One of the great things about NUSL is its real-world emphasis. Through coops, students have four opportunities to work in diverse legal settings and get a sense of different practice areas. In future blog posts, I hope to write more about the coop program. Today, though, I thought I would write about an interesting experience I recently had at Boston City Hall. Going into law school, I never thought that I would take a field trip. This past week, though, I did!

Although coops are great experiential learning opportunities, the real-world emphasis of NUSL is not circumscribed to the coop program. Classes frequently focus on real-world legal issues. One such class that I am taking is entitled "Teaching the Constitution."

This course is divided into two three-month sections. In the first section, students learn about Supreme Court cases that specifically relate to students' rights and how these cases can be taught to local high school students. The second section is devoted entirely to going into local high schools and teaching students about the Constitution and the Supreme Court's body of student rights cases. It was with this class that I went on my field trip.

Our trip was to a hearing at City Hall. It was actually my first time attending such a hearing, and I really enjoyed it. The hearing was prompted through the work of the Hyde Square Task Force, which is spearheading a youth-led effort to get Civics taught in area high schools. It was interesting to hear the testimony of students, who were asking city officials to institute a curriculum requirement that would prepare them for active democratic participation. Moreover, my experience at City Hall got me very excited about getting into high school classrooms!

Now that my finals are all wrapped up, I have a week off before the start of my coop. I'm really excited about my upcoming (and final) coop. One of the things that I enjoy about NUSL's coop system, in addition to the real world exposure I get to the practice of law, is that working nine to five affords me the time to do pleasure reading. Don't get me wrong, the reading for law school classes is usually interesting. That said, there is something quite special about self-directed learning.

So...I thought I would spend this blog piece sharing my coop reading list. I have “loaded it up� and have already gotten through one of the books. I hope that those of you who are taking the LSAT's might pick up one of these books as a study break. Even those of you who are not in need of a study break might enjoy one of them.

The End of America by Naomi Wolf

I just finished this book yesterday. It is about the ways in which open societies close down. Ms. Wolf places particular emphasis on Nazi Germany, but also includes Stalinist Russia and Pinochet's Chile in her analysis. She also charts America's recent pursuit of what she enumerates as the ten tactics of closing down society (invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy, create secret prisons, set up an internal surveillance system, etc.). If you're just interested in a brief overview of the book, you might consider reading this short essay, which encapsulates Ms. Wolf's arguments. I first heard of this book on After Words. In case you have not seen it yet, After Words is C-SPAN's author interview program. The most remarkable aspect of the show is that the producers try to select the author's polar opposite as the interviewer, which usually generates great discussion and debate. Ms. Wolf was interviewed by Viet Dinh, who helped write the USA PATRIOT Act while serving as an Assistant Attorney General. You can stream video of that interview here.

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

I am already about half-way through this Pulitzer Prize-winning book. It's a historical account of Al Qaeda. I'm really enjoying it because it doesn't focus on the widely-discussed events of 9/11. Rather, it places the development of Al Qaeda in its historical context. It's a terrific read and I would recommend it to anybody. In my experience, it is impossible to go wrong with any book that has won the Pulitzer Prize.

My Grandfather's Son by Clarence Thomas

This is Justice Thomas' much-hyped book. Everybody seems to be talking about it. While I have not started the book yet, I did watch Justice Thomas' interview on 60 Minutes as well as his interview on C-SPAN's Q & A. Both made the book seem interesting and quite readable.

Imperial Hubris by [Michael Scheuer]

Imperial Hubris is an anonymously-authored book about American foreign policy and the Bush administration's global war on terror. It caused quite a stir when it came out and I've wanted to read this book since it was published a few years ago. At a recent book fair, I snagged a copy for $2!

I've also got some classics waiting for me, including All the President's Men, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and In Cold Blood.

I hope everybody has a terrific Thanksgiving holiday!

This week marks the start of my very last coop. I am spending my winter at Public Health Advocacy Institute, which is a legal research center focused on public health law. Over the course of my first two days, I have researched the doctrine of implied preemption and explored an industry-driven bill called the National Uniformity for Food Act. The work is intellectually stimulating, if (at times) overwhelming. I am already settling into a routine and am enjoying coop so far. It's a welcome change of pace from the classroom. The office has a relaxed atmosphere and the people are very friendly.

I have also been working on getting ready for the National Trial Competition. The problem came out right before Thanksgiving. My teammate and I are now working on our direct examinations. After that, we will begin thinking about opening and closing arguments. I'm enjoying this preparatory work and finding the experience quite different from the moot court competition that I competed in last year. Doing an appellate competition as well as a trial competition during law school is affording me with a wonderful opportunity to explore different styles of advocacy.

In other news, people are already starting to talk about the bar exam; it seems that it was just yesterday that I was tabbing my Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I am taking the bar exam in two states (Connecticut and New York), which should be fun! Both of these states do not have registration deadlines in the immediate future, though, so reality has not fully set in.

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.

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.

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.

One of the great things about studying law at NUSL is the extent of extracurricular activities that are available. During my three years here, I have yet to find myself with idle time on my hands. There is always action going on somewhere. This past week, my time was just jammed!

The week's highlights included campaigning for a presidential candidate in New Hampshire, providing legal help and advocacy to a young woman in the emergency room of Boston Medical Center (in my role as a team leader at the NUSL Domestic Violence Institute), meeting with my mock trial teammate to review our opening and witness examinations, actually running through these examinations with a group of NUSL students serving as witnesses, watching the New Hampshire debates with a law school buddy, and having Chinese food with two law school friends while discussing where each of us will be in eight months. Of course, I have also been spending my 9-5 time at coop, which is already in its seventh week. Before I know it, I'll be back in a classroom.

I have also been busy with activities entirely unrelated to law. The biggest one has been playing the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute used for breathing meditation. I am having a lot of fun exploring this instrument, despite the fact that it is HARD to play. You can hear a sample of the shakuhachi here. Other than that, I have been going through my reading list and spending time with friends and family (especially my brother, who visited from Sweden).

The highlight of the week, though, was a moment that was NOT action-filled. It was quite still. It came in the form of an email from a friend. She forwarded me an apartment listing for the town in which I will be practicing law in nine months. At that point, I realized how close to complete the “law school� chapter of my life is. I felt at once excited for the future and nostalgic for the past.

This past week has been a whirlwind. I have been quite busy with obligations, both law school related and otherwise. On Thursday, my teammate and I rode down to Connecticut, where we represented NUSL at the National Trial Competition. It was wonderful that the competition was in Connecticut, because it allowed some of my family members to come out and watch me compete. I had a lot of fun at this competition. I'm quite happy that I participated in both a trial competition (this year) and a moot court competition (last year) while in law school. I really benefited from each. Moreover, each netted me a plaque to hang in my office!

On Monday, NUSL held its annual "No Talent" Show. The show is a great event and this year I actually played a small role in one of the skits. It was a lot of fun. The No Talent Show is always such a fun event.

On Tuesday, I had my last day of coop at the Public Health Advocacy Institute. I have enjoyed my time there. To celebrate the end, the attorneys there took me out to a lunch, which was a nice touch. Once I left work, I attended a team leader meeting for the Domestic Violence Institute. When I got home, I set out to spend the next couple of days recovering from the past couple of weeks. In particular, working full-time and getting ready for the National Trial Competition ended up wearing me down.

Today, it's Valentine's Day, and I am taking my wife to see When the Road Bends at the MFA. Tomorrow, my friends on the other rotation are celebrating the end of their final academic quarter. Other than that, though, I will be laying low until classes begin.