromises.

A quick note for those of you applying to schools right now: if you have already figured out how to function on three hours of sleep a night, you are ahead of the ballgame. I, on the other hand, am a slow learner, so I apologize in advance if this particular post is even less cohesive than normal.

So, in absolutely no order, some random thoughts:

LSSC is a four-letter word. This is not a coincidence. This is also as much as I can say before NUSL figures out a way to electrocute me through my own keyboard. Let’s just say that if we add up all the hours my team has spent on this project over the last two weeks, it would qualify as cruel and unusual punishment in at least forty-nine states.

Evaluations (that’s our version of grades) come out tomorrow.

The Giants went into Green Bay and ruined what would have been a perfect Payback-Superbowl for the Patriots. I still can’t say the words Desmond "bleeping" Howard without that "bleeping" in there, and that game was eleven years ago.

The Model Penal Code turns out to not be an ideal that all states should model their penal codes after, since it requires proving a state of mind (recklessness, knowledge or purpose) with regards to each element of a crime. In clearer terms, statutory rape would not be a crime unless the perpetrator was at least reckless in not knowing his victim was under the age of consent. Common-sense suggests that any illegal act with someone under the age of consent should be punishable, regardless of the perpetrator’s knowledge of the actual age of the victim. I’d like to now petition to change the name from Model Penal Code to Impractical Penal Code.

The Uniform Commercial Code is not uniform, in that the states adopt their own versions of it, which differ from each other.

I am starting to feel a little like Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Grades are a funny animal at a school that purports to not have any. I believe I am revealing nothing new when I divulge that here, at NUSL, we have evaluations instead of grades. There are some pretty firmly entrenched ideas on the benefit/downside of evaluations, but before we get into them, it’s a good idea to understand what they actually are.

I was warned ahead of time that professors, in general, use buzz-words at the top of your evaluations that give future employers an idea of how you did in the class. While not a grade, per se, it does not take a genius to figure out the ranking scheme of: outstanding, excellent, very good, good, and so on… An eval starts with some variation of "You wrote a(n) ______ exam." or "Overall, your exam was ______." Fill in the blank with a buzz-word and you have a friendlier system of ranking than you would if professors used, say 3.8 or 2.7. Then, you get a few lines that tell you about your exam – in a way, it sounds like the perfect system: those that don’t want to be ranked can take solace in that they are not, but those that want an idea of where they are in relation to their peers can get a general clue. The system is very humane, as those at the very top or the very bottom don’t have to claw quite as hard, since there is no way to tell if you are number 2 or number 5 in the class, but you do have an idea whether you are in the top 10-15% or so. Of course, guessing, by definition is imprecise, and some professors muddy the issue by refusing to use certain buzz-words (much like that one Philosophy professor in undergrad who thought anything over a B+ had to be a monumental work comparable to that of Socrates -- yes, I am looking at you, Prof. Suits!), but overall the system provides enough granularity to keep those of us with scientific backgrounds happy.

The problem with an unconventional system is that no one else follows it. My biggest worry before coming here was how my transcript would stack up against my peers from other area schools. Imagine being an HR manager and getting fifty transcripts for a given position. You have an hour to whittle them down to the ones you will interview. Will you really take the time to read the transcript that has over twenty evaluations instead of one page of grades?

Thankfully, there are much brighter and better people worrying about this than just me -- and they have solutions. The first thing NUSL has going for it is its extensive co-op employer network. My sheepish apologies about the intricacies of how our "hiring process" works were met with nods of approval and understanding at every interview. The employers that work with NUSL know the system well, and they believe it works. Even more importantly, NUSL has started a slow, methodical shift to make it easier for graduates to get top employment opportunities. In addition to evaluations, upper-level students (starting with my class next year) will get a "grade-like object," as well. Ranging from High Honors, Honors and Pass to Marginal Pass and Fail, these will allow the university to produce a one-page transcript which will give an employer unfamiliar with the NUSL system a way to quickly determine an applicant’s worth. It’s still not a GPA, and it’s not a class rank, but it certainly alleviates some of my fears, and so I thought I would share.

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.

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!

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.

This being a rather slow time sports-wise for me, and having already covered skiing in my posting from the upper reaches of Vermont, I find myself having to actually write about something substantive. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience.

I often get asked about the challenges of law school, and while the long days (and nights) spent reading cases, the mountains of research for the writing course and the constant threat of being the subject of a discombobulating question from a professor that makes you feel like you should be in a SouthWest commercial (want to get away?) are all things to worry about, the toughest it seems is the need to check some of our preconceptions at the door.

Law school, by definition is something you cannot do until you have graduated from high school and college. Increasingly, more and more people also spend some time after college working in the "real world" before going back to school. This gives us all a level of experience with the way things work (or at least should work) which we bring with us. The problem is, the law doesn't always agree with our experiences, and at times, it disagrees with common sense. It should surprise no one that the intricacies of the law are not always sensical (webster's dictionary tells me that I just made this word up, but I refuse to believe it) and require a decent amount of interpretation (otherwise, why would we need lawyers?), but the law has a knack for taking big every-day concepts and turning them on their head.

Here are two stories:

1. Two college freshmen live in the same dorm. One afternoon they engage in consensual intercourse (that's lawyer-speak for "doing it"). Then they go their separate ways, only to "reconnect" later on in the evening, at which point the "gentleman" claims that they went at it again, while the "lady" claims that she didn't want to, and that it was rape.

2. A 63-year-old man tells the 14-year-old daughter of his girlfriend that she has two options. The first option is to satisfy him carnally (lawyer-speak again, sorry). The second is to be removed from the home and placed in a juvenile facility. She has sex with him.

If you were asked which one of these was the clearer instance of rape, which would you pick? Let's assume you'd pick #2 (and if this assumption is wrong, feel free to tell me why in the comments). Our common sense tells us that the scenario there is much farther over the line of propriety than the scenario in the first case. What if I were to tell you that the court in the first case ruled that it was rape (while simultaneously deciding that the defendant was entitled to a theory of defense he did not get, but not allowing him to call for that theory now) and that the second was not, because the victim had a "choice"? You would shake your head, mutter something about lawyers and, if you have a teenage daughter, you'd make sure she only applied to colleges where she could live at home. Please note that the law is not completely nuts, and case #2 can still result in a conviction for statutory rape, but that carries less of a penalty than "pure" rape. Regardless, reading cases like these, or ones dealing with the death penalty makes it difficult to reconcile what you think is right with what the courts end up deciding actually is right. Worse than that, there is a fear that with every one of these cases, every one of these decisions we move farther away from the common sense we came in with and closer to these judges that have grown very out of touch with reality. The last thing I want to do is be a lawyer first and a human being second.

So, that's it in a nutshell -- the toughest part of law school is staying human. I guess I could have just said that to start with, huh?

I think it is official: law school requires you to re-invent yourself. For example, I am currently taking a break from reading my Crim homework to write this posting. Of course, I was only reading the Crim homework as a way of taking a break from peer-editing the latest draft of our LSSC deliverable. In my pre-law school days it was sufficient to only have one "level" of break when something got overly repetitive, but law school has forced an added level of complexity. My breaks require breaks! I think however, that two is the limit. It all starts getting a bit nonsensical after that. Quick aside: I will continue to use the words nonsensical and sensical until they enter common usage. If someone managed to get people to start using irregardless when the 'ir' prefix is superfluous, I can certainly add sensical to the dictionary! I am a man with a plan.

Anyway, I just broke my rule and answered an email, which means that for a brief moment I had a triple-break going! I feel like I just accomplished something monumental. I'd like to thank my family for always believing in me, and this school for providing all this work to make it possible. I'd also like to stress that there's no "I" in team, and that we really gave it 110% on this latest draft. No one thought it was possible, no one believed in us, but we did it! I'm king of the world!

Some other things I've noticed about myself lately:

In an attempt to fool my brain, I have decided that my alarm clock does not need to be on daylight-savings time. This way, when I go to bed, I feel like it's an hour earlier than it is. I know what you're thinking, "this is stupid, when you wake up, it's an hour earlier too, or you're an hour late to class!" Couldn't be further from the truth -- I use my wife's alarm clock to wake up, and because she is not a law student, she has no desire to try to fool her brain, and her clock is set right. As to why we have two alarm clocks, it's simple: I used to be an engineer. I have the world's most complicated alarm clock. It has hidden buttons. My wife is not a morning person. In the interests of world peace, we have decided that two alarm clocks does not make us weird. Don't judge me! Besides, it makes it possible to get 4 hours of sleep in a night when you really only got 3. Actually, now that I think about this, 5 hours would be even better -- I'm going to set my clock back another hour.

I now carry cash, coins and my id card has something called "husky dollars" on it. This is because the coke vending machine closest to the classroom where I spend most of my life intermittently decides to accept only one of those three forms of currency, and when I need caffeine -- I need caffeine.

On a slightly more serious note (just slightly), on Monday a man named William Moore came to speak to our Criminal Justice class. The most impressive thing about this man was that he was alive. Our professor brought him in to talk to us about the death penalty, and the way the justice system goes about in implementing it. Mr. Moore is a pretty good authority on the subject, having spent over 17 years on death row in the state of Georgia before being pardoned. He was represented by my Crim professor throughout his appeals process. I am not a good enough writer to even attempt to relate the story he told us, but I will say that it was a powerful message. He may not have changed my views on the death penalty, but he certainly gave me lots to think about.

The reason I bring this up is because I think this experiential approach is unique to this school. While I am usually first to complain when the "huggy-feely" aspect of NUSL surfaces in my classes, there is only so much you can learn from case law. Words on a page are very impersonal and don't always force you to reconsider your preconceptions. By building opportunities such as this one into the curriculum, NUSL provides a more complete education than you can get elsewhere.

Mired in the depths of editing my team's (from this moment forward, the words "law office" have been stricken from my dictionary) hopefully-final draft of the project deliverable; I am tempted to write this entire posting using passive voice. Tempted, yes, but successful -- not so much. While I like editing, the time it consumes is monumental -- we have gotten through roughly 14 pages in 6 hours today. Our document is 140 pages. As a law student, I am contractually prohibited from doing the math to show you how long this will take, but I am sure you can figure out it's rather monumental. And this is on top of our classes, which do not take a break for a week so we can get this done. In other words, this next week should be a good time.

Speaking of classes, I experienced my first "click" moment of the semester. If I have already explained what a "click" moment is, please forgive me, there is no easy way to search this blog, and I am not about to go sifting through the archives for it. The "click" moment is the precise time when everything starts making sense. In the beginning of a semester, we start accumulating information about a given subject. Material is read, analyzed, committed to that space in memory which used to be in charge of knowing where your keys are and briefed. Class is attended, material is presented, discussed, rehashed, discussed some more and then the cycle is repeated. Every day -- for three substantive classes. So, it is perfectly natural for the material to just float in your head, ready to be recalled and used, but not really connected in a "big picture" way. I've heard it described as a big jigsaw puzzle -- the pieces are coming out of the box, scattered on the table; they just haven't been put together yet. The hope, and goal of all law students is that by the time we walk into the room for the final exam that the puzzle is complete, and that it all makes sense. We all prefer for this moment of clarity to come relatively early in the semester, and in some classes, the material flows relatively easily which makes this possible. Other classes require you to have more of the proverbial pieces out of the proverbial box before you can see the big picture (I think I have gotten all the mileage that is possible out of the jigsaw puzzle analogy).

This semester, the moments of clarity have been harder to come by. In fact, up until this week, I was batting .000, which does tend to scare you when more than half of a semester has gone by. The reason is simple -- the less connected the information, the tougher it is to keep it all somewhere in your head, which means the longer you go without a moment of clarity the more likely you are to start forgetting stuff. So, it is with much pleasure (and, apparently, a lot of words) that I introduce you to my first "click" moment of the semester, brought to you by my Crim class.

Without going too much into the details of the how and why -- since I do not want to rob your future professor of the joy of seeing the expression on your face when he first starts discussing the theory of impossibility -- something about that topic must have kicked the hamster taking a nap inside my cranium into action. All of a sudden, it all makes sense, from day one through today! I really can't explain the feeling, except to say that it is a wonderful thing and you should all be looking forward to it.

So, why do I call it the "click" moment (especially since it really doesn't work with my jigsaw puzzle example)? Because I am an engineer at heart (and brain), and the sign of things working properly is when they "click together"

Oh, and by the way, I made at least three grammatical errors in this posting, and stocked up on "scare quotes" as if they were being discontinued -- but that's the beauty of a blog -- no one expects much.

I made an executive decision last week: you did not need to hear from me while I was in the midst of marathon editing sessions for our final deliverable in LSSC. Trust me on this one. However, roughly 44,000 words and seventy-some hours of editing (in a group of four) later, it is done, finished, completed, kaput, konchena, finita la comedia (tragedia?)! Of course, I am now a week behind in all my classes, with a summary judgment memo that was due this morning and a project in Contracts due a week from today. And we're about 5 weeks away from finals. Nice! If there's anything else any of you would like to have us 1Ls juggle, you let us know, ok? We seem to have way too much free time on our hands.

But enough about me -- my rants about LSSC are starting to sound like a broken record anyhow. Let's talk briefly about admissions. By the time this is posted, it'll be April 1st, and I understand that is the deposit deadline at some schools. I also understand that some people are still waiting for answers from some of the schools they applied to. I was in a similar boat last year, and my one piece of advice is -- don't allow yourself to be frustrated. Well, that, and don't gamble -- losing your deposit sent to a school you were going to attend until your "reach" school finally admitted you is a small price to pay for retaining some of your sanity in this process.

One more piece of relevant information before I go back to reading Planned Parenthood v. Casey (written with the clarity of mud, thank you, supreme court). NUSL held an Intellectual Property conference this past Saturday, and the alumni folk were nice enough to let us poor law school students attend without paying the fee (though the fee was low enough so that I would have gladly paid it if I had to). Panelists on patents, trademarks and copyrights presented various topics and quite a few current and former students participated in the discussions. As a consequence of knowing next-to-nothing about IP law, my brain started to feel like a sponge after a little while, trying to absorb as much as it could. Illuminating, entertaining, overwhelming are all good words to describe the experience. Also, in a way, calming. NUSL is known for its Public Interest, so it's reassuring to see that it's quite good at the area of the law I'm interested in as well.

There are less than three weeks left before finals, and no, I don't really want to talk about it, so let's just pretend like it's not happening, OK?

So, instead, let's concentrate on other things. Saw the first sox/yankees game of the season, which was part of an experiment. Under a theory developed in 2002, I had decided that whenever I attend a sox/yankees game and have nice seats, the sox lose. Being that I am now in law school and broke, I did not think that any experimentation in this area was possible, but my brother, solidifying his status as the best younger sibling of a law student in the history of law students, got us some very nice seats. The sox lost. What's worse is that my brother also went to the game on Sunday (which the sox won), and so we know it was my presence and not his. I will also have you know that a friend of mine briefly debated buying Mike Lowell's jersey during the season opener. She held the thing in her hands for roughly thirty seconds before deciding to just get a sweatshirt. Mike Lowell hurt himself in the next game. What can I say, some people have this gift. We need to figure out a way to harness it and use it for purposes of good, not evil. Oh, and the friend is forbidden from even thinking about buying any jerseys now.

This morning, I saw a guy ride his bike into a pole. He was craning his neck for some reason and never saw it. He wasn't really hurt, but surprisingly he was not nearly as amused by this as I was.

I had a fight with a pigeon. I lost. The bird was sitting in the middle of my way up the garage, and no amount of honking revving or inching forward was going to move it until it was done digesting whatever it was digesting. Adding insult to injury, I am holding the same bird responsible for the bird poop on my windshield present when I returned from class. This is not over! That bird may have won the battle, but I will win the war!

Speaking of bird poop, saw the a car that looked like a flying cow released its entire stomach contents on it on my walk back from the MFA today. Oh yes, as students in Boston, one of our perks is free admission to the Museum of Fine Arts. I actually get double the free admission, because I am also a member, so I wonder how that works? Do they owe me money because I went there for lunch today? Interesting.

A man tripped/fell/ran into the side of my parked car the other day. I am happy to say that neither he nor the car were hurt. Well, actually, I was really only worried about the car. The man can take care of his own problems, but cars need our help and protection.

A friend sent me two youtube clips of a lawyer who showed up in court drunk: Part 1, Part with breathalyzer. This had the dual purpose of both being entertaining and relaxing. Instead of worrying about the fact that I have no clue what-so-ever what's going on in con law with less than three weeks remaining before finals, I am now certain that even if I happen to flunk it, I am still a step ahead of that guy.

Another link for good measure, which my writing professor sent us to prepare us for oral argument: bad oral argument

I don't like sunscreen. Please understand, I mean no disrespect to Mary Schmich or her excellent proposed commencement speech, which is still as funny and relevant today as it was in 1997 when it was first written. (Brief aside: I think it should be the goal of any writer to have their work mistaken for Kurt Vonnegut's). However, I was just never a fan of the stuff. It might have something to do with the fact that a tube of sunscreen has yet to arrive at any destination intact, choosing instead to commit ritual suicide by exploding inside my checked luggage or getting punctured by a ski pole inside a ski bag (don't ask) or by getting lost somewhere in Chicago (of all places!). Also could have something to do with the yogurt-like consistency, the dried-mayo like feel and the hot-dog-glistening-on-a-bun sheen it provides when applied. So, imagine my horror when over the last couple of years I have come to the realization that I cannot live without the stuff?

At the risk of having to turn in my "I AM the NRA!" bumper sticker***, perhaps Al Gore has a point about global warming and our ever-increasing carbon footprint. If a guy like me, who could spend entire days on the beach as a child without anything between him and the sun's rays now can't sit in the bleachers at a sox game without looking like a lobster at the end, then perhaps we have really done something goofy to the environment. When it is 85 degrees in Boston in April, and it seems to surprise no one, perhaps it's time to look at some sort of a tin-foil hat for the planet to wear (can we get NASA on this?).

In law school news, I have finished my very last crim and contracts readings, meaning I am one con law reading (tomorrow) away from being able to get fully into outlining and exam prep. At the risk of causing extreme emotional distress (I know, I know, lame lawyer joke -- listen I can't help it anymore, it's part of my persona now...) to future NUSL 1Ls: I do find this semester to be much tougher than last semester. Finals snuck up a lot faster, and I seem to have a much looser grip on the material this time around. However, a mere fifteen days from now, I will be 1/3 done with my legal education (and if you count the credits, it's more like half-done, really) -- and this is a good feeling.

Random sports note (because I cannot write more than 200 words without mentioning a Boston-based sports team): the Bruins got demolished by the Canadiens in game 7 of the first round of the playoffs and it made all five of their actual fans sad. It also made hordes of "fans" fall off the bandwagon they had clamored atop of since the game 6 win, but I am not terribly worried about them -- the Celtics are there to catch them for now. As for me, despite loving hockey more than any sport out there -- I didn't watch a minute of the series. Why? Two words: Jeremy Jacobs. Perfect example why someone who is not a fan should never own a franchise. That man has caused Boston hockey fans more pain than the Big Dig and the Canadiens combined.

*** In the interests of full disclosure, I should clarify that I would never affix a bumper sticker to my car. Also, I do not in fact own a firearm. Never have. Never even actually fired one, either -- which I think would keep me out of the club, even if I were inclined to join (which I am not).

As a freshman in college I once almost slept through a fire alarm. I would have succeeded, too, had my roommate not been raised in a mid-western state which left him with an overactive sense of personal responsibility for my life. Actually, it was quite impressive, because not only was the siren mounted directly above my bed, but the school had seen to it that there was a strobe attached which burnt the retinas of people three counties away, yet I was perfectly willing to sleep right through the noise and the lights. Alas, it was not meant to be. So, as I stood outside, wearing an improvised outfit of basketball shorts, workboots and an inside-out t-shirt -- being pelted by snowballs emanating from the frat across the street -- I decided I didn't much care for centralized fire alarm systems, or people from Ohio for that matter.

I have since learned to appreciate the folks from the Buckeye state, but my feelings about fire alarms have not changed. We all know that things you dislike tend to come in bunches. So, it should surprise no one that my semi-comatose state of deciding which level of scrutiny applies to a classification of a blind midget addicted to crack cocaine (improvised review question) who was being denied his right to freely associate with non-midgets was broken by the familiar shrill of a fire alarm in my apartment building. Constitutional Law and a fire alarm -- I had reached my own, personal level of hell. I reached for my trusty Nascar-branded ear plugs (distributed gratis by the library, under a sign that said "do not eat"), but was quickly overruled by my better half who suggested that we should at least investigate. Having learned my lesson from last time, I first checked to make sure I was wearing pants and second for the lack of any frat boys with snowballs (yes, I know it's May, but they have freezers!). Finding the coast to be clear, we went downstairs to literally sniff around and wait for the cavalry.

I am happy to report that my tax dollars result in a rather prompt response by two fire engines and a ladder. Three of the firefighters, however, were too intrigued by the "chicken pox" car parked in front of the building to worry about saving our lives, but it is understandable -- the car actually has spray-painted pocks on it (gotta love students). The other firefighters started menacingly in our direction. This is when I noticed that one of them had the biggest crowbar I have ever seen, another had a pick-axe and the third kind of looked like Santa Claus. I opened the front door to the building as they got close, and the guy with the pick axe looked annoyed that I kept him from the truly enjoyable aspect of his job -- breaking down a door.

Two minutes later, the fire brigade re-emerged to inform us that there was no fire (tax dollars at work, people!). I asked if we could turn the bleating of Hades off now, but was told that required a key to get into this tiny little box that was hanging out on the wall beside us, and that, of course, the fire department lacked said key. My suggestion that the pick-axe or the crowbar be used to procure a solution to the lack of key problem was met with cold stares. I think the guy was still mad I didn't let him break down the front door.

Both my management company's regular business line and the emergency line told me to call back at a more convenient time. Undeterred, I decided to ramble down the street to the office. Buzzing the intercom system connected me to a surly gentleman who assured me that "there's a fire, we're working as fast as we can!" A part of me really wanted to know what it was that they were working on, but the part that pays the monthly condo fees decided it was probably better if I didn't know. So, I decided to be satisfied that they were working as fast as they could be and went back to my earplugs and midget problem.

The score, for those of you keeping track at home, is now: firealarm 2, leon 0.

In somewhat-related news, one final down. Two to go, and the chances of me keeping my sanity through this process: about 50-50.

Law school was once described to me as "three years of hell to become the devil." By this time tomorrow, I will be 1/3 of the way done with that mission (pending exam grades of marginal pass or above). I checked for the presence of horns yesterday, and there were none. I am assuming the grow in as I get closer to taking the bar. Actually, aside from learning some new time-saving measures and falling subject to some questionable stylistic decisions (when exactly does stubble stop being stubble and become a homeless man's beard?), I am the same guy I was a year ago. Well, minus the productive-member-of-society-who-makes-things-that-people-use-and-pays-taxes bit.

I refuse to treat the end of exams as a milestone (though it is a nice excuse for a party), and so I refuse to look back at the year and think about everything that's happened to this moment. That exercise always seems to involve to much emotional baggage, and all my emotions were used up during the first semester of LSSC.

I will, however, leave those of you about to embark on your first third of the road to hell with one piece of advice:

Look around you. There are people in your life that are truly important. Some of them have been there since the very beginning, others you've met along the way. Some became your friends on the first day you met them, with others it took a bit longer, and some of them you won't meet until late August of this year (so if you look around now you won't see them, but let it go, I'm on a roll here). Your success in anything in life, and especially law school depends on these people. They will be there to celebrate and commiserate, to pick you up when you are down and to keep you grounded when you get a little too full of yourself. Without good friends and family this first year would be much, much harder than it has to be. Rely on these people. Don't be too proud or too afraid to ask for their help and support. And try not to alienate them all with law jokes -- it turns out no one really thinks they are funny.

I will end now, before I regress into high-school year-book mode and start listing people's names/initials and how much I appreciate them and what they have done to help me along this path; they know who they are, and no one else really wants to see that.

The next time I write something in this space I will technically be a 2L. And I will be a member of productive society again, working for the government without getting paid -- how much more productive can you get?

Enjoy the weekend -- and if you see a guy who looks like the picture at the top of this blog at a bar in the Boston area -- buy him a drink, he'll appreciate it.

"Three people failed this class last quarter." A powerful statement in any circumstances, but arguably even more likely to get the attention of someone who attends a school that purports not to have any grades. Failed, you say? Interesting. The Bankruptcy professor went on to inform us that the class is very fast-paced, there is a lot of reading, an in-class final, statutory language that is unlike any we have seen before, and that he fully expects the class to shrink a great deal now that he has shared all of this information with us. He was not kidding. The forms required simply to file for bankruptcy are apparently 48 pages long and written in a cross between Greek and Aramaic. In addition, the unofficial comments provided by our collection of code sections, contain gems such as this: "If your professor has written law review articles about big case bankruptcy filings in Delaware, then it is important to read this section and those articles." Thanks for the tip.

My other classes this quarter (even after four years of undergrad and a year here, it still feels weird to not have semesters) are: Intellectual Property, Trademark Law and the unfortunately named Basic Income Taxation -- which just proves that putting the word "Basic" in front of something does not make it easy. Interestingly, the code and regulations of tax law were written in a different dialect of Greek from bankruptcy law, so taking the two together is not helpful. Rounding out my on-campus presence will be my stint as a TA for my Torts professor, which hopefully will not lead to permanent brain damage of 60 brand new 1Ls who are permanently confused by some ill-formed answer I provide. I actually wonder if NUSL is insured for this eventuality, you know, just in case.

In non law-school news, I spent the long weekend back in Rochester, visiting college friends. Aside from eating as many garbage plates as can possibly be consumed in a three-day span (why Nick Tahou's Hots will not expand into Boston is beyond me!) and trying to keep up with a very active (and much smarter than me) two-and-a-half-year-old, this trip also just happened to conflict with what I lovingly refer to as "moving day from hell" in Boston, the September 1st lease changeover. While I did get to miss out on carrying some very heavy furniture up and down some very steep stairs, I am sure it was a good time for all involved, and as soon as my friends who moved without my assistance this past weekend start speaking to me again, I am sure there will be some funny stories to share. Until then -- I have to go find a Greek-to-English dictionary.

It was such a simple question: "What classes are you taking this quarter?" In fact, it was the type of question that doesn't have a wrong answer. Except, of course, if you can't think of the fourth class you are taking. You know, the one you just skipped the last ten minutes of to be at this screening interview. That class, with the book, and the professor who is a judge... Let's see, there's IP, Trademark, Income Tax and... complete blank. Mercifully, my interviewer suggested he was not trying to stump me with the very first question and moved on when he realized the answer was not forthcoming. Of course, this did not stop my mental gyrations on the subject of that missing class, and so, roughly five minutes later, my brain (fresh from its nap) chimed in with: Bankruptcy! In hindsight, it would have been better for the brain to have filed this newly located information for later use, rather than interrupting my brilliant monologue about my summer internship mid-sentence, delivering the one-word exclamation with the pride of a kindergartner who just ate an entire tube of glue, but that is precisely the action it took. Then it promptly went back for its second nap.

It should surprise no one that I did not get a call-back from that particular firm (I guess they don't need any summer associates that ingest glue). In the end, though, you can't help but laugh. For, as prepared as you are for an interview, as ready as you are for any question -- there will come a time when you will trip over your own tongue, or your brain will freeze. The hope is that it doesn't happen very often.

In non-interview news, classes continue, with the highlight being the discussion today in Intellectual Property. Responding to the professor's suggestion that the recipient of any love letters owns the copyright to the actual letter, while the writer would own the copyright to the writing (as the author), a fellow student asked a question that started with "so, what happens if you have this videotape..." For those that can't imagine where the discussion went after that... sorry, you'll have to take the course.

And now, off to do my reading for Bankruptcy, you know, that class I'm taking. Along with the other three.

For the past forty years, Northeastern has been known for two things: the co-op program and the focus on public interest law. This focus appeals to some, but I'll be honest, it did nothing for me. In fact, even though I am a Bostonian, I did not initially consider applying to NUSL. Since my well-shorn mug adorns these pages, something obviously changed my mind, so what was it?

The co-op program played a role, but it was relatively limited. The way I saw it, I wanted to work in BigLaw (for a large firm) when I graduated, and any good school gives you that opportunity, through on-campus interviews for summer associateships, which hopefully lead to full-time offers at the end of the summer. Sure, a good co-op and a good review from that co-op can and do help get those summer associateships, but so do letter grades, class rank (neither of which NUSL has) and law review (which we now have, but it requires no competition to be on it) as these things allow you to distinguish yourself from the rest of your class. My analytical brain (straight off LSAT preparation) considered these factors a wash -- whatever benefit co-op provided, the lack of true grades took away (keep in mind that the school did not have honorifics for grades the way it does now when I applied, my calculation might have been different had I known that we would have High Honors, Honors, Pass and Fail instead of just narrative evaluations).

Attending an LSAC forum here in Boston, I got tired of waiting in line behind many suit-wearing future 1Ls (why do people wear suits to those things?) for a prestigious and well-known school across the river. Wandering through the room, I came upon the NUSL table (why are the schools not arranged in alphabetical order?) That was when I had my epiphany, in the shape of a sheet of statistics similar to the following:

Class of 2007 Major Areas of Legal Practice:
Law Firms: 35%
Judicial Clerkships: 20%
Public Interest: 17%
Government: 9%
Business: 11%
Non-legal: 8%

So, let me see, the school I had written off (in my mind) because if was a public-interest law school put 35% of its graduates into law firms? While having 17% of your graduates go into public interest is a huge percentage (compared to other schools), what I had heard about Northeastern had made me think the number was closer to 71%. The incoming class was roughly 200 people, of those 70 ended up in law firms and another 22 ended up in something called Business. This was an eye-opener.

In the short year and a half(ish) that I have been here, I have noticed a trend, as well. Aside from the move to grades (see honorifics above or my posts on the subject from last year), the school seems to be shoring up its non-public-interest programs and image. For example, they brought in a new professor to teach transactional Intellectual Property law (Prof. Susan Mongomery) to supplement Professors Stacey Dogan and Rashmi Dyal-Chand. Last year, an IP symposium came to campus, and all the local law schools have IP-related presentations that rotate amongst the campuses which students are invited to attend (and which are an amazing opportunity to learn from and interact with some of the best minds in IP law).

Additionally, NUSL hosted the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board last night for a hearing on an opposition to a trademark application. The board normally sits in Washington, DC, but does occasionally travel. Having them come to NUSL is a privilege and an opportunity for Northeastern to expand its reach and name-recognition beyond Public Interest. Sitting in our gleaming, brand-new moot courtroom for the occasion, I couldn't help but think how wrong I had initially been about what this school was about.

So, if you are interested in Public Interest law, I hear we're pretty good at that -- but if you are not, turns out we're not just a public interest law school.

Finals in the fall before the snow starts falling is a new concept for me. While my undergraduate institution also had quarters, and thus finals there were at about the same time as they are here at NUSL, that school also just happened to be in upstate New York -- and up there it starts snowing somewhere around Labor Day and sometimes stops snowing around the 4th of July or so. So, frantically studying for finals while there are still leaves on trees reminds me very much of high school. I wonder if this means I am good at basketball again (my skills peaked somewhere around freshman year of high school).

If you felt a seismic shift in the space-time continuum this week, sorry, it was totally my fault: I finally stepped firmly into the 21st century and joined facebook. I know it doesn't seem like such a big deal to most of you, but hey, I went to college when we used abacuses and sundials, I just learned how to use email two weeks ago. Well, not quite, but I have been staging a one-man boycott of all things facebook-related for years. I didn't grow up with it, so I didn't need it. I changed my mind when I realized I was spending more time explaining to people why I wasn't on there than I would by just signing up. So I did. Actually, as I signed up for an account the site went down for about an hour. I think it was due to sheer shock of their servers. "Leon? Signing up? Really? Oh crap, the world is ending -- reboot!" Next step: smartphone!

Watching the economic world we are currently in and attempting to write your Bankruptcy outline is a rather morbid affair. One thing I know well -- student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, so it's best not to have any if you decide to file. Hmmmm.

As for the actual finals: I have four. Three in-class and one take-home. I get to pick the time of the take-home, as long as it is during the week next week (Mon-Fri). Since my other finals are spread out: Mon - Wed - Fri, this means that I will have three finals in a row. This development has made me miss reading week, which we do not get as 2Ls but did as 1Ls. At the time it felt unbearably long, but now I could totally use another three or four days, at least.

On that note... Bankruptcy outline awaits, and unless I get back to it soon enough, my questions about dischargeability of student debt might cease being theoretical and start being personal.

(With apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Since I am apologizing, I may as well beg for the forgiveness of those loyal readers who think that I have devoted enough time (last year) to the subject of NUSL grades (or as we like to call them: Evaluations). Having just gotten my first taste of NUSL's new High Honors, Honors, Pass, Marginal Pass and Fail system, I figured an update is in order. If you disagree, please feel free to scroll down for a riveting discussion of how cold it is outside.

Without further adieu, I have received grades from two of my four classes yesterday, which allowed me to see first hand how the honorifics work. Brief recap: grades are really a paragraph of text which evaluates your performance in a given class. During the first year, they formulaically start with: "Your performance on this exam was..." (or something along those lines). The next word in the sequence determines how well you did, and most professors use Outstanding, Excellent, Very Good, Good, and so on. However, during our second and third years, we also get the aforementioned honorifics to go along with the paragraph of text and to allow for quicker summarization of one's transcript.

I admit, I welcome this change. While it does not lead to a grade-point-average or a class rank, it does make it somewhat easier to compare your grades to those of others. And let's be honest for a second, employers, especially in this economy will compare grades (as well as other criteria) to determine who to hire.

The honorifics also eliminate the problem of professors who choose to use non-standard buzz-words such as "Commendable" or "Interesting", which eliminates the problem of figuring out where on the Excellent-to-Fail scale those words fit in. There is also the added bonus of the professors being free to be more creative with their paragraph of evaluation. There is no longer a need to force the buzz-word into it, and so both of my evaluations had a more natural and less forced feel to them. Now, let's just hope I am just as happy after I get my remaining two evals – I have this fear that one of them might compare my legal reasoning to a porcupine (prickly on the outside, squishy on the inside).

In non-grade news, I spent a good chunk of last week listening to arguments in front of a panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals. The most rewarding thing about my current internship (aside, I suppose, from the ability to dramatically improve my writing skills) is the chance to see the court in operation. While any "civilian" can listen to arguments, judicial clerks (and even us lowly interns) get the full story. We have access to the briefs, and we take part in both before and after-argument debriefings with our judge. This means that even for cases I have no involvement in, I get an idea of what the judges see as important or pivotal to a case. Watching the arguments with the aid of this foresight is an invaluable learning tool.

And now, as promised: man is it cold outside!

Enjoy the long weekend, folks.

It is amazing how our fast our time away from school flies by. In a mere month, I will have traded in the relative comfort of my office and somewhat regular working hours for the round-the-clock experience that is commonly referred to as "classes." To that end, the school opened up the registration process for the next quarter, and even provided a probable schedule.

The schedule is an important component, and the day it comes out can feel a little like playing the lottery (or playing craps, I suppose, or any other sort of gambling activity). Let me explain. As frequent readers are aware, NUSL has two rotations. One group of people spends their summers and winters on co-op, and springs and falls in class, the other group does the opposite. This means that you have to choose your friends carefully, lest you end up never seeing them again, separated by the impenetrable barrier of being on different rotations. The school actually frowns on fraternizing across rotations; I hear some have been expelled for it. (In case the sarcasm wasn't as thick as I thought: I am, of course, kidding. Some of my best friends are on the "other" rotation). However, one real consequence of the rotation system is that some classes are only offered twice in the two years we get to pick our own (first-year classes are picked for you), and consequently only once "during your rotation." To help a student roadmap their education, NUSL provides a running list of classes to be offered every quarter for the next two years. The list does not contain the days and times the course will be offered, just that it will be. This way, one can peruse the list and see when certain classes have to be taken (if they are to be taken at all). So, before the actual class schedule comes out, one can make a list of all the potential classes to take. Then, you hope that the schedule doesn't cause them to conflict. Hence, the lottery feeling.

I considered the fall schedule to be a push (I did not win or lose) because while there was a rather annoying conflict between Corporations and Trademarks, Corps is offered again next year, so I can just take it then. The spring schedule is pure bliss. I was interested in seven classes, knowing that I could take no more than five of them. In the end, only two conflicted: International IP and Securities Regulation. I wasn't sold on Securities Regulation to tell you the truth -- it's just that as a less-than-proud Wachovia shareholder I completely believe that we need better regulation of securities. So, International IP won out. This meant that the schedule actually allowed me to decide which of the other classes I was least interested in. The decision became easier after the description for one class yielded the letters F, C, and C, in that order. I am not convinced I am ready for a quarter of dealing with the people that brought us the "wardrobe malfunction." This left me with five potential, non-conflicting classes, all of which I want to take, and which add up to 18 credits. Hmm. 12 credits is full-time enrollment, 16 is the max. This leaves me with a dilemma. Ask/beg to be allowed to take them all or find a class to drop.

Problem is: there isn't really one that I want to drop: Business Bankruptcy, Secured Transactions, Patents, Corporate Tax, International IP. Having gone through non-business bankruptcy and non-corporate tax in the fall, I am not about to wimp out now. Patents and international IP are clearly not up for discussion. Secured transactions are everywhere, and seem incredibly pertinent in light of the current economy. So, you see, I have to take all of them!
Of course, none of these looks like a "gimme," either. Also, it is entirely possible that I'd be looking at five in-class exams at the end of the quarter (and we don't have reading week). That could be painful. Hmm.

In the end, this reminds me of my first cliff-face while skiing. I shouldn't really call it a cliff-face as much as about a six-foot drop off a perch into some soft, powdery snow. Absolutely terrifying the first time you are faced with one, however, and doubly so for someone whose jumping abilities are well documented as being rather sub-par. As I was awkwardly preparing myself for my immediate demise from a broken neck (and thinking of all sorts of excuses why I needed to take my skis off, hike back up and around this little cliff, and forget that this ever happened), something poked me in the leg. I dug through my pocket to find that my then-girlfriend's key chain had decided to attack me. Inscribed on that key chain: "NO GUTS... NO GLORY." I promptly decided to ski off the "cliff."

A mid-air-ski-detaching-somersault and a face-plant later, I was safely below the drop-off, having bruised nothing other than my ego. I guess the point is simple: life is boring without risk. So, I'm leaning toward taking all the classes. And I am bringing my wife's key chain with me on the first day of class. You know, just in case I want to wimp out at the last second.

or rather it will not be viewed on youtube during class.

One downside to being away from school for three months is the difficulty of staying "in the loop" about things that happen on campus. Some things are relatively minor: the ongoing renovation of the library seems to have relocated its entry point, a situation sure to cause confusion for those of us who auto-pilot themselves to the third floor only to find a wall where a door used to be. I expect to do this at least thrice when I come back, hopefully with hilarious results. Others, however, have a much more far-reaching and long-lasting impact on our education, for instance: I just found out that one of our professors has banned the use of laptops in her first-year Constitutional Law class.

Arguments over the use of technology are not new. My father-in-law recalled people's use of typewriters when he was in law school. I remember the first programmable graphing calculators (banned from the SATs). People sometimes tend to see technology as enabling negative behavior, or as being a distraction to others, and this creates conflict.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should mention that the debate over laptop use in the classroom is not limited to NUSL. Many schools, including law schools, are struggling with balancing the useful aspects of technology with their distractive attributes. Some have turned off the internet, others have banned students from taking their finals on laptops. I should also mention that my background in software engineering as well as my completely illegible handwriting (no wonder grandma wanted me to be a doctor!) Put me firmly in the "don't take away my laptop" side of the debate.

I do admit that with wireless internet in every classroom and games available on every laptop, the temptation to "zone out" and not pay attention is great. However, banning laptops will not make people pay attention – I have a stack of high-school notebooks full of doodles I can submit as evidence. Besides, some people do well in school despite consistently setting new high-scores in minesweeper while in class – I have no idea how they do it, but they do.

I find the distraction argument equally unavailing (sorry, I work for a judge – I have to put this into everything I write now). If you find yourself so easily distracted by what someone else is doing in class, then may I humbly suggest the front row. In fact, perhaps this is a solution – reserve the front row for those who do not want to be distracted by laptops, and ban laptop use in that front row. Similarly, another less draconian measure would be to turn off the wireless signal inside classrooms – no facebook, gmail, or whatever else the kids are into these days.

There is another wrinkle, as well. Some people simply cannot take the volume of notes needed by hand. The ADA would protect those students, and they would surely be allowed to use laptops in class. However, law school is a stressful enough place without being ostracized by your professor's technology policy. And what of those of us who have no medical reason (other than incredibly illegible handwriting)? Would we be able to get waivers as well? Where does the line get drawn? We strive to make a legal education available to anyone who wants one – so why ban technology that might enable additional people to practice law?

I shudder to think what I would have to do if I couldn't use my laptop. Transcribing my in-class notes when I get home is only half the solution, since I would also need my notes from the cases I read at home to be available in paper form (for in-class reference). So, I'd actually be copying my in-class notes from paper to computer and my at-home notes from computer to paper. Can someone please explain to me how this added effort is supposed to help me in my legal education?

Now, I don't want to alarm anyone. There is no NUSL policy against laptops, and there does not appear to be one in the works. Professors set their own rules for the classes they teach. This instance is the first I've heard of anyone banning laptop use outright. The reason this particular decision troubles me so much is because it was done to a 1L class – where you do not get to pick your section, and thus your professor. Had it been an upper-level class, those, like me, who prefer to use laptops, could choose not to take the class – or at least go into the endeavor knowing that laptops are banned.

In the end, if laptop use is important to you, my advice is simple: do your homework. Find out whether schools you are thinking of attending have a laptop policy, and whether that policy is being reviewed. Talk to students, check the web for news coverage – try to gauge the atmosphere. Finally, and most importantly, be prepared to deal with it if you find yourself on the wrong side of a laptop-ban decision. This seems to be an oft-debated topic, and no policy seems set in stone.

The first week of class started with a whimper. Someone decided that a schedule without classes on Fridays makes law students too comfortable, and so class was canceled (due to 6-8 inches of snow) on Monday. I missed four classes, which means I am in line for four make-ups, two per Friday, meaning I just lost two three-day weekends because someone was afraid of a little snow. (Insert angry shaking of fist here). At least this time the school did not call all my emergency contacts at 5AM to cheerfully inform them that my classes were canceled. They sent an email instead -- a much welcome change in procedure!

Midweek into this first week, I've decided to stick it out with the five classes I thought I was taking. Secured transactions seems to have sufficient overlap with bankruptcy law to alleviate some of the pressure of carrying all those credits. Then again, talk to me the week before finals. Actually, on second thought, don't (I am sure NUSL would not want me talking to actual human beings at the end of this quarter).

While most of the classes so far have featured a history of the law to this point, some got us knee-deep into law on the first day. Take the following (quoted directly) from an abstract section of a patent:

A box is formed from a unitary, double-sided corrugated cardboard blank having a plurality of scored lines which enable a set up in box form. A bottom panel of the box has cemented thereto a single-sided, fluted corrugated cardboard medium with the fluted side facing upwardly. A moisture-resistant glue is used between the smooth faces of the fluted corrugated medium and the confronting liner of the blank to provide an impenetrable barrier which prevents grease from penetrating through the box. The boxes are manufactured on a conventional production line which is modified by, in effect, running one stage in a reverse direction in order to invert the single-sided medium and to apply the glue in a different manner to establish the moisture barrier.

In other words: a pizza box. Now, please keep in mind that this was the abstract, I spared you the full gory of patent-speak by not quoting one of the claims -- the first claim (which is one sentence) contained the word "said" no less than five times before I stopped reading because I briefly fell into a coma. The immediate question is simple: is this sort of language required in describing inventions (to prevent legal loopholes), or is it just that generations upon generations of law students learn from previous patents, perpetuating the legalese exhibited above. Let's revisit this topic in three months. Or, perhaps, I should say that it would be pertinent for us to withhold judgment on the appropriateness of the language in said patent application until such a time as at least one of us has completed the course of action known as the patents course and has familiarized himself with said language in greater detail. Hmm...

I just realized that at the end of this week we will be more than 1/4 done with this quarter -- scary thought, given that it feels just like yesterday that I was on co-op. Actually, the last opinion I worked on while I was there should be published this week. This is the only one of the three opinions I drafted that I did not get to see after the Judge's revisions, so I am both excited and terrified of what it will look like. If it turns out well, I'll provide a citation in a future posting, and if it doesn't... I'll pretend like we never had this conversation (which we did not, since it was more of a monologue).

Classes are progressing, some more slowly than others, but there is certainly enough work to keep me quite busy, especially given that the school has taken away most of my class-free Fridays by rescheduling classes missed for snow and other reasons on what I had erroneously considered as a buffer day between class and weekend. I celebrated this turn of events by spending the last weekend in NYC. This meant I missed the "law school prom" -- a semi-formal gathering of law students at a location that provides libations and musical entertainment in exchange for an exorbitant fee -- but given that I hear the lines at the bar were very prohibitive (and the fact that I "dance" with the grace of a bull in a china shop) I can't say I feel bad I missed it (and the scores of innocent bystanders who may have been injured by aforementioned "dancing" most definitely did not miss me).

The one thing I've noticed that differentiates the second-year classes from the first-year classes is that theory is much more intertwined with practice. For example, just because the UCC tells us that when dealing with foreign corporations, a creditor is only required to file a financing statement (to perfect a security interest) in Washington DC in certain situations, the professor made it very clear that any lawyer worth his fee would file it in anyway, rather than litigate whether the circumstances were appropriate or not later. While this seems minor, the fact that we discussed it at all (beyond just reading and understanding the statute) is what makes this education useful. Losing the "business" or "real-world" perspective in the caselaw or statutes is dangerous -- in order to provide a client useful advice you have to be able to understand the business world they exist in.

Perhaps a better example is a case we read for international intellectual property. The plaintiff was an Austrian( I think) company that produced very expensive eyeglass frames. They sold at the most expensive boutiques, limited the supply to maintain a level of exclusivity and in all other ways protected the brand as a premium brand. At the end of one year, they had roughly 20,000 frames left over that were no longer considered to be "in style". They decided to sell these to an outfit in Bulgaria (for roughly $10/per frame), agreeing that they would then be resold in the former Soviet Union. Naturally, the frames ended up back in Austria, being sold at discount stores. The case then devolved into a discussion of the exhaustion doctrine -- a question of whether the original sale by the manufacturer should prevent them from enforcing trademark rights in an attempt to prevent the re-importation (I'll spare you the discussion). However, an equally interesting question was why did the sale take place in the first place? Impossible to answer without knowing more about the finances of the manufacturer, but I certainly hope someone in the legal department ran the numbers to see if the potential reward of $200k or so for the left-over frames was worth the risk of having to litigate over their re-importation.

And now off to corporate tax!

I am convinced that most everything one needs to know to be successful in law school can be learned by watching Saturday morning cartoons. For example, have you noticed that when Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff, he only starts to fall after he looks down? That's a valuable lesson: when running off a cliff... don't look down! Stated in a more law-school instructional fashion: concentrate on the task at hand, and not on what's going on around you.

This is especially true in quarters (semesters for all those of you not on the NUSL plan yet) where you have attempted to prove, once and for all, that a law students' math skills regress to the point of not being able to add single-digit numbers together. As some of you might recall, I signed up for five classes this term. What this necessarily means is that I will have a final on each day of our finals week. Now is perhaps a good time to recall that NUSL doesn't have a "reading week" before finals (except during your first year). Classes end on a Friday, exams start on a Monday. To think that during my first year, I actually opined that the reading week was a touch long. Ahh, how foolish we are when we are young...

So, with finals in three short weeks, I am spending "marathon weekend" cooped up indoors trying to get a feel for corporate tax law that is at least somewhat rooted in the Internal Revenue Code rather than my feelings of how taxes should be handled. A small part of the weekend was also dedicated to supporting the economy, however. I suppose that's something I should explain from the beginning.

As some of you remember, I was supposed to be spending the summer toiling for a large law firm, as a "summer associate." I say supposed to, because a few weeks ago the firm informed us that due to the continuing downward spiral of the economy they were forced to eliminate the entire summer program (there was no meaningful work to give "the summers" and there was no chance of the firm needing us full-time when we graduated). Having never before been "fired" before even having a chance to start a job, I admit the news made me take the proverbial look down at my feet only to see that I had indeed managed to fall off a cliff. As anyone who has seen those aforementioned cartoons would know, rapid descent into the canyon below follows shortly on the heels of such realizations. Except poor Wile never did have a proper support structure...

With an abbreviated timeframe for a job search, there was precious little time to waste. I had planned to work for either a smaller intellectual property firm or an in-house counsel next winter (to see how I liked those types of employment compared to a large firm). It became very clear that my best chance at a job this summer that would allow me to do the type of law I want to do was with one of those types of employers. With an immense amount of help from sources both within and outside NUSL, I was able to round up some potential employers very quickly. In less than two weeks, I had gone on a number of interviews, and had a choice to make among a number of excellent opportunities. In the end, I chose to work for an in-house counsel at a software company, and am very excited about the mix of intellectual property and corporate law matters that await me this summer. The only downside is that any hope you, my faithful reader, may have had for a play-by-play like account of a summer program at a large law firm have been eviscerated.

Just as my job search was coming to an end (and as my wife was taking a much-deserved mini ski-vacation with her family) my trusty refrigerator decided to have a crisis of confidence. Perhaps it was more of an identity crisis, but the end result was that it absolutely refused to keep food cold. For those of you who happen to be engineers, it will not surprise you that my first reaction was to take everything out of the freezer, and then "monkey with it" in an attempt to figure out what was wrong. Long story short -- after multiple attempts at resuscitation, aided by a volt meter, a pair of pliers, a hair dryer and a toothpick, the no-longer-frigidaire was declared dead shortly after noon on Tuesday, April 7th. Turns out I can't fix a broken compressor. I don't know how many of you have had a chance to shop for refrigerators recently, but for those who haven't -- you aren't missing much.

For starters, stainless steel has swept the nation and no one stocks "plain old white" appliances anymore. Now, I worked in an ice cream store for three years while in high school. Part of my daily duties was to polish the stainless appliances to remove fingerprints. I will never own a stainless steel appliance as long as I get a vote, and as long as my wife is skiing while I am talking a refrigerator through a mid-life crisis, I get a vote! I also learned that the part that fails most often on new refrigerators is... the motherboard. Yup, that's right, the computer inside my new refrigerator is likely to fail before anything else does. Fantastic! Can someone please explain to me why a fridge needs a computer inside? Unless it's planning to scan its contents and automatically order whatever I happen to be running low on, I am not interested.

At long last, the fridge was delivered this past Friday -- a feat of both great engineering and incredible brute strength. Imagine a 32x36x96 box that weighs 360lbs walking up the stairs to my second-floor apartment and through a 31-inch doorway (that is not a typo, the doorway was narrower than the fridge until its doors were taken off) without getting a scratch on it and you understand why I always tip the delivery guys. It was hooked up and producing ample ice, water and, most importantly, cold air in short order.

So, there you have it. A long weekend in law school -- spent preparing tax law outlines and installing a refrigerator. Now, if only I can remember not to look down...

Just got finished reading a case for patents that has me ready to re-trace the footsteps I put on my ceiling when the Chicago-based referees stole game 4 of the first round of the playoffs from the Celtics on Sunday.* In other words, it made me rather unhappy (to put it mildly). The case, for those playing at home is Microsoft v. AT&T, and it's a Supreme Court case from 2007.

The facts are pretty straight-forward: AT&T holds a patent for a system of recording human speech. Both sides concede that Microsoft's Windows operating system, when installed on a computer, infringes on this patent. There is thus no argument about "domestic" infringement. The question the court attempts to answer is whether a provision of US patent law (which prohibits exporting "components" that, when assembled outside the US, infringe on a US patent) applies to the copies of Windows that Microsoft sends abroad -- to be installed on computers sold outside the US.

The majority holds that because Microsoft sends a "master copy" of the software overseas, and because computer manufacturers first make CD-ROM copies of the "master copy" of the software before installing the software on the computers, that all the components of the infringing device (the resulting computer with Windows on it) are made abroad, with none of them being supplied from the US. The court explains that software in the abstract (unfixed on any medium such as a CD-ROM) is not a component, but is more like a blueprint for a building. Thus, the relevant software, in the court's eyes is the copy made abroad, and not the original sent from the US.

The court couldn't be more wrong. By attempting to find a physical-world analogy for software, the court not only misinterprets how software works, it misapplies the existing law.

For starters, software should not be treated like a physical object. The court is correct in that the copying step (performed abroad) removes the US-supplied medium (the master copy) from being a component in the final product. However, it was not the medium (the physical disk that the software was sent on) that was to become a part of the final product -- it was the software itself. A byte-by-byte copy of the disk does not create a new work (thought it does create a new physical copy of the work). It merely re-fixes the US-developed software in yet another medium. The software, designed, written and tested in the US is not altered in any way by this process. The software that left the US ends up on the infringing computer -- the medium has changed (twice), but the software has not.

Second, the blueprint analogy is just dead-wrong. SCOTUS likens abstract (unfixed) software to ideas which lack a physical embodiment. However, software is an IMPLEMENTATION of ideas. The software requirements (or specification) can be seen as a blueprint -- they tell the developer what the software should accomplish. However, two developers looking at the same set of requirements can come up with two different pieces of software that accomplish what is required. The resulting code is an implementation of those developers' ideas, fixed in whatever medium is appropriate. Thus, completed software is more like a building than a blueprint. While on the blueprint/building analogy: imagine a modular home being delivered by truck to its location -- one would be hard pressed to make an argument that the home is not a physical embodiment because it is not affixed to a plot of land.

The court really seems stuck on this idea that in order to become part of a device the software has to be delivered on some sort of medium. However, the whole point of software is to be delivered and installed. The means of delivery should not be relevant in this analysis -- for there will be some means of delivery. This, coincidentally, is where the court misapplies the law. As pointed out by the dissent, the statute forbids exporting components that have "no suitable non-infringing uses." There is no possible use of Microsoft's Windows that would not infringe the AT&T patent! It can never be installed on any computer without infringing, and thus it cannot be "used" in a non-infringing way.

And now on to tax law (a much less controversial topic).

* I apologize for the total lack of sports-related blog postings, but you have to see it from my point of view: the Bruins do not exist in my world until Jeremy Jacobs sells the team (unlikely to happen), the Celtics are without KG and "the other" Leon (Powe) and are struggling against the Bulls (a team I despise almost as much as the Lakers, but not in that "wow, I respect them, but I hate them" way; no I hate them in a "I really can't stand these guys -- especially Joakim Noah -- and want them all to be trapped for days in an elevator with a large man who just ate a lot of beans, raw eggs and bad tomatoes" way). And I maintain that April is too early for baseball unless you happen to have tickets to the games (which I haven't had the opportunity to get this year).

It feels like we were just here a year ago, celebrating the end of finals and the true dawn of summer. The Celtics were in the playoffs, the Bruins were out after a seventh-game loss designed almost too-perfectly to sell more season tickets next year, and all of us then-1Ls had survived our first year.

So, here we are again, except this time I crammed five in-class finals in the space that last year housed three in-class and one take-home. The school's policy on finals is that you may reschedule them if you have more than one in a given day or more than two on three consecutive days. There is no policy for having five in five consecutive days, because, frankly no one is stupid enough to put themselves through that. The reschedule blocks are during finals week, which meant that while I could move my two 1PM finals to the earlier 9AM slot, I could not really have an off day during the week, unless I wanted to have two finals on one day (and that's just not a good idea).

Looking back on it, five finals in one week are doable, even when you take one of them in a newly-renovated future office of a yet-to-be-hired professor that is more suited as a meat locker than as a study place (here's hoping they hire someone from Alaska, or someone very fond of sweaters). You learn to cut your studying off by 11pm the night before the test. You learn to pop enough advil to kill a small donkey as soon as you get home after one. You also learn to take a break after you get home and before you start rotating the "old" material out of your head and replacing it with "new" material for the next test.

I won't spend too much time thanking everyone that helped get me through this quarter and this year -- it's beautiful outside, I've just spent a week writing out about 80 pages worth of exam answers (I so hate keyboards right now), and I have a weekend when I can do anything I want -- which includes nothing.

Have a great weekend, folks!

The uncomfortably short summer ended with two wonderful trips: a return flight to California to visit some of the wineries missed on the last tour (taken right before law school started), and an annual pilgrimage to Joisey to enjoy the company of various in-laws and fight a never-ending battle with Toxicodendron radicans (more commonly known as poison ivy). It is true what they say, by the way, each exposure to the vile weed brings on a more violent reaction. In that same vein, let me be the first to assure you that there are no horticulture classes offered at this (or any other) law school, which means your faithful scribe is no more adept at identifying the plant after two plus years of school. Add to this my city-boy roots, and Russian heritage (there is no poison ivy in Russia) and you get someone who is as likely to find a four-leaf clover on Mars as he is to realize that the particular ivy he’s been feverishly digging/tugging/cursing/yanking on for the last few hours is going to require carefully regimented dosages of Prednisone, Benadryl, Jack Daniel’s and coke just to keep him from going insane. Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed the break from work/school.

I also participated in my umpteenth annual rite of passage for Boston-area residents: moving day. Something like 87%* of the leases in Boston turn over on September 1st. While I haven’t had to move myself on that date in quite a few years, I have been known to attempt to beef-up the pro-bono section of my resume by offering my moving services gratis to a select group of friends. Additionally, ever since piloting my then-fiancée’s moving truck from Delaware to Boston in January, I have been the driver of choice when any of said friends rents any vehicle bigger than a Ford Escape.

This year, a buddy decided to kick it up a notch. Arriving in Braintree to pick up what was described to me as a “twenty-two-footah” I was presented with a diesel truck that was thirteen feet tall, required me to climb two steps to get into the driver’s seat, had a power lift-gate on the back, a side door in addition to the big rear one, air brakes and suspension, a gross vehicle weight within one pound of the limit printed on my license, a twenty-six foot bed length, a 3,250 RPM redline, and an air horn (the partridge and the pear tree were optional equipment). Agreeing to the extra $20 a day for insurance coverage was what we law students call a “no-brainer”.

Driving this beast was actually quite a bit easier than I expected. Sure, you have to get used to the idea that the brake and gas pedal operate on about a five-second delay from when you apply pressure to either pedal. If you are like me, and were never very good at physics, it will also take some time and the aid of a too-close to the driveway telephone pole to get the appropriate grip on the physics of your pivot points and turning radius, but that’s why you paid the extra $20 a day.

There’s also the added benefit of professional courtesy. Trucks of this size are generally leased to professionals, and so other truck drivers treat you as such. This holds true for both the parents of the college kids piloting their tiny U-Hauls to dump-truck drivers on the highway. If you are looking for a review of the experience of renting a twenty-six foot truck to move all your belongings in style, this is a highly positive one. I just recommend you don’t do it around the first of September – it will be much cheaper any other day of the year.

In other news, my second-to-last quarter of law school has started, and with it the four classes I have chosen for this round. Evidence, Corporation and Trusts and Estates are all bar-exam topics, but are proving to be rather interesting in their own right. Antitrust (on some bar exams as well, I believe) promises to be an intriguing class as well.

In closing for this week, I’d like to add just one thing. As constantly reminded by the likes of Brett Favre, we humans have an uncanny inability to recognize that the time to quit is while we’re ahead. Most athletes, if given the opportunity, play way beyond their prime, most politicians stay well past their ability to be relevant, most actors refuse to ride into the sunset, and most writers don’t know when or how to walk away. I don’t even pretend that what I do here, with this blog, can be considered writing, but I think the rules still apply. I have been doing this for two years. A fresh class of 1Ls is starting here at NUSL, and it’s time for me to hand the reins over to someone new. After all, I don’t want to end up doing this so long that I am writing a blog for NUSL’s divisional rival (do we even have one?).

* 50% of all statistics are made up on the spot. :)