RawLaw

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:30:27 PDT

With this, my 200th post, I announce a major overhaul of my blog. Mostly, it means I won't be posting regularly. You may have already figured that out. Truth be told, this blog has never acquired the readership I hoped it would, but I still enjoyed posting. I'm still going to enjoy posting, but I'm not going to force myself to do it.

I will continue to update you on major events in my life and majorly funny things.

For example--and this is SUCH a good example of the stuff I like to see on this blog--Anna Nicole Smith's T&E case over who gets her late husband's fortune is going to the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court is going to do a full-out evaluation of Ms. Smith's fortunes.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:36:43 PDT

I had my second 3L callback interview today. The process has a dramatically different feel as a 3L. I don't know what firms want. As a 2L, if you get a callback you have to make pleasant conversation and listen attentively while the associates and partners sell you the firm. That gets you an offer. As a 3L, I can't tell if I should be selling them or if they are selling me. It's a crapshoot, and I'm rolling 12s. First you have to convince them that you aren't a river-jumping, whizzing-on-a-partner maniac who managed to lose an offer at your 2L firm. Then you have to prove that you aren't a grass-is-greener type who is going to change firms and promptly spread rumors about the hours, the cheapness, and screamers. So you have to explain why the old firm was good. But then they start to doubt your commitment to change firms and think you are re-interviewing for the pleasurable ego stroke. So then you have to trash your old firm in an optimistic way.

Unsurprising that I haven't gotten any offers yet.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 21:31:25 PDT

Cut me some blorking slack. I just started school and I had a callback interview today, so I don't have a lot of free time to blog around with. [So I'm reinterviewing. More on that later.] You'd think that given that I had a big callback, 2 classes for which I did no homework or book purchasing, and about 80 billion chores to do today, I'd wake up worried about one of those items. But No. Instead, I woke up at the ungodly hour of 7:30 because I was replaying in my mind every poker game I lost this summer. Which, by the way, is an obscene amount. I've concluded that I have the worst luck in the world. Never mind the nagging suspicion that I'm actually a lousy card player. Urgh.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 14:40:45 PDT

**Please donate money or time to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. I know your gas prices just spiked, but they need your cash more than you need to top off the tank.**

Let's recap the top three stories of summer associates doing really, really stupid shit:

3. One summer misunderstood her importance in the world and blew off a fun summer event one day to do work. That summer was me. I am ashamed. Offer status: positive, but I think I pushed the boundaries of propriety by the end of the semester. Yesssssss.

3. Some guy went boozing a little too hard one night, woke up late, and drove a firm-rented car to his department's event. He crashed the car into a wall. Then he tried to get the firm to pay for a cab ride to his friend's house that night. Offer status: unknown.

1. Some girl got blotto at a charity event her firm gave her tickets to. She jumped into the Hudson River without the burden of clothing. Let's remember that the Hudson River is full of disgustingly dirty things: severed body parts, sewage, exhaust fluid, and the hair Donald Trump sheds. Offer status: negatory.

Yall have a great loooong weekend. Happy drinking and hot-dogging.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:47:17 PDT

I'm a woman of my word. That's right. I'm back.

"school" (lowercase to show its insignificance) hasn't really gotten started. For me at least. I'd like to attribute this to 3L syndrome, but really I'm just so fucking lazy.

You see, this summer, working at the Firm, I recognized this "laziness" quality in myself. I always thought I was a hard worker. But firm lawyers work, like, a lot. More than 9 to 7, and I thought I could put them to shame with my 9 to 7 work ethic. Well, 9:30. 10 if I'm out doing sake bombs the night before.

My first day of work I got an assignment at 5:30. The partner said it would take a couple of hours. "Couple" means "2", right? Wrong. I learned Lesson #1 of the Summer of the Firm: Double the amount of time a partner says the assignment will take. Give or take a few more hours, and then don't plan to sleep that night. Now you're ready.

At midnight that first nubile day, I felt a gritty feeling in my rapidly expanding stomach. (Summer lunches are like butter. Yes, butter. The restaurants placed a stick of butter on my plate and I ate the entire thing with a tiny fork and knife. Then I ate the second stick with the big fork and the third stick with the pastry spoon. I couldn't be rude to the associates taking me out to dinner, folks.) So that gritty feeling got bigger as the night wore on. A few more nights like that and that infant irritation blossomed into an ugly bitterness consuming my soul. And that bitterness told me clearly that (a)I don't like working, and (b)I should vomit the butter sticks up in the bathroom pronto.

I didn't vomit the butter sticks up. Even if I didn't harden my work ethic, I'd be damned if I left the Firm Summer with a weak stomach.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:21:38 PDT

Wow. I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted. I guess I should officially admit that I am on hiatus. Apologies to all those who kept checking back for a new post. That was pretty shitty. I hate it when blogs do that.

Anyway, I am officially on hiatus until, let's say, September the First. I will return with lots of incisive and witty law school and law firm gossip.

And just so you all know, cuz I know you thought about it--that summer associate who got boozified and jumped in the Hudson River, the one the Coast Guard had to fish out--that wasn't me.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 04:06:55 PDT

Um, I'm freaking out a little. No lie. My first Firm assignment involves a kind of law I know nothing about. I just Googled the kind of law and now I memorized the definition, but I don't understand what it means. I need to Control+F my old class notes now for any information whatsoever on this kind of law. Why is law school so useless?

On another front, it's time for me to consider what classes to register for next year. I'm fighting myself on this one. Do I take the useful classes or the easy ones? I'll be a 3L, but I've never been one to shirk my academic duties before. But I think I haven't shirked my academic duties because I've always set my standards so low. I don't want to set myself up for failure in what better be my last year of academic life! I'm leaning toward the easy classes.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Tue, 31 May 2005 04:52:59 PDT

Maybe you thought I partially abandoned you, like Legal Underground and Jason Mulgrew. Or I abandoned you in whole, like LawLush. But mostly I spent the last week gallivanting about town in a drunken, BBQed stupor making me unfit to inscribe anything with remotely comprehensible syntax.

That was the good news. That bad news is that I start working for the Firm today. And of course the most important consequence of working is its effect on my blog and you, dear readers. We will see how much posting I can get done on what topics. While I am sure that law firm life will present myriad topics worth disclosing, I need to make better friends with my old enemy, Prudence.

Now here are the top three points of comparison between firms, as I discern them from speaking with summer associate friends who have started already: (1)direct deposit of paycheck?; (2)average price of lunches bought for you; (3)nights you remain in the office past 6:30 in the first week.

Wish me luck.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Mon, 23 May 2005 05:02:05 PDT

I'm meeting some people from my summer firm for a preview breakfast today. And the big question is: pantyhose or not? On one hand, I want to make a good impression. On the other, pantyhose are tools of oppression and torture. I've been weighing this decision for three days now. I think I'm going to kowtow to The Man. Unless I get these buggers on and they are too tight. Then I'll shred them with scissors and dangle them in front of a male partner's face and say NO! YOU CANNOT HOLD ME DOWN! Keep your rules off my body!

Hmph.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Wed, 18 May 2005 18:09:14 PDT

Just got a phone call from the Borker. Turns out my firm misplaced their trust in this d-bag. The apartment I was supposed to live in this summer fell through. So, I'm starting work in two weeks and I have nowhere to live. Shit shit shit. I am supposed to be at the beach right now, alchemizing the hidden patches of white skin on my body. Instaed, I'm back on Craig's List. Ugh.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Wed, 18 May 2005 09:27:56 PDT

I'm going to see a movie today! And I've watched 4 movies over the last 4 days in front of a ginormous television. I promise I'm not going to a Star Wars preview or anything. Law students and Star Wars fans don't mix well.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Tue, 17 May 2005 14:42:52 PDT

Um, yeah, sorry I've been absent. I have been sleeping 10 hours a night plus 2 2-hour naps each day. Doesn't leave a lot of blogging time. It does leave time for visiting my favorite restaurants, which I've neglected in the last month. Also time for the gym and I detox my poor, broken body. I will be done with this funk soon, and then I'll have to confront the question of how to deal with my firm summer on this blog.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:06:50 PDT

A Collection of Thoughts Toward the End of Exam Season

I can almost taste the end. It tastes like Michigan blueberries.

There are two things that make me really fucking happy in this world: puppies and fiction books.

Now that I know I'll be spending half my summer abroad, how much fudging of the truth will I and should I do on this blog while I'm there?

I came to law school hoping to do something glamorous and mark-making. The book I have decided are useful enough to stay on my shelves are M&A, Contracts, and Corporations. I might be selling out. I think it's more that I find solace in the practical after the giant question marks of Con Law and Civil Procedure.

Whole-wheat bread beats the smack out of white bread.

If my contacts dry out from the computer screen, it's better to re-wet them than to change them out for glasses. Glasses are a totally different way of looking at a computer and it weirds me out at 3:00 in the morning.

Sleep deprivation is bad for the mind. But the emotional depression that comes from deprivation, then oversleeping, then the specter of deprivation on the horizon is wilting my willpower to live.

Just a few days until vacation.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Tue, 10 May 2005 12:15:05 PDT

It's very hazy now, but about three weeks ago I remember filling out a birthday surprise card at a local bar. They were going to send me a free drink coupon on my birthday, and I got entered in some contest to win a free meal. At a bar like this, "meal" consists of some unindentified white meat fried up good and greasy, and a cheeseburger. That was fine with me, though, so I entered. Today I'm desperately cramming for my next exam--not quite the level of concentration zen I had achieved the night of the light bulb conflagration, but close--and I get a phone call from the bar. I was irritated until the bar person informed me that I had won the grand prize of the lottery and would get top-shelf open bar for me and ten friends for five hours. SCORE. I subsequently considered this bartender my best friend and had a nice, long chat pouring out my troubles and how great this would be. Also, Bartender sounded cute.

"Can I have your email?" Bartender said. "I want to send you some details and stuff." I knew this means he totally wanted my email to chat me up and ask me out on a date not in front of his boss.

An hour later, giddy with an aura of luck destined to spill over into my next exam, I checked my email. Bartender's oh-so-trivial details are there: the top-shelf open bar is solely for me, the ten friends must buy their own drinks, and, oh yeah, the ten friends had to come equipped with vaginas. LAME. I could call Bartender and explain to him the consequences of preying on potentially alcoholic law students during exam time. And by explain I mean shriek and alternately whimper. Instead I politely told him to take me off his spam and solicitation lists. I couldn't stand the thought of never getting to eat one of their "chicken" fingers ever again.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Fri, 06 May 2005 14:21:39 PDT

It was 5:00 a.m., this morning. I was willing my eyes to focus on the last exam question. There was dead silence in my house. Nothing stirred as I concentrated, concentrated, concentrated on the pages. My brain was mush, but I finally started getting through it. And then, POP. My desk lamp light bulb blew up, startling me and abandoning me into darkness (actually a grey-ish morning light--who knew it got light that early?). So I did what any normal law student would do: I proceeded to have a full-fledged emotional breakdown.

I stumbled around the house, hysterically crying, desperately seeking a lightbulb or a razor blade, whichever came first. I wrote a hallucinatory email to my friends. I concocted ways I could record my horror at this exam, which I can conservatively say was the most impossible exam ever given, and effectively convey them to the professor in a format designed to make him feel as guilty as possible. I thought splicing in scenes from concentration camps might do the trick. And then I found a lightbulb and dashed off the rest of my exam in an hour, before tucking myself gingerly into bed with a box of tissues.

I wonder how abnormal this is.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Wed, 04 May 2005 08:35:01 PDT

Fine, I admit it: I watched that Scrubs/ER-wannabe TV show on Sunday night. I forgot the name of it. You know, the one that devoured the Boston Legal time slot. I know watching made me a disloyal hypocrite. I promise I didn't enjoy it that much. I can't say I'll never watch it again, even though I'm wracked with guilt. But my god--after a lovely dose of Desperate Housewives, I'm in the mood for some ribald Denny Crane jokes, not a life-and-death struggle.

The show [I just had to look up the name out of annoyance: Grey's Anatomy] did get me to theorizing about the differences between lawyers and doctors, though. The way I see it, we're headed for an ultimate civil revolution with doctors leading one side and lawyers the other. Mark my words: the Grey's Anatomy/Boston Legal replacement is going to spark it. Well, maybe not, but take Exhibit B: the battle over medical malpractice and insurance costs. Or Exhibit C: the doctors I know personally are conservative jackasses who refuse to change by, say, promoting women. Did I ever tell you about the time a well-established, older doctor friend told me he wouldn't hire women because they don't need the money to feed their family? I'm stereotyping here, I know, but there's something to this opposing worldview. Lawyers think doctors are greedy automatons, and doctors think lawyers are greedy residents of an ivory tower. I'm envisioning this giant clash: doctors led by Patrick Dempsey (mmm) attack with scalpels, and lawyers fight back with an overly-complicated flanking maneuver under the control of a steely Candice Bergen. Who will prevail in this epic contest?

Yes, I have an exam in 24 hours.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Tue, 03 May 2005 10:42:10 PDT

Know what is a damn dirty trick? Multi-part questions on exams. A question with four totally unrelated sections, and four fact patterns, is NOT one question. If I have to flip through more than five pages of an outline to answer the question, it is clearly several mischievous questions masquerading as one. I don't care how you dress it up: parts a,b,c,d; or one big paragraph question; or spreading out statements over a page to deceive us into trying for one-paragraph answers. It's a LIE. No one likes a liar, Professor Cheat. It's such self-deception, too. Professors know this is a real question. They know it covers a totally different subject matter. But they attach it anyway in hopes that the act of listing questions on the same page will result in our spending the same amount of time on it as we do on single questions. I conclude this reveals problems of character, and an inability to deal with reality. In other words, such professors ought to be committed.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Mon, 02 May 2005 16:09:19 PDT

I got so involved in studying last night (read: desperately cramming) that I stayed up until 6:00 in the morning. I still slept for six hours, but now I feel miserable. Law school allows me to set my own schedule. Because I am a law student and thus anal, "setting my own schedule" translates into "rigid bedtime." I haven't deviated from my bedtime in a month. I know this is pathetic. Law school is a bitch, and this is my little way of asserting control. Unfortunately, my nail-digging grip on the bedtime hour apparently makes my body physically incapable of coping with change. It refuses to study today. It keeps falling asleep. And it continuously emits a dull ache. It's out of control, and I don't appreciate its childish decision to act out this close to exam season. Bad body.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:36:31 PDT

I decided to try some yoga yesterday to relax and stop panicking about the reading my classes are throwing at me now, at the end of the semester. It seemed relaxing and fun at the time. It's been years since I tried a headstand. Today, of course, I regret it with every fiber of my muscle. Ow. Ow. Ow. I have this searing pain every time I budge my left ribcage. According to some anatomy websites I cursorily checked to diagnose myself, there is nothing there that should be hurting. Even better--my neck is permanently cricked back a bit. This makes that dumptruck of reading nearly impossible to do, unless i sit on the floor and prop my book upright on my desk. So now I am in extreme emotional and physical distress, and yoga is to blame. Whosoever invented yoga should be subject to the Bush definition of torture.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:40:46 PDT

My firm is not cultivating my loyalty right now. I wore sweatpants to class today. My neighbor wore a gorgeous spring dress. I complimented her choice, then asked where she got such a luxurious dress. She named a top-flight designer of considerable expense, and said something to the effect of, “I have soooooooo much money from a costless cash advance my summer firm extended to me that I bathe in it daily. I've barely dented the stack with my purchase of several exorbitantly priced pieces of fabric to drape myself in. I woke up this morning, arose from my bed of greenbacks, wiped the sleep from my eyes, and grabbed this one willy-nilly.”

The cash advance is a really wonderful concept. It alleviates the inevitable financial difficulties that emerge at the end of the semester, when loan money runs out. This unfortunately coincides with exam season, when you don’t have the energy to seek out cheap food and you make frequent purchases of candy and chips to stave off depression.

Needless to say, my summer firm did not offer me an advance. Many of my 2L friends are flush with cash. Meanwhile, I am milking the dregs of my spring semester loan, disbursed in January. Alas.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:24:13 PDT

I was hoping that Passover last weekend would retard everyone else at school's studying enough to let me catch up. Not suprisingly, I diddled around all weekend and didn't get anything done. This is a sad story cried way too many times on law school student blogs, though, so I'm not going to talk about this anymore.

I think I have writer's/studier's block. All I want to do is go watch TV.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:04:45 PDT

Why won't they just lay off of Martha Stewart!? After approving her attendance at Time's 100 Most Influential People honorary dinner, now the U.S. Probation Department is investigating her because the dinner might not have been as business-oriented as she said it was. It's a freaking networking dinner! It's called "d-i-n-n-e-r" in the title. It's obviously a hybrid entertainment-networking event. How could they possibly claim to have been misled on this? Shame on them.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 07:16:23 PDT

In observance of a Friday near the end of my semester, when I should be outlining and meta-analyzing themes of the course, I'm going to indulge in a small bit of meta-analyzing of law school.

It just hit me that I am officially on board the slow, writhing, and tortuous decline of my 2L year. What's that stupid maxim: "Scare you to death in the first year, work you to death in the second year, bore you to death in the third year"? Honky. Maybe it applies when you don't have a permanent job locked up in the first semester of your second year, but it isn't worth the breath it takes for all those people I meet who find out I'm in my 2L year to say. The pressure drops dramatically after first year. It actually drops dramatically after first semester, because then you know if your grades are good enough to get you a firm job for your 1L summer, and you have a better idea of where you sit in the pack. Even if you can't ease off studying in second semester of your first year, you at least have an idea of how much is too much.

If you cut to the chase, first year is the last and only real year. Ergo, I am nearly done with law school. Kick ass.

There's a little more sentimentality in that "kick ass" than I would have expected had you asked me at the end of my first year, or after the debacle of visiting professor-horror in my fall 2L semester. Dare I say I found better teachers, and classes that may interest me this semester? It's possible. I'm feeling a twinge of satisfaction with law school this year. When you strip away grades, and outlining, and required class attendance, and the pressure-cooking pot of exam season, law school can become an almost likeable affair.

Before I get too snuggly about this, let me add that my law firm blabs and blabs about how on top of their shit they are, and it is now a month or so until I start working, and I have no idea
(a)what partner I will be working with,
(b) what department I will be working in, or
(c)what city I will be working in.
That is messed up, and I will become increasingly whiny about this until I receive direction.

So don't worry too much, readers. I may be sentimental in one area, but I will still be shrill in another. I've always got that bipolar balance.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:53:19 PDT

So we all know by now that one of my favorite blogs is Jason Mulgrew's Everything is Wrong With Me. Mulgrew and I have had a correspondence going since he offered to link blogs. Turns out that the shit has hit the fan at Everything is Wrong With Me. Here's the news from Mulgrew himself:

In December of last year, an agent in LA "discovered" my site. I accepted his offer to take me on as a client, and since his judgment was/is impaired, we are currently in the process of turning "Everything is wrong with me" into a TV show. Over the past three months as I have been writing and developing the show, I have met with Comedy Central (twice), representatives from a fancy-pants production studio, and am meeting soon with Fox, all of whom have expressed interest in the show. This leads me to one conclusion: the current state of television is very, very bad.

(Most recently, Random House has contacted me about turning the site into a book. This is still in its incipient stages, as we have only begun talking about this, but if I somehow get paid to write dick jokes in a book, I may never read again. Because really, all hope is lost if that happens. Good lord.)

So best of luck to Mulgrew. I hope it turns out great. I say that wholeheartedly, and without even the tiniest twinge of jealousy. Nope. None.

noreply@blogger.com (RawLaw) — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:36:42 PDT

New roll-worthy blog!: I put Barely Legal in the blogroll. They are fun.