Within the next week, I will officially be in my third year of law school. I can hardly believe it.

Transitions are always a bit hard for me - the last week of co-op I sort of lose my focus, start looking to where I am headed next, and generally feel a little "in between." With about a week left here in Puerto Rico and at the Federal Defenders, I am wrapping up some minor projects, saying good-bye to friends, and wondering when I will be back next. I head back to Boston next week and have a little time off before starting my summer co-op on the 2nd of June. Even though being out of school for six months sounds a little crazy to me, in reality it doesn't feel weird at all, since my co-ops are guaranteed to be different from each other, and I have already learned so much at the Defenders. This summer I will be at a mid-sized firm (25 attorneys) that does both civil and criminal litigation. I haven't worked at a firm before, so I'm excited to see what the "culture" is like, how they divvy up work, the case load of the attorneys, etc.

In addition to my upcoming co-op, I'm excited to be back in Boston. Co-op is good for helping you appreciate what you have back home - I'm thrilled to get back to my law school friends, a city I know and love, and an apartment filled with my stuff! The hard part is leaving behind cases that are still in the works, co-workers I'm used to seeing every day, new friends who I don't know when I will see again, and an island I've come to love. What's neat though, is that the closest friend I made on my first co-op in California, is here visiting me in Puerto Rico now. Proof that even brief friendships, made cross-country, can last. Pretty neat.

I can't lie, I'm still a little exhausted from the trial last week. So this week's posting is going to be sort of a cop-out. Here are some of the articles floating around the legal "blogosphere" that I find interesting. I never thought I would read about law in my free time, but once it's your career....it sort of seeps in everywhere. Enjoy and have a great week!

An article about recent allegations of discrimination on the basis of pregnancy amongst big law associates. My dad does employment discrimination law so this is a field that has interested me for a long time: http://abovethelaw.com/2008/05/proving_the_pregnancy_discrimi.php

On that note, here is my dad's blog! He focuses on employment and labor law in the Ninth Circuit, with a particular focus on Alaska, where he has practiced since the '70's: http://www.akemplaw.com/wiki/

An article about having a practitioner as law school dean (as opposed to an "academic," not that they are mututally exclusive): http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2008/05/can-a-practitio.html

And a lawyer proving that creativity can be part of legal practice: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/05/08/creative-lawyers-an-oxymoron-not-in-james-coopers-world/?mod=WSJBlog

In addition to the above referenced WSJ Law Blog, the "legal tabloid" Above the Law, and the roundup Legal Blog Watch, some of my other favorite law blogs are the Appellate Law and Practice Blog, http://appellate.typepad.com/, and the Volokh Conspiracy, http://volokh.com/.

Wednesday around 4pm the jury came back with a decision. They found both defendants guilty of the charges against them. Since federal court is conducted in English here, while the defendants had earphones through which they could hear a translation of the verdict, their family members did not realize what was going on until the U.S. Marshalls came forward with the handcuffs. Then they started to wail. We took everything that was in the pockets of our client (they have to be empty to go into custody) and sat with our client's mother as he was led away and she sobbed. Then we walked her to her car where she turned to us and asked "Is that it?"

That’s it. Her son is now a federal prisoner, in the custody of the government. He will be sentenced in August and faces decades in prison.

It is impossible to convey the intensity of the trial experience. I learned more in those three days about criminal law, about my abilities as a lawyer, and, honestly, about people than I have in all of law school. It was an experience I will literally never forget.

For the first time in my life, I am waiting while the jury deliberates on a case I have been working on for weeks. We have been in trial since Monday and today the jury was sent to determine their verdict. I cannot tell you how nervous I am.

I thought it would be easier to "read" the jury somehow - that I could look at their faces and chart their reaction to the trial, the evidence, the witnesses, our clients. But it's been impossible. I have no idea if they have been persuaded by our arguments or by the government's. No idea - even though I watched them go through the process of jury selection - how they feel about the crime our client is charged with, or how they feel about the trial process. It seems incredible that twelve people ever agree on such complex legal issues and complicated facts. And yet across the country, every day, hundreds of people are involved in this trial process. "A jury of your peers" is a real and living thing....and jury duty, despite all the jokes about it and people dying to get out of it, is a significant task.

And now all I can do is wait.

Not much to report...but in a good way! I'm busy preparing for two trials that start next week (when it rains, it pours) and still loving learning about criminal law. In the last 24 hours I have written my first proposed jury instructions, and my first Rule 29 Motion for Judgment of Acquittal. Wow. These last weeks have had me grappling with sentencing (I don't think the courts have figured it out either yet, honestly), refreshing myself on Crawford and hearsay (luckily I had Evidence with a great professor, Judge Borenstein...not to mention Criminal Law with one of NUSL's favorites and finest, Prof. Givelber! If you come to NUSL, you should definitely try to take classes with both.), and parsing apart the word "knowingly." Oh, and of course I'm still making weekly trips to the beach. So, no complaints from me. In fact, I am so thrilled here, I have decided to apply for some clerkships with judges in Puerto Rico. As always with clerkships, it’s a long shot, but I thought I would give it a try. Wish me luck!

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Daynard Fellows program and since one of the Fellows is visiting right now, I thought it was a good time to fill you in on some details! Named after one of my favorite professors, Dick Daynard, the program was established in 2004 by Prof. Daynard and his wife. The Fellows Program brings two public interest law practitioners to the Northeastern campus each academic year for a three-day visit. The Fellows serve as role models for students, demonstrating how legal skills can be used in the “real world” and how a public interest career path might be formed. In addition to a talk open to the school and the public, the Fellows also meet with individual students and student groups, to answer specific questions.

This week NUSL welcomes our second 2008 Daynard Public Interest Visiting Fellow, NUSL alum Christina DeConcini ('88). Christina has spent 20 years representing, working with, and advocating on behalf of immigrants and refugees. Christina currently works on issues related to climate changes as the Director of Legislative Affairs for the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank. Christina will be a valuable resource to students interested in immigration and refugee law issues; climate change legislation, the various political forces in this debate and prospects for enacting legislation; the notion of "environmental refugees" eventually being recognized for protective status; and generally "forging a career" after law school. I love that the Daynard Fellows are practitioners, not just academics, and give us a chance to get a sense of the law beyond the walls of the school.

Also an important part of the program is that the selection process for the Fellows includes students! Involvement in programs like this is a great way for students to take part in the curriculum and focus of the school, as well as to get a chance to see how the legal skills we are working to hard to learn may, eventually, help others.

I know a lot of you out there are getting ready to make your final decision about where to attend law school - and some of you have probably never been to the NUSL campus, or to Boston generally. Although I had visited before I made the decision to attend, it was still daunting to think about moving to a new city and find housing in a place I knew so little about. So let me tell you a little about how I choose an apartment and a neighborhood.

I didn't want to make a decision without having seen a place, so I came to Boston for one weekend, sure that within that time frame I could set up an apartment. Well, I did get an apartment, but it didn't go as planned. I had lined up places to look at via ol' reliable Craigslist, but none of them turned out to be what I expected. Either the apartment didn’t look as advertised, or the roommates didn’t seem like a good fit. With only hours to go before I left Boston, I ducked into a real estate office and had the broker show me some apartments. I ended up signing a lease that day on a one bedroom apartment (which cost about $1300 a month), and with it a large check that included a broker fee. For me, the convenience was worth the fee, but if you have the time to look around, you should be able to find a place on your own, without a broker (and without that annoying fee).

If I didn’t know Boston, how did I decide where to live? Luckily, I had a few friends in the area and sent them the apartment listings that interested me, asking if the locations were any good. If you don't have friends in the area, another way to find out about neighborhoods is to take part in the online chats the admissions office holds, where you can ask current students about Boston and about housing.

If you are new to Boston, like me, I would recommend choosing one or two neighborhoods that seem like a good fit to you and then going from there. The most popular places for NUSL students to live are the area around Northeastern (sometimes just labeled Northeastern on listings, sometimes called Fenway area, and sometimes labeled Back Bay), and an area a bit further away from the school called Jamaica Plains (J.P.). I chose to live close to Northeastern for the convenience of being able to walk to school, and the closeness to shops and restaurants. The downside of the area is that it’s expensive and filled with students, like me, instead of having a more neighborhood-y feel. J.P., on the other hand, is a bit further from school (although accessible via the 39 bus or the Green and/or Orange line of the T), however there are more housing choices (houses as opposed to just apartments, for instance) and it’s a much quainter and quieter place to live, with families and schools as opposed to all students. I have stayed in my over-priced but perfectly located apartment for the first two years of law school, and love being able to walk home between classes. However, for my final year, now that I know the area, I am looking to switch places, maybe moving into the slower pace of J.P. We will see how that switch goes.

One final note, a lot of people ask me about housing when you are on co-op. I was worried about this as well, and convinced it would prohibit me from leaving Boston on co-op. However, it is so much easier than I expected. Since students are moving around all the time, I haven't had any problem getting great sublettors for when I am away. This coming year, a friend who is on the opposite co-op rotation from me is going to split the lease, so that neither of us has to worry about finding a sublettor! Perfect.

Next post I’ll write about some of my favorite things in Boston, to try to give you a sense of what it’s like living here. Good luck with the housing search!

My dad said today that he thinks reading of novels is an indicator of well-being. I would be inclined to agree.

Now that I'm not in school, I have returned to the world of novels and non-casebook reading generally. So far I've reread David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," one of my all time favorite novels. It was just as great the third time around! After that I dove into "The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao," which I came to after hearing numerous interveiws with the author. In interveiws, Junot Diaz is charming, entertaining, thrillingly dorky, and incredibly astute. The book almost lived up to the author, and TBWLOW (wow) left me wanting to learn more about the Dominican Republic, and the Carribean in general. Now I have moved onto a colder climate, farther away from Puerto Rico but even closer to my heart - Alaska. Michael Chabon's book "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" has gotten a lot of good press, and so far it's living up to it. In addition to all this fiction, I have been slowly sifting through Mary Oliver's new book of poetry. She has been a favorite of mine for years and this newest collection is incredibly powerful.

Other than that, my freedom from law school time has been spent (when not at my co-op obviously) playing Guitar Hero 3, lying on the beach, and devouring all the good food Puerto Rico has to offer. It has been raining here for a few days though so, don't worry, it's not 100 percent perfect...

ps - I also wanted to give a shout out to the Givelber Adjucts program and the Daynard Fellows programs (named after two of my favorite professors!). They are two ways that the school (with student input) brings in awesome practitioners to talk to NUSL students about public interest work and I look forward to telling you more about this year's selections!

Things are busy in Puerto Rico right now. Today I was lucky enough to be in the courtroom to witness the Governor face federal charges. As reported in the New York Times, "Aníbal S. Acevedo Vilá, the governor of Puerto Rico, has been charged with 19 criminal counts related to the financing of three political campaigns from 1999 to 2004, including conspiracy to violate federal campaign laws, wire fraud and illegally using campaign funds for his personal use, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Thursday." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/27cnd-puerto.html?ei=5070&en=2dd5e68b0674f636&ex=1207281600&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1206717531-RZ0ABihneG0tO+lfBpY+ew

The Governor plead not guilty to all charges.

If you are engaged with the criminal defense side of the law at any point in your life - be it through prisoners rights work, as a public defender, or through general advocacy - you will again and again be asked different varieties of the question, “How can you work with those people ?” Some who ask the question will phrase it slightly more delicately, but the underlying emotion remains the same: those are bad people, they are not like us, they are beyond help, and they deserve whatever punishment they get.

These days, when people hear I am an intern at the Federal Public Defenders office, it seems everyone has a story to tell me about a gory crime committed and a criminal who didn’t get the punishment they should have had coming. A story, basically, about how criminal defense attorneys help people who have committed heinous crimes get away with them, scott free.

Doing criminal defense work could hardly be more different than that image. Instead, the attorneys here spend hours trying to help those accused of crimes understand their rights. The intricacies of the system hardly understood by most law students and lawyers: what it means to plea, the benefits and drawbacks of a jury trial, and the charts and graphs of the sentencing guildelines. Public defense attorneys spend the day talking to family members, helping them wade through the complicated criminal justice system. Attorneys here try to make sure that those being sentenced for crimes get a sentence that matches the individual situation of the defendant - hopefully, a sentence that will help them recover the life they are losing while incarcerated.

Yep, the reality of the criminal justice system isn’t much like CSI or Law & Order (which all focus on prosecution, it should be noted). It's not much like that at all. The “bad guys” are never quite so simple, the crimes rarely so elaborate and brilliantly planned. In reality, people get wrapped up in the criminal justice system for so many different reasons, usually not a scheme to make millions, and often non-violent offenses. People make bad decisions, they make mistakes, and they pay dearly for them. Usually this punishment - time in the hundreds of state and federal prisons throughout the country - guarantee that their interactions with the criminal justice system will continue for the rest of their lives. It is incredibly hard to reenter the “outside” after years in prison, with a gaping hole in your resume, in your personal life, and in your ability to interact with society as a whole.

The harsh reality is that those involved in the criminal justice system aren’t “those people” at all - they are us. Last month news sources reported that, for the first time in United States history, one in every one hundred Americans is incarcerated. (See the New York Times article on the report at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1206363871-4ViH+hZw3jRZENnLLPwIcw). If you were to do a true account of those directly affected by the prison system, it would reach far beyond that one in one hundred. It would include the fathers and children holding hands over tables in the visitation area at the federal detention center in Guyanabo, Puerto Rico. It would include the sisters and brothers in upstate New York mortgaging their hard-earned houses to pay for bail, to pay for an attorney, to support the families left behind. It would include sons and daughters across the country who haven't spent a holiday with family in decades.

I can never write eloquently enough to convey the suffering and agony of those imprisoned, and the pain and struggle of the family and friends they have left outside. Pop culture has romanticized prison in so many different ways, has made so many jokes about prison culture, and spread so many rumors about cable tv and life behind bars. Prison is none of these things. It is cold and institutional, it is bad food, and small spaces, and a constant feeling of fear. It is the loss of control, the loss of choice, and the absolute loss of freedom. Yes, many of those incarcerated have committed crimes, but all remain human. It is easy to forget that every day each of us wakes up, heads to school or to work, sees those that we love, makes the choice to do whatever we want with our day, millions of Americans are trapped in prison. If lucky, they may spend an hour or two in the fresh air. They are told when to walk, when to eat, when to bathe, and when to speak on the phone. All priveledges that may be revoked at any time, for almost any reason.

A number of people have been credited with a variation on the quote, but as Dostoevsky wrote,"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." For those who don’t want to acknowledge the complexities of the criminal justice system, those who don't want to look behind the black and white ideas of guilt and innocence, there is little that can be said (and certainly little in this short blog) to change their minds. The idea of "criminal justice" is complicated, it is both personal and political. However, it's also an issue that cannot be ignored. Because it's not just an issue - it's our friends, our family, and our responsibility.