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 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.

"OK, so that first turn is a sharp left, around that tree there, but then you kind of just want to duck under that tree you can’t see from here, and then it’s all downhill, well, unless you miss that right down there, and then it can get a little hairy…" – a friend explaining the proper sequence of events that need to occur to keep me from never being heard from again.

That was about the time that I stopped thinking about my finals. Three runs into my much-delayed start to the ski season, following a gaggle of friends into "the woods" at my favorite east-coast ski mountain, I finally realized that if I failed to concentrate on the task at hand, and kept thinking about whether the torts final required me to talk about the Hand formula or not, that I’d end up hugging a tree in a way that was not conducive to my continued ability to breathe… or worse, I’d find that "little" cliff that these guys keep telling me to avoid. A few well-timed turns and a head-first plop into a mound of soft snow later, I found myself surrounded by some of the most beautiful terrain you can picture.

I spent three days on that mountain, with spotty cell phone reception, no internet, and certainly no law books. We talked about the Pats, the Celts, the fact that some of us are getting old(er) and told war stories from each day. We traded tips on how to keep your edges on ice for advice on how to handle snow that easily goes above your waist. We argued over which local brew was better and whether it was possible to ski off the roof of the condo into the parking lot without breaking anything expensive. In other words, for three glorious days I felt like I wasn’t in school – and that was the best gift anyone could have given me.

Happy holidays!

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.

Remember the time in your life when a snow day was a good thing? When did that change?

I am not sure, to tell you the truth, because snow days were still good senior year of high school (actually they were awesome, since they didn’t have to be made up at the end of the year), but now I realize that the classes I miss today will be made up later, and that I must figure out a way to do the research I was going to do at the law library from home, which definitely makes the snow day nothing more than an inconvenient way to start a week. So, using some of that logical reasoning that they test for on the LSAT and then proceed to drown you in during your first year, I am thinking snow days must have gone from good to bad while I was in college. However, I have no way to prove this, as I went to school in upstate New York, where they did not cancel class for mere snow.

While we are on the subject of canceling class because of a little snow, let’s also discuss notification methods. In the good-old days you used to wake up early on days you expected a lot of snow and listened to this device called a radio (if you don’t know what this, don’t worry about it, it was a box that sang songs and gave you news before mp3 players and podcasts). As technology progressed, we moved into watching TV in the morning to see if your school (or something that you could convince your parents looked reasonably enough like your school) was listed. I cannot say that I ever missed a snow day announcement using either of these two methods, so why is it that we needed to change them?

Having gone to bed at 2AM when my first class is not until 10:30AM, I was assured of plenty of sleep. Please note that for a law student, six hours is considered plenty. So, imagine my displeasure at being awakened by a ringing cell phone in the other room at 5:55AM. My hopes for just ignoring it and going back to sleep were dashed when I got a polite elbow to the side, which had the dual benefit of springing me to action and also giving me a preview of what having kids might be like. Reaching the phone just in time for it to stop ringing, I noticed a few things. First, the phone was pink, which made it belong to the friendly elbow and not me. Second, neither the phone nor I knew the number, which means some stranger out there somewhere just moved past Ralph Nader on my list of people I don’t particularly like. I mumbled something I am not about to repeat and dragged myself back to bed. Just as my head hit the pillow, the same phone (which I left in the other room) started to beep to let the entire world know it now has a voicemail. What kind of a (insert your own descriptive adjective here) calls a wrong number and then leaves a voicemail? Deciding the voicemail was not worth another trip out of bed, I closed my eyes. This is when the other cell phone started to ring.

Now, my background is in computers, which means I took some statistics and probability classes in my life, and let’s just say that the odds of two wrong-number calls to two different cell phones that just happen to reside in the same house are well near zero. So, I immediately assume the worst. Someone I know or care about is either seriously hurt or dead. The call is coming from the hospital, or a bystander, or a police officer, or who knows where. I jump out of bed, completing a triple-Salchow or whatever it’s called when you clear the foot of the bed in a manner that likely prevents you from ever having kids and stumble to the phone, while tripping over something that sounds expensive as it shatters all over the floor. I get there just in time to hear a cheerful guy named Bill tell me (via recording) that NU has cancelled classes for the day due to snow. So, that’s nice. My heart-rate returns to normal just in time to receive a text message which also tells me that just in case I didn’t know, school is cancelled. I also received an email (which thankfully did not make noise and so went unnoticed until later), just in case. I guess the carrier pigeon had the flu, so he couldn’t make it.

I bring this long-winded entry to a close by asking a simple question: what was wrong with just putting the school-closing notice on TV? Embracing new technology, we could put it on a website where everyone could see it before heading in to school. What exactly is the benefit of treating a snowstorm as if the world is ending? I already know the downside.

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."

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I feel that it was not entirely a coincidence that my cellphone started to emit all the outward signs of a dolphin having an epileptic seizure ten minutes after we were finally done with our LSSC deliverable. My second most important electronic gadget (the laptop I am writing this on claims the top spot) had simply cracked under the pressure of LSSC... or so I thought. Instead, it turned out to be a friend informing me that he had just won the "losers' raffle" for sox tickets, and that I better not have too much planned for Tuesday, April 8th.

During the first semester, we all learned about the reasonably prudent person. If the reasonably prudent person had taken longer than a nanosecond to decide that the home-opener of the sox season (including the World Series rings ceremony) was more important than the two classes that conflicted with it... well, then that person is neither reasonable nor prudent. In fact, that person is the exact opposite of a friend of mine who flew in from the "wrong" coast just to see this game. And so, for the second time this academic year, I decided to miss a class without having an interview during it.

It was a beautiful way to spend an afternoon. Surrounded in a sea of red, we got to watch: banners unfurled, past greats from the major Boston-area sports teams walk out with their championship trophies, rings presented, Bill Buckner get a standing ovation for throwing out the first pitch, Steven Tyler singing during the 7th inning stretch, Sheffield get booed every time he went up to bat, a fly-over that was so cool one of the pilots got suspended for it, and oh, the local nine shut out the visiting team with the $138M payroll. We got to marvel at how the seats added to Fenway over the years look as if they were there when the park opened. There was but one minor annoyance: people who left the game early. The problem with having the smallest ballpark in the league is that your average fan cannot afford tickets. This means that an ever-increasing number of corporate weenies invade the confines. They buy pink, furry toy monkeys with a 'B' on them. They get on their cellphones and wave, hoping to end up on TV. They don't know the difference between a balk and a bunt. They complain that there are no cupholders in their seats. Worst of all: they leave early. Whether their team is up or down, whether it is opening day or middle of July -- the 8th inning rolls around and they stand up and file out of the stadium.

So, if you find yourself in Boston, because you decide to go to school here, or just for a visit -- do yourself a favor -- go to a game -- a baseball game at Fenway park is something that everyone should experience at least once in their lives. Just do us all a favor -- don't leave the game early.

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.

The first sport I remember playing was hockey (I'm Russian, it's like being Canadian when it comes to hockey, but a little less weird), but the first sport I truly loved was basketball. Truth is, basketball is an easy sport to love. It requires a minimum investment: you need a ball, and hoops are everywhere (and do not come with a per-hour rate, like ice time). It's a team sport, but unlike baseball and football it can be enjoyed by two people, playing one-on-one.

Some of my happiest memories involve basketball. From after-school games that could go all night if our parents didn't figure out our circular "I am doing homework at fill-in-the-blank's house" stories to playing with my dad, who still has the ugliest three-point shot anyone has ever seen (and I have no idea how the heck it goes in all the time, but it does).

The last Celtics game I went to was the opening game of the '06-'07 series. Red Auerbach had always said that the Celtics would have cheerleaders over his dead body, and he was not kidding: he died a few days before the cheerleaders were to take the court for the first game of the season. So, the Celtics "dancers" were postponed a day, and the night became a tribute to the man behind each of the Celtics' 16 championships. For one night, the Garden felt like the old Boston Garden, loud, boisterous, ready to win. The Celtics lost that game, and they would lose many more that season, on their way to the worst record in the Eastern Conference, and all I remember thinking was that Red didn't make it. He didn't make it to banner #17. Sitting there with my dad, watching the Celtics play I wondered whether both of us would get to see that banner being raised. After the tragedy of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis, after years spent watching the likes of Dino Radja and Sherman Douglass and after Rick Pitino ran himself out of town -- I wondered if there would ever be another banner hoisted to the rafters.

Wonder no more. The Celtics beat the Lakers, they won #17, and they did it in spectacular fashion. That it came against Phil Jackson, a man on the verge of breaking Red's record for most championships just makes it that much sweeter. That they did it when no one in the media thought they could beat the Lakers just makes it that much sweeter. That they did it the first year with KG, Ray Allen and Pierce playing together makes me excited about the years to come.

For the first time in twenty two years: The Boston Celtics are World Champions!

For the sixth time in the past eight years Boston had a parade for a sports team that won it all. Indeed it was -- a beautiful day.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some people think that the Olympic Games started with the U.S. Women's soccer team losing its opening game. These are probably the same people that think the Olympics are being held in China this year. Ha! For the record, the Olympics started last night with an event that can be best described as drunken volley-soccer, in Brighton, Massachusetts. Actually, with the time difference and all, it was this morning at approximately 1:45AM, that your faithful scribe was awakened by the sound of a ball being awkwardly dribbled, thrown, kicked and otherwise smacked around on the access road of Commonwealth Avenue.

Now, I do not condone drunk driving in any way, shape or form, but I do admit that a part of me thought it would be just peachy to combine the gentleman (the term is being used loosely) who got arrested in Gloucester the other day for his 14th DUI with the impromptu sporting event happening outside my windows, for it would have been a reasonably quick solution to the problem of being awakened roughly 4 hours before I had to get up to go to work.

That option being unavailable, however, I decided that I would, in a rather annoyed and loud baritone, explain to the would-be Olympians that they had two options: the first was to lose the ball and go home, and the second was for me to make a phone call to the local constabulary.

An incredible thing happened next: my new, more-than-slightly inebriated friends chose the first option. I am not sure whether I should attribute this to their inexperience (it is August, after all, not March -- they haven't been at this all year yet), or to the fact that I have started to sound more authoritative with age, but I was much amused that instead of being told to perform and act that I am not flexible enough to accomplish (and subsequently having to call for reinforcements), I was instead treated to a "Sorry, dude." and a hasty retreat. Based on this rather sorry performance, I do not think we should be counting on Team USA to receive any medals in drunken volley-soccer.

Incidentally, the last time I was awakened in the middle of the night, it was because one of my neighbors decided to loudly serenade someone with "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt. That was obnoxious enough to require a call to the police without a warning. It also took about 45 minutes to resolve, with the song being cycled on repeat the entire time. I was not a big fan of Mr. Blunt before this event, afterwards, I am about as excited about this song as my brother is about Sweet Caroline being played at the end of Sox games (which is to say, not too excited at all).

The point, for those who think I must have one: when choosing your housing, be extremely careful where you decide to live. Boston is a city of neighborhoods, and one block can be vastly different from the next. Almost seven years ago, I chose to live in a "student" area, because it is never boring. And as long as you don't mind being awakened in the middle of the night with a friendly game of volley-soccer every once in a while, I cannot think of a more fun place to live. However, those that prefer a more controlled environment should probably seek refuge in a different section of town. Ask your realtor, ask your friends, or ask complete strangers. If you have doubts (and time) -- tour the place on a Saturday or Sunday morning when the evidence of late-night debauchery is still fresh on the sidewalk.

And if all else fails -- maintain perspective. I would much rather have an impromptu Olympic event break out at 2AM than be faced with real problems.

I type this while a great blue heron sits fifteen feet away from me, curiously but cautiously watching the weird guy in the bright red shirt, overgrown beard and U.S. Attorney's Office of N.H. hat attempts to type on his laptop without making a sound. I think I am as foreign to the bird as he is to me. Soon, something will spook him and he will take off for the relative safety of the island across the creek. For now, however, we find ourselves in the envious position of having nothing better to do than sitting here, enjoying the sunshine and each other's company.

The same college buddy who I referred to in an earlier posting was kind enough to coordinate the birth of his first child (and boy does that make me feel old) with the last week of my internship. I suppose that makes us even, I mention him in my world-famous Admissions blog (tm) and he somehow convinces his wife that it is time to give birth. The timing allowed my wife and I to go down to NYC to see the new addition without feeling rushed to get back for work-purposes, and to extend this visit by spending the rest of the week at her grandmother's house. Which is where I find myself in the staring contest with the magnificent bird.

While there are many worthy topics to write about, such as: the Red Sox putting everyone and their mother on the disabled list lately, the end of the Patriots' training camp, the start of classes in less than two weeks, the curious decision in Nevada where a gym was disallowed from charging different membership fees based on sex, but allowed to have areas of the gym designated as female-only, and so on... I am on vacation, and my new friend seems anxious for me to put away the laptop and go back to my previous activity: napping. And so I shall oblige.

One last note, actually more of a warning: those who do not regularly visit a gymnasium have no business thinking they can kayak like they could when they did visit such an establishment on a regular basis.

Having turned my arms into wet noodles through the judicious use of kayak paddles and an inability to understand which way the tides pull, but having failed to do any permanent damage to my physical being, I decided to step it up a notch (no pun intended) for the my last week of freedom and do a day hike in Franconia Notch. Now, just to clarify, I wouldn't consider myself a hiker. I bought hiking boots last year, because my honeymoon contained a "hike around this volcano, and don't fall in" component, and I was told hiking boots are kind of important in accomplishing that goal. Aside from that, though, my last real hike was up Mt. Washington, and I was 18 at the time. I also remember being very depressed when we got to the top then, drenched in sweat, ready to collapse, only to see a parking lot full of people getting out of their cars and running around to stretch their legs after that grueling (for their cars) climb up the mountain. Totally anti-climactic.

As a firm believer in "using my whole ass" (in other words not half-assing it), I picked a trail that was labeled a strenuous hike, between 8 and 10 miles long, with an elevation change of roughly 3,600ft. There's a hut maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club about 4 miles in, then you can hike for another mile, turn around at the top of the peak you get to and hike back down (total 10 miles). The hut even has running water and the neo-hippies are said to be friendly in the summer months, unlike bears, who, I am told, are never friendly.

It being a weekday, the trail was mostly empty, but we did manage to meet some very interesting (and immensely friendly) people along the way. A guy and his dog Yoda (panting heavily and cursing all his fur, but nevertheless very happy), gave us valuable advice about scenic overlooks. We were wowed by the woman, looking to be in her fifties, who ran past us up the mountain. The AMC members at the hut even offered us leftover breakfast items gratis, for which I thank them, though I doubt they will ever see this (not exactly an internet hotspot, that hut).

Due to a missed left turn, we ended up hiking down about 1/8 of a mile before we realized that the trail that continued on for a mile was in the other direction. Refusing to hike back up, we decided that 8 miles was enough for our first real hike this summer and hiked down to the car. A familiar feeling enveloped me when we got there. Exhausted, with leg muscles I didn't even know I had cramping up, we noticed a sign we hadn't seen on the way up. This sign informed us that the hut we just hiked to and back was 3 miles away, not 4. Just like that, we were robbed of 2 miles of distance. Choosing not to dwell on it, we congratulated ourselves on the successful completion of the hike and headed for the car.

Never before have I looked at the clutch pedal in any car with as much disdain as I did just then.

"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.

I'd apologize for not posting for a little bit, but a) that's not really my style and b) I have determined that I cannot write a coherent blog while wearing a suit (the jury is still out on whether I can write one when I am not wearing one), either way -- the break was mandatory.

Good news: I have figured out a way to stay sane during the recruiting process.

Bad news: I need a time machine, so I can go three weeks into the future, see how it all worked out, and if I don't like it... go back and try again. It would be like that movie with the Delorean in it. Except I'm taller than Michael J. Fox (though he has more hair).

Continuing with the good news / bad news trend, here, in no particular order, are some notes from the front-lines of the recruiting process and law school life in general:

Good news: my wife has found the latest and greatest way to get abs of steel!

Bad news: her method involves contracting what can best be described as the cold of all colds, which leads to a persistent and ever-present cough that laughs at cough suppressants (even ones with codeine). Apparently, your stomach muscles get in pretty good shape when you spend more than a week coughing every twenty seconds. If anyone has any ideas on how to successfully market this in Hollywood, please use the comments link below to get in touch with me.

Good news: a friend got Patriots tickets, and I got to go!

Bad news: it was to the debacle of a game against the Dolphins last Sunday, and I was fighting off the abs-of-steel cold at the time. I don't know what upset me more, the drunken masses who decided that it was appropriate to boo the home team as they were leaving the field at halftime (forgetting, I guess that this is the same team that had won 21 straight regular-season games) or the fact that the same wingnut direct-snap play which was very visible from the upper reaches of the upper deck where we were situated somehow managed to slip by our genius of a defensive coach. Of note, also, is that the powers that be charge $10 a beer at Gillette stadium. This is not surprising, but the fact that they do not take credit cards is. Also of note is that the mens rooms lack the greatest gift to stadium design: the urinal troth (ladies, it is exactly what you think it is). In fact, the mens room only had stalls. I know what you're thinking, and no, I did not go into the wrong bathroom, or if I did, then boy are there a lot of women with facial hair who attend Patriots games.

Good news: I did not hold any WaMu stock.

Bad News: I do hold some Wachovia stock, and right about now is as good a time as any for that bail-out. Speaking of bail-outs, did I miss a memo? Are we still a capitalist society, or was there some sort of revolution that was not televised? Again, please use the comment button to clue me in.

Good news: the Red Sox are in the playoffs.

Bad news: they are currently losing their game to the Yankees, and the Devil Rays are going to win the division. Tampa Bay is going to win the division. Seriously. I am not joking. That time machine could also come in handy for situations like this.

Good news: my decision to take Bankruptcy law is turning out to be a good one.

Bad news: it's only good for understanding what's going on with the market a little better, but does not help in any meaningful way. It seems comparable to a guy sitting on the deck of the Titanic reading up on shipbuilding and iceberg avoidance -- very interesting, but he's still going to get wet.

Good news: I had a wonderful conversation with a gentleman regarding Brett Favre and how neither one of us will ever forgive him or his '96 Packers and Desmond "bleeping" Howard for that win over the Bledsoe-led Patriots in the Superbowl.

Bad news: the gentleman informed me that the game "ruined his childhood" and I realized I was a sophomore in college at the time.

Good news: we are approaching that time of the year when I get to give out unsolicited advice about applications because it feels relevant.

Bad news: I get to give unsolicited advice because it feels relevant to me***:

1. Proofread! There is a difference between it's and its, there, their, and they're and your and you're. I also suggest printing out the essay and waiting a few hours before reading it, your brain will catch missing words better after taking a break, and on paper. Better yet, find someone you trust and have them proof-read.

2. Visit the schools, sit in on classes, talk to the students (for the most part we're a relatively friendly bunch, but do yourself a favor and stay away from the people who are wearing suits and look like they might lose it -- they are probably running to or from an interview).

3. Ask questions! Trust me it's much better to have your questions answered before you show up on your first day of class. Find out how the career office operates, talk to the people in admissions, etc.

4. I already wrote a posting about things you put on the internet, so I'm just going to pretend like I am Justice Thomas and cite to myself: click me

5. Just remember, it could be worse, you could be looking to graduate with a Financial MBA in May. This one applies to all of us -- whether we're applying to school or looking for jobs right now.

*** Clearly, these are my opinions and suggestions, and in no way represent an official position of this or any other institution. Not affiliated with any Commercial or Investment Banks. May glow in the dark. Harmful if swallowed. Batteries not included. Proceed with caution. Use headlights after dusk. Do not leave unattended. Use only for intended purposes. Not for internal consupmtion. If your ere... ok, I think that's enough now.

I'd apologize for not posting for a little bit, but a) that's not really my style and b) I have determined that I cannot write a coherent blog while wearing a suit (the jury is still out on whether I can write one when I am not wearing one), either way -- the break was mandatory.

Good news: I have figured out a way to stay sane during the recruiting process.

Bad news: I need a time machine, so I can go three weeks into the future, see how it all worked out, and if I don't like it... go back and try again. It would be like that movie with the Delorean in it. Except I'm taller than Michael J. Fox (though he has more hair).

Continuing with the good news / bad news trend, here, in no particular order, are some notes from the front-lines of the recruiting process and law school life in general:

Good news: my wife has found the latest and greatest way to get abs of steel!

Bad news: her method involves contracting what can best be described as the cold of all colds, which leads to a persistent and ever-present cough that laughs at cough suppressants (even ones with codeine). Apparently, your stomach muscles get in pretty good shape when you spend more than a week coughing every twenty seconds. If anyone has any ideas on how to successfully market this in Hollywood, please use the comments link below to get in touch with me.

Good news: a friend got Patriots tickets, and I got to go!

Bad news: it was to the debacle of a game against the Dolphins last Sunday, and I was fighting off the abs-of-steel cold at the time. I don't know what upset me more, the drunken masses who decided that it was appropriate to boo the home team as they were leaving the field at halftime (forgetting, I guess that this is the same team that had won 21 straight regular-season games) or the fact that the same wingnut direct-snap play which was very visible from the upper reaches of the upper deck where we were situated somehow managed to slip by our genius of a defensive coach. Of note, also, is that the powers that be charge $10 a beer at Gillette stadium. This is not surprising, but the fact that they do not take credit cards is. Also of note is that the mens rooms lack the greatest gift to stadium design: the urinal troth (ladies, it is exactly what you think it is). In fact, the mens room only had stalls. I know what you're thinking, and no, I did not go into the wrong bathroom, or if I did, then boy are there a lot of women with facial hair who attend Patriots games.

Good news: I did not hold any WaMu stock.

Bad News: I do hold some Wachovia stock, and right about now is as good a time as any for that bail-out. Speaking of bail-outs, did I miss a memo? Are we still a capitalist society, or was there some sort of revolution that was not televised? Again, please use the comment button to clue me in.

Good news: the Red Sox are in the playoffs.

Bad news: they are currently losing their game to the Yankees, and the Devil Rays are going to win the division. Tampa Bay is going to win the division. Seriously. I am not joking. That time machine could also come in handy for situations like this.

Good news: my decision to take Bankruptcy law is turning out to be a good one.

Bad news: it's only good for understanding what's going on with the market a little better, but does not help in any meaningful way. It seems comparable to a guy sitting on the deck of the Titanic reading up on shipbuilding and iceberg avoidance -- very interesting, but he's still going to get wet.

Good news: I had a wonderful conversation with a gentleman regarding Brett Favre and how neither one of us will ever forgive him or his '96 Packers and Desmond "bleeping" Howard for that win over the Bledsoe-led Patriots in the Superbowl.

Bad news: the gentleman informed me that the game "ruined his childhood" and I realized I was a sophomore in college at the time.

Good news: we are approaching that time of the year when I get to give out unsolicited advice about applications because it feels relevant.

Bad news: I get to give unsolicited advice because it feels relevant to me***:

1. Proofread! There is a difference between it's and its, there, their, and they're and your and you're. I also suggest printing out the essay and waiting a few hours before reading it, your brain will catch missing words better after taking a break, and on paper. Better yet, find someone you trust and have them proof-read.

2. Visit the schools, sit in on classes, talk to the students (for the most part we're a relatively friendly bunch, but do yourself a favor and stay away from the people who are wearing suits and look like they might lose it -- they are probably running to or from an interview).

3. Ask questions! Trust me it's much better to have your questions answered before you show up on your first day of class. Find out how the career office operates, talk to the people in admissions, etc.

4. I already wrote a posting about things you put on the internet, so I'm just going to pretend like I am Justice Thomas and cite to myself: click me

5. Just remember, it could be worse, you could be looking to graduate with a Financial MBA in May. This one applies to all of us -- whether we're applying to school or looking for jobs right now.

*** Clearly, these are my opinions and suggestions, and in no way represent an official position of this or any other institution. Not affiliated with any Commercial or Investment Banks. May glow in the dark. Harmful if swallowed. Batteries not included. Proceed with caution. Use headlights after dusk. Do not leave unattended. Use only for intended purposes. Not for internal consupmtion. If your ere... ok, I think that's enough now.

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." --Mark Twain

I can't think of a better way to describe this massive financial crisis that we are experiencing at the moment. Had I been leisure-reading (assuming I ever finish "The Summer of '49") some thriller involving the worlds of finance and banking and the plot turned to the complete meltdown we are now experiencing, I probably would have protested that it is not an even remotely plausible scenario. Well, folks, as a not-so-proud shareholder of Wachovia, it might not be believable, but it is certainly happening. Failures of banks that had survived the Great Depression, government bailouts of financial giants, as well as insurance companies, temporary bans on short-selling financial stocks, runs on banking institutions, the complete shutdown of any lending what-so-ever, we are certainly not in Kansas anymore.

However, being in school does insulate one a bit from this whole mess. Unlike some of my friends, I do not have to worry about whether I will keep my job, because, well, I don't have one at the moment. And while my stake in Wachovia is so far under water it keeps sending me post cards with pictures of reefs on them, it is not significant enough for me to pull the remnants of my hair out over it. I do admit (it would be tough not to) that the current state of the economy makes it just that much harder to get a job for next summer***, but a summer job does not a career make, and as 2Ls, we have a full year to watch the economy recover (hopefully).

Having said all this, I still find myself spending a lot of time on finance.google.com (and others) looking for any pertinent information on this. Why? Because it is fascinating, especially from a legal standpoint.

Let's take Wachovia, for example. Over the weekend of September 27th-28th, Wachovia, facing a "silent run on the bank" and a threatened take-over by the FDIC started actively seeking merger partners. Citibank, Wells Fargo and Spain's Banco Santander all showed interest. Without dwelling on the particulars, what emerged was an FDIC-backed (and some could argue mandated) deal (on Monday 9/29) between Citi and Wachovia which would result in Citi paying about $2.2billion for Wachovia's banking operations (about $1/share) and assuming the first $42billion in potential losses from Wachovia's mortgage portfolio, with the FDIC covering the rest of the risk in exchange for $12billion in preferred stock in Citi. This deal was subject to a Wachovia shareholder vote, as the FDIC was adamant that the bank did not fail, was not taken over by the FDIC (like Washington Mutual), and therefore wanted the transaction treated as a "regular" merger.

The story diverges depending on whose version of the facts you believe (Citi or Wachovia), but what is clear is that last Thursday Wells Fargo made a bid for all of Wachovia (not just the banking operations) which was then valued at $15billion or so ($7/share). This bid also does not require the intervention of the FDIC. Citibank, alerted of this development by a 2AM phone call to its CEO, was less than excited. It is easy to see why: the discrepancy in the two offers shows that Citi was getting a great deal.

This is where it gets interesting. Going into last weekend, Citi managed to get an injunction which extended it's exclusivity agreement with Wachovia for another week (it was set to expire on Monday). Wachovia reacted on two fronts: it appealed the state-court decision by attacking the authority of the state judge to issue his ruling while physically outside the state of New York (the judge had ruled from his home in Connecticut). The appeals court agreed, vacating the order. Wachovia and Wells Fargo are currently trying to get the case removed to Federal Court.

Simultaneously, Wachovia went to Federal District Court to try and get Citibank enjoined from enforcing this same exclusivity agreement. Interestingly, the crux of Wachovia's argument seems to be based on a provision in the newly-passed $700billion bailout, which seems to imply that there will be no liability for those who find themselves in the position of Wells Fargo -- meaning in violation of an exclusivity agreement. A hearing on this was originally scheduled for this past Tuesday but has been moved to Friday as the sides attempt to settle the dispute.

Meanwhile, Wachovia shareholders in North Carolina managed to get a preliminary injunction which would prohibit Citibank from enforcing... yup, this same exclusivity agreement with Wachovia.

By way of a "cherry on top", Citibank also sued Wachovia and Wells Fargo for $60 billion ($20 billion in damages and $40 billion in punitive damages), a number which reportedly might grow to $200 billion if the current settlement talks do not work out.

This means there are currently three different courts looking at the same provision of a contract between Citibank and Wachovia! As you can see, some of the rulings are clearly in conflict with each other, which is what makes this situation so interesting.

Another amazing aspect about all of this is that one could teach the entire first-year curriculum from this one event. There are multiple Civil Procedure elements: jurisdiction, venue, summary judgment, preliminary injunction, etc. Contracts issues are also obviously present, for example why did the Citi/Wachovia deal lack a punitive "walk away" clause? Constitutional law issues arise with the passage of the bailout, which has provisions which are questionable, to say the least. Property would be easily satisfied by looking into the details of the proposed mergers. While I see no actual Tort crimes having been committed, there is some talk of damages which would be useful in that class. No criminal charges have been filed yet, but this may just be a matter of time.

My only regret is that I am not closer to the action on this one -- thought I suppose if I were, I might be worried about keeping my job, so perhaps this is a good thing.

Have a good weekend everybody! (my weekend starts today). And Go Sox!

***Firms hire summer associates with the expectation of giving them offers for full-time employment after graduation. So, in effect, the firms are in the process of figuring out what their needs for first-year associates will be roughly two years from now. This process can't be easy when the economy is in the state of flux it is in right now.

Sometimes you can just tell that something is not a good idea. However, where some of us see ridiculousness, others see opportunity. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present... (drum roll, please) all-you-can-eat hockey tickets! Paramedics with defibrillators are standing by.

You do have to feel bad for the Bruins. They are located in a town which is crazy about sports and are at the same time owned by a guy who couldn't care less (by the way, please note the use of couldn't in that expression, I know the cool new way of saying this is "could care less", but that makes no sense, because it means he could actually care less. The point is that he could not. Between that, "irregardless" and the "their/there/they're" mess, we have covered the top three ways that people abuse the English language that get under my skin -- and aren't you glad we did?). The owner of a sports team needs to be a fan first and a businessman second. Teams that win championships consistently generally spend a significant amount of money on payroll, and thus are not nearly as profitable as teams that generate a lot of interest, but do not have the same high salaries. Jeremy Jacobs figured this formula out years ago, and so the Bruins are consistently good enough to get in the playoffs and play well enough to generate buzz (which hopefully carries over into next season) and generate revenue, but are always a piece or two short from a championship team, because the owner refuses to spend money. In the sixth-largest TV market in the country. In a part of the country where hockey is a natural sport, enjoyed by many in outdoor rinks for five months out of the year (unlike Florida, where ice is something you put in your drink, not something you skate on). Well, as those of you who have read this space over the last year know, I refuse to let myself be drawn into this. Jeremy Jacobs will not be getting any of my money, regardless (not irregardless) of how much free food I'm offered.

While on the subject of sports -- the entire sports universe is a mess, isn't it? The Red Sox are one loss away from being eliminated by a team we all lovingly called the "Double-A's" as recently as a year ago. The Patriots have lost their starting quarterback and are behind the Buffalo Bills in their division. Though, it is important to note that if the Pats are not going to win the division (or the Superbowl), then I'd want the Bills to do it. Buffalo fans are some of the most knowledgeable, dedicated fans on the planet. That, and let's be honest -- Buffalo needs this. What else do they have to look forward to up there?

In school-related news, there are events planned throughout this week to commemorate the school of law's 40th anniversary. The events culminate in a capstone reception at the new Federal Courthouse on Saturday. Now, this is a curious numbering system, since Northeastern's School of Law was actually the founding school of this university (in 1898). The school was then shut down in 1956 and re-opened in its current form in 1968 (hence the 40 year anniversary, I suppose). Why we celebrate the 40 and not the 110 years... I will never know, but I guess the number of years is not terribly important -- what is much more interesting is that this Saturday I will find myself voluntarily donning a suit to participate in multiple social interactions with other suit-wearing human beings, and none of it can be called an interview. That's definitely something to look forward to. Maybe I can convince someone there to buy the Bruins...

That was the term of endearment my wife and I came up with when Avis "upgraded" us to a Jeep Liberty the last time we were in Colorado (back when I had a life outside law school I did this thing called skiing -- it's this cool concept when you actually do something active outside, sometimes for an entire weekend -- you should try it, it's great). Having rented cars from various agencies over quite a number of years, I have developed a Pavlov-like growling response anytime the person behind the counter offers to upgrade me or give me something for nothing.

A little background: in my life, I have been upgraded to...
1. a Buick Century Classic (instant grandpa status!)
2. a Hyundai Deathtrap 2000 (truth in advertising should have required this name)
3. a Dodge Caravan (this is one I actually refused to accept, even at a half-price discount)
4. a PT Cruiser (coffin-mobile, and if you don't know what that means, it is because you have never driven one)
5. I could go on and on...

However, the Jeep made sense. We were headed into the mountains, and it was snowing. Had the car-rental gods finally decided to show mercy? Tentatively, we accepted the offering.

I fired up the Jeep, let out a manly(ish) grunt pulling the lever into 4WD Low and grinned with anticipation of doing all those cool things that I see the photogenic people in the Jeep commercials doing. The Jeep made a funny noise and then proceeded to get itself stuck in two inches of slush in the parking lot, while continuously flashing its "low traction" dummy light. Uhm, yeah, I know we have a low traction situation. I know this because I am pushing the gas pedal and we're not moving. Thanks for the heads-up, though -- really helpful! My grin turned into something reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's scowl from The Shining, as I realized that the Jeep and I would be in constant battle for the next two weeks. "Heeeeeeere's Johnny!"

The term refrigerator on wheels came a bit later, when we realized that the cornering ability of the Jeep Liberty is roughly comparable to a Frigidaire, placed on its side, with some wheels attached. Actually, that's probably not fair to the refrigerator.

I bring this up now, because I am currently driving a black version of the same vehicle as my car is in the shop. The vehicle I was supposed to get was a Nissan Pathfinder, which, I am sure, is a better truck, but it is also the size of a small building, and with the rather small parking spaces where I live, it would have had to figure out how to fold in half when I got home. Assured that folding the rental in half was not covered by my insurance, I opted for the Jeep. Honestly, I cannot believe how anyone would be surprised that Chrysler is having financial problems if they have ever driven one of these things. I just cannot. There is a silver lining, however: pedestrians are terrified of this thing. I don't know what about this friendly-looking mini-ute is so intimidating, but the number of people who walk out into traffic in front of me expecting me to stop on a dime or risk being sued for putting them out of their misery has been halved. Perhaps they have had the pleasure of driving one of these things and know how well they corner and stop? Again: I just don't know.

As Amy mentioned in her blog, last weekend NUSL capped off its 40th anniversary with a party at the Moakley Courthouse. For starters: I have never seen a more beautiful federal building. I am sure there's more to share, but I just got a call from the body shop -- my car is ready. And if you think I am spending one extra second in possession of the refrigerator on wheels -- well, you just haven't been paying attention.

Applying to law school two years ago reintroduced me to the concept of the canned rejection letter. More than a decade had passed since I had applied to college, which dulled my memory of stalking the letter carrier in hopes that he brought thick envelopes instead of thin ones. This fall, during the summer associate recruiting process, I noticed that we now have a different letter carrier than we did when I was applying to law school, and I sincerely hope it was not because the previous guy got tired of me hiding out in the bushes outside the building.

Rejection letters are pretty formulaic: thanks for applying, you didn't get in, it was really tough to turn you down, good luck in the future. After you read enough of them, they all start to blend together. This blending gave me the idea of writing my own: a rejection of a rejection letter, and here it is:

Dear recruiting coordinator,

I would like to thank you for the rejection letter you sent me recently. I too greatly enjoyed meeting you during our interview. While I found your letter to be interesting, strongly compelling, and mostly persuasive, regretfully, I will be unable to accept it. The extremely limited size of my mailbox, and the high number of rejection letters from extremely qualified firms, such as yours, requires me to make difficult choices. I was, however, impressed with your firm's qualifications and wish you every success with your other rejection letters.

Sincerely,

Leon.

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.

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!

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.

As far as I know, there is no official school of blogging, or an accrediting association, or even an internet course one needs to take to become one. This means that we create the rules as we go along, pretty much. Due to the flowing nature of the exchange (I write when something pops into my head, you read when bored), I think the first rule should be: never make statements that lock you into a specific time-frame. Thus, wishing people a happy long weekend on a Wednesday is a silly notion, since it is entirely possible that something new pops into your head between then and the actual weekend. So, I take it back – no weekend wishes for you (yet).

As some (or possibly most or all) of you may have noticed, a monumental FISA Court opinion was published recently. FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 which creates procedures for judicial approval of surveillance of those who engage in espionage or terrorism against the US and on behalf of a foreign power. The court is an eleven-member body tasked with approving the eavesdropping requests the government makes. When an entity (in this case an unnamed communications provider) wishes to challenge the court's decision, it appeals to the review court. That body is staffed by three judges. For more info: click.

The decision made public the other day upholds the Bush administration's controversial eavesdropping program. The program allowed the government, with certain safeguards in place, to intercept electronic and voice communication as long as the target of the eavesdropping was reasonably believed to be out of the country. I won't try to paraphrase the opinion, but if you are interested, the opinion can be found here.

I am sure the discussion is not over. For one, the Protect America Act of 2007 which was being challenged was not renewed in 2008. However, Congress did approve a similar act which remains in place today. For another, the opinion upholds the decision against an "as applied" challenge, which means that it is possible that some scenario could arise where the use would be unconstitutional.

At any rate, the decision, as I said before, is monumental. At the very least it furthers the debate on how far the Fourth Amendment goes and what exceptions are allowed to the warrant requirement therein. In the immediate future, however, it strengthens the executive branch's surveillance powers.

Now, you may have a nice weekend.

Fahrenheit. Hmmm. That was the base of the mountain, at 2PM, according to my car's trusty thermometer. Yup, the same car that was sitting in the sun, at the base of the mountain, protected from the wind by a massive snowbank (on three sides, I park carefully to avoid dings from errant shopping carts, car doors, kids, alien spacecraft and the like). The car is also made of metal, and despite what some of my best friends might think, I do not believe it can feel things,,, like how cold it really is.

So, how cold was it at the top of the mountain, with the sun obscured by clouds and trees, and with the wind blowing hard enough to cause the lifts to stop every once in a while to prevent a catastrophe that would surely result in the mountain ending up on the front page of every newspaper in the Northeast? Couldn't actually tell you. Despite it being cold enough that any exposed skin risked frostbite within ten minutes... Despite it being cold enough for your fingers to freeze to the metal buckles of your ski boots on contact (when you would come into the lodge, take your gloves off and attempt to remove a ski boot to see if you did, indeed, still have toes -- an ill-advised proposition, in hindsight)... Despite it being cold enough to make your eyes water (inside your ski goggles)... Despite all of this, we never bothered to look at the thermometer at the top of the lift. It could be that we didn't want to spend an extra second at the top and freeze to death, but I would like to think that we were just having too much fun.

We took a pre-emptive step before even starting: we broke out the "powder" skis. For the uninitiated (non-skiers): when skiing on a really, really cold day the last thing you want to do is strap on a pair of race skis that allow you to achieve barely sub-sonic speed and woof it down the mountain. Instead, you want a slower, fatter, more pliable ski to take into the bumps (moguls) or trees. That way the heat you generate skiing down doesn't have to fight the speed-generated wind and keeps you warm enough on the chairlift on the way back up.

And so, we spent the day shivering on the chairlift, but also enjoying some of the best terrain the east coast has to offer. And we had it mostly to ourselves, most of the crowd choosing to keep the hot chocolate machine company in the lodge. Our biggest challenges were (though not necessarily in this order): (1) making sure to veer far enough to the left, to get back over to a groomed trail that returned us to the chairlift, before the hill dropped off to the right causing us to hike for a few hours to get back (though my wife assures me that's a hike I would have been making alone), (2) keeping from becoming a tree-hugger in the truest sense of that term, (3) looking out for those roots, which have a tendency to grab hold of a ski (and only one ski), (4) making sure the car, yeah, the one that sat in the relative warmth and comfort of the snowbank, started (so that we could go back to the condo).

The car starting, as it turns out, was the roughest part: there was definitely more than a little hesitation there -- but that's good news, for it can be fixed with a new battery.

P.S. Sunday was a bit warmer -- a positively balmy 5 degrees -- and the car behaved admirably, all things considered.

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.

I spent this past Monday night at the Museum of Fine Arts. The entire night. From about 6pm to almost 10pm. In case the significance of me voluntarily spending four hours at a museum is lost on those that don't know me very well... let's just say that those who do know me well are probably looking for some way to secure themselves to the ground, since the Earth is sure to stop spinning momentarily and gravity will cease to work. Don't get me wrong -- I like museums. I just like other things more. I also find that museums, unlike good wine, are good in moderation. Despite my wife's excellent tour-giving skills and endless amount of knowledge when it comes to any exhibit we have seen, my attention span tends to wane after hour number two, and tends to approach that of a fruit-fly by hour three. At four hours, my body switches to self-preservation mode and starts trying to pick a fight with said wife, seeing the potential marriage-ending conflict over whether a particular artwork could have been made by a crack-addicted monkey with only one arm and a lazy eye as better than the alternative of staying at the museum any longer. Come to think of it, this pick-a-fight to leave the museum ploy may have gotten overexposed during our trip to Europe a few summers ago, and now seems less effective due to my wife ignoring my tantrums and pretending not to know me.

So, what was I doing at the MFA for four hours on Monday night? I was attending an opening ceremony for the "Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings" exhibit. It turns out that at some point between on-campus interviews, my fall quarter finals, my wife's birthday and Thanksgiving, I somehow agreed that we should upgrade our membership at the museum (yes, we were both paying members even though one of us gets free admission because he is a law student -- there was a perfectly logical reason for this, I just can't think of it right now) to something called the Museum Council. This level of membership gets you into exhibition openings not open to the public, and gets you invited to other events as well. In exchange, the museum gets your soul when you die. Well, not quite, but they get more money from you than they were before, and a chance to cultivate some serious donations when we all make it big and compete to see who can get the new wing named after them.

Any fears I had of being bored to tears (or having to come up with a new exit strategy) were removed when a waitress presented me with a tray of wine glasses to peruse the second I entered the "closed-to-the-public" museum. Wine and art? Now, this a man can get used to. The exhibit was truly amazing, consisting of furniture and drawings the details of some of which left me scratching my head in a "how did they even do that?!" way. Seriously, the inlay work on some of the furniture was done with precision that I can't even imagine any human being capable of. The slide-show presentation was... well, a little dry, I admit, but it was book-ended by chatting with some friends and an impromptu (and very exclusive) tour given by my wife, so even it was palatable. Then they fed us dinner -- a pleasant surprise for those of us who thought the hors d'oeuvres earlier in the evening were going to be it as far as food goes.

Did this one evening turn me into a connoisseur of all things MFA? No. But it was a lot of fun. And I am looking forward to the next one.

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...

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).

Maybe it is because the month of June had exactly two sunny days in it. Perhaps it is because my weeks are measured by the number of curve balls from GM and Chrysler bankruptcy reorganizations. Could be that "road improvement" project that has created a gigantic pile of concrete refuse outside my window, which is, incidentally, violently shaken, stirred, and otherwise disturbed by a whole brigade of unionized men with no necks creating an ever-increasing, and completely ungodly, early start to each day. One thing is for sure -- a month of summer has gone by, and I am not exactly sure where it went.

There are some things I learned along the way, however. For example, there is a post office at South Station that does not close -- at least it does not close until after 8:47pm, and I have no desire to find out if it ever does. Also, crown molding was designed by an evil man whose grasp of geometry, physics and simple arithmetic is beyond that of mere mortals. Arriving at work before 8:01am gets me the primo parking space I want most weeks, but not always. The lunch line is worst right around 12:15pm, with noon being a close second -- probably because of all the people who are trying to not be in line at noon. Free cookies will be consumed in ten minutes, even if they are not very good. When a man introduces himself as "Binky," one should not look for a meaningful conversation to ensue. The number of telemarketers who call one's office phone is not in any way related to the amount of time spent at the company. And no, I do not want a time share in Mexico, or a tropical cruise of the Caribbean, but thanks for asking.

I also learned that southern New England has a "wine region" and that they produce some surprisingly decent wines, for the most part. Why anyone would try to go grow a Pinot Noir in this climate is beyond me (it smelled of pickles and tasted worse), but the Sauvignons and the Vidals were rather palatable. I do suggest also staying away from the "Port," however, unless the taste of filtered sewage appeals.

Now, let's all go out there and do the reverse of the rain dance, please.

Happy Fourth, Everybody!

I find that the more times one repeats something, the less believable it becomes. So, when I am told seventeen times that being on a jury is my civic duty, I start to question the very existence of the term. Of course, this was not my first trip through the revolving doors of the Suffolk County Courthouse on jury day. The first time was when I finally registered to vote. The next was when I moved and bought a car. However, this time was different -- I did nothing to deserve a return trip to the jury room.

The first time I was up, my number got called, and I was asked to come up with the best excuse I could have in ten seconds or less. I went with the predictable, though completely true, "I am one of thirteen people at my company, and I can't possibly be missing for a week, my deadline is next Monday." I was immediately administered a judicial talking-to, which included the words "selfish," "civic duty," "everyone has one," and "take your seat" pretty much in that order. I climbed over three rather rotund individuals to get to my designated seat, sat down and had enough time to exhale before I got bounced by the defense attorney. The climb on the way back was not more pleasurable, I assure you.

The second time, I never left the big jury pool room; none of us did. All the cases got settled the day of trial, and we were all relieved to find out that we were free to go at around lunch time.

This time, however, I was intrigued. You see, the first two came during my first life, spent as an overworked engineer, while this one happened to coincide with law school, newfound interest in all things legal, and right about the time I should be narrowing my career focus to either transactional practice or litigation. So, I was faced with a dilemma -- risk complete, mind numbing boredom by getting picked for the jury, miss three days of work, but also receive a rare-for-a-future-lawyer glimpse of how a jury works and deliberates on an actual case -- or play it safe, and bow out, this time, hopefully, without a lecture from a man in a robe. This was going to be particularly difficult, since last summer's job at the US Attorney's office qualified me for a private chat with the judge and the lawyers anyways.

In the end, the decision was a simple one. When would I ever get another chance to sit on a jury? I can afford to miss a few days of work now, but likely will not be able to the next time my chance comes up (three years). Plus, who knows what other "warning sign" items I accumulate on my resume? While I can honestly say that my stint at the US Attorney's office does not prejudice me in cases I might hear in the future, not every defense attorney will believe me.

This one did, though, and so, I get to see what life is like on the other side of that jury room door. Of course, I can't discuss the case or anything that happens in that room -- so I guess you'll have to get empanelled yourself if you'd like to know more about it. I recommend doing it before you get into law school -- much easier to not get bounced then.

I cannot possibly explain what October of 2004 meant to Red Sox fans. I’ve tried before – to my mother, my wife, countless non-baseball or non-Red Sox fans. I’ve failed every single time. From my descriptions they understand how it made us feel, but they do not truly understand what it meant. I had hoped one day to try and relate it to my kids, and then, perhaps, to their kids. With practice, I could become better at it. I could do more than explain that while my father and I watched the first three losses of the ALCS at my apartment, he absolutely refused to come over for game four – deeming the combination of him, me, and the apartment bad luck. I could relate how I sat in my living room, in the ninth inning of game four, still wearing my gym clothes, drenched with over two hours of a failed attempt to stay away from the game by lifting ever-increasingly heavy objects over my head. The euphoria of Dave Roberts’ steal, the defiant “we will not be swept” of Big Papi’s home run in the twelfth inning; the glimmer of hope that all was not lost. Perhaps I could make them understand why I found it necessary to call my dad to “convince” him to come over for games five, six and seven, needing to hear him refuse, all the time wondering whether he was disappointed that he had raised an idiot who was so superstitious that he needed to repeat everything he did before game four for the rest of the games. My fears were unfounded – I was ten minutes late calling before game seven, and my dad (the most non-superstitious person I know) had thought I was in a car accident. He needed to have me call and ask him to come over just as much as I needed him to refuse. Perhaps I could one day relate the pure joy of watching that team win it all -- the joy, the relief, the pure happiness.

That task will be harder now. With yet another leak from the inappropriately named anonymous drug test list of 2003, we now know that at least two members of that Red Sox team had tested positive for steroids. Manny Ramirez was not a shock – the man just had a 50-game unscheduled vacation for failing a recent drug test.

David Ortiz – Big Papi – that, on the other hand, was a debilitating shock. Perhaps it is because I chose to be naïve, perhaps even stupid, but I had somehow hung on to the idea that he was clean. In an era when seemingly every big hitter and every big pitcher were on steroids, I chose to think that the guy most responsible (other than Dave Roberts) for those come-back wins was clean.

Some will say that it doesn’t matter. The Sox beat a Yankees team which had plenty of admitted steroid users as well. Some will say it was not illegal at the time (in the MLB) to use steroids. Some, undoubtedly, will argue that the 2003 tests do not relate to the 2004 result. None of it matters. What once was an almost indescribable emotion is now forever tainted.

And that, my friends, may be impossible to forgive.

This summer has really flown by. Not only is today the last day of my summer co-op, but we are quickly approaching that time of my legal career where I have to start thinking about post-graduate employment. That task has been complicated tremendously by the law firm I was supposed to work for this summer (they cancelled their summer program, and thus any chance of post-grad employment with them). However, this has also broadened the horizon a little. In the coming months, I’ll be canvassing smaller IP firms, as well as possibly looking at clerkship opportunities. I’ll also finally do what I should have done a while ago – join the Boston Bar Association. Finally, I’ll have to give some serious thought to studying for and taking the Patent Bar. This, of course, is in addition to classes and this pesky thing called the MPRE (if you don’t know what it is you should be happy, for now).

All of this will have to wait, however, as I am about to embark on a long-planned vacation -- in a probably futile attempt to forget about everything going on in the world around me. The only decision I plan to make in the next two weeks is whether to take my laptop with me. I’m leaning towards leaving it at home, in case you were wondering.

Have a wonderful next couple of weeks!

Special note to the incoming 1Ls: enjoy your last month of freedom, as you can see, the next time you will have a month off with nothing to worry about is roughly… never. (insert evil laugh here).

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. :)