Leon, 3L

This may surprise no one except me, but it turns out that my posts have been getting themselves categorized (look to the left and below this post). This is a neat trick, indeed! In fact, I am currently procrastinating from doing my homework for tomorrow so I can figure out a way to feed my class notes through whatever magical process makes this happen and have an outline come out the other end. I also couldn’t help but notice that my last mini-rant about being recalled form vacation for LSSC work and the fact that New Jersey ate my windshield was classified as diversity, which seemed strange until I realized that this was actually a gift. This leaves me with only two categories that I have not written about before I run the proverbial table.

The first is co-op. NUSL requires all its students to work four 11-week sessions during the course of their three years here. This concept was actually familiar to me, because my undergraduate institution had a co-op program as well. Besides providing a way to gain invaluable experience in the legal profession while still in school, the presence of this program and the connections the university has made with employers all over the country also helps lessen the impact of being at a school without letter-grades or class-rank and competing with students from schools that have both. In a way it allows us to have the best of both worlds: a more collaborative education while retaining the ability to compete for the top jobs.

The second is public interest. NU has a public interest requirement, and I am told that this can be accomplished either via co-op or through a clinical class. An important thing to keep in mind is that you do not have to have a deep-rooted interest in helping the public to come here (I certainly did not have one). Nor do you have to leave here and go work at a public defender’s office in order to be considered a "good person." Loans, career goals, interests (or lack thereof) and other factors may keep you from ever accepting a job that directly helps those less fortunate. However, with the benefit of an NU legal education you will have taken some of that public interest mentality with you wherever you go – and this will make you a better lawyer, regardless of who you work for and represent, and dare I say a better person.

So, that’s that – now the magic happens, and the categories get all filled-in and then there is much rejoicing -- an excellent way to start semester two of year one.

Oh, and: Go Pats!

In the words of Ron Burgundy, "milk was a poor choice." Well, actually, any other beverage would have been a poor choice as a companion to my mandatory ethics training video as well. While discussing special, infrequent occasions when it is acceptable to give your supervisor a gift, the man in the video suggested the supervisor's wedding qualifies, though he quipped "unless you work for Elizabeth Taylor." Had I been drinking anything, it would have shot out of my nose. The line itself is not particularly funny, I admit, but put in the proper context, it is downright hilarious. My daily ritual now involves pass-codes and keycards, bullet-proof glass and metal detectors. Working for lawyers one expects little humor, working for the federal government -- one expects none.

This was but one of many surprises that greeted be in my first week of co-op. While I cannot discuss the specifics of what I do (for obvious reasons), I can say that I am glad writing and research are a part of the first-year curriculum. I can also say that of all the jobs I've ever had, this has the fastest turnaround on feedback. A memo I write for my boss today is likely to be incorporated into something he will use tomorrow. I will know the results of his argument by the end of the week.

I spent a part of this morning observing some sentencing proceedings. These are open to the public, and I encourage any future lawyers in the crowd (as well as anyone else with time to kill) to sit in on a few. One learns much more about our legal system from observing it in action than from reading all the textbooks in the world. The proceedings today included a lesson in civics, stare decisis, the Supreme Court's relationship with the District Courts and, last but certainly not least, examples of both very good and very bad oral arguments.

And thus starts the first of my first four co-ops, and technically my second year of law school.

Notes from the first two weeks of the first job of my legal "career":

1. Any thoughts I had about this being an academic experience evaporated when the clerk said "All rise!"... If you get the law wrong on an exam only you get hurt by it (via a poor grade), but if you get the law wrong in the real world a whole bunch of people are affected. For example, since I am not a member of the bar, if my research and writing is used as a motion or as a basis for oral argument, it's not just my neck on the line. Imagine how horrible you'd feel if you got up in front of a judge and argued your case, only to be asked "well, doesn't the Supreme Court's holding in such-and-such case nullify your point?" Now imagine if it was still you who failed to find the right case, but it's your boss who gets taken to task for it? On the other hand, fail to argue your point well, and a certified "bad guy" fails to get convicted or is released sooner than he should be. Not a lot of room for error.

2. The depth of human depravity has no bounds. In other words, there are some very sick people in this world. Some of them sell drugs, some engage in activities you shouldn't engage in with kids, others just shoot people.

3. There are also incredible people out there whose job, no, whose passion is putting these elements of society behind bars. The more Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) I meet, the more impressed I am by them. For example, one of the attorneys specializes in sex crimes against children. I did about three hours of research for her about a week ago and I still can't get the details of all the cases I found out of my head, that's how disturbing they are. She does this every day, and on top of it has to go into court knowing that she is the obstacle between these people (and I hesitate to use that word) and freedom. That is a lot of pressure to perform, right there.

4. Guns have receivers. I did not know this. Actually, to be honest with you, I didn't know much about guns, seeing as I've never actually held one in my hand. I still haven't held one in my hand, but I know a lot more about them. I learned a lot about drugs, too. Ironic, in some way, I suppose that I went to law school, and chose to work for the government for a summer to learn more about guns and drugs.

5. This opportunity NUSL gives us is truly amazing. Those who have read this space before know, I am the first to criticize Northeastern for things we don't do so well. Without a co-op program, I would only have the chance to work for two organizations while in school. Because my interests lie more in the corporate law, intellectual property arena, I would not have chosen to work for the government, and I certainly would not have chosen to have the majority of my work come from the criminal side of the fence. In doing so, I would have missed an opportunity to learn a lot, and I would have missed an opportunity to broaden my horizons. Lawyers are incredibly specialized creatures, a criminal attorney cannot help you in your civil suit and a corporate mergers and acquisitions lawyer is not likely to go to court to help you defend your speeding ticket. By allowing us the opportunity to sample four different areas of the law, NUSL gives us a chance to make sure that what we think we want do is actually what we want to do.

6. Driving for more than three miles at a time is awesome! Now, talk to me at the end of summer, after I have sat through countless Red Sox-game inspired traffic jams and encountered every latest fad to hit the highway in an attempt to save gas (the latest is something called "hypermiling" which is best described as attempting to inspire rage in everyone around you, while simultaneously causing an accident which results in a ten-mile backup, negating any gas-savings you were attempting to achieve, but all the time feeling good about yourself), but for now, I am ecstatic.

Of course, the converse of that familiar statement is also true: the early worm gets eaten by the bird. Sometimes in life, it is difficult to tell whether you are the bird or the worm, but at other times -- this distinction is perfectly clear.

For example, when, on the hottest day of the year, your right rear tire decides to disintegrate on your way to work in the morning, forcing you to replace it on the side of the highway before the clock even strikes 8:00AM, you are certainly the worm. If you've never had the pleasure of changing a still-smoldering hot, completely destroyed tire while wearing a tie, trust me -- it's not something you should look forward to. Likewise, I would stay away from dead batteries in the dead of winter, while we're on the subject of car-related activities that should be avoided.

In other somewhat work-related news: I got to sit in on a meeting with a couple of Russian prosecutors this past week. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that since the then-Soviet government branded me an "enemy of the state" at the age of eleven, I've had what I consider a healthy fear of Russian authorities. However, I have nothing negative to report about this experience. The meeting was fascinating as a way to see the birth of a new system of justice. Being able to observe systems all over the world before settling on the details of theirs has allowed the Russians to "cherry pick" ideas and concepts they think work. In the process, they have built a system that is both very similar and very different to our own. For example, while jury trials are available, they only become a right in cases of serious crime (with the possibility of serious punishment). The juries consist of 12 members, but only a simple majority is needed for conviction. The appeals process seems much more stream-lined than our own. Most importantly, their prosecutors not only get government cars, but also government chauffeurs, a revelation which may have gotten them some new applicants from the pool of current assitant US Attorneys.

One other thing I noticed is that four weeks into working for "big brother" it has finally started to feel like a job, and not a break from school, which I admit is a great feeling.

I leave you with an actual quote from an actual decision in an actual case. The judge was explaining the presence of "exigent circumstances" allowing the police to enter a hotel room without a warrant. As you read it, please remember not only that a real judge wrote this in an opinion on a real case, but that a real human being went to jail as a result.

"Moreover, delay risked the life of the person in the room reported to be dead, if there were such a person."

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

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

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

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

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

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

The thing that tilted the balance of school-selection towards NUSL, for me, was the co-op program. My undergrad institution had one, and I knew first-hand the benefit of "hitting the ground running" when you graduate. There is something to be said for having actual, practical experience to differentiate yourself from everyone else with a shiny, new, diploma. At the same time, the co-op program at NUSL offers something even more valuable: because you are required to work with four different employers, your horizons are necessarily widened.

When I started law school, I was very certain what I wanted to do when I got out: patent prosecution work, in the software field. I had a ton of experience in software, and it was the interaction with some patent attorneys that got me "over the hump" of choosing to quit my job and go back to school. However, once I got here, the blinders started to come off a little bit. Sitting in first-year classes that had nothing to do with intellectual property, or technology was none-the-less fascinating, as a way of connecting the legal world with the real world. When it came time to pick my first co-op, I talked to everyone I could find about it. I cornered the co-op staff in hallways, I called friends at all stages of their careers, and I talked to professors, second and third-year students and even the weird homeless guy with the "The World is Ending! Repent!" sandwich-board. With the exception of the homeless gentleman (who suggested I intern at Starbucks, which is odd in itself), everyone I talked to suggested either a judicial internship or a prosecutor's office. Choosing the U.S. Attorney's office, I had the expectation of learning a lot, but being incredibly bored with the subject matter. After all, what interest do I have in criminal law?

I couldn't have been more wrong. This summer, I got to push for the extension of Belton-type searches to car trunks with pass-throughs. I got to argue what "regular business operations" for a drug-dealing conspiracy are, in order to establish a reverse-sting operation as being "within normal business practices". I learned that possessing a "receiver" for a gun that was once designed to fire automatically requires registration of the weapon, even if it can no longer fire at all, much less in an automatic fashion. I got very closely acquainted with sentencing provisions, especially when it came to departures for "substantial assistance" and whether that meant other factors could then be used to reduce sentences further, under the Supreme Court's relatively recent rulings. I was never bored with the subject matter.

While researching the sentencing departure issue, I also had another epiphany. The most relevant First Circuit decision was written by a judge whose opinions are known for their wealth of vocabulary, their clarity, and "non-lawyer-speak" manner. It was clear, it was easy to read, and it was absolutely brilliant. We had read some opinions written by this judge before (in class), but getting to use it alongside other decisions to support my argument highlighted how much better the writing of this particular judge was. That instant, I was sold. Even though I had planned to make the U.S. Attorney my only foray into non-corporate law, I absolutely knew I had to work for this judge during one of my next three co-ops -- it is an opportunity to learn from the best that I simply could not pass up.

Seek, and ye shall find. The judge is a participating co-op employer, and I did not "bonk" my interview this past Monday, which, combined with my eval from the U.S. Attorney resulted in an offer. So this winter, I will be interning with a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Not just "a judge", though -- the judge I knew I absolutely, positively, without a doubt just had to work for -- no matter what. I guess I better go buy a new dictionary, I'll need it for all those vocab words.

All thanks to the co-op program.

With the fall interview season officially coming to an end, I figured it might be useful to write a wrap-up review of the process. As I have mentioned before, recruiting started with something called the bidding process, in August. NUSL uses a suite of software called Symplicity to run the recruiting program. Students upload resumes, cover letters and writing samples, while the school uploads our course and co-op evaluations to the site. Then, you "bid" on the firms you want to interview with. These firms generally interview about 20 people (though I have seen as few as 4 people get called in for these interviews by one firm) in the one day that they spend on campus. It is pretty safe to assume that more than 20 students are interested in each firm, and so the first round of selection happens during this bidding process.

If your bid is accepted, you get to either accept or decline the invitation to interview. This is generally when students start to do serious research on the firms to figure out if there are firms out there that appeal more than others, or to weed out those that don't appeal at all. If you accept the invitation, you come in for a 20-minute long interview, which is held on-campus. Generally, if you are selected for one of these spots with the firm, it means you meet whatever cut-off they have for their applicants, meaning: you have the grades to be accepted. Your goal during this interview is to show enough about yourself and your interest in the firm to get what's called a call-back. A call-back is when you are "called back" and invited to visit the firm for the next round of interviews -- they are generally offered within three or so days of this initial interview, but some firms have been known to wait as long as a week before notifying those they would like to see again.

Call-back interviews usually involve anywhere from 4 to 8 (or so) associates and partners who usually get about 20 minutes each with you. Sometimes you are taken to lunch, other times you are not. It is important to remember that the lunch is part of the interview, and is not a social gathering of long-lost friends (in other words, stories about your drunken exploits the night before are probably off-limits). Another lunch tip -- order things that are not messy to eat -- you don't want to be fighting a lobster while discussing the finer points of your past summer internship.

Firms usually get back to you within two weeks of the call-back interview with either an offer or a "ding" letter -- a rejection (more on these next week). Once offers come out, the situation changes. Instead of you selling the firm on your abilities, the firm starts selling you on the benefits of working for them. This courtship generally includes dinners, more (optional) visits to the firm, and so forth. Within 45 days of receiving the offer you let the firm know whether you will accept it. Then you breathe a sigh of relief (usually just in time to start thinking about finals).

This is the process, as it would be, in the perfect world. However, the world is not perfect, especially this year. Our on-campus interviews came smack-dab in the middle of the financial melt-down and hyped-up fears of a looming recession the likes of which we have not seen since that little bump in the road we like to call the Great Depression. Firms interviewing potential summer associates are actually trying to look two years into the future, because they use their summer associate class as recruits for full-time employment at graduation. So, a firm making me an offer now is assuming that they will need me in the fall of 2010. As the markets crashed, summer classes (this is what a group of summer associates is called) at most firms shrank, which made call-backs and offers harder to come by. Wait times between call-back interviews and offer decisions increased from an average of two weeks to, in some cases, almost two months as law firms try to ensure they do not over-enroll their summer class. Students waiting for one of these firms to get back to them tend to sit on offers from other firms, which makes those firms delay answers to those they interviewed later in the process and creates self-perpetuating chaos and panic.

When the dust settles, those of us with offers can consider themselves incredibly lucky (given this economy) and can do our part by making our decision as quickly as possible (to free up those firms we are rejecting to make offers to others). Those without offers can take solace in the fact that they did everything they could (unless their names are Bernake or Paulson -- then they could have done much more). The co-op program is also a great safety-net for a lack of a summer associateship. While students enrolled elsewhere can find themselves at a loss when a summer associateship does not materialize, here at NUSL there is a network of employers ready and willing to pick up the so-called slack.

Personally, I was one of the lucky ones. I went to law school knowing that I wanted to work for a large firm in Boston when I graduated. It didn't particularly matter which one, as all the firms seemed the same at the time. Throughout this recruiting season, though, I've had the chance to learn a lot about the different firms and about the things that draw me to some of them more than others. Earlier this week I accepted an offer with a firm I absolutely loved throughout this process. The more I got to know about them the better the fit seemed: great reputation in Boston and beyond, small summer class (and a relatively transparent recruiting process), growing corporate/IP practice, beautiful location (though admittedly I have yet to see a firm in a lousy location), and most importantly -- really awesome people. The way I see it: we spend so much of our lives with coworkers that it makes to really be excited about seeing these people on a daily basis.

Can't wait for summer to start.

I keep glancing over at the clock. Dr. Pavlov would be so proud, as I have conditioned myself to look at the clock whenever I am sitting in front of the computer but not doing any work. In this instance, it is a completely useless reflex, since I already accomplished everything I had scheduled for today: call Verizon and find out what the heck they did with my phone order from last Friday (answer: they shipped it, finally). After eleven weeks of reading, studying and preparing for exams, I had made the conscious effort to set the productivity bar for this week between finals and co-op relatively low. Yesterday, for example, I touched up a nick on my living room wall. My remaining goal for the week is as follows: I have to buy one of those coat things that one wears over a suit when it is cold out. I have been reluctant to purchase such a piece of clothing (all of my current winter gear either says Karbon or NorthFace on it and is generally skiing-related). Having given up my Peter-Pan like dreams of never growing up, however, I can see why such a piece of clothing might be useful to me in the coming months, especially if I decide to take the train down to Providence for my co-op (as opposed to driving).

The rest of the time will be spent reconnecting with friends (law school and otherwise) who have been ignored for way too long this quarter -- first due to all the interviews from OCI, then due to all the finals prep. In fact, one of the biggest downsides to the NUSL quarter system is that half of your friends end up on "the other" rotation, which makes it very difficult to coordinate social schedules, especially if these friends go on co-op out of state. On the other hand, I understand that having all the students at the school on co-op at the same time is not workable. I guess the solution is to be careful who you become friends with during those first few weeks of law school and only make friends with people who plan to stay on your rotation (this time I am sure I am kidding).

In other news, I see that the new law school website is now up, and that it (in a very curious decision) features my mugshot (complete with a link to this blog) which is certain to increase traffic (and scare small children) to these blogs. In an attempt to welcome any new readers, I give you an updated version of the disclaimer from my first post:

Disclaimer: I hold no answers. I still 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, though I do know that it is possible to survive the first half of it. And I certainly do not know the meaning of life, but I am convinced now, more than ever, that we are meant to enjoy it. Now that I have sufficiently lowered the expectations, it is probably safe to proceed.

On that note, I leave you to go tend to the explosion of pumpkin pie which has covered my kitchen and lovely wife in orange goo and has presented an opportunity for today to be even more productive (and fun) than I had anticipated!

Have a happy Thanksgiving everybody!

When entering the Moakley Courthouse* a U.S. Marshall asks you whether you are an attorney. I am not sure what happens when you answer this question in the affirmative, but I can tell you what happens when you respond "not quite yet, but I am a law student": they take away your cell phone. I do admit, this idea is not foreign to me, as the U.S. Attorney's Office I worked at this summer shared a building with the District Court and had the same policy. At first it may seem almost barbaric to separate people from what one of my friends half-jokingly calls "life devices", especially when entering a federal building -- a place where things never start on time. Given enough time to think it through, though makes you understand that the idea needs to go further. Why exempt lawyers?

If the idea is to prevent disclosure of confidential or sensitive information (most cell phones have cameras), then what makes a member of the bar less likely to misbehave? If the point is to prevent the annoying ringing of a cellphone during actual court sessions -- well, lawyers (and their blackberries) seem to be much more likely to offend in this case. And why is this limited to court houses? What about movie theatres (you know, those places people used to go to before cable TV and DVRs were invented), restaurants, classrooms and other public spaces?

I can hear the groundswell of blackberry addicts searching for a way to make my Q key zap me with 240 volts right now, and I understand their concerns. Who wants to hand over a device full of personal, sensitive information to a total stranger? What lawyer wouldn't want to be able to complete tasks on said blackberry while sitting idly in the gallery waiting for his or her case to be called? What about those emergency calls that Lassie places to your mobile device when Timmy falls into the well? What will happen to poor Timmy if you don't immediately answer?

The privacy concerns can be taken care of with technology. Instead of taking away cell phones, we can jam their signals, preventing them from being able to receive a call (given the world we live in, it seems that emergency calls to 911 should always be allowed, especially from public places). There are actually "personal" jammers on the market today, which are relatively popular, even if completely and totally illegal. You don't have to hand over your cellphone, but when you walk into a court room, or a restaurant, your cell phone can no longer receive a signal and thus cannot ring.

The Lassie/Timmy argument, while compelling, begs the question -- what would Lassie have done five, ten, or even twenty years ago? We have all become dependant on these little gadgets to keep us constantly connected, forgetting at times that none of us are the center of the universe. The world will go on even if we are incommunicado for an hour. Someone else will save Timmy, I guarantee it.

This leaves just the convenience of multi-tasking. Sure, a lawyer will no longer be able to sit there and bang out emails to their associates while listening to a case being argued, but this is a minor inconvenience. The phone would work outside the actual court room, allowing one to continue to do work, but limiting the sending and receiving of information.

Have I overlooked anything? Likely. Feel free to drop me a line using the comments link and we can hash this out further. At this point, this discussion is academic: my badge lets me into Moakley without having to surrender my phone... which is currently blinking -- someone has sent me a message. Hmm, could be Lassie. You never know -- I did see Timmy playing near a well earlier.

To those studying for finals: Good luck! To those applying to school: Same to you!

* Also known as: The John Joseph Moakley United States Court House, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and the Pretty Courthouse With the Huge Curved All-Glass Wall.

One week into my internship, and exactly three and a half paragraphs into my first draft opinion I have come to the conclusion that I could not be a judge. This is fine, because last I checked my phone was not exactly ringing off the hook with offers to become one. Since this realization did not occur suddenly, but instead has been built up over the course of the week, I suppose I should start at the beginning.

Of the people that work for the judge, I am usually the second to arrive in the morning (the Judge is the first), and as such, one of my duties (and so-far my absolute favorite thing to do) is to check in with the judge in the morning to see if there is anything I can help him with. One thing that became quite apparent from these short meetings is that the judge has an absolutely impeccable memory. When he has a citation that needs to be double-checked, it is invariably correct. Even when the opinion is a relatively obscure one written over twenty years ago. Did I mention that the judge is easily double my age (and then some)? I can't remember what I did last week or what was the point of this paragraph.

Then there is the patience, which is likewise infinite. Unlike the Supreme Court, the Circuit Court of Appeals does not get to cherry-pick their cases (via granting certiorari), and as you can imagine, some of the appeals have somewhat less merit than others. My summer at the United States Attorney's office offered me a glimpse into "jailhouse lawyering" a term used to describe motions and briefs filed by inmates with access to legal resources in their libraries. One particularly meritless (though quite lengthy) argument was that sentencing guidelines in place at the time of the crime (rather than at the time of conviction) should be used to calculate "points" for prior crimes. This is an incorrect view of the law, but what was fascinating (not the word I initially used) was that the guidelines had not actually changed between the two dates. My job of answering this motion in a professional manner seemed tough until this past week, when I realized that the judge (or more likely one of his clerks) then has to write an opinion which, in an even more professional manner states the reasons why the inmate is wrong.

Legal knowledge required to be a judge is something that probably does not need to be mentioned, however, let me just say that it is my sincere hope is that by the time I retire I somehow manage to learn one third of what the judge seems to know.

Other than learning I can't be a judge I also learned that public transportation and I do not get along. My attempt to take the commuter rail to Providence one (very) early morning resulted in hopping on the Acela Express to NY instead, which thankfully does stop in Providence before it gets to the Big Apple. Even more remarkable was the fact that while an intended ride on this train would have cost me $34 (compared to the $4 it costs to ride the commuter rail which leaves from the same station, and even the same platform, about five minutes later -- as I now know), my blurry-eyed mistake cost me nothing. A very nice conductor explained to me that since I was on the wrong train (technically, this is true, I was headed to the right city, but on the wrong train) -- policy was to have be deboard at the next stop... which just happened to be Providence (I got on at the Route 128 Station). Perhaps aware that lawyers are creative problem-solvers, he did mention that he does not suggest I try this "trick" often, as others are not always as nice, and I may be out $34 per attempt. Given that the combination of car + train made my trip home that night take over 2 hours (double the amount of time it takes using just the car), I am not inclined to repeat it, even if the train ride were free. To my car: I apologize in advance for all the miles, but I promise they will be more fun than the daily commute from home to school.

In the legal world, just like in the real world, it is important to be able to laugh every once in a while. Keeps you sane. So, for example, when you are neck-deep in trial records, motions, briefs, denials, hearings, re-hearings and various other transcripts in a mostly futile attempt to give the appellant's argument some sort of background... when you realize that you are not so much floating above all this, but are slowly sinking into the depths of it... you can bring yourself back when you see the following (taken verbatim from a pre-sentence report):

"As to his present status, defendant admitted that he has been cured by the Almighty."

So, he's got that going for him, which is nice.

In other news, I spent part of the weekend in Mystic, CT for reasons completely unrelated to their excellent aquarium or the nearby casinos (though those are not bad reasons to visit the area). The nice thing about co-op is that while it is a lot of work, it generally leaves my weekends relatively unencumbered.

Now, if it would just stop climbing into the 60s every other day so that we could finally kick off the ski season for real! I mean, count me among those who are thrilled that gas is below $2/gallon again, but what does it say about the state of the planet if an outdoor ice rink (with a cooling system for the surface) in New England... in December... comes closer to resembling a kiddie pool than it does a frozen surface?

So, for those keeping track at home, Leon's holiday wishlist is now two items long:
1. Draft opinions should write and edit themselves
2. Temperatures should get down into the single digits (and stay that way until March)

Not sure which is more likely, to tell you the truth.

Wait! Just thought of a third item:
3. The Buffalo Bills will stop making play-calling decisions which roughly approximate sticking one's tongue into a light socket. You know it's bad when you see a "highlight" from the game and immediately think "Wow, I have to call my buddy, the Bills fan, just to make sure he isn't suicidal or something."

Ok, that's it for now.

(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.

What is the difference between a linked list and a vector?

And with me failing to answer that relatively simple question, we came to the stage of my legal education where I realized that I could no longer pass a Microsoft interview. Actually, since I have never interviewed with Microsoft, one could argue that I might never have done very well, but I choose to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Guess it's a good thing I like this "law stuff," otherwise, I might be in trouble if I were looking for a job.

My time in Providence is wrapping up next week, with my final draft opinion going to the Judge tomorrow (I hope) and then going through a round of revision and then circulation to the other judges. It is unbelievable how short the time I spent there seems. If I could convince everyone involved to let me stay there for the rest of the year, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I guess that's what judicial clerkships (after graduation) are for, and I am going to have to seriously weigh the positives and negatives of those when we get closer to application time.

In preparation for returning to campus, and partially because our day-trip skiing this Sunday was scuttled by an unusually strong allergic reaction to the bleating of the alarm clock, I decided to go to the gym today (for the first time in something like six months). If I can steer my car on the way to work tomorrow morning, I will consider this a small victory for mankind. I wonder if the GPS in my phone can chart a route to Providence that does not require any turns.

Speaking of GPS -- not sure if this is going to sound a little like when people complain that the clock on their VCR (remember those?) is impossible to program, but what the heck -- I think GPS hates me. My first experience with this then-emerging technology was when a friend decided to substitute this gadget for the paper directions I had directing me from the Tampa airport to a hotel on the beach. Roughly 45 minutes later, the infernal device told us to take a right in 500 ft -- we had arrived at our "final destination". Given that the device had picked a cemetery (which was nowhere near the beach or the hotel) as our resting place for the evening, I wondered aloud whether there was a setting to perhaps pick a "final destination for this evening, not my entire life" or if, perhaps, the device knew something I didn't know.

Then there was the time that a different friend insisted that his GPS knew the cow paths Boston calls roads better than I did. He finally gave up trying to direct me after the third time his little black box tried to make us drive through a wall.

Then there was the time a friend wanted to know how fast we were skiing. With the GPS hanging out of my jacket pocket, I achieved a speed of roughly 64 miles-per-hour on a relatively steep groomer. I was somewhat impressed by this (it was not a very well-groomed run, and I was not going flat-out) until the device registered me going about 35mph through the lift line... while I was standing still.

My latest encounter with the limitations of satellite-based navigation came last weekend, when the maps of Lincoln, NH absolutely refused to line up with the actual town. The streets were right, but the numbers were all off by an unpredictable number of blocks.

So, basically, I think GPS hates me.

But now, I am back to more important things, I have to figure out how to weigh an elephant without the use of a scale, and how to figure out which one of otherwise-identical bowling balls is heavier than the others (you are given only a balance scale, like the ones Lady Justice is holding, and can only use the scales twice). Both are relatively famous Microsoft interview questions.

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...

To paraphrase Alanis Morrissette, it is all a bit ironic. When I was a software engineer, I never had any desire to talk about what I did for a living. Now, three weeks into the third coop of my legal career, while I would love to go into what it is that I "do for a living" -- I can't.

While at the US Attorney's office, and even while working for the Judge, there always seemed to be a way to discuss the cases, pending or otherwise, by changing enough details to make them unrecognizable, but leaving enough of "the meat" of the legal issue to make the discussion interesting. Oftentimes, my commute home would be spent coming up with ways to obfuscate the parties and alter the issues just enough to be able to discuss the problem. The same cannot be said about my current gig. Without making myself to be more important than I am -- a competitor armed only with the knowledge of who I work for and what the legal question I am trying to answer is would have a pretty good idea of what the company is trying to accomplish.

One thing I can talk about, however, is the experience. From the first day, the interns (yes, there are two of us, and yes, we are both from NUSL -- a first, for me, on both counts) have been intertwined into the legal department. We went through training, and have been getting a steady stream of work from all corners of the legal department.

The training has been invaluable. There are many things that law school attempts to teach you, but one thing it certainly does not get to is the confluence of business with law. Legal decisions inside corporations are never driven by precedent alone. Valid business reasons exist that make the most solid legal position untenable -- such as a company suing some of its biggest clients (regardless of who is right -- the customers won't be customers for long). The job of the in-house lawyer, is then to anticipate the legal challenges, and to evaluate them in light of the business reasons, producing a risk/benefit assessment. In other words -- in-house lawyers live in the real world, which is a place I long to get back to, armed with legal knowledge acquired in school.