One week ago, I was in Albany, NY, sitting for the New York bar examination. Afterwards, I made my way down to Connecticut to sit for the Connecticut bar examination. It was a grueling three-day process. Since wrapping up the bar exam, I have been recovering from two straight months of studying. My wife and I hosted a party over the weekend, and family and law school friends came to our new home. It was a lot of fun to see friends from NUSL, as well as family members who I had neglected ever since graduating. My aunt remarked that my NUSL friends all looked pretty shell-shocked from the bar exam. I bet I looked the same!

I will spend this week recovering from said shell shock. My plans include reading Justice Thomas’ book, My Grandfather’s Son, which I just picked up from the local library; assembling a crib for our first child who is due at the end of September; riding my recumbent bicycle through my new environs; playing some old school video games; and catching up on podcasts that I have missed during the bar exam. On Friday, my wife and I will head out for a week on Cape Cod. I’m excited to smell the salt water for the first time this summer.

While studying for the bar, I was putting in about seventy hours per week. As a result, I fell out of touch with current events. I have been catching back up, but have quite a backlog. I have not yet read anything about the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment case, the coming Olympic games, or the state of the presidential race. Starting my morning off with the New York Times is a ritual that I really missed during the bar review process. Getting back to my usual life feels terrific.

The bar exam is approaching ever-more rapidly. This past week, I did a simulated, all-day bar exam. If it had been the actual bar exam, I would have passed, albeit not by a wide margin. In the remaining weeks before the exam, my focus is going to be on making a "final push" before the test. The past few weeks have been pretty intense, with lots of studying crammed into days that always seem to end too soon to get it all done. I'm certain that the coming weeks will be quite similar.

Over the past few weeks, I have gotten quite a bit of perspective on NUSL and the ways in which it prepares its students (and sometimes, doesn't prepare its students) for the bar exam. For those readers who will be 1Ls in the fall, I would suggest that you really make sure to enjoy your time as a first year student. It's a special time, and going through a bar review course that focuses on "just the law" has made me appreciate the social justice context that NUSL gave me. I learned "the law," but also gained an appreciation for the ways in which it affects people's lives. I could not imagine being a lawyer without that aspect of my legal education.

Out of all the classes I took at NUSL, my favorites were the ones that were not on bar topics. The classes that I took on bar topics were good, but I think you could learn the "just the law" from BABRI. As most soon-to-be-law students won't know what BABRI is, I guess I should give you some context. The entire bar review review enterprise is quite interesting. It is dominated by one company, BABRI, which runs a two-month bar review program. It's almost entirely conducted via video. As such, I (along with a large majority of the roughly 56,000 bar applicants in the United States) get up each morning and go to an auditorium, where I watch a four-hour DVD with about a hundred other students. It's a surreal experience that makes me yearn for my NUSL days, or, alternately, yearn for the day when I actually begin the practice of law.

I am done with my second week of post-NUSL bar review. Things are definitely starting to "heat up" as the bar exam date gets closer and closer. In just a few hours, though, some of my best friends from law school are arriving from Boston. We're taking a short break from our bar review worries to have a men's retreat. I'm very much looking forward to this respite. We're going to fire up the grill, drink a cold beer and commiserate about the bar review process. We're also going to go see a Jon Stewart show tonight, which I think will be a lot of fun. I'm very excited to take a break from the past two weeks; they've been unrelenting.

With all my bar review work, I have been forced to cut myself off from many of the highlights of my erstwhile life (e.g., reading the New York Times, following legal blogs, going to events). There has been one legal bit of news, though, that nobody, not even a bar applicant, and certainly no soon-to-be law student, should miss. You can read more here, if you have not already. Be well until next time!

It’s been a while since I last blogged. In the interim, quite a bit has happened! I have graduated from NUSL, moved to Connecticut, and started studying for the bar exam. Along the way, I’ve become a gardener (tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, mint), gotten myself a recumbent bicycle, started grilling in my backyard and settled into a home office. There are big differences between my current home and the small Boston apartment that I lived in during my three years at NUSL. Of course, there is a lot that I already miss about that little home. Most of all, I miss my law school friends, many of whom are remaining in the greater Boston area. Although my emphasis this summer is on studying for the bar exam, I will be checking in with a weekly blog piece as to how things are going post-graduation. Along the way, I hope to provide some insight into what it’s like to be an alumnus of NUSL. Until next time, take care!

Today, I had my final law school class ever. My law school years came and went pretty quickly! With classes done, I am just wrapping things up. I set my schedule up so that I would not have any finals. I do, however, have a few final papers to write. I will finish these at the beginning of the upper-level exam week. Then, I will start reviewing for the bar exam. As far as the bar goes, I am getting geared up. I have created a week-by-week schedule for myself and am getting mentally prepared for the last big push! I have canceled my subscription to the New York Times, New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other indulgent time wasters; written (but not yet activated) my “away” email auto-response; created folders for each of the six topics of the Multistate Bar Examination; and cleared my calendar of social commitments. It’s going to be an intense (but rewarding) final push to the end of July!

This past weekend, the New York Times magazine was organized around the theme of environmentalism. One of the articles discussed the tremendous impact that walking can have on one's carbon footprint. Within that article, I came across an intriguing website that I suspect might be useful to future NUSL students who are relocating to Boston. It's called Walk Score and you can access it here. The gist of the site is that you enter an address and it then returns a "walkability" score, which give you a sense of how realistic car-free (and, by extension, carefree) living is. The scale runs from zero to one hundred. My current address, I'm proud to say, gets a ninety-seven! This score translates into "Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car." For students coming into Boston, especially with no or limited access to a car, I would recommend using Walk Score (and also considering the commute time to and from NUSL) to evaluate housing.

I thought I would spend this week's blog piece talking about activities that are available to first-year students. Because most blog readers are interested in my specific experiences as a NUSL student, I will limit my comments to activities that I have been directly involved in. Accordingly, there are lots of student activities and organizations that I am omitting. I should also note that the first year of law school can be pretty demanding, the upshot of which is that there are more interesting activities than there is free time. As such, I only got involved in three student organizations during my first year.

First and foremost, I participated in the Domestic Violence Institute. This experience was one of the greatest highlights of my time at NUSL and I would recommend that all first-year students seriously contemplate getting involved in the program. You can get more information about it here. As a first-year student, I also ran for inaugural president of NUSL's chapter of the American Constitution Society ("ACS"). ACS is national organization committed to progressive principles of law and policy. One of the great things about getting involved in a national organization like ACS is that participation facilitates tremendous network-building and quickly integrates a first-year law student into the broader legal community. For instance, I attended the past two national conferences in Washington, which were great opportunities to meet other law students and attorneys from all over the country. Moreover, ACS provided me with unique opportunities like serving as editor-at-large of ACSBlog. Finally, it gave me opportunities to distinguish myself through its moot court competition in constitutional law.

As a 1L, I also got involved with the work of the Innocence Project. I was first exposed to the Innocence Project through the LSSC program. After attending the national conference and meeting people in the innocence movement, I decided as (as a second year) to volunteer to screen a lengthy criminal case for the review board of the New England Innocence Project. Although reviewing this case and drafting a proposal took lots of work over several months, I found it tremendously rewarding and would recommend it to anybody, although not to first-year students.

When thinking about what activities to devote time to during a busy 1L year, I would recommend that perspective students consider three things. First, it is often a good idea to consider activities that complement your career interests. For instance, as a somebody who is interested in appellate litigation, I got involved in ACS because I knew it hosted a moot court competition and ran a highly-regarded constitutional law blog.

Second, there is tremendous value in activities that connect you to the broader legal community. When I would go on interviews, it was terrific to be able to talk about the activities I was pursuing and have the interviewer understand exactly what I was talking about. Organizations like ACS and the Innocence Project are hardly obscure; they have general recognition throughout the legal community. Other prominent examples that come to mind are the Federalist Society and the ACLU. Most people in the legal community know what these organizations are and what they stand for.

Third, it is always a good idea to try to find activities that are emotionally rewarding. 1L can be a stressful time and it is important to have some sense that you are not just spending all of your time reading casebooks. The Domestic Violence Institute gave me that feeling. Getting into the emergency department and seeing how the legal response to domestic violence directly impacted human lives right here in Boston proved a nice reality check for me.

Well, that is all I have for this week. See you next week.

I am really enjoying this semester, particularly its lighter courseload. This past Tuesday, for instance, I went to go see Saul Williams with two law school friends. Although I am a big fan of Saul Williams, the show was not as good as I had expected. It was still nice to get out and do something unrelated to the law, though. Saul Williams did two spoken word pieces, which were incredible. His music, though, was not to my tastes. On Thursday, my wife and I are having date night. It's also a fact-finding mission: we are going to try a restaurant before we make the dinner reservations to follow my graduation ceremony. Then on Friday, one of my favorite NUSL professors, Lois Kanter, is hosting a dinner party for my wife and me, in honor of the fact that we're expecting our first child. On Saturday night, I am getting together with some law school friends for game night. I am going to dominate over all of them! On Sunday, I am meeting law school friends for a brunch and then working my final shift ever at the Domestic Violence Institute at Boston Medical Center. With all this social activity, my final semester stands in stark contrast to my first year, which was almost entirely devoted to studying. It's a really nice to wrap up my time at NUSL. Next week, I will be back with my thoughts on worthwhile extracurricular activities during law school. Until then, take care!

This Saturday, I will be attending the open house reception. If any of you blog readers are there, you should say hello to me. I would love to shake your hand and candidly answer any questions that you have about NUSL. I am very opinionated about my time at NUSL, which is rapidly drawing to a close. I am already in my fifth week of the spring academic quarter, which means it will end in just a month a half. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that in just six more weeks, I will be done with my final academic quarter and law school. In fact, today I got an email from my future employer asking what practice group I would like to placed in. Graduation is starting to feel real, and I am getting excited!

One of my vivid law school memories was the first week of first year, when Dean Spieler talked to my class about law school comprising roughly one thousand days. Over the past one thousand days, I have really enjoyed being part of the NUSL community. Many of my law school friends have been asking about my post-graduation plans. While I am excited to return home to Connecticut and practice law there, it also saddens me to move away from Boston, where so many of my law school friends will be staying. I’ve really enjoyed being part of the NUSL community. So . . . if you are the reception, make sure you give me an opportunity to meet you and tell you what makes NUSL special!

I started today off by doing some reading for jurisprudence. The material was so dense that I had to read it last night and then wake up early today to re-read it. After reviewing the assigned reading, I had a coffee and read the latest issue of The New Republic, which just arrived and (as an aside) had a very disturbing photo morph cover. Before I knew it, it was time to hit the road. My first class of the day - legal interviewing and counseling - was about to start. I really like this class; I have been conducting interviews ever since I got involved in the domestic violence institute as a 1L and now have a great opportunity to think about what I have learned in the past two and a half years. I am enjoying the retrospective that this class provides and am discovering changes that I can make to make my interviews better.

After legal interviewing and counseling, I had to rush over to NUSL's clinic offices, which are currently located a few minutes from the law school building. Once there, I met the professor who runs the domestic violence clinic for lunch. We had lunch together with her teaching fellow. We spent our time talking about the Dorchester Court project, which I involved in this quarter. I had a great time talking with this professor. She is one of my favorite NUSL personalities and is my most valued mentor. It was great to talk things through with her, but I had to literally run out of the building; jurisprudence was beginning in seven minutes.

Shortly after jurisprudence, I was in civil trial practice. During today's class, we covered direct and cross examinations. I was assigned to conduct a direct examination, which I thought went pretty smoothly. Although I hit a few snags, I think I have come a long way from where I was just a few months ago. One of the things that has really helped me get more comfortable in a courtroom setting is the National Trial Competition. Truth be told, I wish I were only a 2L so that I can do it again! I will have an opportunity for some more experimenting with courtroom advocacy in a "safe" setting this weekend, when I participate in a a trial advocacy workshop.

When I got home, my wife and I had some dinner and finished watching The Staircase, which is a six-hour documentary about North Carolina v. Peterson, which was a high-profile murder case that took place in the fall of 2003. For all you prospective students with a Netflix account, I would highly recommend putting it on your queue. The documentary was riveting and allows its audience a real inside perspective into the criminal defense team. If you're interested in the case, you can check out the CourtTV website here, but be aware that it contains major spoilers. I thought The Staircase was phenomenal and I am going to recommend it to all my friends.

Now I have to do my reading for tomorrow. I had better get going!