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.