It's Not Everything I Thought It'd Be

Its been five days since our last final and guess what? We're bored. I forgot how horrible afternoon television really is and when you're living off student loans, you don't exactly have the funds to go out and explore. So we mostly just read (until 3:00 when the People's Court comes on).

To make matters worse, we're lucky if we're able to sleep much past 7:00. This is the view from our bedroom window:

It gets dark here around 4:30, so there's not a lot of daylight to work with. Work starts as soon as the sun comes up around 7:00 or 7:30. Monday morning they were hammering. Today they were cutting metal pipes. To make matters worse, some of the heavy equipment shakes our apartment. When construction started about a month ago, they had a steamroller that shuck our whole apartment almost constantly. Today, they had some heavy equipment that would give us a short, mild shake every once in a while. It's a little like trying to read in a moving car.

For our law school friends, yes, we are thinking of bringing a nuisance cause of action against the construction.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day with nothing to do but curse the construction.

Two At A Time

When people find out that both of us are in law school, they're always shocked. In truth, I think it makes a lot more sense to do this at the same time because we each know exactly what the other is going through. On the other hand, there is one downside to going through law school together. As every law student knows, you amass a plethora of dirty laundry and dishes during the last month or so of the semester. We have two people contributing to the mess and guess what? Neither one of us has time to cleanup. Thus, we get six loads of laundry (consolidated into four loads to save on quarters) and a kitchen counter that we haven't seen for six weeks. Just one of the many reasons we're glad finals are over.

Work Hard, Play Hard

We've been celebrating heavily the last two days! We had an awesome party at Lark Tavern after our last final and I think 95% of our class showed up. It was a blast, I've included some pictures for you. Names have been changed.
Madness decends on Lark Tavern after our last final. Look at all the future lawyers!
I'm not saying that I was sober all night. There was Free Beer after all.


This is my lawfirm. (Our lawfirm was formed as part of our lawyering class) The gril on the far right is an honory member of the law firm!

The girl on the right is from NYC and these pictures were taken with her camera. The girl on the left is from San Antonio. We've bonded over discussions of SaltLick and Mexican Martinis. She's down there right now eating good Mexican Food. I am jealous!

His and our friend from Miami. It was fun to dog him about football this semester
I'm holding on to this picture for a while. The two girls are in my property class (the blonde sat next to me in the class and we saved each other from the fear that is my, um, energetic property professor). The guy in the middle is in my section.

As you can tell we had a great time. We celebrated last night too. We started out with a little Hanukkah party complete with a exciting flip cup tournament and then we went to a Rugby party. Good times, good times.

Thats all for now. His and I will be doing absolutely nothing today and I'm pretty sure it will be everything we thought it could be.

From 60 To Zero

Have you ever had one of those days when you look outside and just know you shouldn't get out of bed? That was Thursday morning. Just one Civ Pro final standing between us and a month of nothing and we couldn't see lights across the street through the fog. As we made our way from the parking lot, a murder of crows perched on top of a barren tree emerged. If we didn't have a final to take, I would've turned around and headed back to bed.

My professor gave our class an extra thirty minutes to complete the final giving us four and a half hours in all. Hers had just three and a half hours to complete her final (she's gotten the short end of the stick all year long, so why change that now). I needed every minute of the four and half hours to finish the test. I was a little dizzy after sitting for 270 straight minutes. Everyone in Hers class struggled to finish in time. Not one person left early.

When hers and I finished and we stumbled out the doors of the law school into the warm sunshine, we began to realize that we had absolutely nothing to do. There were no more finals to study for. No more papers to write. No more assignments to read. We have a month to do nothing but sit and relax. It's kind of a weird feeling, but it'll probably be the last time I have a free month until I retire, so I'm plan to make the most of it. I'm going to do nothing and I suspect it'll be everything I thought it would be.

Torts... brutally short.

I had a teacher in high school who once said “each word is a pearl.” Today during my torts final that phrase became “each word is like a flawless four carat Painite”, priceless. In response to my tort prof’s hatred for excess verbiage she imposed some seriously draconian space restrictions. We had two short answers each of which had to be under 500 characters, not words, but characters. To put that into perspective my post up until this point has 454 characters. As you can tell I’m perfectly capable of rambling on for 500 characters without saying anything.

I had to fully analyze a vicarious liability problem in less then what I’ve written here. That’s not an easy task for me. Especially when you consider the “gift for gab” I’ve inherited from the matriarchs of my family. But I did it. And because I got through my multiple choice and short answer rather quickly I was able to devote a full hour to doing nothing but editing my long essay down to 5700 characters. There wasn’t a drop of passive voice (or an adjective for that matter) left in that darn essay. But I do have to say that Torts is the most entertaining exam to take. Where else to you get to combine someone falling in a moat, being struck with golf clubs, having medical equipment left in you and committing suicide by drinking too much water?

3 finals down, 1 to go and a keg of beer waiting at the end of that rainbow.

Misery Sells

We couldn't help notice a spike in traffic corresponding to the start of finals. As Hers says, this is reason reality television is so popular. We just wanted to say we're glad our misery is keeping everyone entertained and that you only have another week to enjoy that and than it's winter break :)

Hope everyone else is enjoying their holidays :)

Property, at least its all relative!

We took our property final today. In case you’re wondering how it went we went to the bar right after the final. And after the pitcher of beer it’s not exactly like we’re feeling better about the exam, it’s just that we don’t care as much any more.

My professor model his exam after the BAR exam. We had one section that was multiple choice, one essay section and one “performance” section. The multiple choice was 33 questions and we had 1.8 minutes to do each question. The multiple choice questions themselves weren’t hard, but the answers presented were enough to drive me to drinking. The questions went something like this:

O conveyed Blackacre to B so long as used for a some really inane and if not to Susie so long as Susie never smokes crack if she does to Ted. Allen adversely posses the upper left quadrant of Blackacre while B then sells the lower right section to LaShawnda. Allen then sells the upper third of his section to Billy. What is the status of Susie’s claim:

[6 answers that could all be right or could all be wrong]

Choose One:

A: 1,3,4,5 but not 2 and sometimes 6

B: 6 in New Jersey; 4 & 5 in a community property state but not 2 in England in 1600

C: 1 & 4 if under the policy argument of Sawada, 2 in state that employs the destruction of contingent remainders rule but not 6 if the state is community property

D: All of the above

E: None of the above

After 33 of these mind numbing questions it was on to my “performance” exam. We were given a case that we had never read before and we had to analyze and discuss it. It wasn’t too horrible, and the Essay was to discuss everything we thought was wrong with American property law. (It was hard not to mention any of the prof’s questions in this category).His’ final was tough too. The multiple choice weren’t as bad but his essays were tough.

The moral of all of this story to all of you who own real property and substantial chattels: Please, Please, Please make sure that you have a will! And make sure that your will is correct, lest you run the risk of being studied in a future law student’s book on property. That is all!

C is for Confidence

Well, we’re officially in the middle of all the insanity. We’re learning that there are certain people this time of year that you can’t talk to for more than five minutes without starting to go a little crazy yourself. Luckily for us, a friend invited us to study in a classroom she had reserved along with a few others (thanks L). That turned out to be the best thing we could’ve done. We were able to hide away from the craziness, kick ideas around, and ask questions about the statute of frauds without getting into a heated three hour debate.

We finished up studying last and got to bed by 10:00. I woke up this morning feeling confident of two things: I had a good grasp on Contracts, and that knowledge would earn me a C. My professor pretty much told us in the review session that everyone was going to get a C. The problem is that he doesn’t really like to give Ds or Fs. Well, because of the curve, every grade above a C has to be balanced by a grade lower than a C. Last year, I believe there were three As in a class of around 60-70 students. Well, at least I shouldn’t have to worry about failing.

My final was entirely essay and consisted of two questions that were a little over a page each and one question that was about a paragraph long. I felt like I did a pretty good job on the final, which probably just means that I missed a lot of issues raised in those questions. In other words, I left confident of two things: I had a good grasp of contracts and that knowledge is going to earn me a C. Isn’t law school fun?

So, we have one final down, four to go. Next up is Property on Friday but for right now, it’s time to kick back and watch The People’s Court before focusing on Property.

Those who can study, those who can't Blog.

Our first exam is less than 36 hours away. Yikes. You may be asking me why I’m posting instead of studying. Well, I’m just tired of studying. There’s only so many ways one can study an outline. Next I’m going to try reading it on one leg and barking like a dog, no a really big dog. That might help.

Our last day of class was today. I had two classes and his had 1. My two classes were property and contracts. Let me tell you how useful those two hours of my life were.

Our property professor spent 15 minutes out of our only 50 minutes of review telling us how to eat a proper breakfast and get plenty of sleep. Got that, thanks, move on. Well he did. He tried so hard to pump us up but he fell a little short. In general it’s a good thing to tell people that they could do really well on your test and a bad thing to tell them that you’ve had a reputation at all your schools of being a very demanding grader. Don’t further patronize us by telling us that the test could even be “enjoyable”. I’m sure that’s what they told surgical patients right before they took a shot of whiskey and bit down.

And on to Contracts. Today was performance art day. Our professor gave extra credit out to people who reenacted a case. The reenactments were great and you could tell they had put a lot of time into it. These worried me greatly. How do these people have free time to plan out a skit or write a poem. What do they know that I don’t know. Should I be writing my contract outline in poetry. This is just a little of the self-destructive logic that goes through a law students mind right before finals.

Because everything is graded on a curve you get a little paranoid about who might know more than you and how much everybody else is studying and how they’re studying. You can see the tension and the stress on everyone’s face when you pass them in the halls. Students line up in an eager anticipation, that is only duplicated by black Friday, in hopes of landing one of the few study rooms in the library. Otherwise you’re stuck out in the open looking at the despair and stress on everybody else’s face.

This post isn’t to worry any of you that His and I are about to crack. We do our work, get to bed at a reasonable hour and eat a good breakfast. I should be half way to acing my property final. Rather this post is just a thinly veiled attempt to get all of you to wish us good luck in our Comments.

I'll see your voidable title and raise you a knock out rule.

I just don’t know if I can take much more of this. His and I are spending upwards of 16 hours a day studying. We wake up and study. We eat and study. Even when we take shower we’re studying. And the little time we have that we’re not actively studying, we are talking about what we are studying. Our conversation consist of us grilling each other on questions in some sort of sick 1L-upmanship. A typical conversation will go something like this:

Hers: Some inane hypo about adverse possession

His: Some even more obscure reference to the tolling of the statute of limitations.

Hers: Pulling out the trump card relates it all back to UCC 2-403 and a bona fide purchaser for value.

His: licks his wounds and comes back with an even more inane hypo about unjust enrichment.

Hers: throws in a comment or two about there being three kinds of reasonable standards

His: counters with an in-depth analysis of UCC 2-207 subsection 3.

And this is the ritual we go through until we decide to toll the competition and return to our outlines, books, and notes in hopes of coming up with an even more obscure and challenging hypo. This really is as fun as it sounds; don’t all line up at once to hang out with us!

Random Thoughts

I don't know which came first, the law school or the medical school, but putting one right across the street from the other was not a great idea. If the construction doesn't distract you, the ambulance sirens will. And then they wonder why we can't wait to sue them when we graduate (the medical school refers to the law school as the "baby shark tank").

With our first final just five days away, maybe it's not the best time for social hour in the library. And if you insist on making the rounds and visiting with every table, is it asking too much that you whisper?

With winter approaching I have to ask: What the hell New York? Is it really necessary to rig every gas pump in the state so that you have to stand there and squeeze the trigger while pumping gas? I can't stand in the cold wind pumping gas when I know there's a better way. I blame Hillary.

Fear & Loathing In December

As of Wednesday night, I have no more reading for any classes this semester. I have one more class remaining where we’ll go through the intricacies of Summary Judgment and a couple of review sessions on Monday and Tuesday and then our first final will be Wednesday. For those who haven’t been to law school, the best way to describe finals is that it’s similar to the scene in that movie “The Paper Chase.” If you haven’t seen it, basically it’s about a guy with really bad 70’s hair (complete with a really bad 70’s ‘stache) who makes it into Harvard Law. Near the end of the movie is a great scene where everyone is cracking under the pressure of preparing for finals. Hotel employees are chased by rabid law students, people are running through the halls of school shouting, and utter chaos is unfolding. In reality, there is no chaos in the halls and if any law students have accosted any hotel employees, we haven’t heard of it. But the outward chaos in the film is a good indication of the inner chaos every first year law student goes through at this time.

Why the big deal? Inexperience for one. None of us have taken a law school exam. We may have taken practice tests, but those usually aren’t graded and they really only show us that law school exam are noting like our undergrad exam. Then there’s fact that, unlike undergrad, law school is competitive. In undergrad, if you get a 95% on the final, you get an A. As Hers pointed out, in law school if everyone else gets a 95% too, that outstanding effort earns you a C. Finally, we all should, in theory at least, be of similar ability. There is no full proof way to evaluate how well an applicant will do in law school, but the best indicator is GPA and LSAT (think SAT for law school wannabes) scores. Everyone here has similar GPAs and LSAT scores meaning we all have an equal shot at success in law school. However, traditionally, we’ll lose about 20 students this semester. Some will drop out, some will simply be asked not to come back. (And if you say no school is going to turn down tuition from a willing student, think again. Albany is trying desperately to improve its ranking among other law schools and one way for it to do that is to raise its bar passage rates. If you’re carrying a D- average, your odds of passing the bar aren’t looking to good and the school would just as soon drop you now to prevent you from dragging the class average down when it comes time to take the bar.)

Now I know some people read this and say that it sounds like I’m stressed and I appreciate the concern. Truth is that I am stressed a bit, but it’s not the ulcer inducing, cold sweets at night kind of stress. It’s the motivating kind of stress that makes you work 12 hours a day to understand “blasted RAP” in hopes that you’ll manage a C or (dare to dream) better on the final.

I now return to my regularly scheduled review of the statute of frauds.

PS-If the typos I've corrected so far are any indication, I should stop blogging after studying all day. At least finals are in the morning.

The double edged sword

Sometimes the curve goes your way, sometimes it does not.

Today was the last day of my lawyering class (well for the semester, anyway). And while we were sitting there basking in the glow of not have to worry about Neumann (our book, which is appropriately named. We look at that book with the same amount of distain Jerry would have towards his overweight mailman. We even refer to it in the same tone. Note to readers: this is a Seinfeld reference, feel free to skip it if you don’t watch the show). Back to my story. As we are sitting there our professor tells us how much she’s enjoyed us, we’ve been a lot of fun, etc. Then she starts to talk about the memo. That’s right, the dreaded memo. The one his and I have been ranting about on this blog. She tells us that this is the best batch of memos she has ever read. Sounds great, right? Nope. The class is graded on a curve, so an A paper last year might easily end up a C- paper this year. I guess I got assigned to the wrong class.

Example of the curve not being such a bad thing: My property class. We have the zaniest property class. While all the other property classes were reviewing this week we STARTED the most confusing and difficult section of our class: The Rule Against Perpetuities, which will be hereinafter referred to as “blasted RAP.” Other classes had weeks to learn this; we had 2 days. That’s fair. Anyway, “blasted RAP” basically states that a conveyance (deed/ will) must be vested, if at all within 21 years of the life in being. Sounds straight forward but with items such as fee simple subject to partial divestment, springing executory interests, contingent remainder subject to partial divestment , the dreaded Rule of Conveniences (which 1) is not in our book, 2) Is not in any of the outside supplements one can buy for the class and 3) NO OTHER CLASS IS LEARNING), precocious toddlers, fertile octogenarians and unborn widows make “blasted RAP” the most mind numbing, curl up in a fetal possession, cold sweat inducing topic that we’ve covered to date. But thanks to the magic of the curve I could get a 5% on the final ( a very real possibility) and still walk away with a C.

In summation:

Curve in lawyering =bad

Curve in property =the only thing that may keep me in law school

We Have A Lot To Be Thankful For . . .

In the interest of law school efficiency (if you're a law student, you'd find that funny or at least mildly amusing), we had our Thanksgiving meal on Friday and it was nothing if not interesting.

It actually all started a few days ago when we noticed the fridge was leaking. So we talked to the manager and he finally sent someone up to fix it on Friday. Then, this afternoon, the turkey cooked a lot faster than we anticipated and, as a result, we were behind on the mashed potatoes, green beans, and gravy. As we were cooking the gravy, we noticed a small problem, the fridge didn't seem to be working. We're talking about a week or two worth of leftovers in the fridge and the soonest the manager said they could get to it was Monday.

The middle of preparing a tasty Thanksgiving meal is not the best time to realize that your fridge isn't working. We postponed the gravy and went down to talk to the manager who eventually agreed to swap our fridge for another. Of course, that meant cleaning out our fridge and postponing dinner even longer while we waited for the new fridge. In the meantime, we're heating up rolls in the microwave and sneaking on mashed potatoes trying to hold off on dinner. Finally, we reached the point where we couldn't wait any longer and we started the green beans and gravy. In the middle of the gravy, of course, the fridge arrived.


Between restocking the new fridge and making gravy, we managed to finish up the meal and eventually got to sit down for a tasty Thanksgiving meal. Of course, by the time we sat down to eat we were exhausted and stayed pretty much catatonic until the Husker game started.



Speaking of the Husker game, I have plenty to be thankful for, but thank God I'm not a Buff's fan. How'd that taste Colorado?

Ahhh, Miller time!

Well, it is 10:30 here and His and I just printed out the final copies of our respective memos. We are now kicking back with a nice refreshing Miller Lite. Life is good.
I know I speak for His when I say this, but if I ever have to read this damn memo again it better be frosty down in Hades.
I for one, could care less if Denita negligently entrusted her little hussie of a daughter with a jetski. And His is tired of writing about biological parents.
We turn our memos in tomorrow and will be celebrating with a nice cold beer with my section. HOLLA SECTION 9!

Have a Happy Turkey Day one and all!

Our First Day Of Law School

It seems so long ago, but if I remember correctly, it went a little something like this . . .

The Memo

It’s all us 1Ls can talk about: the memo. It’s a right of passage and its mere mention brings shivers to upperclassmen. It’s the culmination of our first semester of Introduction to Lawyering and the largest part of our grade in that class. It’s what we’ve spent the better part of a week working on it’s due Tuesday.

So what do you learn in lawyering? No, it’s not all about making cheesy television commercials or figuring out how much an ad on the front of a telephone book costs. We’re given a hypothetical case and we’re expected to progress through the various stages of litigation while learning how to write and think effectively as lawyers. We use the case to walk us through a guided research project (yes, I now know what all this numbers and abbreviations after a case name mean and I might even be able to find the case in one of those official looking books you see behind the DA’s desk in Law and Order) and now we have to take everything we’ve learned and write an objective memo highlighting what we believe is the most effective argument regardless of what side we’re on. In other words, we get to make our best guess about how a court will rule.

In putting together our objective memo, we have to follow a strict formula and we have to properly cite each source according to Bluebook rules. The Bluebook, for those who are not and have not been to law school, is billed as a uniform system of citations. The problem is that the Bluebook is so convoluted and complex that it’s impossible to follow. It seems like each professor has their own interpretations of what the Bluebook requires which I guess is realistic because different courts want you to cite cases in different ways, so it’s all about finding out what’s expected and then ignoring all the rules in the Bluebook that seem to be to the contrary.

At any rate, my memo will be turned in Tuesday and then, as Hers said, it’s off to the bar so we can forget for a little bit about all the outlining we have to do over Thanksgiving break.

Now back to my memo.

Law School Humor

It’s no wonder people hate lawyers. We actually think things like this are funny.

I've been here too long and can not form a coherent thought...you've been warned.

I’ve just spent the last four hours editing out the passive voice in my dreaded memo. So if any of the editors or writers are reading this, please, please have mercy on my horrible writing. I officially apologize to all of our readers for having to sift through my drivel. I had no idea what a horrid writer I really was.

I write good:
Why does a political science degree do such a poor job of preparing you to write?
I know what you’re thinking, what did you learn in political science if not writing. Well, what I learned was simply this: Long sentence and big words equal A. Short sentences and easily deciphered words equal C. I wanted the A so I learned to write with highly complicated (read grammatically WRONG) sentences and highly pretentious words. Law school is about communicating what you must in as few words as possible and with words that are clear and easy to understand. This has been a struggle for me. And most of you who know me, now that I’m not passive about anything in my life. Why do I insist on writing so passively. “Be” verbs why are you so tempting?!

I’m gonna go with she hates us:
Why is my lawyering class the only one to have class this week, and the week after Thanksgiving? Why must she send us an assignment during our Turkey day holiday. Does she not realize that finals are a mere 3 weeks away and we have real classes to study for? Does she hate us? After much meditation I have found the answers to these questions respectively.

1) Because she hates us.
2) Because she wants us to know that she is the true meaning of every holiday.
3) Of course she does, see number 1.
4) Id.

Mixed messages:
I was a star today in property. The girl who sits next to me in property was gone. No one sits on the other side of me. I sit in the front row. I was stranded on an island today, where the professor looks for anything that sets you out from the crowd. Be it a coffee cup, a cub’s sweatshirt or just movement of any kind. I knew that he was going to ride me today so I bit the bullet and volunteered in a class whose mantra is “no good deed goes unpunished”. And I rocked. After my wonderful answer the professor said “I LOVE your answer”. So answer me this… why did he blow me off 2 hours later when I said hi to him in the cafeteria? That hurt.

Sated bliss:
Turkey Day is coming and His and I are excited. We hand in our dreaded memo on Tuesday, then we’re going to party like its 1999. You know, old school with a lot of booze. Please make no attempt to contact us early on Wednesday. We will then be spending all of Wednesday outlining and preparing for finals. Thursday we will be doing the same, except for in the morning when we make pies. Friday we will be celebrating Thanksgiving by cooking the 20lb bird His picked up for us. We’ll be making rolls, mashed potatoes, green beans of some sort to be determined, cranberry compote, pumpkin and pecan pie and probably a nice brandy whip cream. Then we will be watching the HUSKERS lay the smack down on the Buffaloes! After this we will slip into our tryptophan induced slumber. Then its back to outlining and studying and probably some horrific assignment from my lawyering prof.

So that’s what we have in store. Drop us a line sometime and let us know what’s going on in the outside world. PS I refuse to even reread this post, so um, yeah I’m pretty sure it stinks.

I'm not even sure what my name is anymore

We've been at the law school for 13.5 hours (I've been in the library for 11.5 hours) and we are not even close to being ready to leave. With the end of the semster all too quickly approaching his and I are working hard. Hopefully we'll still find time to post but if not we will make it up over the winter break.

Useful tidbits I have picked up along the way:

1) You do not have heirs if you are alive. End of story.

2) Laches is a doctrinal nightmare.

3) it is imperitive that all aspiring attorneys acquire an acute appreciation of ABA rule 3.1 (there is a point to the alliteration)

4) NEVER EVER EVER call your professor a Wanker when he is standing behind you.

Let The Fun Begin

It seems as if we're officially entering the finals period. My first indication was in Torts, where Professor Stevenson reminded us that we only have four weeks left before finals (actually, it's five, but she thought four would sound better to us; it did not). That was only the beginning. Today, Professor Taranto gave us a peptalk about plowing through this difficult time. Then I saw Dean Mayer, who I have Civil Procedure, in the hallway and she remarked how this time of year she can see the 1Ls' eyes glaze over with information overload. She's right too. I'm not sure how I'm going to hold everything I've learned this semester in my head and apply it to a test.

It doesn't help that I'm a bit behind in my outlines (which is to day I have Property and Civ Pro started, but not Contracts or Torts). I've attempted starting a Torts outlines several times, but I'm just having a hard time structuring it. Contracts I fear. Of all my classes, Contracts seems the most ambiguous. We read a case that lays out one set of facts and concludes there was no consideration and thus no contract, then we read another case with a very similar fact pattern and the court finds there was consideration and thus a contract. Ugh!

So the craziness has begun. We took last weekend completely off and didn't even look at a case book. I felt a little guilty Sunday night, but I woke up so refreshed Monday that it was completely worth it. Unfortunately, that feeling didn't last two long.

I have no idea what we're going to do after finals. It'll seem so weird to have a week with absolutely nothing to do.

Relax Moms

Well, even though our address says Albany, we technically live in Colonie (it's a zip code thing). In the interest of allowing our mothers a better night's sleep, we thought we'd link to this recent study. Please note number 6. Please also note that Lincoln, NE, is not listed anywhere in the top 25 safest cities at all.

Tests, Rugby and Costumes. Oh my!

Well, I had quite the entertaining week and I’ll try and recap if I can remember the whole thing… Actually I can’t really distinguish the beginning of the week from the previous weeks so this is basically about Thursday on.

Torts:
All of my entertaining stories are about Torts. You may remember me talking about a joke contest in Torts. Well, I submitted my joke. I will be the first to admit that it was probably in poor taste, but I thought my prof would enjoy it. She did and I got a book and a bag full of candy on Friday. Yay for Torts! Also, my prof apologized once again in class for implying that I had presented the wrong case.

Class that is the bane of my existence:
I don’t feel comfortable mentioning much about this class, because I wouldn’t be surprised if the professor was monitoring this blog. But since the confidentiality agreement is over. THAT WAS THE WORST HOUR OF MY LIFE! Seriously, that “test” was ridiculous! There was no need to march us into the class two at a time. There was also no need to march up and down the rows glaring at our answer sheets. AHHHH! Okay, I’ve probably said too much.

Contracts:
The same day as the aforementioned test we had a contracts practice test. It went okay, although I was completely brain-drained by the time I took it. I did manage to write an entire paragraph about the “fairness” of the contract. That should earn me a few points. Yay for liberal contracts profs!

Rugby:
We had our last game of the semester this weekend. I was hoping to post pictures but His chickened out and refused to take his gloves off so he could take pictures. I’m sure it was tough for him to stand on the sidelines with the puddles and all.

If you had caught the news recently the Northeast was in the middle of a torrential downpour. But Rugby is played rain or shine. So we bundled up at 6:30am to drive the three hours to Vermont Law School for a match. It would have been a beautiful drive if I could have seen anything through the rain. We got to the pitch about 10:30 or so. The guys Rugby team was just starting their game. We stood around and huddled, trying to stay warm, but then it was our turn to go out into the deluge.

It was a really fun game, even though we lost. We’re terrible though, so I’m not at all surprised. I did however become a one woman wrecking crew. I channeled the previous mentioned “class that is the bane of my existence” and used that anger on the pitch [field]. The game was muddy, physical and a blast. Unfortunately I’m too old and inexperienced to be playing rugby which my body is telling me today. I have the mother of all bruises on my knee and can’t move much, but don’t worry mom His is taking good care of me.

Halloween Party
Albany Law had their Halloween party last night. We got back to our apartment at 6:00 pm and made it to the party around 8:00. I can not believe how creative the costumes were. His and I went as “the married couple”; the costumes were easy. Some of our favorite costumes:

• The Spanish Inquisition
• Pac Man & the Ghost (they took turns chasing each other)
• Two American Gladiators: One was assault, the other battery
• Displaced Tree Fairy (Since all of the trees at our school have been cut down)
• Sam Adams & St. Paulie’s girl (because they read our blog)

Anyway, it was a great party with lots of beer and we only made it to 9:00. I’ve spent the whole day in bed and hobbling around the apartment.

More fun with Torts!

It was at the end of Torts yesterday, when the professor posed this answer: "It would be considered the Iowa equivalent of ...[a case on proximate causation that we had just read]. Ms. [my last name], you should know this."
I racked my brains for the case and couldn't think of it. I looked around at my fellow classmates who were obviously as perplexed as I was. But she kept hounding me: "Ms. [my last name], its an Iowa case, you should know this, shouldn't you?"
I finally responded: "I'm from NEBRASKA, they're not the same state."
The professor looked really embarrassed and apologized. She didn't even know that I was from the Midwest, she just thought that I had presented this case to the class (I hadn't; was another girl with a last name that started with the same initial).
I found this to be a very important educational moment for all of my Yankee classmates. The Midwest is actually compromised of individual states. Shocking, I know.


***Update***
I received an apology email from my torts professor. She admitted that " [my] mystification at [her] suggestion...was entirely appropriate."
In case you're keeping score:
Law School 613
Hers 3
Its been a long long semester.

Anniversaire Aeureux à Nous

We were determined not to celebrate our first anniversary in the library (even though as hers will tell, it might have been the more practical decision). One of the great things about Albany is its location. The Adirondacks and Catskills are just about an hour away. Vermont and New Hampshire (which, by all rights, should be beautiful this time of year) are just a few hours away. The city and Boston are only about three hours away and Montreal is about four hours. The only question was where we were going to end up on our anniversary.

We drove north through the Adirondacks, across the border into Quebec, and into Montreal. We arrived early in the afternoon and set out right away to explore the city. We started off following a walking tour in our guidebook. We started on Notre Dame drive at the statute of the town founder Jacques-Cartier. The building in the background is the oldest bank in Montreal.



Continuing down Notre Dame drive we came to, not surprisingly, the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Montreal.



The inside was impressive, but as you can see, it was a bit dark. Most of the pictures came out blurry. Yea, I could've opened the flash, but it seemed a bit disrespectful to everyone there who was praying (it is, after all, a church). The downside is that it cost $4 (Canadian) to get inside. It's not a whole lot, but I hope they didn't charge the people who were there to pray.



Shortly after leaving Notre Damn, we passed a French book store. It eventually dawned on us that this was a law bookstore. Among the other books, you can make the civil procedure code for Quebec.


Not bad a town hall eh?



One of the best parts of the trip was our little wine and bread picnic in the park. We picked up a cheap bottle with a twist off cap (we really need to start packing corkscrews) and asked the woman behind the counter if it was legal to drink it on the streets. She didn't say much, just placed a brown paper sack in the plastic bag with the wine.

Next, we visited a small candy shop that had a few large rolls for sale. We told her we wanted two rolls and nothing else. She seemed very disturb and offered us, in broken English that matched our broken French, if wanted jam on it. We politely refused. She asked if we wanted something to drink. We said no. She was becoming increasingly distraught. At first we thought she was just trying to sell us something else, but it became clear that she really didn't like the idea of us eating bread by itself. Finally, we held up the wine and said "avec vin."

"Ah! Vin! Vin!" The woman seemed relieved and almost overjoyed. We took our bread and wine to a park in the old port and enjoyed a ghettorific anniversary picnic eating our dry bread and drinking our wine from a paper sack.



After our snack, we wandered through the streets and stumbled upon this church that was modeled after St. Peter's Basicillica. Inside was a beautiful alter. They were just concluding a small mass when we walked in.



Eventually, we stumbled on the Centre Bell, where the Montreal Canadians play. Yes, it was the Canadians who beat my beloved Los Angeles Kings back in 1993 to win the Stanely Cup, but they are the freaking Canadians! At one time, this team had won more championships (24) than any other professional team in North America. Since 1993, the New York Yankees have won four World Series to bring its total to 26. As it so happens, the Canadian's home opener was the next day. Scalpers wanted a premium for tickets but said if they couldn't unload some tickets just before game time, we might be able to find a cheap pair.

We finished the day with a delicious Mexican meal (yes, good Mexican food in Montreal). The next day, we decided we hadn't walked enough and decided to walk up Mount Royal. This small mountain in the middle of town provides a great view of the city. We could've gotten to the top quickly by walking up a set of steps, but we opted for the gradual switchbacks instead. The paths were beautiful with the falling leaves.



When we made it to the top, we were treated to an amazing view of the city.



After Mount Royal, we went back to the Centre Bell and eventually found two tickets for the game. The scalpers all seem to work together and one guy knew of a pair of tickets he could get us from someone else. We stayed with one guy while the other tracked down the tickets. As we stood there, we started wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. I quickly passed my wallet to Hers just in case they decided to try and jump us. In the end, we got the tickets and everything worked out fine. We were a little concerned that the tickets might be fake, but they scanned our bar code and let us into the building.

The game was fantastic. The Canadians fell behind early, but there was a great fight in the first period that lasted a good five minutes or so. The Canadians tied it up late and had some good chances to win it in overtime. Unfortunately, Ottawa won the game in a shootout after a scoreless overtime. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures from the game. Cameras are not allowed. A lot of people did smuggle cameras in, but I didn't want to run the risk of checking a camera somewhere were I didn't speak the native language.

We left early the next day so we could take a scenic route home through the Adirondacks. Along the way, we found Ausable Chasm. We didn't have the energy to walk it (plus, I think you had to buy tickets to get in) but we had a great view from the bridge.


It was nice to get away from the school for a weekend. As you can probably tell by the lack of posts, however, we had a busy week when we got back. It was certainly worth the extra work though.

Party over Here!

His and I had a party for my section last weekend. We were dying to get into the kitchen and show off our awesome decanter. It's infamous around the law school =).
We had such a great time. We laughed and drank, laughed and ate, made annoying legal jokes and got to meet the significant others of our classmates. I'm sure it was nice for the "others" to see who their partner is spending the better part of their lives with. It explains a lot.
Here are a few pictures from the party. Well they are mostly of the food. Because that's how we roll.
Heres everyone hanging out in the kitchen. Why is it people always hang out in the kitchen. Our food was in the dinning room. I guess the booze ws in the kitchen, maybe thats why.

We made:

stuffed potatoes

Our favorite plantain chips and crab dip.

Yummy Fondue

Cheesecake (what else could we serve, we are in New York!)
RISOTTO CAKES! These were bye far the favorite of the night. Thanks to the wonderful chef who gave us the recipe.

That was our party, thanks for stopping by!

My Mother Will Be Happy To Know That I'm Apparently Very Polite

After 12 hours at the law school yesterday, we went to a fund raiser for the Intellectual Property Society here at Albany Law. We ended up staying way later than either of us had wanted and after just five hours of sleep, we were back at the law school. Hers had an 8:00am Torts class and I had a 9:00am Civil Procedure class.

At the start of class, we went over some subject matter jurisdiction problems. The professor went up down the rows in my section systematically calling on people to answer each question. For those of you who aren't law students, the federal courts have to have subject matter jurisdiction to hear a case. That means the case has to involve a federal issue (First Amendment rights, for instance), or it has to involve citizens from different states (called "diversity of citizenship"). The federal courts, however, can get "supplemental jurisdiction" over claims it could not otherwise hear hear if the claim is part of a case that involves a related federal question or if it envolves diversity of citizenship.

My question looked like a supplemental jurisdiction problem because the plaintiff is from the same state as one of the defendants (thus there's no diversity of citizenship). I answer the question as a supplemental jurisdiction problem because there's a state claim related to a federal issue that a federal court could hear (still with me). The professor listens and then says "Well, you're right, but do you need spplemental jurisdiction in this case? Isn't there an easier way?"

I look at the probvlem wondering what in the hell I'm missing. She's clearly hinting that there is diversity of citizenship, but it really doesn't look that way. Furthermore, the claim the question is asking about is clearly a state issue. Finally, feeling compltelte defeated, I meekly utter "Well, it doesn't look like there's complete diversity, so I really don't know what else there is."

The professor looked at the problem again, looked back at me, and apologized. "I was thinking of another question. You're absolutely right. Supplemental jurisdiction is the only way to go here. I'm so sorry, but thank you for being so polite about it. It makes me feel even worse that I made the mistake."

Polite? Well, my mother would be glad to hear it, but lets face it: the last thing I'm going to do is get snooty (snoty?) with a law professor, especially because I do, on occasion, miss small details. After a late night I was in no possession to just assume the professor was wrong.

One more class and we get to go home!

Oh yeah, he went there.

We had a mandatory review session today on exam writing. There is nothing like having class from 9:00 - 3:00 (with only a 30 minute break) and then going to a "mandatory" review session. My brain is fried, please just let me go home. I'm no good to anyone. I can't separate the rule of adverse possession from the paradigm of an argument. And if you asked me anything about supplemental jurisdiction I may just go crazy. (Yes, I know it is a short trip).
Back to my point. We had this review session today. And it was actually entertaining. Our previous session have been 2 hour lectures on grammar. Those are riveting, trust me. The presenter was entertaining, informative and topical. The best line of the day:
Do not write your exam like an email or in instant message format. In fact, just leave the instant messaging to congress.
Bad taste or not, this left me ROTLMAO! It was certainly a well needed diversion.

As an aside, one of the presenters for today's session came up to me afterwards and said that she noticed that I was really engaged in the presentation. It looked like I was taking lots of notes and nodding in agreement with the presenter. I'm glad it looked like this since I was watching the Yankees game on my laptop =)

Memo To ABC: We Have TiVo & We Know How To Use It

I have a TiVo, but because we don't pay for service, I prefer to watch my favorite shows live (rather than set a manual recording). Unfortunately, if the season premier of Lost is any indication, ABC is making the show impossible to watch live. By our count, there was a four minute commercial break every seven minutes. That's roughly 35 minutes of programming in 25 minutes of commercials.

There are two problems with such a high ratio of commercials to programming: 1) Disruption of the narrative flow and 3) Decreased content resulting from what amounts to a shorter show.

TiVo can help resolve the first issue to a certain extent by allowing us to fast forward through commercials. Incidentally, I would think this is one reason why ABC would be judicious with the number of commercials packed into an episode. Lost is a water-cooler show. The kind of show people love to talk about the next day and thus it's exactly the type of show people with DVRs are more likely to watch live. By inserting commercial breaks every seven minutes, ABC is driving away fans that would normally watch the show live.

Even a DVR, however, does not completely elevate the disruption of narrative flow. Sure, a 20 second break while you fast forward through commercials is better than four minutes, but I suspect having to fast forward every seven minutes is going to get old. It breaks up the show too much. Just when you're getting into the story, there's another break!

The second problem can't be solved by a DVR. The show was about forty minutes last year, which still isn't great, but it's better than 35-minutes. We have five minutes less story line in each episode and if you watch Lost you know that a lot can happen in five minutes,

If nothing else, I'll at least feel a little better skipping the commercials. It makes me feel like I'm sticking it to the man even if I know ABC could care less.

Why Is New York So Backward?

It seems we picked a state that's almost completely backward. If any of you have watched an episode of Law & Order and wondered why a criminal case would start out in the New York Supreme Court the answer is simple: We're hopeless backward. In most states, the state supreme court is the highest court in the state. Not so in New York, where the Supreme Court is the lowest court in the land. The highest court in the state is actually the New York Court of Appeals (with the Supreme Court Appelate Division being the intermediary court).

Furthermore, in most states members of the supreme court are called justices whereas members of all other courts are called judges. In New York, members of the New York Court of Appeals are called judges. Members in all other courts are called Justices. I thought I'd post this just in case anyone might think that I made a mistake using the title "justice" when referring to Justice Carlin.

Not All Judges Are Good Writers

You'd think good writing skills would be a prerequisite for a judge. I've certainly read my share of well-reasoned, well-written court decisions, but there are always exceptions to the rule. Take, for instance, Justice Carlin of the City Court of New York, New York County who wrote a decision for Cordas v. Peerless Transp. Co. in 1941.

It appears that a man whose identity it would be indelicate to divulge was feloniously relieved of his portable goods by two nondescript highwaymen in an alley near 26th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan; they induced him to relinguish his possessions by a strong argument ad hominem couched in the convincing cant of the criminal and presses at the point of a most persuasive pistol.

Justice Carlin was obviously a man who liked to hear himself talk. Wouldn't judicial economy be better served by simply saying "This guy was robbed at gun point." Don't judges ever think about us poor law students who have to read their long winded decisions.

Unfortunately, the decision doesn't get any better. It spans a page and a half and consists of a single paragraph. The jest of the case is that a robber jumbed into a cab after holding somebody up. The cabi slammed on the brakes, throwing the driver off balance, and hoped out of the cab leaving it in drive. The cab slowly moved forward hitting a family of pedestrains. The court said the cabi wasn't responsible because he was placed in an emergency situations.

It took me less than a paragraph to say what took Justice Carlin a page and a half.

SCRUM DOWN!

I survived my first Rugby game, although I am a little drunk right now (it makes the injuries less noticeable). We lost, badly. abut we improved. We had to borrow three players from our opponents team so that we could field a full team. And then one of them got kicked out. So we played the first half down a player.
I really enjoyed the game altought I felt completely clueless. I had a great time tackeling and our scrum rocked. We only lost one scrum out of about 20. So yeah us! Here's some pictures that his took:This is me running lines. You have to turn your hip and pass the ball backwards., Its sometiems confusing. Do you like my head band?
Yeah, it wasn't a head band. I had to get my ears taped back. Why? Because second rows (thats me) have their head shoved between a couple of thighs and run a huge risk of having thier ears ripped off.
THE SCRUM! This is the one thing we rocked at. You can kind of see me on the left. I"m the only one with white socks. Seriously, we only lost one scrum, thank you very much. We did a really good job with that. This is the only time I knew what I was doing, so scrum downs were my favorite.
This is one of the out of bounds plays. I'm right behind the girl getting lifted up. I'm still not sure why we do this, but it looks cool.

To all our loyal readers (both of you)

Please help me answer the following question:

What is the difference between an orthopedic surgeon and a puppy?

There's no right or wrong answer, but there is a prize for the answer that makes my tort professor laugh the most.

So think of something funny and witty, post it in the comments, and if I win I'll give you credit.

Thanks

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.

I'm not sure if it is because I have nothing really exciting to report, or if I just haven't had a ton of time, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I am still alive. And this might be my last chance to do that because my first Rugby game is on Saturday.

Rugby:
I just got back from practice and I am HURTIN. I have been moved back to second row and now I basically have to support a prop on my right shoulder. (The prop's are generally the largest girls on the field). So I have one girl sitting on my shoulder, I have one hand around the other second row, I have my other hand through the props leg and my head is shoved between the prop and the hooker. I'm not sure how else to explain this, it really does look as weird as it sounds. I'm pshyced for a first game, but I think I'm going to screw sokmething up. This will most likely lead to me being severely hurt.

Property Class:
I have an interesting, animated property professor who thinks that we are all idiots. And we are compared to him. In the middle of one of his rather passionate degrading sessions I suprised everyone in the class, even myself. I knew exactly what and how he wanted us to answer. I weakly muttered: "Property rights are relative?" YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! He screamed as slid down to his knees ala Brandy Chastain. So now, I'm known as the girl wo brought the prop teacher to his knees. It's a good kind of noteriety.

His & I:
Our first anniversary is coming up and we are heading on a weekend trip to Montreal. I'm so excited. We'll get to speak some French, go somewhere we've never been before and mange in a great city for gourmands. If you've been and have any suggestions let me know!

Section 9:
I have the greatest section (a group of 18 students who have all the same classes together). We all get along really well. We're all really supportive and everyone is really, really funny. To celebrate our greatness His and I are having a party for my section on Sunday. We will finally get to do some serious cooking and socializing.

Jewish Holidays and Italian Americans!
You might think that this is a weird pairing, but thanks to Yom Kippur and Columbus Day His and I have two three-day weekends coming up. The first is this weekend. We have alumni weekend at the law school, my first rugby game and our party. Should be a laid back weekend, huh?. The next weekend we will probably be doing nothing but reading and outling. So one fun weekend, one not so fun. I'll take that.

Distractions

A good slogan for law school is that it's better to fade away than burn out. With that in mind, Hers and I try to maintain some semblance of a normal life. I mean, we could spend all day in the library and, in fact, some days we do. But you can't spend every day in the library and be expected to think straight in class. So every once in awhile, we have to recharge the batteries and relax a bit. This may involve a bottle of wine or a six pack of beer depending on the circumstances. It may also involve some quality time in front of the television.

Fall isn't just about going back to school, it's also about new episodes of our favorite shows, which means The Office and Lost. The Office is, at times, painfully uncomfortable and last night's episode was one of the most uncomfortable episodes I've seen in awhile. It's a good, funny uncomfortable though.

There are several burning questions from last year's season finale of Lost. What's going to happen to Michael and his son (I can't imagine they're not coming back next season after all the hints about the Walt's "gifts.") If Michael does come back, will Hurley kick his ass? How are Jack and his friends going to escape "the others?" What exactly is Kate's problem anyway? Did Lock and Mr. Echo survive the hatch? In regards to the last question, I suspect Lock will make it back because we still haven't found out how he became paralyzed. Of course, considering that everyone on the island seems connected to one another somehow, we'll could learn how Lock got paralyzed through someone else's flashback (perhaps Jack's father operated on Lock and screwed something up). Every season, we find out that everyone on the island is more tightly connected than we thought.

Are these question as important as knowing the elements of battery? Certainly not, but thank God we have something else to think about.

We Will Survive

As of yesterday, we've been in law school for one month now. That means we're one third of the way through our first semester of law school. That also means we have another month before we begin to feel the pressure of finals weighing on us. It also means we're starting to get some practice tests in a few of our classes. In fact, I just finished a practice test in Civil Procedure. Civ Pro, if you remember, is the class that I thought was going to be the bane of my semester. Turns out I'm actually kind of digging Civ Pro. Sure it's bureaucratic and boring, but Professor Mayer does an excellent job of laying it all out and making it understandable (at least, I think I understand, but I'll find out next week when I get the practice exam back) and any class is more enjoyable when you (think) you understand it. We've finished personal jurisdiction, so I have some idea of what courts might have jurisdiction over me.

Contracts is a different story. The best thing I can say about Contracts is that we're moving slowly enough that my work load for that class is pretty light. Hopefully, when I start putting together my outline for that class, I'll realize I know more than I think.

Property is also going well for me. Again, I have a good professor for that class who does a good job of making everything clear. We just got done covering adverse possession, which is an idea that, for some reason, I love. Basically, adverse possession says that if you sit on a piece of land that isn't yours long enough and treat the land as if you did own it, you might eventually gain ownership of the land if the true owner doesn't do anything about it. We were thinking of grabbing some land up in the Adirondacks and seeing if we couldn't get ownership in 10 or 15 years (I can't remember what the New York statute of limitations is right now). Unfortunately, New York has this bothersome requirement called Claim of Right that basically says you have to believe you own the land. Blah!

Torts is always a fun class because personal injury cases, as a general rule, involve personal injury stories. Some stories are sad. For instance, one case involved a Nebraska boy who severed a foot playing on an unlocked railroad turntable. There's also the case of a mother who rolled her Volkswagen Beetle (the old school pieces of crap, not the expensive new ones). Battery acid dripped on the mother's small infant while the mother was unconscious for several hours (for some reason, back then Volkswagen thought it be a great idea to mount the battery on the floor of the passenger compartment). Some stories are a bit more entertaining. There's the old Iowa couple, for instance, who decided to rig a "spring gun" (a shotgun rigged to go off when a door opens) in an abandoned farm house they owned (note that they weren't even trying to protect their home, just an old farm house on land that the wife inherited from her family). Then there's the story of a Creighton athlete who claimed the school failed to provide him with an education. At on point, the athlete started throwing chairs out of a motel room imagining that each chair was a Creighton administrator who had done him wrong. Still sad in a way, but certainly more entertaining.

Then there's Introduction to Lawyering, every 1L's favorite class. This is the class where we learn all about research as well professional responsibility and other aspects of lawyering. Basically, you have to do a lot of work in this class and you only 2 credits for it in your first semester (next semester it's a 3 credit class).

So we have one month down and the clock is ticking toward finals. I think we better enjoy the next month as much as possible.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

OK, I know I'm not longer in Husker country, so perhaps I'm out of the loop, but can someone tell me why the Huskers got rid of Frank Solich again? If we wanted lackluster, predictable play calling, Steve Pederson could've saved Husker fans a lot of stress and aggrevation. You didn't need to be Pete Carroll last night to know that the Huskers were going to run the ball on first down. For one brief drive, Callahan broke out of his rut and the Huskers threw the ball downfield with some success. Why did it take so long?

I thought the players played well and they have nothing to be ashamed of. I just wish the coaches would've given the players a chance to win the game.

For all of you who are concerned

We haven't eaten any pre-packaged spinanch and do not have ecoli . We did however have a very tasy meatball sandwhich for lunch today and are in the processing of drinking several local brews this evening. Law school has led us to drinking.

Looking At The World Like A Lawyer

We're almost to the end of our fourth week in law school. Many students say law school changes you and it seems that's about right. There was a time when I'd hear someone say "Watch my bag for me" and not think anything of it. Now I instantly think "Gratuitous Bailment" and wonder if the bailee (the person watching the bag) will give the requisite amount of care (which, in the case of a gratuitous bailment, is only slight care). When I hear about a lawsuit, I wonder if the court has personal jurisdiction over person or company being sued. Now that we're starting negligence in torts, who knows where my mind might go.

Holy promissory estoppel batman!

It is two o'clock and I'm sitting in contracts anxiously awaiting what will be the first of many PowerPoint questions that I don't understand. When all of a sudden I see a shadow go across the projection screen. If I'm not mistaken that shadow looks something like this:

I kid you not. We had a BAT flying around our classroom. And not just any bat. This was a kamikaze bat. The thing was diving towards us. Everybody starts getting a little jittery. I'm hiding under my contracts book. (At least I'm getting some use out of it =)). And then the teacher say's the best thing I've heard all year: Class is canceled.
I must have been the only one who heard her say this, because I was the only one who stood up. And since I was now taller than the rest of my classmates and not hiding under my book of contractual poetry (seriously poetry) I drew the attention of the bat. The bat buzzed me and I sat back down quickly. After that everyone started packing up there stuff to leave. I made a mad dash for the door. Went to find Chad and his computer so I could share this little bit of excitement with you.

My final thought:
Who is liable for the intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault and is the law school guilty of negligence? I would probably conclude that the owner of the bat would be responsible for negligence, but then one must determine who the owner is. In other words, "how does one occupy a bat?" The school owns that bat in as much as it was found within the confines of the school's property and will soon meet with a must definite taking of its natural liberties. In short if the school wants to settle this with me to forgo the cost of a lengthy trial, and it would be lengthy,(where exactly am I domiciled?), I would accept a settlement of a full tuition credit. Or a free cup of coffee. This line of reasoning would be quite entertaining if you were also a 1L. But since I don't know of any other 1Ls reading this, you'll just have to take my word for it.
Be good to yourselves and each other.

The poor Students Cookbook - Fried Fish Sandwiches

Those who know us also know that we love to cook. Unfortunately, like many students out there, we don't have money for good ingredients and we don't have time to cook really good meals. Occasionally, we'll post some of our favorite "student" recipies here (anything that's cheap and quick to make). We had some thawed fish on hand, some bread, and a few other miscellaneous ingredients. The result? Fried fish sandwiches.

Ingredients:
2 Fish filets (each about the size of about half a piece of bread)
2 slces of bread
Bread crumbs
Olive oil

(Optional)
Eggs
Flour
Cocktail sauce

Directions:
Start by coating the bottom of a non-stick frying pan with olive oil. Turn the heat onto medium and let the oil warm up. Turn the oven to broil. Place two slices of bread on a baking sheet and place some butter on top.

We bought a pack of frozen fish that we thawed before cooking the sandwich, but any fish filet will do. If you want, you can probably even substitute fish sticks for fish filets and skip this section entirely. Start by making sure the fish is completely thawed (if frozen). If you have eggs and flour on hand, dry the fish completely, roll it in flour, dip it in egg, and then roll it in bread crumbs. If you don't have eggs or flour, leave the fish damp and roll it in bread crumbs.

Place the fish in the hot oil and allow to cook for four or five minutes on each side. After flipping the fish, place the baking sheet in the oven. Keep an eye on the bread as it has a tendancy to burn easily. About one minute or so should do the trick.

Place the toasted side of the bread down and place the fish filets on top. If you have some cocktail sauce on hand, drizzle some over the top of the fish and place the second slice of bread over the top (toasted side up this time). Enjoy.

Why Did A Short Week Seem So Long?

Only four days this week. Seems like it should've been a piece of cake.

All first year students have to take an Introduction to Lawyering class. It's worth two credits, but it should be a four credit class for the amount of work we have to do (and I have it easier than Hers). The first week, we were asked to choose whether we wanted to represent a plaintiff or defendant in a hypothetical, semester-long case. I grabbed a folder marked "Plaintiff" on my way out the door. The file included a short memo with some basic information about the case. As it turns out, my "client" is a single mother with a daughter who was nearly three years old. The child was conceived via artificial insemination. The donor was someone the mother knew and had verbally agreed to release from any parental obligation. Now, almost three years after the birth, she wants the father to take some responsibility for the child.

Last week, we were given our first research path, which is essentially a scavenger hunt through the law library. We each received 20-pages with about 35 questions we had to answer using legal references in the library. Naturally, the questions all related to laws governing parental obligations and legal issues surrounding artificial insemination. We divided up into groups of three to work on the research path together. My group decided we'd all do the research separately and then get together to compare notes. Unfortunately, I didn't quite understand that we were supposed to each finish the project separately, so I ended up doing the majority of my research path Wednesday night. I got home about 8:00 Wednesday night.

The next day, we met to compare notes and it almost took longer to decide on final answers than it did for us to do the original research. Nothing like getting three lawyers together to argue why their answer is the right one. In the end though, I think our answers were the better for it.

The research actually wasn't too bad. The hardest part of the project was properly citing the sources. Put a comma in the wrong place and you'll lose points on the answer. We talked with the TA for the class and he told us the average for the research project is around 60%. Despite the time we've put into the first research path, we've resigned ourselves to the fact that it's going to come back covered in red ink.

Thursday night was Hers first Rugby practice. So that ended up being another late night. A four day week and two of those days we didn't get home from school until almost 8:00. Can't wait to see what next week brings.

Congratulations Lincoln!

No, not for the football game. Although it was encouraging. No our congratulations is offered to all of you that stuck with Lincoln for the past mayoral administration.
It looks like she's leaving politics behind her. YEEEEEAAAAAAAAA!
Anyway, I'm very thrilled that she's leaving because now she will have more time to devote to her cooking. I planned on linking you guys to her fabulous cheese strata recipe, but alas Time Warner wouldn't publish it. If you haven't checked out there cooking show, it is kind of cool. They talk to some local chef's in the area and get recipes. They also always throw in a Lincoln "celebrity". They went to the Mayor's house for one episode and she made this thing called Cheese strata. The ingredients:
White bread, processed ham, american cheese, frozen broccoli and cheese.
It looked delicious. In fact I would like to nominate her to take our place in our fabulous dinner group. Just kidding, we wouldn't do that to you. We miss your cooking so much =(

I'm suppose to do what to the Hooker?

I started Rugby this week. We had our first practice yesterday. I'm sitting in bed tonight instead of going out with my friends because I had practice yesterday and it kicked my butt. And everybody said it was an "easy" practice. What have I gotten myself into.
It has been decided that I am going to be a prop which means I literally "prop" up the Hooker. Which means I will probably end up looking like this guy.
I did have a lot of fun at practice. This is a totally new sport to me so I am starting at the very bottom level. We learned how to toss the ball yesterday and run a line. We learned about how to be tackled, what to do when there's a ruck, what "balls out" means (it means the balls out of the ruck) and several other things.
I also realized that I have a long way to go to get my body in Rugby shape. This is certainly going to be great stress relief for the school year.

It's not morals school...

Let me just say that I love my torts class. Our teacher, who you may have read about before, is really, really entertaining. And at 8:00 am on a Friday morning that's exactly what I need. Take today for example.
Our professor has canceled our class for the day before Thanksgiving (giving me a five day break!). We have to make up the two hours of class we are missing, so we had three hours of torts this morning. The professor gave us a 15 minute break half-way through class and gave us cookies and fruit. As a poor grad student I'll jump all over some free food.
We were discussing the tort of trespassers this morning and property damage. She asked a student (not me, I had already been grilled for about 30 minutes that morning. She was tough. But at least I wasn't the worst person in class) why the Supreme Court would make a certain decision when logically it wasn't correct. The students argument: "Well, morally it was right". And that's when she broke out with the motto of the next three years of my life:
"This isn't moral school, it's law school. Make me a legal argument".
For all of you out there who think that lawyers are nothing more than amoral parasites it's not our fault, we've been trained that way.

Blogger Bugs

Many of our friends and family are checking our blog on a regular basis, which we really appreciate. Some of our friends who check the Web site on a regular basis have mentioned that they're not seeing regular updates on the blog. Than, one day, there's suddenly three or four new updates that appear to have been posted some time ago.

The problem is that the browser saves a copy of the Web site on the computer's hard drive and instead of loading the latest version, it loads the copy off the hard drive. I've added some HTML that will hopefully take care of the problem, but if you notice that it's been a few days between updates, you might want to want to open our blog and press SHIFT-F5. This will force the browser to load the latest version from from Blogger instead of loading a saved version from your hard drive. Alternatively, you can place a question mark (?) at the end of our URL and this should do the same thing (you can add this to your bookmark if you want).

Hope this helps,

-Legallyboundblog's Technical Adviser

New York DMV's Office Moto: "Good Luck"

Hell is the New York State DMV. We've lived in this state for less than a month and we've been to the DMV five times. That averages out to more than once a week. I know going to the DMV, wherever you happen to live, is never a fun experience, but believe me when I say that the New York State DMV is one of the more hellish experiences any person can ever hope to endure.

Just before school started, we dropped by the DMV to get our New York State driver's licenses. The DMV is setup so that everyone has to pass through an information counter first. The clerks at the information counter make sure all your paperwork is in order and, if you're lucky, they'll issue you a number so you can sit down and wait a bit longer. You can think of the information counter as Cerberus perched on the river Styx. We presented our applications along with our passports and Nebraska driver's licenses as proof of ID. The New York State DMV, however, requires an additional non-picture ID (a Social Security Card was about our only option). Dejected, we returned home determined to return the next day.

With our applications, Nebraska driver's licenses, and Social Security Cards in hand, we returned the next day and managed to get past the information desk. They took our pictures , gave us a number, and told us to have a seat. The one positive thing I can say about the DMV is that it was the easiest eye test I've ever had. Hers and I went up together and they had Hers take the eye exam first. They had her step back and read the first line on an eye chart posted behind the counter. While she read the letters back, I began memorizing the first several lines (figuring that, surely, the guy wouldn't ask me to read the same line as Hers). Sure enough, when it was my turn, I was asked to read same line as Hers. By that time, I could've read the line with my eyes closed.

Of course, New York doesn't possess the requisite technology to print out a drivers license at the DMV. They took our Nebraska licenses and gave us a piece of paper to use as a temporary license. They told us we'd have our real licenses in about a week. Until then, we had to make sure to bring out passports if we needed ID.

Then came the car registration. Last week, we returned to the DMV with an envelop full of paperwork for registering our car. We offered up the envelop to the DMV Gods who began sorting out what was required and what was not. The woman who was helping us inspected our lease agreement and quickly folded it up and handed it back to us. She finished going through our paperwork, setting aside the paperwork we needed to register the car. At the end, she told us we had everything in place except for a certified copy of the title from GMAC. She gave us the DMV's fax number and told us we could have GMAC fax a copy directly to the DMV. She also pointed out that the effective date on our insurance policy was too old. The effective date had to be within 45-days of the current date. Dejected, we returned home, called our insurance company and asked them to issue new proof of insurance cards with a more recent effective date, and then called GMAC to ask them to fax a copy of the title to the DMV.

With everything in place, we went back to the DMV after classes this afternoon. Once again, we waited patiently to get to the information desk. We talked to people in line and found that most of them were recently rejected by the information desk as well. We wished each other luck as we headed up to the information desk. Once again, we offered up our folder containing all the documents we were told we needed and the gentleman at the information desk went through them all, found the copy of our title in the back, and said we had everything we needed with the exception of the lease agreement (yea, that's right, the same lease agreement they tossed aside so quickly during our last visit). Because we're registering a vehicle leased in another state, we have to pay sales tax for the remaining payments in New York all at once. As it turns out, they need the lease agreement to figure out sales tax.

We left the DMV at 3:30. They close at 4:30 on Wednesday. We raced all the way across town, grabbed the lease agreement, and raced back. We walked through the doors about 4:15 or so and once again got in line at the information desk. We watched as the people in front of us wished each other good luck before going up to the desk.

When we made it to the front, the lady who originally told us we didn't need our lease agreement began going through our paperwork again. "You guys are having a tough time with this car."

"Well, it's not easy when different people tell us we need different forms" we replied.

She went through everything and pressed the button to issue us a number. "If they reject you up there, don't come back to me because every thing's in place. If they reject you, it's because they can't figure out the sales tax." A ringing endorsement of DMV employees if I ever heard one.

We grabbed a seat and watched the big-board waiting for our number to come. As we waited, we wondered which lucky employee was going to get stuck with us. Finally, we had our answer as we made our way to window 4.

The clerk began going through the information and looked instantly perplexed. She called over a manager to help her figure out the sales tax. They took the monthly payment specified in the lease agreement and multiplied it by the number of payments remaining. Makes sense but there's just one problem: in Nebraska, we paid sales tax on a monthly basis and the figure they used for their computations included the sales tax we were paying in Nebraska. WhenHers, smart cookie that she is, brought this to the manager's attention, she started rambling on about tax credits or something completely unrelated to the point we were trying to make.

"OK, recently we received a letter from GMAC explaining that our monthly payments decreased by about $15 because they were no longer charging us Nebraska sales tax with our monthly payment," I offered. "The payment on the lease agreement is outdated and about $15 higher than what we're actually paying a month."

Finally, some kind of light flickered on and the manager explained that we had two options. They could either compute the tax using the figures on the lease agreement, in which case we could file for a refund, or we could return with the notice from GMAC specifying our new monthly payment. There was no way we wanted to make a seventh trip (I don't think either of us had the strength to try and explain everything again), so we paid the taxes and will send off a request for a $50 refund this weekend.

We did get to leave the DMV with our new plates in hand. Considering all that we've gone through to get them, I don't think I've ever been more proud of a set of license plates. They're even good quality license plates. You know, the kind that have been stamped at some penitentiary somewhere (not those cheap Nebraska plates). With any luck, we won't have to set foot in a New York State DMV anytime soon.