50% Completed

Today marks the end of my 6th week at Nossaman, the halfway point of my 12 weeks here. The last 6 weeks have pretty much flown by, and the next 6 are going to go even faster (heck, we only work 3 days next week due to the 4th of July vacation). I definitely don't feel like I've gotten too much done, but that's a different story.

Today's Field Trip Lunch: Melissa, one of the associates and a sometime vegetarian, took us to a vegan restaurant near the Beverly Center. Though we were all somewhat skeptical, it was actually better than I expected. We all shared a vegan nacho plate (with cashew cheddar cheese and tofu sour cream), and I had a vegan burrito with fake bacon bits. Adam 2 ordered a vegan reuban (with vegan meat and vegan thousand island dressing), which he said was "disgusting." My food was pretty darn good, and the "bacon" tasted exactly like the real thing. The cheese on the nachos was a little funky at first, but by the end of the meal they tasted more like real nacho cheese. Before we left, we all got vegan chocolate chip cookies, which also turned out to be almost as good as the real thing. As weird as some of the food was, I think I might actually go back sometime.

LAX Timekeeping

I came into work really late today, and nobody cared. I had a dentist appointment this morning east of home, and so I had to drive extra far to get to work. My commute ended up taking 2 hours, and so like I said, I came in really late.

Tonight, we're going to Lucky Strike, a nifty-looking bar/lounge/bowling alley in Hollywood. It's one of the highlights of the summer I hear, and it should be fun. I'm a little rusty since my bowling club days in high school, so I think I'll just try to wing it.

Lunch: I went with Jeremy and Bryce to an infrastructure lunch at a nearby hotel. A group of abotu 80 lawyers, engineers, architects, and politicians were having a roundtable discussion there regarding the planned expansion of LAX. I'm a natural fan when it comes to future construction plans, so I went. The food was pretty good, consisting of tortilla soup, meat and rice, and ice cream dessert with coffee. The presentation about the future of LAX was given by a representative of the MTA, and was more interesting than I expected because of all the different plans put forth by different mayoral administrations. Apparently, the infrastructure practice group is more than just bridges.

Shhh!

Nossaman has librarians. And a library! It's funny because in law school, your entire life revolves around the library. The library is the de facto place where students go to study, find cases, and meet people. If you have a problem finding a source for the journal, you can ask one of the reference librarians and they'll usually be able to find anything you need. Their ability to find almost any book or document is so awe-inspiring that it borders on magical. The library becomes such an ingrained part of the law school experience that I think most students come to see the library and law school as interchangeable, kind of like how you associate bathrooms with a toilet. Or something like that.

Anyway, due to this cognitive association, you can see how it might be mildly disorienting to see a library in the middle of a law firm. What the heck? Libraries are only found in law schools! What the heck is one doing on the 30th floor of this building? And OMG there are reference librarians? That's like... finding a zebra at Sea World! Things like this are just not supposed to happen.

Lunch: The librarians (Arlene and Tracy) took us to Engine Co. No. 28, a nifty restaurant a few blocks down Figueroa that used to be an old fire station. Inside, there are lots of nice fireman-type touches, including hemets and the original sliding pole. The food was pretty darn good. I had a cobb salad, crab cakes, and a key lime pie for dessert (at Arlene's insistence). I was really stuffed, but I definitely wouldn't mind going back there again.

Riperian Randomness

Today we had an MCLE teleconference lunch about water law. MCLE stands for "Something-Continuing-Legal-Education," or something like that. Essentially, practicing attorneys are required by the Bar (and the firm) to keep up-to-date about new developments in the law, since their law school education is bound to fade. Like most professionals, they accomplish this by attending continuing education presentations and conferences put on by other attorneys, at which they earn continuing education credits.

Today's presentation was put on by the head partner in the water law group, Fred Fudacz. The food wasn't too remarkable -- just some turkey and corned beef sandwiches with potato salad. The presentation was kind of fun, though. It was the first time I got to see the teleconferencing equipment (consisting of two 32-inch LCD TVs, a rotating camera, a speakerphone, and a mouse/remote control) in action. The Orange County, SF, and Sacramento offices were linked so that attorneys in each of the offices could watch the presentation and get MCLE credit. Orange County had a full room of people, Sacramento had one guy, and SF was represented by an empty conference room. Joining Fred in LA were us summers, an associate, and two other partners.

Fred's presentation on water law wasn't exactly the most riveting stuff, but it served as a good crash course on things like riparian rights, approriation rights, and the relation of those to land use. My property law course last semester didn't spend a good deal of time (read: zero) on water law, but I have since come to find out that it's an absolutely vital area of law, especially in California where we have a chronic shortage of water. All in all, the food wasn't bad, the company was great, and the lecture was interesting. I might even consider becoming an H2O lawyer myself... haha.

MFD

Wow today I was way busier than I expected. Lots more bridge work plus tighter deadlines = super-busy. I've pretty much fallen into a groove with the bridge project. I'm looking through agreements, calling state departments of transportation, sorting through documents, filling in tables, and printing on nifty Nossa-letterhead.

I also have come to really appreciate my secretarial assistant Luciana. That woman gets things done. Burn a couple CDs for me to send to a client? Done. Mail out the CDs? Done. As a multi-decade veteran of Nossaman, she also has invaluable information about all the little logistical things that a newbie attorney would need to know ("Luciana, how do I dial out?"). She is the secretary for about 4 attorneys (my neighbors) and I'm amazed that she can juggle all of us on a daily basis. Granted, I'm not a real attorney yet so I'm not so much of a burden. But still, it's pretty impressive.

I also got a new assignment today from Tom Long. Litigation stuff. I've been a little litigation deprived for the past few weeks, so it'll be nice to exercise my "meanie" muscles again.

Lunch: Just me, Ashley, Adam, and Adam at Dan's Deli again. I had a regular salami hoagie, and discovered that it's not that much different from a genoa salami hoagie, despite what the deli man told me. Adam (#1), Ashley and I have pretty much concluded that it will be our de facto eatery when we're not being wined and dined by Nossaman. Ashley has actually started calling it My Favorite Deli. I just call it MFD for short.

Reign of the Summers

A new summer associate, Adam, joined us today. He's going to be at the LA office for only a few weeks. Adam (not be confused with my current co-summer Adam) is actually a summer at Nossaman's Virginia office. He's in his 2L summer and appears to be so certain that he wants to practice in the infrastructure practice group that the Firm is sending him on a grand tour of all the Nossaman offices that have infrastructure attorneys: Texas, LA, and Virgina (where he's working). He just flew in from the Texas office, where he apparently has already spent 2 weeks.

Anyway, Adam (aka Adam #2, A2, Other Adam, or Juan Carlos) appears to be a very nice guy. Heck, he must be, if he can convince the firm to pay for travel and hotel expenses for a month.

Field Trip Lunch: The Pantry on Figueroa near the Staples Center, courtesy of Jeremy, a 2-month associate. Today's lunch posse was rather large, consisting of 3 summer associates (Adam #1 wasn't in today), 2 regular associates, 2 partners, and a small child (one of the associates' kids). The Pantry is a pretty nifty place, with a definite "small town 70's-ish diner-cafeteria" feel to it. I was contemplating breakfast, but ended up going with a burger and fries. The food was good, the conversation was great, and I found out that Jeremy, like myself, is a huge DMB fan.

Nonsense Fear-Mongering

I was reading Peggy's xanga post about the LSAT and LSAT prep when it dawned on me how much test prep companies, even those as great as Testmasters, rely a whole lot on fear to make money.

Now that I've gotten a good idea of what not only law school but law firm life is like, I can look back at my original anxiety surrounding the LSAT and shake my head. Even though the LSAT is a very important indicator of where you'll end up for law school, it does NOT, as many test prep firms would have you believe, dictate where you'll end up working. Though going to a good law school is sufficient to get you into a "good" firm, it is not necessary (those of you who've taken LSAT prep know what I'm talking about).

The truth is that while higher-ranked schools make it easier for you to find a job, what really matters is how you do in law school. A top-ranked student at Loyola will get just as good of a job at a prestigious law frim as a top-ranked student from UCLA, Boalt, or Columbia, or even Yale.
I know for a fact that there are partners here at Nossaman who graduated from 69th-ranked law schools (av. LSAT: 159). I also know for a fact that they are making a very comfortable income.

But despite all this, here's the rub: In many cases, you might not even want to work at one of the huge "prestigious" mega-firms. They are called "sweatshop firms" for a reason.

Just my 2 cents.

Lunch: Met up with high school buddies Mike and Ben, who happened to be in Downtown. Since Mike parked in my building's "$3.50-per-15-minute" parking structure, he decided that eating close by would be a good idea. We ended up at Ciudad, the place where I went to happy hour my first week here. Turns out the food isn't so cheap when the hour isn't happy. I had a relatively ok burrito thing, Mike had some sort of salad, and Ben broke the bank with $18 fish tacos. Between the overpriced food and the ridiculous parking, I cringe to think of what Mike and Ben had to pay in total. Mike joked that he was going to have to explain to his kids that the reason they were all living in a trailer was because he decided to have lunch with me today. Actually, I don't think he was joking.

Nossa-SacTown

A little known fact about Nossaman is that in addition to legal services, Nossaman also has a California lobbying practice. There are about 10 lobbyists working out of the Sacramento office that work with California legislators to get whatever their clients want made into law.

Every year, Nossaman flies the summer associates from every office up to the Sacramento office to meet the lobbyists and learn more about the lobbying process, the legislative process, and California politics.

My day started at 4:30 AM today when I woke up in order to catch my flight at 7:00AM. I met my co-summers Ashley and Adam at the Sacramento airport, and we taxied over to downtown Sacramento. The Nossaman office there is much smaller than the LA office, but it still looked very law-officey. We were soon joined by the associates from the San Francisco office, as well as the Sacramento office. This was a lot of fun, since I got to see fellow Boalites Thomas (my Nossa-buddy), as well as Krystal (working at the San Francisco office). I also met their co-summers. There were 7 of us Nossa-summers.

Kelli, one of the nice lobbyists (non-Washington lobbyists get a bum rap, we soon learned) met us and after telling us about how she injured her hand fixing a toilet that exploded, took us to the Capitol where we met a policy assistant to Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, got a private tour of Gov. Schwarzenegger's office, met with a State Assemblywoman representing Orange County, and got a tour of the building by a woman named N.C. Otter. After the tour, we met back at the office, said our goodbyes, and taxiied back to the airport. Quick turnaround, but it was for the better because Sacramento is not a city where you would want to spend large amounts of time (sorry Thomas).

All in all, I got a much better idea of how California politics works, especially given that I knew virtually nothing. It's interesting to see how the Democrats in the Legislature rule every aspect of the legislative process with an iron fist much in the same way that the Republicans in Congress do for federal laws. All the summers from Sacramento and San Fran were great, and we are all looking forward to seeing each other again in a few weeks when Nossaman flies us up to SF for the deposition training.

Lunch: Before the tour but after meeting the Assemblywoman, the lobbyists and a few attorneys took us to a fancy-schmancy Sacramento restaurant where we got a private dining room. Little fried cheeseballs, a nice salad, tasty flank steak, and a delicious (and ugh rich) chocolate cake were on the menu. The highlight though was our keynote speaker Tony Quinn, a political analyst and pollster who finger is so tightly on the political scene that he is capable of predicting the outcome of most political races, both state and national. As a politics junkie, I had an absolute blast listening to him talk about everything from the Florida recount to the difference between Gov. Schwarzenegger and Gov. Davis, to why the Democrats might not actually recapture the House/Senate this November.

Life Is Like a Bowl of Oysters

Just when I thought it was safe to celebrate my freedom from the bridge project, my supervising attorney came in yesterday 45 minutes before I left for the day and asked me to do a little more research. I worked on it for those 45 minutes yesterday, and I've been working on it all morning today. FYI, I'm not complaining. I definitely know much more than I will ever need to know about this particular bridge, and bridges in general. All a part of being an infrastructure lawyer, I suppose.

Funny quote overheard from a partner on a conference call: "Help me understand... I'm a 40 megabyte mind working in a 2 gigabyte world..." Hehe.

Lunch: McCormick & Schmick's with my partner-mentor Scott Yamaguchi (BTW, none of the people on the Nossaman website actually look like that in real life). He's a great guy, with lots of interesting insight into firm life and life as a lawyer in general. He shared a couple funny stories from his experience as a land use litigator (which, from the sound of it, you wouldn't think is that funny). He also introduced me to oysters, which aren't actually too bad. And the trout I had for the main course is hands down one of the tastiest dishes I've ever had, ever.

Free At Last

So I finally finished that bridge project I've been working on for the last 2.5 weeks, and I am SO ready to do something else. Anything else. I think I'm going to start by proofreading this 70 page appellate brief. Then maybe I'll do something CRAZY.

Also, today marks a nifty landmark: I've been working for 4 full weeks! A whole month! Wowee! Whenever I ask attorneys how long they've been with the firm, they always pause to think, then give me a number in the 5-25 year range. The number is almost always followed by some sort of comment along the lines of "wow... it's been that long already?" Today, having finished a month, I can sorta understand how they feel.

Lunch: Quick bite at Oliveras St. with Boalt buddies David and Sara. David is spending the summer at the U.S. Attorneys office in the federal building, and Sara, working for a federal judge down in Orange Country, just happened to be at there for the day. It's actually a bit of an ordeal to get to the federal building since it's on the other side of Downtown. Walking, it would take about 45 minutes to an hour for me to get there. Luckily, Sara's friend (who also joined us for lunch) picked me up in his car. Giving directions to a person not familiar with downtown LA made me realize just how convoluted the one way streets are.

Just Dive In

It's really hot today. Worse yet, my office overlooks the pool at the Westin Bonaventure, and the clear blueness of it is very inviting. I kinda wanna just dive in. Unfortunately, my window here in my office doesn't open, and I don't think anyone has ever attempted a 30+ story dive into a pool before (and survived). So I guess I have to content myself with staring longingly at the shimmering crystal blue water...

Lunch: One of the partners from the eminent domain practice group took us on our field trip lunch to Monterey Park for dim sum!! At Ocean Star!!!! As one might expect, I was very excited. Plenty of goodies, though for the sake of propriety, I passed on the chicken feet.

Free Ride!

Last night after coming home, my Dad decided it was a good idea to get more chinese fast food. Yikes. Little did I know that my craving for "cheap 'n greasy" chinese fast food on Tuesday would see me eating three greasy meals in two days.

I forgot my wallet at home today, and with it, my Metrolink and MTA Red Line pass (the Metrolink pass doubles as a ticket for the Metro). I would have bought a day pass or something, but the thing is, I LEFT MY WALLET AT HOME. No money and no driver's license. So yeah, I was technically a "unauthorized rider."

The thing about the Metrolink and the Metro is that there are no turnstiles or other things to physically prevent you from boarding the trains. Instead, the authorities conduct random checks on the train to make sure everyone has a pass. If you're caught without one, you're slapped with a very heavy fine plus community service. In other words, the public transit system is run on fear.

And it's very effective.

Even though some might envy my free ride, I was absolutely terrified every time the train stopped that MTA police would come on board, and I would have to explain myself in front of all the other riders, none of whom forgot their wallets at home. The ride home on the Metrolink was no different, and so combined, I experienced on my commute home roughly an hour of pure terror. Of course, without my ID, I'm not sure they could have done anything like write me up. No, I think that had I been caught, I would have just gotten the boot. Yeah, I'm never forgetting my wallet ever again.

Lunch: QDoba again with some associates. I had no wallet and hence no money, but one of the associates was nice enough to pay for me. I was planning on getting a taco salad after my orange chicken lovefest the past few days, but the steak quesadilla called to me and I heeded its call. I need to go to the gym. Like, right now.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Bridges!

The bridge project is almost done, or at least I think so. It'll be nice to work on other projects. Then again on the bright side, I can probably tell you about every interstate bridge in the country.

Lunch: Partner/Summer Associate lunch with Bob, a healthcare lawyer, Scott Yamaguchi, a land use litigator and my "Nossa-mentor," and Julia Stift, a tax lawyer. We had chinese fast food. Ugh. Two days in a row now. On the other hand, the food was much tastier than yesterday's Panda Hut.

One of those Tuesdays...

Sometimes the days in the office just drag, especially if there is an ongoing project that lasts weeks. After a week of doing the same thing, it can get kinda monotonous. On days like this, leaving the office for lunch is when things get interesting.

Today, my co-summers were AWOL and all the associates were out of the office for a conference, so I grabbed lunch for myself. I was craving some cheap n' greasy Chinese food, so I walked across the bridge to the Bonaventure. I don't know if the people in Panda Hut are always friendly, or if they were just excited to see an asian face, but my chow mein and orange chicken was served to me by a chipper and very generous gentleman. The register lady was equally as cheerful, with lots of smiling and money-exchanging. To top it all off, a grandmotherly looking woman came from a back room, pointed at me, said something to the register lady in chinese, then they both laughed. I'm not sure what that was all about.

Coming back to my office, I got in the elevator with two older men. They were having a conversation about how much Skadden lawyers billed ($3 million) and how much they worked (sweatshop hours). I smiled, partly because it's true that Skadden attorneys are crazy, and partly because I was still laughing at the crazy Panda Hut people.

As I was getting off at my floor, one of the men turned to me and said, "You're laughing. You must be a lawyer from Skadden." Before I could answer, the other man said "no, he's a lawyer with Nossaman." I chuckled and stepped off the elevator. Technically, neither of them was right.

Slow Day

Not too much going on. Just this bridge project. I think it's starting to get to me.

Lunch: Genoa salami sandwich at Dan's Deli by the Water Court. Did you know there's a difference between Genoa salami and regular salami? I sure didn't. Also, there is a distinct lack of recyling facilities around here. I always feel like crap tossing glass into the trash.

Monday Monday

Wow it's already been 2 weeks. Crazy.

Today went by quickly, only because I had so much to do in terms of meetings and research. At this rate, my summer is going to fly by.

Lunch: QDoba, a mexican restaurant that apparently only exists in Downtown LA and Phoenix, AZ. The "Three-Cheese Burrito" I got was huge, though two of those three cheeses was actually just this nacho-cheesy kinda thing they squeezed into it. Still pretty tasty though.

A Case of the "Fridays"

Every Friday is a like mini-senioritis. It's not uncommon for me to lose my incentive to work. It doesn't help that the casual-Fridays dress policy here encourages a feeling of laid-backness.

Lunch: Salami sandwich and chips at Dan's Deli, in the Water Court next door to the MOCA. Adam, Ashley and I hiked across Downtown to look at the Bradbury Building, then ate on the way back. Given that this impromptu sightseeing was required by a partner for some transaction he was working on, we might try to bill for some of the walking time...

Up And Down

The interesting thing about working in a high rise is the fact that your ears pop riding in the elevator. If there are other people in the elevator with you, there is added entertainment as you get to watch everyone repeatedly open and close their mouths to make their ears pop.

Lunch: Four partners took Adam and I to the L.A. Police Academy. Apparently there is a cafe there with cheap and tasty food that you can eat while listening to the sweet sounds of the firing range. Unfortunately there were no people at the range today, but the food was tasty and we got to check out the gift shop. Personally, I'm jonesin' for one of those "LAPD Internal Affairs" baseball caps. And no, it's not nearly as wacky as the movie would have you think.