Bunsnip

It keeps you up at night.

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 08:38:00 +0000

You resist sleep, because sleeping is forfeiting the day until tomorrow, effectively fastforwarding an already brief life via unconsciousness. It goes like this:

One day, you wake up, and you're thirty, and you don't really feel any more grown up than you did at twenty. Maybe in some ways you feel less grown up. But maybe that's because you were never as grown up as you thought you were. You were just precocious back then, and a little naive and idealistic. But the fact that you see that now means you really are grown up, at least compared to twenty.

Though you still like video games. The sames ones you played in your childhood and teens. And you enjoy discovering other games from the same era, because it makes you feel like a kid again, and all nostalgic. But you might have ruined a few childhood memories by rewatching films or shows that were once so good, but now are clearly lacking in one respect or another. So you try to forget the revisit, and reinstall the memory.

You don't have your whole life ahead of you anymore. You only have what's left. And you have less time to get where you're going, wherever that is.

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Passed, Lawyered, Employed, Phew! Oh yeah, and an exciting tale of riding the bus.

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 08:44:00 +0000

Whoa, I've really kept things suspenseful on the blog, haven't I? Last I wrote, I was still waiting on my bar results, and I said that if you don't hear from me for awhile, it's probably because I didn't pass.

Well I hate to break expectations, but my silence has not been because I didn't pass. I did, in fact, pass my bar exam, and have been sworn in as an officer of the court here in Oregon. So, yeah, I'm a lawyer now. Yay!

I am also gainfully employed, though not strictly as a lawyer. I think I mentioned in my last post that I was working a temp job at Nike world headquarters. That temp job has been upgraded to a full time W-2 style position. I'm working in the procurement department, which is fancy business speak for sourcing of commodities for Nike. The group I am working in helps procure service contracts/deals for Nike's business groups. So it's law-related in that negotiating service contracts is involved. I am liking it pretty well, and am excited by how much there is to learn.

Legal education is very theoretical. Too theoretical, if you ask me. What I'm doing right now is much more practical and results-oriented. So it's a different perspective for me. Even pre-law school, I worked in law firms, which largely live in a theoretical world.

So everything seems very new, and I'm having to learn a lot of business jargon. For instance, you might be interested to know that it is not uncommon for business people to use the word "ask" as a noun, similar to the nominal use of "request". "Here's our ask on this..." one might say. Business people also like to "escalate" things up the chain of command. "Escalate" might also mean not punting up the chain of command, but increasing the sense of urgency that one has about a matter. Depends whom you ask (in the verbal sense). Business people also "push back" when someone has an ask that they are totally not amenable to.

And acronyms! My god, acronyms are all over the damn place! The alphabet soup is crazy in the business world. Things are promised by EOD (end of day) or maybe COB (close of business). A cost might be capital, but it also might be OPEX (operating expense). Contracts come in MPSAs (Master Professional Service Agreements), MSAs (Master Servce Agreements), NDAs (non-disclosure agreements), WOs (Work Orders), COs (Change Orders), and so forth. Compensation might be calculated on a T&E (time and expense), otherwise known as T&M (time and materials) basis. And of course there will probably be SLAs (service level agreements) in your EULAs (end user license agreements). I can handle that kind of talk, because it's part of legal jargon, too. But when people start going on PTO (paid time off) instead of vacation, I get a little batty.

The good thing about gainful employment is that I should be able to buy myself a car soon. The bad thing is that, due to my overwhelming amount of student loan debt, and the fact that I am only recently empoyed, I can't get the credit without Mr. E's co-signature. Normally I would strongly advise against co-signing loans, because you get all the personal responsibility without any of the fun, but Mr. E and I, we're like a team, see, and I can't keep taking the bus to work because it's taking close to three hours out of my roundtrip day, which is very exhausting and soul-crushing.

Speaking of the bus, let me tell you a little story about my bus ride this morning. I ride the same bus route every day to work, and it's pretty much the same every day. I board the number 62 crack of dawn bus at the local mall after connecting from my village, and ride almost the whole route up to Nike. It's typically a 45 minute ride on that leg. The bus typically sees the same faces everyday, and people pretty much leave each other alone. With the exception of a few odd days, my morning ride almost never fills to capacity. People do that thing where you sit one to a row on each side, with an extra space, and then when everyone is evenly spaced, newcomers have to start sitting next to someone (the horror!). But in truth, my bus nearly never gets so full that people must sit together.

I ride with my new leather satchel briefcase (graduation present from my lovely family), and so I typically lay it on the seat next to me while I read my Kindle, listen to my ipod, or snooze against the window. On the extremely rare occasion that the bus fills, I will put it on my lap so someone can take the seat next to me, but that has only been necessary about two times in the past 3.5 months.

Today, I'm sitting in my usual area toward the back, reading my Kindle, when this frequent rider boards the bus, bypasses a number of open seats at the front of the bus (granted, they were all neighboring other people), walks back to my row, points at my bag and says, "I'm going to sit right here. This bag has no ticket."

I glance at all the empty seats in front of me and over my shoulder and say, "There's plenty of open seats on the bus."

Again, the man insists, "This bag, no ticket."

"I understand that, but there are plenty of available seats for you to choose from, why do you need to sit here?" I ask, even as I drag my satchel onto my lap while he plops into the seat next to me.

"No one tells me where to sit. I sit where I like."

At this point, I'll mention that this guy is black, and I got the impression that he was somehow defensive about being dictated on where to sit on the bus, which is something that frankly hasn't been an issue in my lifetime, but it's the vibe he was giving off.

"I'm not telling you where to sit, you don't have to get contentious," I said, "I just don't understand why you must sit here when there are plenty of available places to sit on the bus."

He began to lecture me some more about how my bag doesn't have a ticket, and I cut him off, "You know what? you can sit here," I said, "excuse me, please." And I let him have my row and moved to the back of the bus where I squeezed with my bag on my lap between one of those annoyingly placed poles on my left and a lady on my right. "I'm sorry," I mumbled to her as I sat.

"That's alright!" She insisted.

"What a psycho." I muttered, and I took her silence as agreement.

I went back to reading my Kindle, but no longer found enjoyment in the novel I was reading, so I switched to a book on technical contracts. Dry subject like that is just perfect for a morning that was just asking for clinical detachment over emotional connection.

Oh, and the guy who ousted me? He sat on the aisle side, and laid his own bag on the inside seat next to him. I thought for a moment about yelling to him that his bag didn't have a ticket and he should put it on his lap, but I didn't want to mirror the poor behavior of a hypocritical asshole.

And you know, even if there were all those open seats on the bus, if he would have come to my row and said, "May I sit here please?" I would have gladly moved my bag onto my lap and said, "Sure." Then I would have returned to my book. Almost everyone gets off at the train station 5 minutes before my stop anyway, so soon I would have my row back to myself.

I think really the guy just wanted his own row, and he couldn't very well demand that someone without a bag move for him, but when I have a bag, all of a sudden there's a philosophical argument about who and what are entitled to a seat.

I'm really not one of those people who strives to deny people a place to sit. If the bus is full, I will accommodate your needs. But when there's plenty of room, and I have a 45 minute ride, yeah, I'm gonna lay my bag next to me.

So sue me.

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Speaking Words of Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:42:00 +0000

A wonderful Utah musician named Mike Masse is selling covers of The Beatles' song Let It Be in order to raise funds to treat his infant son with a malignant brain tumor. I already have a collection of Mike's great covers which he performed and recorded at The Pie Pizzeria in Salt Lake City, around the corner from where I used to live. He is a very talented cover artist.

I think it's tragic that people who get sick in this country so often have to resort to fundraisers in order to have a chance at surviving. Politics aside, there's clearly something wrong with that.

Anyway, I wanted to spread the word on this fundraiser because I like Mike as a musician, and because I have a brother who still battles cancer today after roughly six years of treatment, and it breaks my heart that this poor kid might not even finish year two of his life.

I went ahead and threw down $5 for the song, because that's what I can afford as an as-yet-unemployed-near-lawyer. Hopefully one day soon I can do more for such causes.

But even if you don't decide to donate, go check out Mike's covers, which you can also find on YouTube.

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Firm decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 08:30:00 +0000

Let's see, it's been awhile since I've posted, so where were we...? Eeep! It looks like my last post was just before the bar exam! I was quite on edge about it (if you ever talk to anyone who says the bar exam is not that bad, they must be so far past it that they have exam-prep amnesia, because this was by far the most stressful summer since law school began).

I managed to wake up to my alarms on both days (no thanks to the hotel alarm clock, which didn't go off, but I had triple redundancy in the form of my cell phone, my ipod, and my boyfriend's sleepy morning phone call, so I made it on time). Also, my laptop made it through essay day without crapping out on me or giving me any trouble whatsoever. Not everyone was so lucky. During essay day, a number of people had to raise their hands during the exam because of laptop trouble. Glad I wasn't one of them.

The exam took place in the Red Lion hotel situated as far north as you can get in Portland before you cross the bridge into Washington. The hotel was lovely, actually. Situated right on the Columbia river with beautiful views of sail boats and larger ships passing under the I-5 draw bridge. My hotel room was also quite nice. The downsides were that the planes from PDX airport fly right over the hotel along the river, and I was awakened a number of times the first night from the noise. But it wasn't that big of a deal. It was a strange experience, where I felt very solitary but also surrounded by a lot of solidarity. I knew a lot of people there, naturally, and the whole stay was sort of like a mixture of hell and a vacation with friends between exam days and sessions.

I was quite nervous the first session of the first day. When I sat at my assigned seat, my hands were shaking. They shake a little bit all the time anyway (thanks, dad's genes), but this was added nerves. I was seated next to someone I knew casually from law school, and we chatted a bit during the morning wait, so that helped diffuse some tension. But after the first session was over (all 3 hours of it), I felt more confident going into the remaining 3 sessions over the next day and a half.

I don't think the test was easy. There were definitely some curve balls thrown in on both the essays and multiple choice sessions. But I don't think it was that bad either. I think I probably displayed the minimum competency needed to pass, but we won't know for sure until Sept. 21. (If you hear nothing from me for a long time after Sept. 21, it's because I failed and am crying myself to sleep into my pillow every day. But seriously, I think it went ok. Probably. *knocking on wood*)

In the meantime, post-exam, what have I been doing? Well, I spent a good two weeks doing absolutely nothing. I slept quite a bit. Took impromptu naps daily. I would be watching some of my TV shows and then suddenly wake up three hours later, having not chosen to nap at all. It is funny what stress does to your body physically. I was seriously beat after the exam, mentally and physically. I went to a few celebratory drinking sessions and dinners. There was a beer fest involved.

It's only been in the last week or two that I have started working on what comes next, professionally. I am one of the (unfortunately many) unlucky ones who does not have a job lined up. I do scan the job boards daily, and there has not really been much to bite at in my areas I wish to specialize in. A lot of the pertinent listings want attys with 3-10 years of experience practicing. Ha! So I'm still looking for work, and there's a chance that it will come along, especially after bar results come out.

But I am also working on a plan to launch my own law firm, right out of the gate. I know, it sounds crazy. I have so many doubts myself. But I am doing a lot of research, reading books, checking out websites in my practice area, working on business details. This is not ideal. My plan has always been to have my own firm -- eventually. But the economy being what it is, and the job market being what it is, and my desired specialty area being what it is, jumping right in might be the necessary choice, unless I want to sacrifice my professional vision in some way.

So it's not ideal. But I am going to try it.

I have picked my practice area (trademarks, primarily, but other legal business needs will be serviced), selected a firm name (secret for right now), and designed my logo. I am working on plans for a website, and have acquired my domain name. I am looking into forming my LLC, and figuring out where I should open my banking accounts. I am looking into virtual office services which would allow me to book a conference room for client meetings when I need to make them (an actual physical office will probably be something that must wait a year or two). Right now not much has been set in stone, but I am working hard to figure out what needs to happen and trying to get those balls rolling, slowly, and with due diligence of course. The biggest hurdle is going to be funding. I am going to try to keep start up costs as low as possible, but I will need some capital to get everything going. Going to look into grants. I know there are opportunities out there for women entrepreneurs, because it's a man's world out there, baby.

So that's the direction I'm heading now. If I can get an acceptable job while I am trying to launch the firm, I will take it, just to help pay the bills. But I want this firm to happen at some point anyway, and I'm kind of at the point where I think, why not now? You have to take the plunge some time.

Tonight I watched a video conference call on starting up a small firm, and I identified very closely with the female attorney giving the presentation. Her experience with setting up her own firm mirrors some of the thoughts and plans I have been working on. It made me feel reinforced to watch that.

Business aside, I have concerns over my ability to competently work legal matters out of the gate. Law school is not so much like med school or other professional schools in terms of how they prepare you to actually practice. But everyone has to learn on the job. Whether it's diving in yourself, or working under a slave-master's thumb, it has to come at some point. I guess in an employment situation, there's more a sense of security that someone is watching for your mistakes and that there's someone there to mentor you. But I have heard mixed opinions on how effective the large firm environment actually is for attys in their first few years in terms of actually teaching you how to practice. There are other resources out there, such as books, listservs, unofficial mentors, official mentors (Oregon assigns you one during your first year of bar admittance), professors from the law school, and so on. So I don't think the disadvantage is too great, if any. Also, Oregon is one of the few (if not the only) state that requires professional liability insurance in order for you to practice law. So if I screw up horribly, that will help.

Crazy? Maybe. Happening? Looks likely.

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Dun Dun Dun... Exam Time

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 05:47:00 +0000

Well, 8 weeks of studying have come down to this: the last weekend before the bar exam. I have 3 days left to finish studying before the first day of the exam next Tuesday. I'm going to probably spend the next two days finalizing my memorization of as much law as possible. Then on Monday, I'm going to try to take it a little easy, just some light review. I will check into my hotel that night and try to relax. Maybe work out a bit to kill nervous energy. The hotel is supposed to have a fitness lounge.

I have had a few freak outs over the past weeks. It's a real roller coaster. One day I feel fine, and the next I am anxious and panicky and have a hard time focusing or sleeping or just being calm. I feel like I could use another month to really feel ready for this exam, but I don't know if it would make a difference.

I wish I could say I feel like I have this in the bag, but I just don't. I don't know how it will go. I feel maybe cautiously optimistic, but I do recognize that smart, dedicated people can and do fail the bar exam for a number of reasons. I have friends who walked out of the February exam having no idea if they passed or failed. I probably won't know either.

My biggest fears are (1) not waking up in time for my exam, and (2) having my computer crap out during the essays portion.

To combat number 1, I've had Mr. E wake me up when he leaves for work for the past two weeks. The first week, I would sometimes get up right away, but usually go back to bed for another couple hours, because it is just too damn difficult to be awake at 6:45:AM, dammit. I'm serious. But this week it's do or die time, so I have actually gotten up with Mr. E. I usually have to sit around for a couple hours to mentally wake up before I can start studying, but I'm getting to the point where I am actually somewhat coherent by 8:AM, which is when the exam will start. I think adrenaline will get me there on game day.

To combat number 2... I don't know, it's up to chance. My MacBook is 3 years old now, and it still seems to be in fine working order, but I have heard personal stories from people who've had their computers die in the middle of the exam. Legibility-wise, I can write for about 5 minutes, and you will maybe be able to read the first half of what I wrote. So we're talking disaster if I have to write for 6 hours. It would probably fail me. So let's hope that doesn't happen.

I am feeling good about the multiple choice, so as long as I can get through day 1, day 2 should be ok, I think.

As far as the essays go, I am worried about getting a question (or several questions!) where I just have no clue what the law is. I did a practice exam earlier this week and the very first essay I opened was that way: I had not a single clue what to write. I hear that happens to people sometimes, and in that case you just have to look at the facts and try to identify what might be a legal issue, and then make up some law to apply. Sometimes people guess right. Anyway, after that crappy practice test, I have been incessantly reading essay answers, trying to familiarize myself with lots of fact patterns in case something similar comes up.

Here's hoping that the past two months were good enough to prepare me.

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Free and Inexpensive Media Online

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 08:33:00 +0000

Thought I'd share a few links to my favorite places to download media online for free (the legal kind of free!) or on the cheap. I make daily or weekly visits to many of these sites for music, books, and video games:

1) Freegal [music]

Freegal is a music download site that works with participating libraries to offer you 3 free music downloads per week via your library account. Unlike most library experiences, however, you get to keep your free tracks for-ev-er.

Three tracks at a time is a slow way to download a full album, sure, but it adds up quickly. I use a recurring reminder on my e-calendar to keep me coming back to the site every Sunday night for my new downloads, and soon enough I have a complete new album without any expense or effort.

I actually also use Mr. E's library card number to get his 3 free songs per week (since he's not interested, oddly enough), so I get my albums twice as fast. It usually takes me 2-3 weeks to get a full album, so if you don't have someone special in your life who has a library card but hates free things, you could count on a free album every month.

Freegal doesn't have every album you might want, but it has many good ones. I keep a running list of the albums I intend to download in a Google Doc. That way I don't have to actively remember my list of greedy desires every week.

I have already downloaded songs and albums from a bunch of great artists, including:

Adele,
Alice in Chains,
CAKE,
Cyndi Lauper,
Faithless,
Fiona Apple (incl. her brand new one),
Imogen Heap,
Incubus,
The Lemonheads,
Madeleine Peyroux,
Madonna,
Passion Pit,
Phoenix,
Sarah McLachlan,
The Shins (incl. their new one),
Zaz,
2Cellos,
and even the damn cast of Glee.

Look at all those free albums. Currently, I'm working on an album from The Temper Trap (you probably have heard their song Sweet Disposition on 500 Days of Summer). After that, it will be on to an album by my favorite German indie rock band, Wir Sind Helden. You should get on the Freegal band wagon and fulfill your own list.

2) Overdrive [books]

Overdrive is similar to Freegal except that it's for e-books and audio books, and you DON'T get to keep them for-ev-er.

You use your library card (if your library participates) to download books to your Kindle, Nook, or iPad, or even to your old-fashioned laptop. If it's an audio book, you can sometimes listen to it on your iPod or burn it to a CD, but usually you are forced to use Overdrive's proprietary software.You can select a 7, 14, or 21 day borrowing period.

Even though digital is naturally non-rivalrous due to its intangibility (i.e., my having a copy doesn't keep you from also having a copy -- we could all have copies at the same time without depriving each other of anything, ha ha!), Overdrive artificially simulates the rivalrous nature of tangible books by only lending out however many copies they are allowed to lend for a given book at a time (if I had to guess, I would say they can e-lend as many copies as they have in hard copy, but I don't know). Because of this, you may have to put your book on hold and wait awhile.

I'm currently the 150th person in line for the Game of Thrones series, for instance. That's gonna take awhile to get to me. But you can have 6 books on hold at once and 6 books out at once, so if you find less titillating and popularly-hyped reads to put on your book list, you should be able to keep a nice rotation going.

Unfortunately my reading this summer has largely been spent on bar prep with precious little time to read things that actually enrich my soul rather than destroy it, but after this bar nonsense is over with, I hope to start reading a book a week, and Overdrive and my trusty Kindle shall help me do that.

3) Kindle Daily Deal [books]

If you are on the Kindle bandwagon like me (probably one of the better purchases I have made in recent life), you will want to check out the Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon. They select one book every day to deeply discount down to 2 or 3 bucks.

They are often murder mystery novels, since that seems to be a popular genre, but I was delighted recently to pick up a book on the Donner Party's ordeal, which is something more to my taste. Well, my taste is not so much for the cannibalism, but I have found in recent years that I strongly prefer non-fiction books to fiction books, and I especially like non-fiction books that cause me to question the bounds of humanity.

Like recently I keep reading books about sociopaths and serial killers because I'm trying to understand what makes people do horrible things to other people without seeming to care. (Highly recommended: The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson [from the guy who wrote Men Who Stare At Goats {but don't judge it poorly for that piece of crap, this book is really engaging}] and Serial Murderers and their Victims by Eric Hickey [textbook, but utterly fascinating psychological perspective].)

Anyway. Cheap books. Everyday. The end.

4) John Vanderslice website [music]

John Vanderslice has been an indie musician for a number of years. He's received some notoriety via NPR's radio podcasts. I once saw him play live in a tiny little garage venue in Salt Lake City called Kilby Court, a place I still think dearly and fondly on from time to time. I have enjoyed his music for quite awhile, but he earned a special place in my heart when I recently learned that you can download several of his full albums for free on his website, and giving value away for free is something that I always respect in an artist. Some of his more popular albums are available for purchase on the site, but the free albums are really worthwhile as well. My iPod practically overflows with Johnny V these days. If you're looking for something new to listen to, or if you're already a fan, be sure to scurry over there a pick up some albums, because: FREE!

5) GOG.com [games]

GOG stands for Good Old Games, and that's exactly what you can get for cheap: really classic old computer games. If you're like me, you're all nostalgic over the grand old days of 90's adventure gaming, with games like King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Zork, Gobliins, and Gabriel Knight. Classics like these are what I come to GOG for, but they also have some more modern games to choose from. Games sell for ridiculously low prices and are often offered in discount bundles. Plus, they are DRM free, so you can put them on all your home computers (although often the games are not Mac-friendly, unfortunately; they are working on that).

6) Fan Remakes of Sierra Games: Infamous Adventures and ADG Interactive [games]

With blessings of Roberta Williams and Sierra, two companies have made some delightful remakes of a few of the earlier Sierra adventure games that had pretty crappy graphics. By today's standards, I suppose the remakes also have really crappy graphics, but they are on par with the graphics of later games like King's Quest V & VI. These fan remakes are free, include voice packs, and some of them can be played on a Mac now. You can pickup King's Quest I-III and Quest for Glory II from AGD Interactive, and a different version of King's Quest III and Space Quest II from Infamous Adventures. Both sites also produce original games.

7) Humble Indie Bundle [games]

The Humble Indie Bundle packages and sells game bundles by indie developers in a pay-what-you-want pricing scheme, which is a scheme I dearly love. They incentivize paying at least the average going rate by offering a couple extras if you beat the average by even a penny. If you have never tried the Humble Indie Bundle before, I recommend getting in on the next bundle. The latest package (which is unfortunately closed) included the most excellent game LIMBO. (This is a graphically and aesthetically beautiful game, and if you are into physics-based puzzle games, it's a must have.) The bundle prior to that included the games Botanicula and Machinarium, two absolutely gorgeous and artistically / musically awesome puzzle adventure games. Unfortunately, I already had purchased both LIMBO and Machinarium for full price from the Mac App store prior to their placement in the bundles, and I would have gotten a much better deal if I had waited, dagnabit. So the lesson is that they put really good stuff in those bundles, including extras like game soundtracks, so keep your eye out for the next one.

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On bar prep and taking bar subjects during law school

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 21:04:00 +0000

I have just under 4 weeks left until the bar exam, and now that I have studied for a month, I have made a few observations about subjects that are worth taking in law school. (Warning: This post is probably only going to be interesting to you if you are going or considering going to law school. Maybe not even then.)

My general advice in terms of looking ahead for the bar exam is to try to take as many bar subjects as you can in law school. Law schools tell you not to focus on that (so that the peripheral stuff can get some love too). But the reality is that you can take all the bar subjects and still have plenty of room left to take electives. I took all but one of the bar exam subjects in my jurisdiction, and still had time to get a certificate in intellectual property law, which is not a bar subject. So if you can take them all, do so. But if you can't, here are the classes I'm glad I took, wish I'd taken, and wish I hadn't taken:

Glad I took...

Criminal Law (substantive, not procedural)

I am not going to practice criminal law at all, even though I can't get enough of watching crime shows and reading about psychopaths. But I am glad I decided on a whim to sign up for substantive criminal law in law school. It is much more complicated than one might think, and having a full semester background in studying mens rea, the different types of murder, and defenses which mitigate versus defenses which exonerate really makes the bar prep in this subject easier.

Article 9 Secured Transactions

This is the area of law that deals with creditors, debtors, and the offering of personal property as collateral to secure loans. It gets tricky when you have multiple creditors claiming a security interest in the same collateral, and then the debtor defaults on one or both loans, and then the creditors have to battle it out to determine who has priority to the collateral, and what happens after foreclosing on the collateral. Although the class was probably more of a headache in law school than the subject will likely be if it appears on the bar exam, the details are not terribly intuitive, so having background knowledge to launch from during bar prep is helpful.

Wish I HAD taken...

Evidence

This is the one bar subject I did not take, and I really wish I had. I am not planning on litigating at all (if I can help it), so I didn't feel it was super necessary to get all down to the nitty gritty on this subject during law school. Plus, I've seen Perry Mason and Matlock and A Few Good Men. How hard could it be? Well, it's pretty hard sometimes, actually. Hearsay is especially crazy. Hearsay is "an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted". Generally hearsay is not allowed to be admitted into evidence in court. But there are quite a few exceptions and exemptions that almost swallow the rule, and they can be hard to remember if you haven't done the background casebook study of the subject to ground the rules in fact scenarios. Plus, identifying hearsay is hard sometimes. Something that would be hearsay if used for one purpose may be completely non-hearsay if used for another purpose. Character evidence is also a tricky area. Usually, you can't offer evidence of a person's character to show that they are more likely to have committed a crime or civil misdeed. But if the defendant's character is already in issue, like in civil defamation cases, it can come in. Or if the defendant "opens the door" to his character by having witnesses testify about his reputation or their opinion of him first, then the prosecution can offer rebuttal character evidence. But it's a very detail-oriented analysis, and I wish I had worked through some of this stuff prior to bar prep.

(Emphatically) Wish I HADN'T taken...

Administrative Law

Oh my god, is this subject dry. That's saying a LOT when talking about law, because it's all pretty dry. But admin is the most boring thing I ever subjected myself to for 13-14 weeks. This is the area of law that deals with agencies -- things like the EPA, FCC, FTC, etc. They are part of the executive branch of government, set up to execute laws, but they kind of have hybrid legislative and judicial functions, because they make rules and perform adjudications when rules are broken. They are also kind of like the police, because they do investigations and perform inspections (like health and safety code violation stuff). It sounds kind of exciting when you describe it all like that, but it is NOT. It is the opposite of exciting. It is horrible. I am lucky that my professor had a very liberal non-attendance policy -- we could skip or not be prepared for up to 10 classes and still sit for the final. You better believe I took advantage of all 10. And it was still painful. So here's the thing: admin is not that hard. The bar coverage is much more cursory than the horrible detail you will go into in class, and it is not counter-intuitive. So I actually recommend against taking this subject, unless you are, say, going into environmental law, and anticipate dealing with the EPA a lot, or something. Even then I just don't know... it's too awful.

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Crampwriting

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:17:00 +0000

So I was having lunch with the attorney who employed me whilst I was in my last year of law school, and we were talking about things like the bar exam, and he told me a horror story of how, when he took the bar exam, his computer blue-screen-of-deathed on him toward the beginning of the essay portion, and so he had to hand write his exams for 6 hours (that's six hours of pure hand crampage, folks). In order to allay the horrors that would accompany such a bad stroke of luck, the attorney advised me to practice writing at least some of the essays I am analyzing in my bar prep with my hand, so that I can build the muscles and get used to the idea that I can do it if I have to. So I'm not quite ready for full on essay hand writing yet, because of the severe atrophy of muscles in my hands other than for purposes of stabbing downward at keys, but I went ahead and outlined an essay this afternoon. As you can see, having computer death will probably be close to the worst thing that could happen to me on the bar exam, because my handwriting is nearly illegible even to myself. Maybe I should just bring a back-up computer instead.

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Final Grades

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sun, 13 May 2012 09:34:00 +0000

Final grades are in. I only had three graded classes this semester, and I managed to pull two A's and an A- in them, earning my highest semester average of my entire law school career. This semester stands in stark contrast to my first semester, during which I earned two B's, a C+, and a nagging feeling that I had made a terrible mistake. But I pushed on from that bad start and showed constant improvement over the course of my schooling. I accomplished many things which I am proud of, I grew a lot, and I identified many areas where I need to continue my personal growth. My cumulative GPA going out is 3.436, which is good enough to graduate Cum Laude, and which probably ranks me in the top 25% of my class, although the final rankings are yet to come out. A nice way to end this chapter of my life.

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Bar Study

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:24:00 +0000

My bar exam study books arrived in a package today. I had trouble hoisting it into my house because it had this many books in it:

I have a hard time seeing how I'm going to get through that many pages in two months, but they put you on a pretty regimented schedule, so I guess if they say I can do it, I can.

Bar study doesn't technically start for a few weeks. I am still in my finals period at school, although my finals really came early this semester, back when I was freaking out turning in a bunch of papers and giving presentations, and finishing up client matters. Now all I have to do over the next two weeks is revise my capstone paper and prepare for and take my antitrust exam. So much more low-key than finals period normally is. I mean, I paid my dues early, but it is nice to laugh a little while some of my friends have a regular finals period freak out.

I filed my bar application (barely) on time, and booked a room at the hotel where the exam is taking place, so everything should be set to go for the exam in July. It's a two-day exam. The first day consists of six essays and two "multi-state performance tests", which is basically where they give you a closed universe scenario with some cases and statutes and whatever else so you can analyze a legal problem, almost as if you are given real legal cases to work on. Day two is lots and lots of multiple choice questions.

So anyway, the sun has arrived in Portland and it is lovely. Ian and I went to the batting cages yesterday to hit some baseballs (just being around baseballs makes me kind of giddy like a child, apparently). Today my arm is weak and my shoulder aches as a result. But it was worthwhile.

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The future is now

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:40:00 +0000

Well, I'm almost at the end of my final semester of law school. These past three weeks have been super hellacious, even though one of them was Spring Break. I wrote my 36-page capstone paper and a 9-page contract over Spring Break, which means I worked practically every day, all day.

I did take two days off during Spring Break: one to watch the Hunger Games (just like the book, it's perfectly enjoyable, but so not worth all the attention it's getting), the other to watch the most amazing live soccer game I've seen (RSL kicked the P-Timbs' asses 3-2 with two of those RSL goals being scored in the last 5 minutes of the game).

Then the week after Spring Break, I had to juggle a number of obligations and deadlines, all working up to Saturday, which was not really a Saturday because I had to attend a 5-hour paper symposium, during which I nervously presented my capstone paper to my class and professor for 15 minutes. I thought the end of that week would see my stress levels diminish, but instead they have carried over into this week.

This week I have been working on wrapping up my client matters at clinic, and finishing up my final contract drafting project, consisting of a short 10-page article and several supporting documents. Finishing clinic has been the most stressful. On the whole I have mixed feelings about my clinic experience. It has been positive exposure to lots of different things, but I also found the experience very restrictive in a number of ways. The biggest restriction was that I had a lot to do and only a very small amount of time each week in which to do it (we were only in clinic 8 hours each week -- hardly enough time to get any real work done, especially when that's broken into two sessions, and each session is broken into a number of administrative interruptions). So I've taken a lot of that work home in the past two weeks, and even stayed an extra two hours at clinic on Tuesday. Anyway, I'm pretty glad to be getting that clinic stuff done this week. But the stress of my last day tomorrow (and the near certainty that I am going to have to put in extra time tomorrow too) is what's keeping me up entirely past my bed time right now.

My contract drafting project is due Friday at 5:PM. It will be done by then, and it's about half done now, but I just wish I could focus on it without having to deal with other annoyances, like classes, and clinic bleeding into my home hours.

I also need to get my damn bar application in the mail by Friday. To do that, I need to get a fingerprint card. I was going to get it on Tuesday, but the place that does fingerprinting closes an hour after my clinic hours, and since I had to stay at clinic late on Tuesday, I couldn't get it done. So I have to go do it tomorrow. And if for some reason that doesn't work out, I have to scramble to get to a police station before Friday to get printed, all while getting that stupid contract drafting project in by 5:PM. So it's a time pressure thing. Maybe I'm to blame for putting the fingerprinting off to the last minute, but it just turned out that way.

The good news is that after 5:PM Friday my life will be a lot easier. All I will have left is a single class the following Monday, followed by a week or two or three of studying for my single final exam in antitrust. It's an open exam, so I can take it whenever, hence the one or two or three weeks of studying. I guess I will also have to revise my capstone based on my professor's comments once I get them. I am feeling pretty good about the paper, so I think that shouldn't be too bad. Then once that antitrust test is done, I can wallow for a couple weeks before Bar-Bri starts and I have to start studying for the bar exam in July. A few days after bar studying starts, my family is coming to town for commencement, which should be fun. Well, no, graduation ceremonies are never fun. But having family in town is fun.

Then I study hard for two months, then I take the bar exam for a couple days, then I pass out, then I cry, then I celebrate, then I cry some more, then I sit around and do absolutely nothing for a few days, or else go on a short unplanned road trip, then I start pounding the pavement and hitting networking events and trying to get someone to hire me. That should about be the rest of my year, I think.

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Practice

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:47:00 +0000

If I could go back to my 1L self and advise me on what to make sure I do in law school, I'd say take as many practical (rather than substantive or theoretical) classes as you can, because learning by doing can be way more effective than learning by reading theory.

This semester I am taking two practical classes: the small business legal clinic and contract drafting. Both of them have already provided some of the best experiences I have had in law school.

In contract drafting class, I am rewriting some form contracts, which is a very useful skill to learn. You might imagine that this is a very regular thing for law students to learn in law school, but actually I have heard that contract drafting classes are quite rare. The one at my school is a very small class that always has a huge wait list, so I am glad I got the opportunity to take it before graduating. It's much more useful than my technology licensing class I took a year ago, in which I read about licensing, and looked at some rather dense and unintelligible contracts, but didn't really learn much because I wasn't asked to draft anything.

There is so much garbage out there in contract language. When was the last time you read a contract that you understood even half of? Ok, ok, I know. You don't read the contracts you sign. I don't either. But wouldn't it be nice if you could understand what they said when the shit eventually hits the fan and you have to actually go back to read them? I am planning to eventually amass a collection of coherent form contracts that I can use in my future practice. This class is a great chance to get a start on that.

The small business legal clinic is turning out to be something I probably should have done last year to build up some of the confidence that the first year tore down. I started it with a great measure of anxiety. I have been struggling with anxiety issues for many years, and sometimes it is more bearable than others, but before this semester started, I was in a pretty bad place in terms of managing it. It was getting to the point where I was starting to contemplate seeking professional help, but that's not something I want to do before the bar application process, so I've been holding out. But in the last two weeks, I have been able to work on a lot of my anxiety issues via the clinic class. I have already had to interview two clients, which is an intimidating thing, but they went well and my confidence is growing by the day, noticeably.

On the day of my first interview, I was nervous as hell. But I got through it in pretty decent shape and had a nice endorphin high the rest of the day. I was so insanely cheerful that day, and had a bunch of positive interactions with people throughout my day, including random strangers. The following day, I was exhausted from having had so much positive energy the prior day, so I kind of crashed and retreated into my shell again. But clinic is forcing me to come out of that shell on a regular basis, and it is having derivative effects in my life outside of clinic that are starting to stick around a little longer.

Today I had my second client interview, which went great, and I carried my positive attitude into my after-clinic hours. I am beginning to realize how important human relations skills are to the practice of law. It's customer service, really, and in any industry that performs customer service, it is a boon to be kind and pleasant to people in general. You never know who may walk into your law office needing help some day. And you want to build interpersonal skills so you can provide good customer service for the needs of your clients, because they are at the center of what lawyers do. I am feeling more confident, and can actually envision myself getting into this profession and eventually being good at it, one step at a time. It's nice to have positive, confidence-building experiences at last, instead of just being torn down in the classroom all the time.

I think this last semester will be a good one.

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In the end

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:26:00 +0000

Lately, I am very resistant to going to bed. I am not resistant to sleep: I love taking naps during the day. But even if I am tired, I don't want to go to bed at night, because that means my day is over, and tomorrow will come by the time I am next cognizant. I just want to grab on to time and hold it back for a bit. Hold it until I am ready for it to advance again, and I'm not sure how long that would take. It could be quite a while. Maybe it's that I'm finally starting to feel "old", or maybe it's that I feel like there is just too much in front of me to handle, and I don't want to get to it yet, or at least not all at once. It's kind of paralyzing, when you see how many obligations lay ahead of you. Ironically, all I really want to do is sleep right now. Sleep until winter is over, like a nice hibernating bear, those lucky bastards. (See how much of a break they get from life every year.) But sleeping means time advancing, and I don't like that right now.

So yeah, these are my last few days until my very last semester of law school begins. What's that you say? You can't believe I'm here already? Feels like just yesterday this journey began? Yeah, that's what pretty much everyone who hasn't had to live with me or otherwise suffer with me through the past 2.5 years seems to be saying. Time is relative, my friends. Of all the notable 3-year blocks of my life -- junior high, high school, most of college, my first full time job -- this has been by far the longest and the most self-transformative. I feel like a completely different person from where I once was, and it has taken a long, long time to become like this.

What lies ahead for me? In short term, a Capstone paper; a few classes; some writing assignments; a single remaining final exam; a clinic; graduation; the bar exam. Then? I don't know. Everyone asks what's next, and all I ever say is I want to get hired by anyone who will hire me, pretty much. But then the advice begins. You could practice such and such law. And sometimes they are right, sometimes I could practice in that area. But usually they just bring up some area in which I have neither experience nor interest, and they've never gone to law school anyway, so they don't really understand why it's not feasible for me to do whatever they think is a brilliant idea for me to do. I just want people to not ask me what I'm going to do next, because I don't know, and no, you can't help me figure it out, most likely. But I will find something, at some point, and when I do, I'll let you know.

As my friend heidikins recently wrote: It all works out in the end. If it hasn't worked out, it isn't the end.

I think that's going to be my new mantra.

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Dead Batteries and Self-Induced Isolation

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:39:00 +0000

This Christmas Eve, Ian and I spent 4 hours chasing after a new car battery to rescue our dead car.

We had spent the morning downtown, having lunch and walking the streets, listening to brass bands playing on sidewalks, admiring the Christmas tree in Pioneer Square, and watching the statue man stand still like a statue in the cold for tips (that's got to be harder than it looks).

On the way home from our restful Christmas Eve activities, Ian decided we should stop at the Safeway close to our house for some Christmas Eve snacks. While I sat in the car with the headlights on, Ian went into the store. He was in there for a good 15 minutes, I'd say. I watched several carloads of people come after him and leave before him. By the time he returned, I tried turning the car over to the dull sound of clicks, signaling a dead battery. I felt like a dunce for leaving the headlights on, but Ian said he's been suspecting that the battery wasn't holding a full charge anymore and expected it to go soon.

We felt fortunate that this happened close to our house, as it was only a 7 minute walk from where the car died. But we felt not so fortunate that this happened on Christmas Eve when places that sell batteries are not likely to be open.

We took our groceries home, then brainstormed on the best mode of rescuing our car. In retrospect, the thing to do would have been to hang out in the parking lot of Safeway with the hood raised and wait for some good Samaritan to give us a jump so we could take the car home and worry about a replacement battery Monday. But, I guess the best way for me to explain why we didn't do that is that we are both very independent people who like to do things ourselves before depending on help from others. Character flaws, perhaps, but that's just how it is. Ok, maybe that's a cop out. See what I mean at the end of the story.

It was 3:30:PM, and on Christmas Eve, that means options would quickly be running out. There's a Les Schwab about a 10 or 12 minute walk from home, so we decided that instead of trying to figure out a bus route to go to some unknown auto parts store far from our home, we'd try walking over there. I suggested that Ian give them a call first to see if they were open, but he was like, "let's just go." And I was willing to just go along instead of calling myself. Another thing about Ian and I is that we are both rather averse to making phone calls if we don't have to. It's kind of a phobia that I actually think is not too uncommon. Anyway, since Murphy is in charge of the universe, Les Schwab was not open today.

A Jiffy Lube was open (just in case you need your oil changed on Christmas Eve), but they do not sell car batteries. I seemed to remember in my childhood seeing car batteries stocking shelves at convenience stores like 7-11 (am I hallucinating about that?), so we poked our head in a couple gas stations along our way, but I am either dead wrong about that, or gas stations have just stopped stocking them. Running out of options, I got over my telephonophobia for a minute on our walk and called the local Fred Meyer, asking if they stocked car batteries. Our Fred Meyer recently remodeled, and while the layout is much improved, the selection is much diminished: they no longer have an automotive section at all, so no dice.

We looped back around to the Safeway, since we were closer to that than our home at this point, and tried the car again. No avail.

At this point it was 4:15 and we didn't have many options left. We thought of asking our apartment manager to come give us a jump, but they appear to be away, and besides, we feel crummy about bugging people on a day many treat as holiday. Finally, we decided that Sears Auto Center would be the last choice for a car battery on Christmas Eve. We called ahead (lesson: learned) and found that they would be open until 6:00. Only problem now was traveling the 4 or 5 miles to get there on time. We looked up a bus route which would drop us at the mall where the auto center was located 45 minutes before closing, but we would be dropped off clear on the exact opposite side of the mall parking lot area, and would have to walk fiercely in the cold to get there after having already waited a half hour in the cold for the bus.

We did all this, got the battery, and then called a cab to take us back to the car, because there's no way we were going to carry a car battery back through that long walk and bus ride (car batteries, it turns out, are quite heavy). A $23 cab ride later, we were standing at the car again. Ian decided to just jump the car with the new battery and take the car home then change the battery later from our own parking lot. Immediately upon raising the hood and connecting the jumper cables, a woman parked in front of us asked if we needed a jump. We told her no thank you, but it was ironic that we were so reluctant to ask for help, and we went on this big adventure, and just when we were close to finishing our independent quest, some kind person offered to help. All we really had to do was ask and this whole day would not have been the headache it was.

This experience underscores something that Ian and I have both been experiencing lately: isolation. For some reason, this year we have both started to feel quite homesick and lonely. We just miss being around people that we know and love. We don't make friends easily, and though we have made friends here, I can't say we're particularly close to any of them. I do enjoy some of them quite a bit, but I have not achieved the same level of intimacy with anyone in Portland that I had achieved in Salt Lake.

Ian and I were talking about these lonely feelings lately and Ian said something that struck me: "You know how when we first moved here, we thought the people of Portland were all so nice and friendly, unlike the people in Salt Lake?"

"Yeah," I replied. I can't say I'd describe the people of Portland the same way today.

"Well, it was us. They were friendly to us because we were receptive to meeting new people since we were in a new place and didn't know anybody. They reflect back to us what we give to them."

That made a light bulb go off for me. I think it's true. I for one tend to keep pretty closed off from people for a lot of different reasons. One reason is that it's only the people who are close to you who can really, really hurt you. Another is that even strangers can hurt you, though maybe not as badly, and I have had plenty of experiences in life that have made me distrustful of the way people will behave toward me. Another is just that I am an introvert. While extroverts find social settings a great way to unwind, I find them taxing on my system, and I need a lot of alone time to balance it out. Thinking back on my close relationships in life, they have, for the most part, been with people whom I grew up with as a child, or with whom I lived as a roommate. A couple exceptions exist, but in all cases, there has been an environment ripe for intimate development of a friendship. I'm not the type of person who's going to become best friends with someone if we haven't ever had a real conversation about who we are as people. And growing up with people or living with them is a great way to facilitate those conversations. It's harder to get there without that.

But the bottom line is, we are alone because we have made ourselves that way. I can take a lot of alone-ness and not feel lonely, but I think it is to the point where something's got to give, and I guess Ian has convinced me that the change has to come from me. But Inertia also rules the universe (right up there with Murphy), and it is hard to make myself move when I am so used to standing still.

I guess I have a lot to work on in the new year.

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Bad Hand

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:58:00 +0000

This is why I should not be allowed to hand write my exams:

I'd give myself an F if I had to grade an exam that looked like this. TGFC (Thank God For Computers).

It's finals season now. I'm probably taking my first exam tomorrow, assuming I can decipher all the chicken scratch on my notecards and put my exam taking tool together in time. Believe it or not, I am immune to my own bad handwriting most of the time and should be able to read it just fine.

I have four exams this season, and will probably be done with them in a week and a half. Most of them are unscheduled, which is why I'm playing the timing rather by ear. They are all open book and 3/4 are part multiple choice, so I am feeling pretty good about it.

The one concern is that my school is making us use some new exam software this season, and I can just envision tons of problems happening. Hopefully not to me, otherwise some poor professor is going to have to read my bad hand and my grades will suffer the consequences. :S

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Welcome to the Big Apple

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:30:00 +0000

Just when you think you are the busiest you've ever been in your life, things just get busier.

I'm reminded of the time I went on a cross-country road trip with my roommate the August after I graduated from college. We headed out to Boston, down to New York, and finally to DC before heading back home via Lawrence, Kansas. When we reached Boston, I was hotter than I had ever been. That is, until we reached New York, where I was even hotter. Then, of course, sweltering DC blew away my whole conception about how hot a person could actually be before their head would explode.

I'm kind of going through that same experience right now but with the busy. I think I'm in New York at this point. I say that because I can only image how busy I am going to feel when I begin preparing for the bar exam, which is probably going to be about in the vicinity of DC. But New York is pretty damn unpleasant, and I have felt myself toeing the line of a mental breakdown once or twice in the past week or two.

Luckily, I have Mr. E to help diffuse my I-can't-handle-this with a hard-nosed dose of yes-you-can-and-you-will-dammit. I also have a great sense of denial and an exhibited pattern of avoidance.

So what I'm dealing with right now is this: (1) I have to draft a complaint and motion for summary judgment for work, which does not have a hard deadline, but which I promised they would see a draft of in two weeks, which means Friday; (2) I have an in-class graded midterm in Criminal Law next Tuesday, and the material to be covered is actually quite challenging (mens rea -- difficult -- who knew?); (3) I have a roughly 8 page paper due in Wills & Trusts also next Tuesday; (4) Law Review, the evil obligation from the third circle of hell, will be assigning me to perform a second edit of a paper on Thursday and will uncharitably ask for it to be due Saturday night (the first edit took me roughly 15 hours, and considering the appalling state of the paper, I'm not sure the second edit will take much less).

It is now, I guess technically Tuesday night, but my computer clock is calling this Wednesday. That means I need to get the Complaint practically finished tomorrow. I think I can do that. It is started, but needs a lot of fleshing out. I think I can make my bosses happy by supplying them the Complaint on Friday and promising the MSJ the following week. Next most important is the Crim Law studying -- that test ain't gonna disappear and there are a lot of bright eyed bushy tailed 2Ls in that class who have not had their souls crushed in 1L (remarkably) and will probably come guns blazing to the test. I gotta bring it too. Finally, I can take a two day extension on the Wills paper, and most likely will. Otherwise I might have to, like, not sleep for a few days or something, and that would be most unpleasant and out of the question. As for law review, well, it's low-priority, AFAIC.

Today's takeaway advice:
Don't join the law review; or if you think you must, make sure that the review has entered the 21st century and uses digital means to accomplish its purposes. I'm talking Google Docs and Dropbox and the like. There is no reason I should have to vie against 30 other people for 4 computers and hard copy binders of the materials we are working on. Digital, people! For fuck's sake.

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Hell of a

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:31:00 +0000

I am just over halfway through my first week back at school and already I am feeling very high stress levels. I have a lot on my plate this semester: 15 credit hours (that's 5 classes, most twice a week), law review, and law firm work.

This law review business has been a royal pain in the ass since I started on it the week before classes. So far, I've been doing my part in source checking a 100-page paper written by one of my school's professors that will be published in the next journal issue. What that entails: locate original or photo-PDF versions of the sources cited in the paper, check the citation format, and then check to make sure the source actually supports what the author says it does, on the page he says it does.

Finding my sources was pretty easy thanks to the magic of the internet. I checked out some real live books from my school's library for the first time ever. Two of my sources are unfortunately in Spanish, so I can't verify if they support the author's assertions, but I am told that someone fluent in Spanish is going to do it. Actually, I was able to verify one of those sources by using Google Translate -- artificial translators are actually getting pretty good these days! But someone else will officially confirm the original.

The hardest part has been pin-citing each footnote that quotes each source. I only have about 10 sources, but some of them are quoted in 50 footnotes, and sometimes those footnotes do not give specific pages on which the support is to be found, so I have to find it myself. Here is where Google comes to the rescue again with Google Books. Not everything is on there (yet), but luckily two of my sources which the author cited copiously were text searchable on GBooks. The biggest problem is where the author cites a 10-20 page range that is support for his assertion. I'm supposed to go in and highlight and label the support, but what do you do in that situation? I've been skimming to make sure the pages generally talk about what he's talking about and then move on with my life.

After hours and hours of work (probably between 20 and 30), I have finally highlighted all my sources. All I have to do is enter the changes to the citation format on the computer in the law review office. Only problem is those four computers are always full of other LR students doing the same damn thing. They have some ethernet ports available in the office, and I googled a video to help me figure out how I can connect to their network using my own laptop (haven't had to use ethernet since about 2004, and that was on a PC). That way I can work whenever the hell I want to work. It's better not to have to use a foreign machine anyway. I hate having to work with other people's default settings and without my shortcuts. Wastes so much time just figuring out how stuff is oriented. Maybe I can get that crap done tomorrow.

Anyway. After this part is done, I guess things should go easier as we move into other phases that are more about editing than source-checking. All I can say is it's fucking bullshit that they only give you 2 credit hours for a whole year of law review, with all the damn work you put in. I said I wasn't going to complain about it, because I got so fucking sick of hearing my friends complain about "stupid law review" last year. But what can I say? It really is a royal pain. I cannot fathom why people out there in the legal realm are so impressed with this credential. Maybe because it proves you are willing to be a little workhorse bitch. Whatever.

So classes: I think they are probably going to be alright (for law school classes). The subjects are all bar subjects. Things like wills / trusts, criminal law, income tax, and secured transactions (fancy talk for when you put up personal assets to secure a debt). Those are all pretty dry subjects, but happily, at least three of the four professors teaching them are very engaging. The fourth... I need to see her in action a few more times to be sure, but she will probably be fine. I actually have a fifth class only once a week, and tomorrow is my first session. It's a class on cyber-crime (internet fraud, child porn, online copyright & trademark infringement, online trade secret misappropriation, hacking -- things like that). It will be taught by a USDOJ guy who I heard give a presentation earlier this year. I liked his presentation, so hopefully I will like his class. This is my one "fun" class. I am slightly concerned because it's a seminar: worth fewer credits, but always seeming to have more work than a regular 3 or 4 credit hour class. But I'm pretty much all in if I want to both graduate on time AND have an easier load next semester.

This morning I woke up drenched in sweat, changed my clothes, went back to bed, and then hours later woke up drenched in sweat again. I guess that could be an indicator of stress. I also wonder if it might not be a reaction to the change in weather. In 2004 when I went to Kiel Germany on study abroad, my first week there I woke up drenched in sweat in the middle of every night. Needless to say I had a lot of laundry after that first week. I remember talking to a friend there who was experiencing the same thing. Maybe it was the weather, maybe we were both stressing. Who knows?

Anyway, it's gonna be a hell of a semester.

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Lactose intolerance!*

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:14:00 +0000

*The title of this post should be read as Meg Ryan's voice in the movie French Kiss.

So it turns out I have developed an intolerance to lactose. This is highly inconvenient for me because many of my favorite foods involve milk or milk products. Coffee and tea -- staples of my diet -- are not complete without milk. Cereal, cheese, yogurt, and butter have been on my daily ingestion list for as long as I can remember.

Ever since I identified my unknown food intolerance as being linked to ingestion of milk products, I have been making an effort to reduce my milk consumption, but I find no day's meals complete without it. I have been taking lactase enzyme supplements to aid in my body's digestion of lactose, and they do help, but they do not completely solve my problem.

Yesterday I tried my very first soy latte. My first sip was a little off-putting. This was not what I expect my latte to taste like. It was sort of nutty and sweet and the texture was a little thicker than I am accustomed to. The taste of the soy milk was stronger than the taste of the espresso. But as I kept sipping, the taste began to grow on me, and by the end of the cup I may or may not have removed my lid so as to lick the frothy foam within. I can't really say I have made a practice of doing that with regular lattes. So in the end I think it may be an acceptable substitution. I hesitate to put soy milk on my cereal, though. It just doesn't seem right.

I have heard that lactose-free milk exists. I'm going to look for it, but I suspect it might be (a) hard to find and (b) prohibitively expensive. Things are always more expensive when they take stuff out, for some reason.

Meanwhile, I will be chomping on chalky enzyme tablets and trying to figure out what kinds of foods I can put into my food staples list that do not involve large amounts of lactose.

I need to find a good substitute for yogurt. I mean, I can't live without yogurt. I am just too passionate about it. It completes me.

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Chopped all my hair off again

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:51:00 +0000

Just felt like time. What a damn goofy grin on that last frame.

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Tell us how you really feel

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 05:49:00 +0000

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Two Points

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 05:05:00 +0000

(1) Yesterday one of my old longtime roommates texted me out of the blue because she and her boyfriend were driving through Portland on the way home from Canada. So I went downtown and met them for lunch. It was quite nice to chat since I haven't actually seen or really talked to this friend in maybe a couple years. Sometimes time just spins away from you as far as old friends are concerned. But it's nice when you get to reconnect with someone that you genuinely like, and have only neglected because you now live in far away places having new adventures. It was not an awkward meeting the way meetings with long-unseen people can be. Instead it was a delightful visit very much like how our interactions always used to be when we lived in the same apartment, and that makes me glad. I do love the chance to hang out with old friends who come through this town. And Portland is a very come-through-able town indeed. Mostly, though, I just wish all my old friends would move here, because I'm self-centered like that.

(2) I have been accepted to join the law review at my school for next year. I went ahead and participated in the write-on competition to try to get a staff position. I don't remember if I mentioned on this blog that I would be participating or not. Might have kept it to myself in the chance that I would be embarrassingly rejected. But, nope, they like me. So I will join their elitist ranks and have another line for my resume. I think there's a chance I might like doing it too. We'll see. At least this means I will have enough credits to drop a class next Spring semester. Huzzah!

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Not Alienating People 101

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 06:22:00 +0000

Here's how it is, people. If you say you are going to do something, you do it. If you don't know if you can do something, you don't say you are going to do it. Backing out because you got a better offer is not cool. Backing out at the very last minute is ultra not cool. Backing out because you have a very good reason is fine, but there is a very limited set of very good reasons comprised mainly of unforeseen emergencies. That's all there is to it. It really isn't complicated.

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New Experiences

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:42:00 +0000

Seattle. Last weekend, Ian and I drove up to Seattle to catch a Mariner's game with my buddy Sov, who flew up to meet us from Salt Lake. The drive to Seattle from Portland takes almost exactly three hours if traffic is unimpeded, and it was. That is, right up until we actually reached the city. Then, due to one of those annoying city races where they close down city streets, we had to detour in nearly stand-still traffic for an hour until we could finally find a parking lot that would take cars all day. (Lots of parking lots in Seattle seem to have a 1-2 hour limit for some reason. That makes sense for roadside parking, but I don't get it in parking lots.) Once we finally ditched the car, we met up with Sov near the two enormous stadiums in the southern end of the city. I was pleased to notice a restaurant in that neighborhood called Berliner Döner Kebab. Next time I am in Seattle, I will be sure to check it out to see how it stacks up to my own local Döner shop. We then toured Seattle mostly on foot, but also on bus and monorail. I think Seattle is a really fun town to play tourist in, but I think that's also one of its main drawbacks as far as livability goes. So many damn tourists everywhere. Portland gets tourists, but not nearly to that extent. After we tired ourselves out seeing the sights, we headed back to the stadium for our baseball game. The Mariners lost to the Marlins 2-6, but it was a very action-packed game, which is really all I ever want out of a ball game. (I am known to applaud either team for making a good play -- don't care if it's "my" team or not.) I had a good trip, and it was great to see Sov. Next time I'm taking the train to Seattle, since it stops mere blocks from the stadium.

Last Thursday. I guess it's probably strange that I've lived in Portland for two years but only just attended my first "Last Thursday" yesternight. Last Thursday is kind of like a thing Salt Lake has called Gallery Stroll, where all the local art galleries open their shops with wine and cheese for foot-touring. But Last Thursday is Gallery Stroll times about a thousand. It takes place up on NE Alberta Street -- kind of a cool little strip of coffee shops, bars, boutiques, and food shops. The street is closed down to automobile traffic, the businesses and local artists put out their wares, crazy people juggle fire, and musicians good and bad release their music into the atmosphere. It's a cool thing, but it is very well attended, which makes Last Thursday a little beyond my comfort level. You don't feel like you can linger too long in any place because there are so many people moving about like cattle, and you feel like you have to join the flow. The only time in my life when I felt more crowded was when I went to Bumbershoot music festival and literally could not move without touching somebody. I could move without touching people at Last Thursday, but inevitably some people were touched, and that is something that I don't really like. Touching people, I mean. I'm not a touchy person. I like my space. Space is a definite issue at Last Thursday. But it was cool to do once. I think I'd be happy to hang out in NE Alberta on any other day, which is saying something, because it's on the dreaded east side of the river (which I don't really like going to in general). And the affair kind of reminded me of one of my old roommates, so that was nice.

Top 25%. Well, it's official: I have made it into the top 25% of my law school class. (I am number 62 out of 258, which is technically the top 24%.) Now I have a new goal: top 20%. Not sure if I can make it by the time school ends, but I'll give it a shot.

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The joys of summer

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:10:00 +0000

Summer is so lovely this year. Last summer was much less relaxing and much less engaging than this summer.

Last summer I was working full time (and for free -- no, scratch that, I was paying for the privilege to work because I got school credit). This summer I am working part time for pay.

Last summer I had to get up super ass early and walk 20 minutes to my bus stop (after having spent half an hour getting ready) so that I could arrive at the office before 8:30. This summer I snooze my alarm from 8:00-9:30-ish, roll out of bed, check my email for 5 minutes, then clock in to my job at home, and if for some reason I can't work in the morning, I can work at night and it makes no difference.

Last summer I researched a few interesting things, like music licensing and the intersection between IP law and bankruptcy law, but most of the time my work was very tedious and boring. This summer most of my work is interesting: I get to work on copyright and trademark cases, draft actual response letters to opposing counsel, research interesting legal questions, and familiarize myself with some litigation filings. Only some of my work is mindless data entry, but even that is ok because I can listen to my music while doing it, or have TV on in the background.

So basically I am very happy doing what I'm doing this summer. I am learning a lot of really interesting things that I actually really like learning about. I think this area of law is definitely for me. I hope I get to keep doing this through next year.

Exciting bits of news:

My last outstanding grade is in: A- in tech licensing

I have been accepted to my school's small business legal clinic for next spring

In 1.5 weeks Ian and I are driving up to Seattle for a Mariner's game, and my best friend Sov is flying up to join us!

I got tickets to see CAKE this August; haven't been this excited for a show in a long time.

Happy early solstice to y'all.

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It pays to be a 2L

noreply@blogger.com (Sra) — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:50:00 +0000

I have already received all but one of my grades. Actually, I received these grades a week ago, which was a mere week after finishing my last final. Apparently the turn-around is much quicker in the second year, because you end up taking classes with a bunch of graduating 3Ls who need their grades STAT. So I got mine stat too. Here are the results:

Ethics	B
Copyright	B
Business Associations	B+
Constitutional Law II	A
Trademarks	A+
Tech Licensing	awaiting

Check that out! I received my first (and probably only) A+ in a law school class. I am quite pleased with that. I feel only slightly bad for whoever had to suffer a C at the expense of my A+.

I am also very pleased with my A in Con Law. I left that test feeling like I had slayed it, so I'm glad the result mirrors my impression.

The B+ in BA is also noteworthy, because I didn't have a chance to finish that exam and worried that it would probably be a C of some kind. Shows you how much the curve matters.

Of course, I am always satisfied with Bs in any law school course, so I feel fine about Copyright and Ethics too.

Altogether it was a very good semester for me. I think the Tech Licensing paper should be good for at least a B, but I tend to do well on papers, so maybe it will turn out better. Maybe this semester will be good enough to bump me up into the top 25% at last.

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