I thought I would write this blog piece about student life at NUSL. As an older and married student, one of my concerns was that I might not fit in with the rest of the student body. I have happily found that not to be the case. In fact, I have made lots of terrific friends here and really feel that I fit in. The student body and faculty have both been warm and welcoming.

Although law school can be overwhelming at times (particularly during the first year), I have nonetheless found that it affords me with plenty of social time. This past weekend, for instance, I went to see the Boston Symphony Orchestra. One of my supervising attorneys invited my wife and I to accompany her and her boyfriend to see the BSO perform Bruckner and Shostakovich. Because attendance has plummeted during the Red Sox world series games, Symphony Hall has been giving free tickets away. It was a lot of fun!

Spending time with law school friends has been an important part of my legal education. This past month, I have had lots of terrific outings with other law students: dinner with my torts professor's first year advisees, Chinatown dinner with my Domestic Violence Institute team, the Actors' Gang production of 1984 at Northeastern, a talk by Garrison Keillor, brunch in Cambridge and a few other things.

It might not seem obvious to a law school applicant that he or she should examine his or her relation to the rest of the student body, but it's a consideration that I would definitely advise you to take into account. Establishing meaningful relationships with other students will benefit you in so many ways. You will have people with which to form study groups, discuss legal issues and ultimately get through some of law school's tougher moments. All in all, it will benefit you academically, socially and professionally. Accordingly, I would urge prospective students to any law school to carefully observe the student body and note how students interact with one another. If you get the sense that you will not thrive in that setting, I think that feeling should inform your calculus of where to enroll.

In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should also note that there are times (even at NUSL) when there seems to be no time at all for one's friends and family. Thankfully, these times are circumscribed to exam week and the preceding ten or so days. I also think this is a phenomenon that is common to almost every law school.

That's it for now. Feel free to email if you have any questions! I will be back next week to write about NUSL's Domestic Violence Institute. Have a terrific week!

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.

Over the holiday break, I finished watching Ken Burns' The War. For those of you who have not seen The War, I highly recommend renting it. The chronicles that it is comprised of are absolutely amazing. One of the elements that most struck me was the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The 442nd was a race-segregated WWII unit comprised mostly of Japanese Americans.

The raw injustice attitude of asking young Japanese American men to serve (and die) in our armed forces while their family members were held in internment camps really moved me. The distinction with which these young men served is remarkable; the 442nd is the most decorated military unit in the history of the United States.

As I watched The War, the story of Daniel Inouye, a soldier in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who was awarded the Medal of Honor, particularly impressed me. When he returned to the United States, Mr. Inouye went to law school and has served in the United States Congress for almost fifty years. The story of Mr. Inouye moved me so much that I sat down and wrote him a quick letter. In my letter, I told Mr. Inouye how proud I am to be entering a profession that includes such a tremendous person.

Throughout American history, some of the greatest champions of justice have been lawyers. I am very much looking forward to graduating in this newly-minted year and becoming a lawyer. That's my thought for the New Year.

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.

I thought I would spend this week's blog piece writing about adjuncts. Adjuncts are law school instructors who are not members of the faculty. Some of my best courses have been with adjuncts. During my time at NUSL, I've had four adjuncts: a judge on the Massachusetts Appeals Court, who taught me appellate advocacy; a veteran estate planning and settlement lawyer, who taught me trusts & estates; a former head of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers, who taught me professional responsibility; and, most recently, a federal bankruptcy judge taught me bankruptcy. The highlight of each of these courses has been exploring an area of the law under the guidance of a high-level practitioner with tons of real-world experience. After these courses, I often find myself much more interested in news related to that legal area. For instance, after taking bankruptcy, I have been quite interested in the bankruptcy of Alpha Omega.

For those of you not in the greater Boston area, Alpha Omega is a jewelry store that specializes in high-end timepieces. Quite apart from the legal issues playing themselves out in court, the story of its collapse is an inherently riveting human drama. First, the store mysteriously shut down and its owners could not be located. Then, six million dollars worth of inventory went missing. The biggest plot twist for me, though, has been learning who the presiding judge is: the adjunct who recently taught me bankruptcy!

I'm in the midst of putting the final touches on my opening statements for the National Trial Competition. Because I am leaving for Connecticut tomorrow morning, and still have some things to wrap up before going to bed, I will keep this blog piece brief. I thought I would write a little bit about my last quarter of NUSL. I just finished selecting my courses, and my dream schedule includes:

*Jurisprudence, which is being taught by an adjunct who is my current supervisor on coop.
*Teaching the Constitution, which will find me teaching constitutional law to area high school students.
*Law and Literature, assuming I get into this limited enrollment class.
*One of the trial practice courses (criminal trial practice, civil trial practice, civil motion practice).
*TA'ing for NUSL's domestic violence clinic.

I think this schedule will be terrific. Its beauty is that it is comprised entirely of courses that lack an in-class final. This way, I will be able to go into my bar review course (which begins the very day after the quarter ends) with a fresh mind and minimal post-finals burn-out.

I'm excited about my last quarter. It seems like it was only yesterday that I was trying to understand the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; now, I am on the cusp of law school graduation.

Before I sign off, I wanted to share something with you potential students. I recently watched a fascinating (albeit depressing) movie that I think you will really enjoy. It's called Maxed Out, and if you have not yet seen it, I recommend it highly. You can see the trailer here.

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.

While I have some time off between coop and my final academic quarter, I have started preparing my bar application files. The amount of paperwork is prodigious; I am glad that I have started on it now. Certified driving records, every address I have maintained for thirty days or more over the past ten years, every employer I have ever had, transcripts from college, naturalization records, personal references. . . it's enough to make my head spin.

I am about done with most of the heavy lifting and hope to have my application completely ready to go by the beginning of April. I have also started thinking about how I will prepare for the bar exam. I have signed up for two commercial bar review courses. In addition, NUSL offers its own bar review course over the course the final quarter. It meets on Friday, when there are no scheduled upper-level courses. Because I will be in court every Friday for the domestic violence clinic, though, I will be unable to make use of this resource. Accordingly, I recently went onto eBay and picked up a 29-set compact disc review of the bar exam subject matters. Fun, fun, fun!

My wife and I have also begun planning for our move to a new city and are looking at apartments this weekend. Big changes are around the corner!

With the down time before the start of classes quickly dwindling down, I am heading into my last weekend of complete freedom from school work. I am going to spend it with law school friends. From Thursday through Sunday, we'll be in a rented house on Cape Cod. Over the course of my time here at NUSL, I've really met some terrific friends. I'm really looking forward to having fun with several of them this weekend. For our dinners together, we're having a cooking competition that we're calling the Iron Anteater contest. My wife and I just finished shopping for some of our secret ingredients! We're very excited and bullish on our odds of winning!

Because I still have to finish packing and have to go see the dentist (ouch!) before heading out, I will end this blog piece here. I'll be back next week with a report on how the first few days of my last quarter went. Till then, take care!

This week has been terrific. I am back in classes, which feels great. I am very happy with my selection of courses. For my last quarter, I have foresworn doctrinal courses in favor of ones that are more practical and/or more fun. I am taking legal interviewing and counseling, jurisprudence, teaching the constitution, advanced legal research, and civil trial practice. I think this quarter is going to be my best one ever. On a bittersweet note, it will be my last quarter of law school ever! It's hard to believe that my time at NUSL has flown by so quickly. In a few short months, I will be a law school graduate and student of the bar exam.

Until then, my focus will be on savoring these remaining weeks of living in Boston. Over break, I prioritized this top ten list of things I want to do before moving from Boston:

1. Take a drive to the Norman Rockwell Museum in the Berkshires.
2. At the Norman Rockwell Museum, buy a print for my soon-to-be office.
3. Have one last pizza at Pizzeria Regina.
4. Go for Thai food at Brown Sugar with my wife.
5. Visit the spring flowers in the Back Bay Fens.
6. Walk down to the North End on a lazy Sunday.
7. Give my dad one last tour of Boston.
8. Spend an afternoon reading in the Copley Library courtyard.
9. Tour the MFA.
10. Go to a Celtics game.

Boston is a terrific city and it makes me a bit sad to think that I will be leaving it soon. My light class schedule, though, will hopefully afford me a little extra time to bask in its culture.

The spring quarter is already in its second week of classes and I am quite busy. Things have been moving along quickly; classes are already in full swing. I am enjoying being in school for my last academic quarter. It's nice to be able to see friends right before graduating from NUSL and leaving Boston. Speaking of leaving Boston, my wife and I are going apartment-hunting this weekend. It's amazing how much further money goes in smaller cities. For instance, for a little more than what we're paying now for a modest one bedroom, we can get a spacious three bedroom apartment with washer/dryer, dishwasher, parking garage, etc. Of course, there are a lot of things that I will miss about Boston. Probably at the top of the list is its vibrant sense of community. As such, I am trying to soak it all in before we leave.

This past weekend, for instance, my wife and I got together with some of our non-law school friends, who hosted a party at their house in Dorchester. It was a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed talking with Scott, my wife's best friend's husband. He recently became a dad, and we discussed some of the issues that concern recent parents. In particular, we spent a bit of time talking about schools and racial diversity. I told him about the Seattle schools case, a recent Supreme Court decision, which held that school districts cannot use race in assigning students to particular schools. Scott had not heard of this case, so I enjoyed sharing it with him and telling him about how the Supreme Court has recently approached racial diversity in K-12 classrooms.

As my wife and I drove home from that party, I was thinking about how pervasive the law is in American life. No matter what topic is discussed at a dinner party, the law is usually somehow implicated. It's interesting to be entering a profession with such expansive reach. I cannot wait to be a *real* lawyer!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.