In my undergraduate years, I was all about the extracurricular – student-faculty committee, peer leading, student government, volunteering. But, no doubt you’ve heard, scarcity of time is something law students have in common. I often feel like I’m racing against the clock, persistently ticking away. This problem is made worse by the fact that there are always so many enticing events going on at the law school. All this meant I had to make some hard decisions about how to allocate my precious “spare time�?. One student group I have committed myself to since my 1L year is APALSA – Asian Pacific American Law Student Association. Last year, APALSA organized some pretty neat events like the potluck fundraiser for Greater Boston Legal Service – Asian Outreach Unit, the dinner event at an Asian American professor’s house, inter-APALSA cruise around Boston harbor where we mingled with APALSA kids from other Boston law schools, community service at Boston Living Center – the list goes on.

APALSA only got better this year. We sent two teams (yours truly included) to the Thomas Tang National Moot Court Competition. Moot court, as you will find out, is the law school equivalent of mock trial. It is an old-fashioned but invaluable part of the law school experience that allows you to hone in on both of your brief writing and oral presentation skills.

A fellow law student and good friend of mine told me about the competition over the summer and we decided to enter the competition together as a team. By the time fall quarter started, we had sent in the application, received the fact pattern for the competition, found a professor to coach us, and dedicated Fridays as “moot court day�?. What followed was a pretty demanding experience of weekly researching, brainstorming, writing, citation checking, and oral advocacy. This was on top of my classes and the fall recruiting. I’d be lying if I told you that there weren’t days when my partner and I wished we had never heard of moot court and could enjoy Boston’s postcard-perfect autumn Fridays like everyone else. But as I often say to myself – no pain no gain. And what a tremendous gain it was.

Participating in the regional competition was one of the most rewarding experiences of my law school career thus far. I had very few expectations going in as everything is brand new to me. After submitting our written brief 2 weeks prior, my partner and I arrived at American University, the host of the Northeast regional competition, bright and early on competition day. We first argued “on-brief�? on behalf of the respondent in the case in the preliminary round. This meant we argued the position we took in our brief. We argued off-brief next, which meant we switched from the last session and argued the exact opposite position on behalf of the petitioner. A panel of 3 “judges�? (litigators and lawyers from the DC bar) asked my partner and I some good questions, and I thought we did well answering them in both sessions. It was a huge relief to me that we survived by the time lunch time came around.

We rendezvoused with the other team from Northeastern and their coach who was traveling with us and exchanged stories from the preliminary round. It was really great to have the moral support of your fellow teammates and professor there. By that time, none of us wanted to set our hopes too high so we all thought we were not going to advance to the semi-finals in the afternoon. When the competition official announced that team 8 was one of the four teams advancing to the semi-final competition, I looked around the room waiting for team 8 to reveal themselves. No one moved. In retrospect, I must have forgotten my team number in all the excitement. So just like that my partner and I defeated 14 other teams from the region to compete in the semi-final round in front of six real judges from the Maryland trial court and court of appeals. To make a long story short, my partner and I are going to Las Vegas in two weeks for the final national competition!

It's exam week for the upper levels at NUSL. Check back next week for stories of my law school exams, moot court competition in NV, and getting ready for coop in SF.

This quarter has finally come to an end. I am exhausted – partially because law school is challenging but also because I may have over-extended myself just a bit. Law students often have opinions one way or the other about whether 1L or 2L year is more difficult. Having completed ½ of the academic portion of my 2L year, my vote is that they are equally difficult, but for different reasons. 1L year is challenging because of the distinctive learning method and environment, coupled with the sheer volume of material one must master. Both of those challenges are still present in your 2L year but you have learned to cope or even thrive on them. By your 2L year, the clean-cut structure and the predetermined schedule are gone. All of the sudden, your time is not taken up with classes and your LSSC project. Instead, you must make good judgment calls on what classes to take, what extracurriculars to participate in, and most significantly, what you should be doing for your career. I think making good decisions is a life, not school, skill. So for those of us who have not had the benefit of a lot of life experience, 2L year involved growing pains. For example, I just came back from the national round of the moot court competition that my partner and I have been participating in this quarter. The national competition unfortunately was during the same week of my exam week at the law school. Inexperienced and always overly ambitious, I decided that I could prepare for moot court and my four exams at the same time. To make a long story short, I ended up working on my take home exam on the plane ride to and from the competition, making myself completely nauseous the whole time. Lesson learned – know your limits and don’t be afraid to ask for help. I should have rescheduled one of my exams after the moot court instead of moving all of them up and taking them early.

Speaking of moot court, what an incredible experience it has been. The national competition was completely different from the regional, both in terms of competitors and judges. You definitely feel like you are competing on a different level there. 16 teams from around the country each competed in 2 preliminary rounds arguing both on brief (your own side) and off brief (your opponent's side). Then 4 finalists competed in the semi-finals and from that 2 finalists argued in the Supreme Court of Nevada in front of real federal and state judges. While we did not bring home any trophies, Team Northeastern was excited to make our first appearance at the nationals. Personally, my partner and I were pleased with our performance, and we’re definitely looking forward to passing on everything we’ve learned to next year’s team for an even better performance. I don’t know how moot court works at other schools, but the faculty at Northeastern has been amazingly supportive of us. Our coach traveled with us all the way to Nevada for the national competition while another professor came to support us at the regional in DC. All in all, more than half dozen professors at the school have mooted us in practice oral arguments. While I’ve never gone to another law school, from what I hear of other law schools, this kind of individualized attention really sets our school apart.

As you can tell, I am having another I-love-NUSL moment. Although I don’t always feel this way and like everyone else get upset about the malfunctioning heating/cooling system in the building, this has definitely been a quarter in which I really got to appreciate the incredible support network this school has built for its students from financial aid to co-op to career services to the faculty. Well, happy turkey day everyone! I’m off packing for my San Francisco co-op!

If you have been doing your readings of the blogs, you probably have figured out that it’s evaluation time here at the law school. First year students get academic evaluations for the courses they take every semester. Second and third years are divided into four quarters each so we get evaluations every quarter.

I will never forget the first time I received my course evaluations at Northeastern Law. About fifty of us first years lined up outside of the moot court room on the ground level and one by one we each received a large white envelope. First, I chuckled at the old fashioned way we Northeastern people do everything. Then I realized that this felt eerily similar to the time I stood in line to receive my flu shot outside of the nurse’s office in fifth grade – the cold sweat, the hushed murmurs, and the gnawing anticipation. Except this time, I knew the stakes were a lot higher. I knew that large white envelope was capable of causing a lot more pain that the physical discomfort of a sore arm.

If you have not lost complete grounding of reality (or have yet to attend law school), by now you would have realized how ridiculous all this was. They were not even “grades�? for crying out loud. But trust me in those short moments, I believed that a large chunk of my life would be decided by what was contained in that large white envelope. After a quick read of the content of the envelope, my first thought was “whew�?. My second thought was “what�?? While I easily discerned that I would not be repeating any courses and my exam did not make any professor want to quit her/his job, I could not really tell how well I did, at least not in comparison to others like an A or B. And that’s kind of the whole point. We are all so used to defining who we are in comparison to others. I think narrative evaluation is an attempt to evaluate our work against our own standard. I have to admit when I first read about the whole “no grades�? thing at Northeastern, I thought that was all “Mickey mouse�?, as my labor law professor would say. What self-respecting institution doesn’t give out A, B, C? But half way through my journey at Northeastern Law, I have to say that I’m a believer. However, lest some of you think things are always happy and peachy here at the law school, they are not. For one thing, we wait forever to receive our individualized narrative evaluations. In one isolated (I hope) incident, I took my exam before thanksgiving and to this day (end of January) have not gotten my evaluation for the course. Students are putting their heads together on how to remedy this unfortunate drawback of narrative evaluation.

I finally made it home. I had naively hoped to write that it felt all warm and fuzzy to be back in my beloved city, see its skyline for the first time from afar, drive home on the river roads with city lights reflected in the water, and remember thousands of bits of memories that make this ridiculously cold yet character-building city my home. But alas, the truth is it was way too frigid to feel anything at all. After more than nine hours of flying, landing, delaying and waiting for luggage, I was transported from sunny and 70s to single digit temperature and wintry mix. It turns out this February happens to be the coldest and snowiest February on record. One thing about true Bostonians – it doesn’t matter how many of these bone-chilling winters we have lived through, we will never, ever, stop complaining about it. Nor will we flee to somewhere warmer (not permanently anyway). Our modus operandi - grumble about it, suffer it, and then brag about it.

So with that, this Bostonian is home and getting ready for a brand new quarter of classes. In a way, this time of transition is my favorite part of the quarter because I get to do everything anew. I have a clean slate, from books and school supplies to study habits to exam strategies. For my second quarter of my second year in law school, I pre-registered online for (1) Secured Transaction, (2) Professional Responsibility (the only required upper-level course), (3) International Business Regulation, and (4) Administrative Law. Once classes start on Monday, I will have time to check out these and other classes before I make my final selections during the add/drop period. It’s great that the school gives me a chance to change my mind, but I have a really good feeling about these courses.

It has been a very busy week so far. First, I had to make sure I want to stay in all the classes I pre-registered for. Typically that decision depends on the material on the syllabus, teaching method of the professor, whether it will be an in-class or take-home final, who else is taking that class etc. I liked all four classes I went to so I didn’t have to “shop” for classes. Once I made that decision, I bought the required books for the classes. I bought almost all of my books online this year so the totally cost come out to a modest $300. Then, I had to catch up on all the things I missed in the past three months. The hallways are filled with excited conversation about people’s coops. It never fails to amaze me when I hear about where coops take Northeastern law students.

Lastly, there is the MPRE on Saturday. It stands for Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination. I think of it as the first step to pass the Bar – the final obstacle course before I can call myself a lawyer. It is a is a sixty question, two-hour and five minute, multiple-choice exam that tests students on their knowledge of the professional and ethical rules that govern our profession. In Massachusetts, a law student cannot sit for the bar until s/he has passed the MPRE. And nearly all states require law students to achieve a passing score on the MPRE before practicing law. As for preparation for the test, many will go to a review lecture offered by Bar/Bri, a company that prepares students for the Bar and take practice exams; others will study on their own; still others will “wing” it. I do not recommend the last method. In my an opinion, there is no reason to waste $65 to take a test that you could have easily passed had you invested a little time to prepare for it. Though many people see the MPRE as a chore, I actually have learned some pretty interesting rules. For example, did you know that a lawyer may be disbarred if s/he said “Good morning. How are you?” to a juror in an elevator at the courthouse? It turns out we have some pretty strict rules preventing advocates from exerting improper influence on jurors. I don’t know about others but I’m glad I learned that one.

It’s already two weeks into the spring quarter so I thought I’d write more substantively about my classes. As you know, I took the MPRE (Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination) last Saturday. It is definitely do-able for those who came prepared and mostly painless compared to most law school exams. NUSL requires upper levels to take the professional responsibility course before graduation. It’s probably preferable to take the MPRE after completing the course, but I decided that I wanted it to get past this barrier and focus on passing the bar exam my third year. So consequently, I took the MPRE with only one week of professional responsibility class under my belt. On the other hand, this is definitely the type of material you can learn on your own.

With respect to the class, it is a lot more stimulating than I thought. I think the mere fact it is required puts off many NUSL students. But rest assured, pondering about ethical dilemmas other lawyers faced is not only thought-provoking (and I must admit occasionally entertaining) but will also help us become more ethical lawyers and stay out trouble in the future. So to give you a taste, consider this scenario that Professor Hall posited to us on the first day of class.

You are a young criminal defense attorney. You just won your first big case and got your client acquitted of murder. You did such a fabulous job representing your client that he took you out to dinner, during which he told to you that you’ve really worked a miracle considering that he actually did commit that murder. What would you do upon learning this, if anything? What if since the acquittal another personal has been charged with that murder? Would your answer be different? What if that person faces the death penalty? You should know that ABA rules generally prohibit attorneys from disclosing information learned from representing a client. Would your answer be different if your client died of heart failure soon after the acquittal and the other person still faces death penalty if convicted of the murder your client committed?

Something amazing happened to me this weekend. I finally mastered s-turns. S-turn is so elementary to snowboarding that it’s something they teach you right after you learn how to stand up on your snowboard. It consists of a heel-side turn and a toe-side turn. So it is pretty embarrassing that I have just fully mastered this technique during my fifth snowboarding season. Like many kids in my generation, I grew up skiing. Unlike snowboarding, I learned the basics of skiing (“pizza” and “French fries”) in all of one day. Then when I was in college, snowboarding became the cooler snow sport so of course I had to try it. So for the past four years, I have persisted in making my way to the slopes at least once a year to snowboard even though it’s painfully clear to everyone that I cannot do a s-turn if my life depended on it. Then this past weekend, instead of using the board that I’ve been using, I borrowed my friend Liz’s board and headed west to the slopes at the Berkshires. Though I will never believe the whole “the equipment can make you a better athlete” business, I must admit that a smaller and more flexible snowboard did help me master the s-turns that have eluded me for so long. In fact, I was on the verge of finally giving up on snowboarding when we were driving to the Berkshires. I even told my boyfriend that this is going to be my last snowboarding season and that come next winter, I’m going to be a skier again. But skiing was the last thing on my mind when I finished my last run on the snowboard. The s-turns that had seemed so impossible one season again were now coming to me completely effortlessly. As we drove home, I could only think about how I can get one more trip in before it gets too warm to snowboard.

You may wonder what snowboarding has to do with law school. It relates to law school in two ways. First, you should know that if you come to law school in Boston, there are lots of good mountains within a 3-hour drive. But more importantly, it just so happens that learning how to snowboard is just like learning civil procedure during your 1L year. The learning curve is very steep. You will feel lost and hopeless for most of the semester. And then toward the end, someone explains a rule to you in a different way or you read your rule book at a slightly different angle or whatever the triggering event may be, the glorious moment of clarity finally dawns on you and everything that the professor talked about all semester long clicks into the right places and the world is a happy place again. As many of you make your final decisions about law school this spring and start your legal education as 1Ls next fall, I hope you’ll remember that persistence pays off in law school and most other things as well.

One of the first things that comes to mind when people talk about NUSL is “co-op”. All NUSL students get to go on four “co-ops” during their three-year legal education and we absolutely adore it. But while “Co-op” officially stands for our “Cooperative Legal Education Program,” I have learned that it means a lot more than just four legal internships. It also means we recognize the value and importance of teamwork. For example, as a 1L last year, I completed a major project on potential legal remedies for reducing children’s exposure from second-hand smoke along with more than a dozen other law students from our law office. As you can imagine, working with 13 people to produce one single written product is both intellectually and administratively challenging. But these were not just any other 13 people – these were 13 often-opinionated law students. Although I’m not certain if I will remember what my project is about ten years down the road, I know I will remember the lessons I learned about how to work and lead effectively in team settings. And that skill can make or break one’s career in law. Just when I thought the emphasis on teamwork was just an 1L year thing, I realized that three out of four classes I am taking this quarter involve varying degrees of teamwork. Some classes like administrative law place such heavy emphasis on teamwork that our final exam will be done in a small group. To be perfectly honest, I was and remain very hesitant about a class in which I will be evaluated on how well my group does. But that’s precisely the point. We all are much more comfortable relying on ourselves than other people in our group. Yet to succeed in law, we must rely on others in our firm or organization. By taking these cooperative classes, we get an invaluable opportunity to develop these “teamwork muscles” that will come handy and give us a head-start once we start working. Meanwhile, I’m sure there will be a lot of growing pains for me this quarter.

I think I have already said this once but I will say it again – as soon as you start law school, family, friends, and random people who acquire the knowledge that you are in law school will begin to think that they can get some competent (and free) legal advice out of you. Their level of trust in your opinion will not vary whether you started law school two weeks or two years ago. Furthermore, their questions will span from criminal law (can I really say no to a police officer who wants to search my car) to landlord-tenant (can I withhold rent if my landlord didn’t fix my bathroom sink) regardless of whether you have had any class in that particular area of law. Once you embark on the legal path, you become their law go-to person. As you will learn in your professional responsibility class (side point – I learned yesterday that I passed the MPRE I told you all about couple weeks ago. I can’t tell you how happy I am that I have passed the first hurdle in becoming a lawyer!), it is not a good idea for lawyers to give legal advice on areas of law they are not familiar with or have not done research on. If you’re not careful and give bad legal advice, you may be disciplined and/or sued for legal malpractice. Some people you can simply say “no” to when they ask you about a legal question that you’re not familiar with. But others, like my parents, there is simply no escaping. This past weekend, I helped my parents review documents related to a refinancing of our home – all 80 some odd pages! Even though they were represented by an attorney, they wanted me, their law go-to person, to review the documents anyway. At first I thought that I would just give the documents a quick glance since what do I know about real estate and financing law. But as I was reading the documents, I realized that a lot of terms and concepts were actually familiar to me because of my secured transaction class. For example, we learned in class that when home buyers purchase a home, they typically sign two barebones documents – a promissory note (which says something like I, homebuyer, promise to pay you, the lender, back all the money I borrowed to buy this home) and a security agreement or a mortgage document (which says something like if I, homebuyer, don’t pay, I understand you, the lender, have the right to take away my home). So actually, it was really neat to see those two documents that we talked so much about in class in real life and in action. After a careful review, I was able to find some minor errors and handed the documents back to my parents. I think they were pleased that my legal education is finally getting put to their use.

I won’t lie – law school has been very stressful this week. My law school schedule has been extended to 9AM – 10PM and I have been surviving on very unhealthy subs and burritos from various restaurants on Huntington Avenue. The countdown clock in my head keeps ticking while I desperately try to figure out how to best allocate my time. I try very carefully to avoid most social activities because no normal person wants to be around law students during final exam time. My family and boyfriend, unfortunately, do not get that protection. For the record, I have two in-class finals and two take-home exams, which most upper years will tell you is a pretty decent set up compared to all four in-class closed book exams during the first year. But as I am finding out, exam period will always be stressful regardless of format and volume. The more optimistic side of me actually, just for a little bit, enjoys all this pressure because I know it will be such a great relief and accomplishment come May 16th. I think a lot of the horror stories people tell about law school probably arise from this time of the year. So I am here to tell you that yes, law school will get stressful but keep in mind that it is limited to a specific time frame and as they say, if it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger.

Sorry I have been MIA. As always, things got really busy during exam week, and I have not gotten a chance to update you since my stress-filled entry from two weeks ago. Well, I have officially survived the second year of law school. I thought it would be fun to share with you one of my favorite rituals in law school - the end-of-the-quarter purge. I finished my last exam on Friday exactly at 1:02 PM. I pass in my exam answer and head straight to the lockers. I take everything out of my locker and make three piles: 1) things that I never need / want to see again and have little resale value (this pile goes to the huge blue recycle bin), 2) things that retain sufficient resale value to pay for my victory lunch with fellow law students (this pile gets sold to the bookstore / half.com), 3) things that I want to have by my bed side when I go to sleep (I’m a code lover so that means the Uniform Commercial Code and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure). As I take my trusty combination lock out and double check for anything left behind, I exhale a huge sigh of relief. It is done. All that stress, all those late nights, and all those pages of outline all lead to this singular moment when I get to clean out my locker. It is one of the best feelings in the world. I go to the bookstore and sell one of my casebooks for almost seventy dollars. Satisfied with my lunch money, I head to Uno’s where my fellow law students have been congregating for a while and I say to myself let the celebration / commiseration begin.

Even though one third of the law school journey still remains ahead, law school has already been one of the most amazing and transformative experience of my life. I came to law school full of anxiety and trepidation. Am I smart enough? Will I succeed? Will I still have a life? And who has not met those members of the bar who absolutely loathe law school and being a lawyer? I came to law school despite of all this because I wanted more than a 9-5 job. I wanted a career that is intellectually challenging, personally meaningful, and financially stable. I knew the dangers of proceeding ahead with law school (though they were greatly exaggerated in my mind) but I also knew the danger of remaining still in life.

When I was looking for a job after college, one of the interviews I went on was for a non-profit marketing position which sounded like a perfect combination of learning real life skills while helping to advance social justice. When I got to their loading-dock type of office, I was told that this interview involved an on-the-job component. The next thing I knew, I was being driven to Harvard Square to solicit donations from people on the street on behalf of a non-profit organization I had never heard of in 15 degree sleeting weather. I remember feeling grim and dejected and an urgency to find a real job. Less than three years later, not only am I learning law from incredibly bright and intellectually curious law students and professors, I have assisted a federal judge in drafting judicial opinions, helped non-profit attorneys in litigating the biggest sexual discrimination lawsuit in history, and gained a world of business law knowledge as a summer associate at one of the best law firms in town. This winter, the coop system will take me even further to the Beijing office of the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative. I will be working with the staff there to promote good governance and increase public interest advocacy in China. And this is just what my law school education has afforded me so far. I could not have imagined better things for myself.

This is my last entry on this blog. I have accepted a post as a teaching assistant to the incoming 1Ls this year and thus will not have adequate time for blogging. It has been a pleasure to share with you my lessons and adventures, victories and defeats. Thank you for reading it. I hope it has provided some insights into the life of a law student at Northeastern University School of Law.