I thought I would spend this week's blog piece discussing something that might of interest to prospective students: the sort of tasks that are regularly assigned to NUSL coop students. There is quite a range of legal work that NUSL coop students perform. Some of the things that I have personally gotten to do include: attending, and participating in, legal strategy meetings; drafting memoranda for clients as well as court documents that actually get filed as-is; “shadowing� attorneys as they appear in court; interviewing clients; and conducting legal research. An exhaustive list would be much longer; the aforementioned items simply comprise the most consistent experiences across three completed coops.

On my current coop, though, I have had an interesting opportunity to try something quite off the beaten path: I am helping to create an internal legal knowledge-management wiki. This is something I have never done before, and I am having a lot of fun with the new medium. Not only is the process a welcome change from traditional legal memorandum writing, it is also affording me with an opportunity to think about the ways in which information inter-connects. Moreover, the wiki is a highly collaborative environment. So far, I'm enjoying the experience.

In other news, Christmas is rapidly approaching and I am leaving for Connecticut at the end of the week. My brother is visiting from Sweden, and my coop generously let me take some time off. It's been two-and-a-half years since I last saw my little brother! In fact, when I last saw him, I was not yet a law student. I'm really looking forward to seeing my brother, celebrating Christmas, and spending some long-overdue time with my family.

Posted by Martin at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought I would spend this week's blog piece giving readers a sense of some of the issues and concerns that confront NUSL students. I thought it might be interesting to do so via four lunch-time conversations that I have had with friends and co-workers over the past three weeks. Here are some of the things that we've been discussing at the lunch table.

The Future
One red-hot topic in my cohort of third-year students is where people are going after graduation. It's really fun for me to see (and talk about) who ends up where. So far, most people who are set with a job are either going to clerk or will be joining a large firm; other employers hire later in the game. Several of my friends have already accepted clerkships and others are moving onto the second round of interviews. It's an exciting time!

Gay Identity
I recently had an interesting discussion at work about what it means to be gay. One of my co-workers contended that until the twentieth century, there were no gay people. His argument was rooted in the notion that “gayness� is ultimately rooted in identity, not preference or behavior. It was a very interesting conversation and (in my opinion) it attests to the degree to which the practice of law has become more (although certainly not entirely) inclusive. I doubt that such a conversation could have taken place a generation ago.

Long Term Capital Management
I recently had a very interesting conversation with a non-law student who I met through a NUSL friend. He is in business school and shared with me his thoughts on Long Term Capital Management. LTCM was a highly leveraged hedge fund that folded in 2000 after losing over a billion dollars a month for a four-month period. It was interesting to get his read on legal issues that I have recently been thinking quite a bit about, such as the compliance costs of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the ongoing sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Creationism at Woods Hole
One of my law school friends recently met me for lunch and we ran through the top news stories together. He told me about a story that had slipped underneath my radar: a civil suit that was recently filed in the Boston federal courthouse where we both cooped. The suit was brought by a Christian post-doctoral researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who refused to apply the principles of evolution in his analyses and writing. When he was terminated, he brought a suit alleging that he was fired for his religious beliefs. You can read more about the case here.

Posted by Martin at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This past weekend, my wife and I watched a documentary called Street Fight. If any of you NUSL applicants have not seen it, I highly recommend it as pre-law school viewing. It's an engrossing film about the 2002 Newark, NJ mayoral election. The election comprises an epic struggle between a young, passionate up-and-comer and an entrenched incumbent and his attendant political machine. It's quite a story and I won't give away the ending.

The reason that I open this week's blog with this documentary is that watching Street Fight made me take stock of the ways in which law school has informed my political consciousness. I thought it might be useful to discuss this process a little bit and hopefully provide readers with a “bigger picture� of what NUSL has meant to me. I have spent quite a bit of time on this blog discussing the minutia of NUSL: coop, final exams, school assignments and so forth.

Moving from the small to the large, I think that the overarching theme of my legal education has been the application of the motto that I learned as a boy scout: “Be Prepared.� My experience at NUSL has forced me to critically examine my beliefs, which has made me more prepared. At this point in my legal education, I feel ready to begin my practice of law because I have come to appreciate what my values are and why they matter to me. I also feel more comfortable in areas that have nothing to do with the practice of law. Sitting at the Thanksgiving table and discussing politics with adverse (and sometimes belligerent) family members is not threatening to me, as it once was, because my political consciousness has become less rooted in unexamined emotions and more rooted in self-examination and erudition. Although my values are largely the same as they were before law school, my cheer in the face of having these values questioned is much more steadfast.

I have also become more prepared by observing (primarily on coop) how talented lawyers approach legal problems. They anticipate the weaknesses in their cases and honestly confront each case's awkward contours. Seeing people I admire engage in this process has liberated me from the emotional vulnerability that comes with real self-criticism. I have learned to take hard looks at myself, which has made me a more self-actualized person.

So there you have it: come to NUSL and find self-actualization! OK, that's a tremendous overstatement. I do believe there is a kernel of truth in it, though. That kernel of truth is this: if you come to NUSL with a willingness to confront and question your views of social justice, you will emerge with a deeper understanding of where you stand and why. I think this is true regardless of whether you conclude that social justice is best achieved through economic egalitarianism or through free market capitalism and equality of opportunity.

Posted by Martin at 1:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)