Things That Make You Go Hmmm

Today in property, we learned that it's illegal to pay for blood (like, you know, for a blood bank) in cash. However, check is okay.

Dusting Off

I think that one of the downsides of the winter vacation, as short as it was, is the tendency to forget and then lose your work ethic. Then when you get back to school, the work hits you like an angry linebacker on steroids. It doesn't help either when the vacation has also sucked out all your motivation to study. If its true that your first year of law school is like drinking out of a firehose, then it's doubly true that your first few weeks after winter break is like being thrown in front of a fire truck.

No, I haven't stopped updating my blog (though I appreciate the concern). I've just been taking an extended vacation from it. This doesnt mean that I haven't been writing entries... I just haven't been posting them (sweet sweet Blogger). Check back in the coming days for back-entries about my first 3.5 weeks of spring semester.

Also, it probably doesn't help that I've been hooked on watching the first and second seasons of Lost (thanks Thomas... thanks for NOTHING). Everyone should watch it, and watch it soon. Unless you're a law student.

Coloring Book For Lawyers, Part 1

This morning, Shawn, our Torts ASP instructor, gave us a packet of hypos. This was on the back. I looked it up on Google and apparently it's part of a series, so you'll be seeing a couple more in the coming weeks. Personally, my underpants are blue.

Day of Reckoning

Grades came out today. The mood in the law school was decidedly somber.

In general, law school is a pretty friendly place (well, okay at least Boalt it is). People are willing to share notes, talk about the material, and study together. There are only two exceptions to this comraderie: grades and jobs.

I guess it's the idea that you 1) don't want to appear arrogant by tooting your horn if you've done well, and 2) don't want to offend/piss off/make cry anybody who didn't do as well as you. I haven't experienced it yet, but I hear the same rationales apply when job interview time comes around.

As a result, only close friends share their grades. To everyone else, you just give a vague answer when asked about grades.

"I did fine."
"I did okay."
"I did as well as I expected"
"I did well"

I have a theory, though. When people say they did "well," it means they got at least one H. When people say they did "very well," it means they got at least one HH. I haven't figured out the rest, though I'm working on it.

So I'm sure you're all wondering how I did, right?

I did fine. ;-)

Property... Finally!

First property class was today, and Prof. Volpp started it off with a slightly teary reminder to us to not let school and work take predence over our interpersonal relationships. Apparently it was her mom that recently died, and so she wanted to emphasize the fact that people aren't always going to be around forever.

I can tell that this class is going to have a significant social policy aspect to it. After all, what is the nature of property but the right to exclude others? And excluding others is usually the cause of injustice.

Take for example, the case we discussed today, Johnson v. M'Intosh. It was an early 1800's case revolving around the land rights of Native Americans, where the Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans had no ownership rights in the U.S. The rationale was that the U.S. government derived its rights from the Europeans, who derived their right to own the land from their "discovery" of the land and their "conquest" of the uncivilized indigenous people. Why did the White man get to "discover" the land when it was so obvious that it had already been discovered before? Justice Marshall's reasoning was that the Native Americans were too primitive to make "proper" use of the land.

Go ahead and let that sink in.

It looks like property will be an interesting class.

I See Different People

Last semester, my entire schedule was set and pretty regularized. Every day of every week, I saw the same people (namely the people in my Mod and my uber-Mod, 4, 5, 6). Our schedule was especially taxing, and so I rarely saw non-1L’s. I also rarely saw people outside my uber-Mod, since each uber-Mod had a different schedule setup. For example, I never saw people from Mods 1, 2, or 3, since their schedules were so different. As a result, I simply concluded that they didn’t exist, like Wyoming. I even had a name for them: the "Mythical Mods."

Now that some of my classes are electives, I’m seeing lots of people I’ve never seen before. I can only assume that they are either 2L’s , 3L’s, or people from the Mythical Mods.

As I sit here now in the library, I’m looking around and seeing completely foreign faces. I’m also seeing people who I used to only run into in the hallways. During passing periods, I notice that almost everyone in the locker room is foreign to me. In a way it's nice to know that the law school is so diverse, but it's also weird, like in high school when there were people at your graduation you were only seeing for the first time.

First Day of Class, Spring Edition

So I had my first day of class today. Everyone agreed that it felt a little weird to be back in school, and the day felt pretty weird in general. A sense of "I shouldn't be here... what am I doing here? Why am I back in school?" pervaded everything. It's definitely going to take a little while to get back into the swing of things.

This semester, I'm taking a heavier load than last semester:
Property
Torts
Legislation
Written and Oral Advocacy
Civil Procedure II

My Torts prof, Alta Charo, is very peppy, which is nice given that our class starts 15 minutes earlier in the morning than Crim last semester (8:45 AM, bloody hell). She seems a little less organized than say, super-structured Prof. Talley in Contracts, but at least she has a structure, unlike Prof. Westen.

Legislation is taught by Prof. Phillip Frickey, who apparently pioneered this entire field of study. He co-wrote our casebook, for example. I guess you could say it's the quintessential "lawyer" class, since it's all about how to split hairs on the meaning of words in a law. Today, for example, we spent the entire period discussing what "approach" meant for the purposes of a left-turn traffic law (If a statute makes it illegal to make a left turn when cars are "approaching" from the opposite direction, and if you make a left turn as soon as the traffic light turns green but before any of the oncoming cars have moved yet, is it technically illegal?). Anyways, the material is kinda interesting. Seems like it'll be useful. Prof. Frickey is engaging, but hard to follow. I've heard that despite the dry material, it's wothwhile and it'll pay off in the long run. I hope it's true, because I know a lot of people who are already thinking about dropping it.

WOA seems like it'll be fun this semester. We get to write argumentative briefs (as opposed to objective memos), and at the end of the class we get to practice trial technique and make oral arguments before a panel of judges. It's also always nice to see our super-sweetheart instructor Lindsey.

All my Property classes were cancelled this week, due to a death Prof. Volpp's family. :-( I've heard from people who took property last semester that it's probably the hardest of the first-year core classes. I've heard good things about Prof. Volpp, so hopefully it won't be so bad.

CivPro II is tomorrow. I'm really excited because I love CivPro (there's something oddly alluring about rules and procedure), and Prof. Bundy is considered one of the best professors at Boalt.

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Second Semester

Sooo here I am back in Berkeley. It's a kind of weird to be back. It's even weirder to think that it's only been 2 weeks since I was here. It's even more weirder (can I say that?) to think that two weeks can feel soooo long even though it's the shortest winter break I've had since high school.

Class starts tomorrow bright and early at 8:45am, 15 minutes earlier than last semester. Luckily, for me at least, it ends at 3:00pm, 2 hours earlier than last semester. Seriously, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the extra time. Maybe I'll learn to knit.

I haven't bought my textbooks and I haven't done the reading for the first day of class tomorrow. I've decided to extend my vacation for just a few hours longer.

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! It's kinda scary to think that I'm going to be back in Berkeley in only a week. Then again, what better way to ring in the new year than prepare for law school?