Another Sunday at school

So I spent every minute since the brief playing catch-up. When faced with a looming deadline (a 75% of your grade deadline), it's easy to push everything else aside to focus on finishing in time. Sadly, this means that whenever the deadline is met, there are four other remaining classes with oodles of readings waiting for you! Hence the lack of blog entries.

Here I sit in the basement of my school (because the library doesn't open until 9am on Sundays - it's sad, actually. The motion-sensor lights just turned off so I'm in the semi-dark), mentally preparing for round 2 of oral arguments. My partner and I (in a moment of sheer insanity) volunteered to be "heros," which means arguing in a round just for "fun" because there are uneven numbers of teams and a pair of Appellees needed opponents. However, my partner was emailed to say that her hero round was canceled, so it's just me... she is a little bitter I'm "cheating" on her, but I told her it wouldn't count if I didn't enjoy it...

First "fun" round is at 10:30-12:00, then the "graded" round with my partner is from 2:00-3:30. I put "graded" in quotes because it's really only a pass/fail. The grade-grade is from moot court, to determine the finalists for best oralist. 

Anyway, the point of this entry is that it's very early on Sunday, I am at school sitting in the dark, and I'm looking forward to another week of playing catch-up. Also I'm questioning my sanity just a little bit... so basically, it's a normal law school weekend!

K

P.S. C leaves for DC on Monday, just for a week this time, but that also makes things a little more hectic. 

Relief!

THE BRIEF IS DONE!

Ahhhhhh! Kinda feel like screaming... the major rite of passage for 1L's, the appellate brief, is done! My partner and I spent ALL weekend in the library, ultimately churning out 28 pages of brief arguing in favor of our imaginary injured client. So many hours spent crafting each argument, questioning each word, checking and double-checking each citation... it's a little hard to believe it's all over now. We were assigned this problem weeks and weeks ago, and have been working on and off since then... soooo relieved that this writing process is over!

In addition, my partner and I presented our oral arguments on Sunday afternoon. We went in, smartly dressed, and laid our arguments out for the judges. Fortunately we had a very kind Chief Justice who, though he gave us some tough questions, was very supportive and constructive in our post-argument debriefing. As much as I was dreading the oral component of the project, I actually ended up enjoying the arguing (go figure... I love to argue). We have our second round of arguments this coming Sunday, where we switch to the opposite side (now arguing for the manufacturers of the vaccine that injured previously mentioned client). I'm actually looking forward to those arguments...

Despite my enjoyment of the oral advocacy, I still prefer the writing aspect of law school. My favorite thing (by far) is the legal writing. I'm still a 1L, but I think that my legal writing style has developed pretty well - I can tell that my phrasing is more concise and directed and my arguments are starting to flow from one to the next in ways that they never did when I wrote papers in college... hopefully this bodes well for 1) the grade in legal writing and 2) my developing legal career.

This entire appellate process is also a competition to make the Moot Court team. Each team consists of two oralists and one writer, and anyone who makes top-16 oralists or top-16 writers gets to interview for Moot Court (as does anyone who earns an A for their brief). I am still thinking about it, but I think I would seriously considering joining Moot Court (at least as a writer) if I get to the interview process. My friends are trying to convince me to try as an oralist, but we'll see. My partner and I have volunteered for the non-mandatory third round of arguments, and if we do well we'll potentially advance to the semi-finals and final rounds, which narrow down the pool of Moot Court candidates. It's tough to prepare for this on top of all the reading that has piled up from the week spent working on the written brief... but my partner and I are going for it. We figure it'll be a great experience and hopefully we'll get some good advice about our advocacy style. Can't hurt, right?

More on this later...

K (so busy...)

Stress!

Major deadline in T-3...

On Monday our appellate briefs are due (28 pages, 75% of our grade, oh holy cow). Starting today as soon as lunch is over, the next three days are dedicated exclusively to this goal. My paper partner happens to be one of my closest law school friend (and her fiance is out of town), so I'll be spending Saturday day - Saturday night - Sunday day with her working on our brief. Hopefully it's worth it...

Additionally, we have to present our issues in oral arguments this Sunday. I get to/have to wear my brand-new grown-up suit, will stand before the judges and endure 10 minutes of grilling about our case/my issue. This component of the project is pass/fail (thank goodness), but it is a requirement for qualification to join Moot Court, which is something I am considering for next year. Thus, I'm preparing for the oral arguments as well because I want to sound like I know what I'm doing when I get up there. Also, I think it will be good practice for later on, depending on what career path I choose (still working on that...).

Anyway, the point of this is:

1. Weekend is devoted to the project.

2. Hopefully I churn out a good paper (legal writing is kind of my thing, so I want to keep it that way).

3. Not looking forward to oral arguments, but do want to get that part over with.

4. Paper due on Monday between 2 and 6.

5. Monday afternoon = happy party time!

This situation is exacerbated by the fact that the husband is sick. He went on a just-for-fun trip to Tahoe over the weekend, but then ended up taking Monday and Tuesday off of work because he did not feel well. Thus, I've been "nursing" him (which only amounts to bringing him glasses of water and medicine, because I haven't had time for anything else! Poor kid). 

Basically, I'll be really relieved once all this is over...

OH also... I just got tapped to interview for an externship (job for school credit, not pay) for the summer... interview is on Tuesday. Life doesn't really exist past Monday, though, so I'm going to worry about that later.

K

Inside-out kind of day

Yesterday I realized I had my underwear on inside-out. It threw off the entirety of my day...

1: When I went into the gym it was cloudy but clear. When I left the gym, it was raining SO HARD (which is very strange for SoCal) and my shoes and socks were soaked from running to my car and then to class...

2: ... which means that I spent Torts barefoot with my socks drying on the arm of my chair.

3: My normal lunch group was meeting with their Copyright prof so I scarfed down my leftovers sitting with much less than my normal crowd.

4: In Legal Writing I volunteered to practice oral arguments (in lieu of an extremely shy girl whose partner volunteered them to go - she REALLY didn't want to stand in front of the class without notes or preparation... so I offered to instead??). It went alright, considering I had prepared nothing and forgot all the arguments in my memo. Note to self: make really detailed notes for my oral arguments...).

5: C came back from class at 10+pm (and he is leaving for Tahoe tomorrow and will be gone for four days, which is a bummer) BUT he brought me home a donut, so it's OK.

This morning I checked - my underwear is right-side-in.

: D

K

Cold Call #2

ALSO I forgot to say this earlier...

In Torts on Friday I was cold-called for the first time this semester, second time total. It seems that this semester the same group of five or six people keep getting cold-called in every class (maybe the professors are in cahoots and agreed beforehand to torment the same group of poor suckers?). I haven't been part of this group and thus haven't been called on at all up until Friday.

Our Torts prof has our names printed on index cards and my card was cut. I had a pretty good brief and was able to answer almost all the questions he posed. Unlike my last cold call, this time my heart didn't pound and my face didn't flush. I thought I handled it pretty well! The cases we've been reading are pretty straightforward, though, so I had it easy. We're studying the causation element of negligence torts. The particular case I stated was about a woman who suffered a collapsed lung while evacuated from a hotel during a fire alarm that was accidentally tripped by the cleaning crew who forgot to run the exhaust hood when cleaning out the hotel ovens. Fun stuff.

Cold calls aside, I think I'm doing a better job balancing the work load this semester, though I feel like we have WAY more going on. Appellate briefs and oral arguments are in two weeks (and we aren't sufficiently prepared for either). I also haven't spent as much time outlining as I did last semester, but I'm hoping I have time to do that when the Legal Writing work is done in March.

Lots to do...

K