The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I finally got a look at the course offerings for next year. Now I have a dilemma: what classes to take?

In the spring, I'm planning on taking Trademark, Telecom Law, and Tax.

Tax??? Is there anything more boring? Perhaps not, but the professor is really good and kept corporations from reaching the vast levels of boringness I'm sure it was otherwise capable of attaining on its own. And lots of people recommend taking tax, so I will. Even though it pollutes my schedule with Friday morning classes. I used to think I didn't mind them, but now that I've had Fridays off, it's hard to go back.

The question is what else to take. My choices:

Negotiation.
Trial advocacy (advanced).
Wills and Trusts.
Indian Law. Edit: interesting, but not a high priority.
Consumer law. (So I'd really be able to complain about Verizon.)
Administrative law. Edit: can't take, schedule conflict.
Secured transactions.
Criminal procedure.

I'm also looking into an independent study, either along with one of the above, although potentially instead of. Thoughts? Things I'll need to consider are unit count (I can do a 4 unit class - but will I want to?), whether it's a bar course (and if that's a good or bad thing since I'll do a bar review course), or whether it's something I should know anyway.

By the way, I've gone ahead and made a "Law school - the process (3L)" category to accomodate this post. I won't start using it until the summer though. I am not done with the 2L thing yet...

Mark your calendars accordingly: a year from today I will have my JD.

Last week I wired off the deposit on the apartment I'll live in this fall in Germany. It's a huge relief to have that detail taken care of. Trying to find an affordable home in a city I'm unfamiliar with in a language I don't speak was not an enjoyable prospect. Fortunately there are some students at the school doing their semesters abroad who wanted to sublet their apartments to the exchange students coming in. There aren't quite as many rooms like that as incoming students though, and I'd procrastinated so long that there was only one left by the time I got my act together. In fact, it wasn't really me who got my act together but another exchange student who'd found the place and needed to find a roommate in order to take it. In the rush to secure the place before someone else did we quickly conversed, deemed each other roommate-worthy – at least sufficiently for four months (she doesn't smoke and *assures* me she doesn't have an alarm clock that crows) – and then sewed up the deal. At least we hope. We wired over the money, but we haven't actually signed a lease yet. Which I fear will end up being in German...

But it should all be set now, and so I've bought my plane ticket for the trip over at the end of August. Also today I got in touch with my "buddy," the student who will help me acclimate to the school and life over there. Over email we discussed the prospect of him meeting me in the airport.

Him:

"If you tell me exactly when you arrive, I might come to the airport. I won't have a huge welcome poster with your name on it, though. I suck at arts and crafts."

Me:

"No, no. Nothing so conspicuous is required. But SOME way for me to identify who you are would be helpful. I can't tell you how many times I've been at airports, not knowing what the guy meeting me looked like. I had to go up to every man there, 'Are you looking for me?'

(I'm serious - this has happened to me twice!)"

Sadly, this is no exaggeration. It has happened to me twice, although I realized after I sent this that one of the occasions was in a train station, not an airport, like the second one was.

Unfortunately, this prospect intrigued him:

"Concerning our rendez-vous at the airport, I will just look out for a girl asking guy after guy whether he wants to take her home, that should make some noise!"

I wrote back that on second thought, he'd better make a sign. A really BIG sign...

I talked to some housing attorneys at work today about the North Carolina case of the woman being evicted because of her abusive ex-boyfriend. One of them confirmed my suspicion that women who are victims of domestic violence tend to count as a protected class under the housing discrimination laws. Beyond that, the other attorneys nodded affirmatively at some of my other theories about possible defenses she could raise.

From a policy standpoint, because I think evicting the woman on this basis is the wrong thing to do, the fact that there was no clear answer of "this is absolutely, positively wrong" is distressing. But personally, I found it a little validating.

I was concerned, as I explained to one of the attorneys, that even though I'd been working with housing law for a few weeks now I didn't feel I could quite resolve the question. It seemed like there must have been a specific answer out there, and I was distressed that I didn't know it.

But it's a myth that there's but one answer. "The law is not black and white," I was reminded by my boss. Everything is subject to argument, and it seems my instincts on how to do it were just as sound as anyone else's might have been.

To a certain extent, the impetus to do a judicial clerkship is driven a lot by inertia. This is what graduating law students do, and since I don't have a good reason not to clerk, I think I'll clerk.

Of course, I'll never get a clerkship if that's all I can say for it. Plus I take some pride in my ability to buck standardization trends in law school. You say 2Ls normally take only 12 units in the fall? I'm sorry, but there are too many things I want to learn while here... So I'll take 18. Stress out about grades? I think not. I'll take my exams seriously, but I refuse to look at the results. Do moot court? Do a journal? Of course! But not because it's what "everyone" does but because it's what I want to do.

So certainly I'd never want to do a clerkship just because it was the next step on the assembly line. I want to do it because it's a unique opportunity to be part of as essential part of our legal system. That said, having never been a clerk, I have to surmise what kind of experience would be. But the educated guesses I can come up with definitely appeal to me.

I've lamented in various posts how people often abdicate their role in their own governance to the legal institutions that wield so much power over their lives. I think that's a shame: the law belongs to everyone, and everyone needs to be able to control it – not be victimized by its awesome power.

In the long run I would like to help make those institutions be more accessible to everyone. In the short run I would like to make them more accessible to *me*. After law school I would like to be a litigator as a means of affecting positive chance. But for me to succeed at that, I will need to know more about how the judicial system actually functions. Towards that end I think the clerkship experience would provide an invaluable education.

But more than that, I think the clerkship itself can be an avenue for doing good. While lawyers may be zealous advocates, important pieces of the adversarial system, the whole point of that system is to yield a just result at the end. Such a result depends entirely on the fair process and resolution of a dispute – which is very much the responsibility of the judge. To be a clerk and support that noble end would be fulfilling on its own, and it's one I relish taking on.

One of my clerkship recommendation letter writers asked me to explain for her why I want to clerk. But I couldn't write something on such an important topic for just one person - I had to share it with everyone! I think it belongs here anyway, as an important part of the law student process. And so accustomed am I to exploring these types of things here that, when intended for the wider audience, it ended up much easier to write.

I spent the last few days trying to get together a list of judges to apply for clerkships with.

For a short time my list included various judges on the DC Circuit. Including John Roberts.

I can't tell you how special it makes me feel that I knew who he was before the rest of the world did...

I know it was the right decision, but it was still really hard to make. I decided to give up my teaching job.

It breaks my heart: those two hours I spent at the pool four days a week were some of the happiest of my summer. But it was getting to be a big burden to have that all time earmarked for that one activity. It didn't leave a lot of time or energy left over to take care of all the other things I need to do this summer, and it required me to have the time management skills of an automaton – being out the door every day precisely on time to get to work at my clerkship so that I could leave on time to get to the pool. I kept it up pretty well for about four weeks, but it was becoming pretty clear that I needed more of my time back. Or at least more flexibility in my schedule.

But I did go out swinging: Monday and Tuesday were my last lessons, the first days of a new class session, and every day of my 14 years of experience was brought to bear. The first days of a new session tend to be a little chaotic, as we test all the kids to figure out what classes they should be in. The first class was pretty straight forward – just a few 3-5 year olds – but the second class, due to an ill teacher, had nine uber-kinetic kids. Somehow I had to get them tested, divided, and then engaged in a learning activity. So I did. Then for the next class there also ended up being seven kids. I tested and divided them as well. One of the fathers noted that I looked really confident despite the chaos. "You didn't have that look of panic I might have expected," he said. And it's true: I didn't. There was nothing about the last couple of days that I haven't dealt with at some point in previous years.

It's a funny thing, teaching swimming lessons. When I'm not doing it, it seems very abstract. It's hard for me to describe how to do it, or even recognize that I can do it, as I'm not usually in contact with that talent. But put me in the pool and I know exactly what to do. There's a piece of my personality, energetic and effervescent, that's never present in any other situation, yet automatically comes out when I'm in the water with the kids. I love tapping into it. I love being in touch with that part, and being reminded that it's part of me too. And I love that feeling of complete confidence I get when I'm doing something that I've done for nearly half my life. That confidence is the complete absence of fear that the situation will overwhelm me, since I have no doubt that I can overcome whatever's thrown at me. It's a wonderful feeling, and one I want to come to have with me in all the other things I go do.

I had an interesting evening. A Big Law Firm hosted a reception for law students. I went, which was a nice way to ease back into the job hunt, which I'm going to need to get more into from here on out.

It was interesting - I think I was the only 3L. In some ways the job hunt will be harder this time around: there are fewer 3L than 2L positions out there, particularly at big firms, and the stakes are higher this time around (this time I really need a job!). But I already can tell that, to the extent it's possible, I will enjoy this year's search much better than last year's. As a 3L I am a real person looking for a real job. For the 2L summer, there's something very artificial about the whole process. Firms and students preen and posture for each other. There's something un-honest about the whole process, it seems. I don't mean that there's dishonesty, but it sometimes seems like the whole firm-2L wooing process is so skewed towards the wooing, and so disconnected from any substantive law practice, that it's hard to really see it as a job application process. Whereas now, for me, even with the same firms it will come down to whether the firm has an opening in a practice area I would like to do. It also seems like the substance of what I can bring will matter more - particularly since now there's more to bring - and I find that less discouraging and dysfunctional than the 2L job search process had been.

The really interesting thing about the evening though was that I bumped into my LSAT teacher at the reception. I'd really liked my LSAT class - somewhat in spite of myself because as someone who typically tests well on these standardized things, I tended to be of the mind that prep courses were a load of crap. But I actually liked my class and I liked the teacher, and I was telling him tonight how I thought that some of the lessons - particularly those for the analytical reasoning sections - have remained with me and even been useful in law school.

Anyway, at the time I took the class I don't think he'd expressed any interest in going to law school himself. I think he may have mentioned thinking about taking the LSAT as a lark, but it seemed to not be part of the path he was on. But obviously since then he's switched gears, and now he's a rising 2L. Cool guy, and a good teacher - he should do well.

The problem with my evening, however, and the origin of this post's title, was that as I got on the BART to go home I discovered, to my disgust, that a bird had defecated on me. It ended up all over my backpack, my fingers, and my suit. It was a very unpleasant commute, waiting to wash my now-filthy hands. And it's very annoying that now I'm going to have to get my suit drycleaned. But what REALLY concerns me is that I'm not sure when this happened. I didn't notice until after I'd left the reception, but I'm not entirely sure it hadn't happened before. I therefore find myself really really hoping that it didn't happen until then, and that I was not walking around the Big Law Firm Reception all night with bird crap on my back.

I met with a lawyer friend today to talk about my note. (Remember that?) The thing is languishing in academic limbo. It's supposed to satisfy my upper division writing requirement, but I haven't heard a peep from the evaluating faculty on whether it does in its current form.

Meanwhile, I'm interested in making any improvements necessary in anticipation of getting it published somewhere, so it was worthwhile to hear my friend's thoughts.

He gave me lots of feedback on the legal issues that I need to incorporate. And he also gave me some structural feedback:

Pretend you're representing one side in a suit, he said. What arguments would you press, and what ones would you expect you'd need to deflect?

Sounds obvious, right? Well, NOW it does. But it's the first time anyone ever described note writing in those terms to me. It would have been really helpful had someone said the same thing to me a year ago. Some guidance, you know - so I wasn't left to my own devices to flounder around until I happened to figure out note-writing on my own. (A hardly likely event - a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters in a thousand years would not manage to write a good note, and neither would I without some instruction.)

I don't really want to lambaste peer-edited writing projects altogether: I imagine they can be very positive experiences. But they are entirely contingent on the efforts put in by the upperclassmen giving the advice. I didn't get much of that. To some extent it wasn't their fault - there was a period when I got behind, and I let my note editor off the hook until I got caught up. But even when I did, ultimately I never heard from him. And the one set of comments I got from the editor in charge of the process had one helpful bit, but then was otherwise preoccupied by how often I split my infinitives. If I don't cert (get academic credit for the paper) because I split infinitives I'm going to raise hell. It's not even a rule anymore that you can't!

Anyway, I'm grateful for the great help I've gotten from my friends but very frustrated by the process. As well as stressed about how much work will still be required to make this thing what I really want it to be.

It's 7:11 in the morning, and I've already been up an hour. Today is the day I need to finish packing up my car, finish up at work (to the greatest extent possible - there's a bit of a Sisyphusian quality to my clerkship, with an infinite amount of work I could be doing but, unlike Sisyphus, fortunately, not an eternity of damnation to spend doing it), get my haircut (which unfortunately requires an hour commute each way), meeting a friend for lunch, and then driving to the middle of Nevada.

But it's practically a day off compared to tomorrow, when I have to drive 1010 miles, and learn to speak fluent German.

I certed!

This means that my note passed the upper division writing requirement, and I don't have to do a thing more to it in order to graduate. I may anyway, because I'd like to publish it, BUT I DON'T HAVE TO!

Not only that, but the evaluating professor said I wrote it really well, "like a law professor." What a lovely compliment!

Anyway, I'm absolutely thrilled to have that pressure removed, and positively ecstatic that I won't need to slave away at it either before, during, or after my move to Germany - unless I want to.

One step closer to graduation...

On Wednesday I came up to Boston for a few days to take care of everything I couldn't do from California this summer or wouldn't be able to do from Germany this fall. A lot is getting packed into these few days, and not all of it is very much fun.

Thursday I went to school to deal with lots of administrative issues. Most were tedious, but one is particularly concerning in that I don't think it will be satisfactorily resolved: (Edit 3/8/06: Actually, it was.)

I leave Boston on Tuesday. I leave the country entirely on the 29th. However, my financial aid loan disbursement - the money I really, really need to live on - won't be available until the first day of classes, or September 6. Normally what I've done in the past is, on the first day of classes, written a check for the outstanding balance owed to the school, and then they've handed over the loan check to me in its entirety so I have that money that day. But I won't be able to do that on September 6, because I will be several thousand miles away. So the financial aid office said the university can cash my loan check and then cut me one to refund the difference and then mail it to my mom, who will then be able to deposit into my account for me. That would be fine, except on Thursday I was informed that the school would probably take a week before writing it the new check, and then it would be several more days before it arrived in the mail. Meaning that I wouldn't see the money until mid- to late September.

This isn't going to work! I've been in school for two years, and any financial cushion I might have had to compensate for bad cash flow is pretty much gone. Already I've been begging and pleading with the dentists and doctors I saw this summer not to bill me until the fall, and trying to time charges to my credit card to hit the future billing cycles, but there's limits to how much I can rob Peter of to then stiff Paul on. And I think I'm going to be pushing those limits because of this delay.

What really infuriates me, however, is the complete lack of responsiveness from the school. Now, I should say that in theory BU could still come through for me. And I've talked to some helpful people in the law school (none of whom can control the situation, however). But I seem to be trapped in this nightmarish bureaucracy, where only because I'm doing this touted school program, I risk financial hardship because the university can't see clear to make whatever exceptions to its policies it needs to make in order to make sure I have the funds necessary to complete my studies in a timely way. For this I pay tens of thousands of dollars a year? Support me in doing this, dammit! Don't just throw up your institutional hands and say there's nothing you can do to make sure I can focus on my studies and not worry about bouncing checks and late fees. You can fix this, and I expect you to do so.

Anyway, with this and other stressful matters confronted on Thursday I felt like I spent the whole morning being shrill and whiny. Which may be an accurate assessment of my comportment -- not that it was unwarranted, however. It seems like ever since I decided to do this law school thing life has been non-stop nits. There's always new things to worry about, new things to do, new deadlines to meet. It's very wearing, and Thursday was a very wearing day.

Until the very end, when I went to a Huey Lewis and the News concert that night in the city, and got to watch it from the side of the stage. From a sound, and even visual, perspective it wasn't the best place to be, but it was so extraordinarily cool to be there and watch this fabulous performance be created from the inside out it hardly mattered. Plus I was so worn already it was easy to just get sucked into the moment. I was sort of at the right level of tiredness: subdued enough to not need to be scraped off the ceiling from excitement, but not so tired to be an imbecile... I stood there, in awed transfixion, loving every moment of the concert as it unfolded before by eyes.

And as the specialness of the situation dragged me away from my world of stresses and cleared my mind of all distractions a weird feeling came over me. And I recognized it as a foreign one I'd almost completely forgotten over recent years: contentedness. I was as plainly, uniformly, and undilutedly happy, just standing there, as I've ever felt in years.

My mom spent all yesterday evening and most of today helping me get my wad of clerkship applications out. What an ordeal. (And I'm not even done; there are still some other courts I'd like to apply to, although this was the bulk of them.) Mail merging, printing things out, affixing postage and labels... I wouldn't have been able to get it all done without her help, at least not in the available time.

Unpleasant though the task was, it did conjure up some nostalgia for things like fourth grade school projects, like the one where we stayed up making a model of Tenochtitlan out of construction paper and legos. Turns out those finely honed cutting and pasting skills came in handy...

(There really has to be a better way to do this. And there very well may be: OSCAR, an online system for applying for clerkships. However, not all judges use it. So instead I need to do TWO separate sets of application processes, a mail-based one like the one prepared yesterday and today, and the online one that I haven't had a chance to figure out yet. And these are just federal courts; state courts have their own processes.)

I woke up at 2:45am to leave the house by 3:15 and drive down to New Jersey. That's always a fun way to start the day... I was supposed to leave the night before, but the clerkship applications took most of the day, which left barely enough time for packing. Once I finished that I was pretty much toast, so I decided to take a 4 hour nap before making the drive.

(On the upside, the traffic is great at these odd hours, except for this SUV that followed me from the Mass Pike to the I-91 split in Hartford and insisted on driving 1.5 car lengths behind me, despite there being no one else in any of the other lanes. This car REALLY liked driving right behind me. In fact, when we got to the toll booth, it got behind me in my lane, as opposed to the perfectly good toll lane next to me WITH NO WAIT. Very weird, but unfortunately "weird" is not really want you want to encounter when driving my yourself in the middle of the night...)

Arriving at my dad's in one piece, I parked the car and then walked to the train station, where I caught a train into the city (Manhattan). There I met a friend from middle school (herself a lawyer) for breakfast.

After that I went to Brooklyn to meet blogger Jeremy Blachman for coffee iced tea. It was nice to meet him in person, although I commented how with blogs you sometimes can feel like you "know" a person even before you've met. That's probably a bad thing, because no matter how prolific the blog author, it still won't paint a picture of a person as completely as an immediate acquaintance would. The mistake is to accidentally believe that it has.

But for an otherwise almost complete stranger... we had a lot in common and a good rapport. We talked a lot about blogging, law school, and blogging about law school – and it was nice to talk to someone who understood these things like I do. Normally I'm in "explain" mode, where I'm always telling people what law school's like, why I blog, etc. With him, he already knows, so instead we could compare notes from our experiences. Even though we had very different experiences in law school, and will continue to have very different experiences thereafter, our perspectives on it were, I think, remarkably similar. We both had a similar take on the institution and our participation in it. We participated in different ways, but that we also participated in different ways than many of our peers actually made us have more in common with each other.

Of course, we did have something specific in common from our law school experiences that most of our classmates do not also share: we both had photo shoots! Jeremy had a few, including one for the New York Times, and I had mine for the Corporate Board Member magazine. If you were listening in to our conversation you might think that EVERY law student had a hours-long photo shoot at some point during their law school career, but I think in actuality it's just us...

After meeting Jeremy I then continued deeper into Brooklyn to visit my grandma. After a two-hour nap I had lunch and then was put to work on the latest jigsaw puzzle. I like working on her jigsaw puzzles (although I wasn't crazy about the picture on this one) because I like the way it engages my brain. It gets to rev up in a way that sort of tickles my head, but without stress. I don't even have to finish the puzzle (despite the admonitions of my aunt...) and it's rare that I can use my brain in such an inconsequential way.

In the evening I left and went to Cardozo law school for a reception for my German program. I met a few people I will see again once I'm there. I had to leave before it was over, though, to catch a bus back to New Jersey. And that was pretty much the end of my day. Thank goodness...

I wish I had the money to stop needing to stay in cheap motels. I'm currently staying in another "cheap" motel in Atlantic City, trying to have a relaxing weekend on the beach but failing. My room is overpriced under the best of circumstances, but with a shower that alternates between ice cold and scalding, it most certainly is way more expensive than it should be. (What is with it with me and showers?)

Learning my lesson from the Super8, I did talk to the front desk. They've adjusted my rate slightly, but not nearly as much as circumstances and fairness would call for.

I've thought a lot about my Super8 post since I wrote it, and in some ways self-critically. It is a bit whiny. Of course, lately *I've* been a bit whiny. I've been stretched thin for a long time, and I'm beginning to show signs of fraying. And it isn't quite fair to hold it against these businesses for my condition. On the other hand, given that this is the hospitality business, it's not unreasonable to expect to come away from the relationship feeling good. In a sense that's what you're paying for. But in any case I shouldn't be coming away feeling WORSE than when I started. Yet that's what's been happening a lot lately, when I've been coming away more tired, more stressed, and poorer. I don't think it's because I've got unachievably high standards, however; I think by any objective measure these defects are worthy of concern.

I also wish to restate something I wrote in the Super 8 post. I said that "no great injustice" resulted from my dealings with the motel. But that's not completely true. Yes, it is true that neither life, limb, or significant amount of property was at stake. But like many customer-business relationships, there is an unequal bargaining power manifest in the relationship. The consumer can try to find a good price beforehand, but once he shows up at the establishment to enjoy what he has bargained for, his options immediately become limited. For instance, this weekend's motel told me that if I hadn't liked my room when I checked in I could have refused it. Oh really? And then done what? Been in a far off city with no housing? Been forced to pay even more to get a room somewhere else? It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that, when agreeing to pay these prices, you can trust the establishment to deliver a room that fulfills even the barest minimum of hospitality standards.

And what do you do when you don't discover the defects until after you've already spent some time there? If it wasn't already too late to leave before I settled in, it certainly was by then. At which point I was over a barrel, because lacking an interest in good customer service as an investment in future business, there's nothing a customer can really do to enforce the implied agreement of value for money. Any leverage the customer might have had in the market has been lost, now that the establishment has won the business. It's therefore only the threat of losing future business that the customer still has to compel performance. But when confronted with recalcitrant or irrational business managers, sometimes that threat carries much less weight then it should.

Backdated due to lack of Internet access. Actually posted 9/2/05.

I landed in Germany yesterday. It was a good trip, apart from the scalding. (Lufthansa in Frankfurt offered complimentary coffee and tea dispensed from some very poorly designed machines. As I was filling my cup the hot water splashed up on me, causing me to drop the cup, and as a result dump a cupful of scalding water all over my hand. That was fun, and gives relevance to the Comparative Tort Law course I will be taking this semester...)

I was met then in Hamburg by my buddy, who didn't bring a sign but was easy to find anyway. He was very helpful, carrying my monstrous bags on a bus and subway and then down the street to my apartment.

The apartment is very nice. It's in an old building that appears to predate WWII. Which is somewhat surprising because Hamburg was so heavily destroyed during the war. It has hardwood floors and raised detail on the ceilings, but it also looks like it was recently redone with a modern kitchen and (very tiny) bathroom (which does have a nice shower!). It's well located and has everything we need except a microwave, which we will buy on Friday, and Internet. The Internet is a problem and we're not sure what to do about it. Purportedly there's wireless at school, but I hate having to go out to use it. I really like having Internet at home and am not sure how I will get by without it. Meanwhile, there's been no Internet at school either (it's currently down) so I've been cut off for quite a few days. I think I'm going through withdrawal...

Due to the aforementioned lack of Internet, this was not posted until 9/2/05.

I haven't gotten to unpack yet because the summer sublettor is still in the room. That's ok though, because she's very nice and was helpful in telling us all about the apartment (how to turn on the heat, how to take out the garbage, etc.) And anyway, she's leaving tomorrow.

My roommate and I get along great. Which surprises both of us, since we're both decidedly independent people. But because we're going through the same program, and also have the same personality wiring, we find each other fairly compatible.

Yesterday we wandered around the city a bit going microwave shopping. We found one to buy and will go back to get it in the next day or so. But what was fun is that it didn't take long to get the hang of the subway (U-Bahn) and begin to feel like we lived here. To the many people who ask why I'm doing this study abroad program, a partial answer is that there is no substitute for living in a foreign country. All the travel in the world won't give you that intimate connection with another people and place that living there full-time provides.

My roommate is of Indian descent, which made our Hamburg adventures more interesting than they would have been otherwise. Near our apartment is a small produce store, and in the morning on the way to orientation we passed by some yummy-looking fresh peas on display outside. We stopped in to buy a 1/4 kilo for breakfast. The man there spoke enough English for us to communicate, but he seemed particularly fascinated with my roommate. "What land are you from?" he asked her. When she told him India, he said "Me too!" And then he proceeded to speak Hindi to her. He seemed so happy to have made a connection with someone else of his ancestry. In fact, today when we went back for more peas and I was struggling to find a 50 cent coin to pay for them, he waved it off, pointing proudly at my roommate and smiling, "My land!"

At school we've gone through two days of orientation, taking care of lots of paperwork, meeting the other foreign students, and some of the German ones. Last night there was a barbecue where we could mix and mingle and drink beer... My buddy and his friend showed me the foosball table in the basement. I'm embarrassingly rusty, but it seems like I may not have been too far afield when I contemplated adding my foosball skills to my legal resume...

Posted 9/2/05

The law school where I am doing my semester is Bucerius Law School, the first private law school in Germany. From what I understand it's a big deal to have a private law school, and I believe it's attempting to wrest some control of the legal field from the exclusive domain of the State. Which compares interestingly to the United States, where the tension between public and private interests manifests in different places.

But one thing this law school emphasizes particularly is training a cosmopolitan, internationally-aware lawyer. Towards that end all their pupils go away one semester to some other country for their studies, and in return law schools around the world (like mine) send their students to Germany for a semester. The school then runs a special program for us. We could, if we wanted to and spoke enough German, take classes with the German students. And I think they can, if they want, take classes with us, with our special catalog of English-speaking classes to choose from.

The school itself is in an old building – a former botanical institute, I think – settled in a park area with a large, quiet lawn and a fully modern interior. It is also within easy walking distance from downtown and its shops, restaurants, and train stations. And it's an easy subway ride from our apartment.

I'm sure I'll have more to add about the school and the experience, but I will save it for other posts.

Posted 9/2/05.

One of the "get-to-know-each-other" group activities the school planned was a running dinner. I had never heard of one before, although I guess it's a bit like a progressive dinner. Except in this case it took place all over Hamburg, which resulted in as much running as it did dinner...

My buddy and I met at 4pm to go shopping for the course we were to prepare. At my suggestion we made chili, with my mom's recipe, doubled, and then converted to metric approximated. Amazingly, it came out pretty good given all that, the fact that German ingredients are not quite the same as the American ones I'm used to, and the miniscule amount of time we actually had to cook it. (And the fact that the part of my brain that does math seems to have withered. I was heard saying to my buddy, "3/4 of a pound of chopped meat, doubled, is, what? 3 kilos?") I'm also amazed I didn't slice off a finger with all the chopping I did, especially because when I did the onions and couldn't see through all my tears. But we got everything together and thrown into a pot, which we then let simmer while we raced out of the house and to another part of Hamburg (via foot and subway) for the appetizer course. Another foreign student and his German buddy had prepared a finely-made bruchetta, so we joined them and another pair for that.

Since we got there late, we pretty much ate and ran (literally and figuratively) back to my buddy's place to get ready for the two other pairs who were coming to our dinner course. The chili by then had nicely simmered and, with a 1.39 euro wine from Chile we'd picked out, we served the 5 guests who turned up eventually. It all seemed to go over well.

Then we headed over to another apartment for dessert, which seems to have been some sort of pudding and milkshakes spiked with Bailey's Irish Cream, and met still more foreign students and their German buddies.

Wrapping up around 11, the Hamburg night was still young and everyone headed over to a bar off the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn is Hamburg's red light district – it's full of adult establishments – but it's also a place with a lot of more mainstream nightlife. On Friday night it was still buzzing at 4am. Even *I* was still buzzing at 4am, although I kind of wondered what I was thinking – this is not my thing, staying out late drinking and partying. But the summer's almost over (classes start Monday!) and I'm in this new place, so what the hell...

(However, it should be noted that beer seems to be the cure for the common cold. Upon landing in Germany I became plagued by my usual sinus catastrophe, but three beers (and one glass of wine, and a spiked milkshake) later it seems to be gone.)

Posted 9/4/05.

Three of my four law classes have met twice this week – the last, a German law survey course, will start next week. That one and one of the other ones will run the whole semester; the other two will be replaced by two new courses in November.

The one that runs the whole time is International Conflict of Laws. (Not "ConflictS of Laws," which my professor insisted was something else.) The course is, at least so far, a civil procedure course. We're going over a lot of what I learned as a 1L involving jurisdiction, venue, choice of law, etc. In the United States if you want to sue someone you can't just sue them anywhere and in any court. There's rules about where people can be sued having to do with place (for instance, it may not be fair to a defendant to sue them in a place that's far from where they live, especially if they have no significant connection to that place) and subject matter (not all courts can hear cases on any subject) and choice of law (the court that hears the case may need to use the local law of another place in making its ruling). Complicated? Well, that's just in the US! All these issues are magnified when you put them on the global stage. Then we are no longer talking about whether a plaintiff in California can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a California court – we're talking about whether a plaintiff in Germany can sue a defendant from New Jersey in a German court. And when we start asking these questions, we run into a difference of philosophy (for instance, the US tends to be more concerned about fairness to the defendant, and Europe more about fairness to the plaintiff) plus differences in the rules about whether and where people can be sued. Also, it's not like the systems in any of these places have been worked out to precision: many legal disputes in the US still take place over these issues, as do they in Europe, where there is another level of complication because in Europe there are both national rules on the subject and EU rules, and then there are more rules about when one or the other applies.

I find this kind of thing really interesting though because I really like contemplating process and thinking about the structural issues of fairness and balance. I also think, particularly if I do have an international career, it would be useful to understand more about the practicalities of how international litigation would unfold.

One of my other classes is Comparative Tort Law. In a way I sort of enjoy these flashbacks to 1L year because the first time all these things came at me, they came a bit too fast and without any real context (it was only the first time I'd considered them, after all). Now that I have my legal faculties about me, I'm enjoying contemplating them much more. And I like the course because it addresses where we got some of these notions of tort law from (Rome!) and will (I think) compare US notions with those around the world. The Roman law itself is really interesting, and in the last few classes we've been reviewing the Lex Aquilia - comments by Roman legal thinkers explaining how Roman law applied to various tortuous injuries.

The other class is Comparative IP. In one sense this class is disappointing – I think if I took it in the US, it would have presupposed that the students had a background in IP law already, so that we could build on that background entirely. Unfortunately, there was no prerequisite for the course here and some students are taking it as their first taste in IP law, so the professor needs to make sure more of the basics are covered. She told me she wouldn't be offended if I dropped it, but I've decided to keep it. For one, it won't hurt me to brush up on some of my basics. For another, as I told her, I eat sleep and breathe this stuff... If there is anything to be gleaned from her course – and I think there will be, as there will be more focus on comparison of international IP paradigms than there were in my US classes where they were mentioned more in passing – I'll glean it and add it to my arsenal of policy arguments.

It's also interesting, because in the US law school is hard. At least BU is hard. And I think I do ok – I'm not a legal dullard – but there's so much, so new that it always feels like I'm always running in place, trying to keep up. It does feel different now to actually know what's going on and to have MY notes be the ones being shared. I have offered, and it's come up, to do review sessions for my friends in the class who have not had this background, and that itself is good practice for me because I will need to know how to explain these things well if I push for policy changes.

It is possible that this semester won't be as academically challenging as the ones I've had in BU. In a way that's frustrating, because I'm used to that kind of academic demand and have come to appreciate it in its own, annoying way... But in a way it's also a nice change, and I don't think it will cause me to learn any less. In fact it may help me learn more. In the US I'm always under such pressure to do readings and prepare, that there's no time left to think about what I'm learning. Here there's more time (and an absence of so much thought-squelching pressure) to think about it, to let all these things stew in my head so that I can come away with grander realizations about how things work together than I necessarily have the luxury of doing at BU.

I am very frustrated with my complete lack of German skills. Even when I first moved to France I had the basics to work with. But here, almost nothing.

That said, I'm learning it as fast as I can. I take 3 hours of German at the law school a week; next week I'll take (I think) another 3 hours at the Colon Institute; I read a chapter of my textbook every night (actually I read it two times: the first to see what it's talking about and the second, the next day, to review and learn what I didn't catch the first time); and my friend sends me how-to-speak-German tidbits every so often in emails.

What I'm not really doing is having conversations with people, though. Even the most simple questions – if I can manage them – get answered in English. And the complicated ones I can't even attempt. All the German students in the law school are happy to speak English; my German friends are happy to speak English; my other friends are happy to speak English; and my classes are all in English. (My blog is all in English!) So my English is great! But my German suffers. It's just so hard, though, to try to speak with what I do have, because I have so little.

On the other hand, I've come to the realization that my French is also terrific! Most conversations I attempt (and fail) in German could be done in French. Now, my French may not be perfect – I don't know if I say things the right way – but I can be understood in most instances. Plus I have the vocabulary to at least get started in most instances, and the ability to learn the rest of what the circumstance calls for at the time. I also – and this is what I think is amazing – have the ability to start speaking French instinctively. Being in Germany has really reminded me of that, because during the times when I'm determined not to speak English, I succeed – because I speak French instead. Fluidly, automatically, contextually.

In a way, I feel good about that. I really like being able to speak another language. It gives me this magical feeling of empowerment like nothing else. I do, actually, want to practice the French here. There may be a conversation group I can join, and there are some Quebecoises students who are very happy to speak French with me. (In fact, one said that my French was better than her English.) I don't want to lose this hard-won skill.

But this isn't a French-speaking country, and my lack of German is tremendously disempowering. I shouldn't have needed my friend to fix my cell phone for me. I shouldn't have to walk around being essentially a deaf mute, unable to participate in the world around me unless it's on my terms. I want to participate on their terms! That's what I'm here for! I want to BE here, not observing Germany from the sidelines, but really BEING here as much as I can be, to live the local life as much as possible in four months.

I just bought a dictionary, which I'm very tempted to read cover to cover. I need to start participating in the world around me – so it's time to start collecting the tools.

Not only am I deaf and dumb, here in Germany, but I'm also functionally illiterate.

That's truly an eye-opening experience, and relates a lot to the work I did this summer.

In one sense, a native English speaker in America is a little better off than I am – he can at least ask questions if he can't otherwise glean the information he needs. That's difficult for me.

(However, the other day I did manage to ask someone in the grocery store the other day which of the butters contained salt. German uses so many compound words that even though I might have recognized "saltz" in the word, for all I would know it could be in a word saying "no salt." But then today I tried, and failed, to buy facial soap since I couldn't be sure what it was what the clerk suggested I buy really belonged on my face... Sometimes I get lucky and the packaging includes alternative versions in French – and I tend to reward those products with my purchase – but it's fairly rare and only slightly more common than packaging in English.)

But it's still very debilitating, being locked out of visual language. I think literate people may not even realize how hard it is, since normally we interact with writing so seamlessly, so automatically. Consequently it can be hard for literate people to realize just how writing-dependant modern life is. For those who can't though, their faces are pressed up against the glass of a world they can see but not enter.

This summer when I wrote my housing self-help documentation I did it with the intention that it be understandable to people with low literacy levels. It was hard to write that way, though, since the law that I was explaining was very precise and required precise language to explain. Such language is hard to make understandable to someone whose reading skills are at an elementary school level.

Had I had this experience first, though, I wonder if I would have done it differently, or at least done so with less hypothetical empathy and more actual empathy. In that I've now been there too, being locked out of the words I need to know, and know first hand it's not an easy place to be.

My buddy has been very helpful getting me set up in Hamburg, so I thought I'd return the favor last week by getting his bike flat fixed. "I can fix a flat!" I declared. Which was technically true. I have done it before. But a long time ago, and not often. And not on a 3-speed non-roadbike. And never in Germany...

There is this bike shop on the campus of the University of Hamburg though that provides a workshop for fixing your own bikes, cheap spare parts, and a staff of helpers who can lend a hand if you're stuck. Another German student had shown me where it was, so when my buddy left me his bike, I figured I was set and ready to impress him with my fine bike repair skills.

Unfortunately, I couldn't remember where the bike shop was. And I lacked the German vocabulary to ask anyone. Plus those whom I could ask in English didn't know. After a long while I did eventually find it, and, already flustered, I got to work.

And immediately stopped because I couldn't figure out how to get the wheel off. I was looking for a brake release, but these bikes don't have them. Neither a little lever or a bolt that the cable loops over. Apparently, though, you don't need to release them. As long as you empty the air out of the tire it should slip right off.

Only it didn't. And even the bike repair helpers there (all decked out in their bright red overalls) were stymied. Unfortunately it was really crowded and while I was waiting, these "helpful" girls insisted on taking the bolts all the way off. Which meant I couldn't keep track of all the parts that were now falling off the wheel everywhere. Um, this isn't my bike you're screwing up, ok...?

Eventually, wheel off, I found the leak and applied the patch. Only I didn't wait quite long enough for the glue to dry, so it didn't hold. One of the helpers made the next attempt for me, and then, patch all perfect, I remounted the tire and the wheel, pumped it up, and was on my way. I stopped for lunch and an errand, and then came back to discover that the wheel was flat again. How could that be? We did everything right with that patch! We sanded the tube, we applied enough glue, we waited enough time to apply the patch, we waited enough time to inflate the tire... Unfortunately we neglected to place this wonderful patch OVER the hole, and instead made attached it beautifully beside it.

At this point the level of ambient exasperation was palpable. The helpers towards me for my extreme incompetance and complete inability to communicate effectively, and me towards the helpers for not really helping and to the bike for still needing more fixing, even after the expenditure of all that energy already. But now suddenly confident as inspired by my frustration, I quickly took off the wheel, peeled off the tire, did the patch all by myself (managing to put it OVER the hole...) and then remounted the wheel. Sadly, the step I forgot in my annoyed haste was the one where you are supposed to tighten the wheel bolts to keep it from coming off... I think this pretty much constitutes bike repair malpractice (and here I was, trying to be so helpful and impress my buddy on my fine bike repair skills - apparently I'm a fraud...) However, as far as I know my patch is still holding, and I did at least disclose the bolt problem to my buddy...

Anyway, that was Bike Adventure A. Today was Bike Adventure B, when I took MY bike back there to get a generator for the lamp. The visit then, however, turned into a complete tune-up, replete with a new chain guard (the old one was cracked and rubbed the chain), a new gear shifter (it had three gears but no cable - I was perennially in the highest gear, which explained why I always nearly fell on my face when starting up at intersections, trying to peddle a lump of steel that would barely roll), the dynamo, and a cleaning/greasing of the entire rear gear mechanism, a tweaking of the front wheel (and bolting it securely onto the rest of the bike...), and an adjustment of the front brakes.

It took 2-3 hours and 30 euros to complete but then I was set. The bike was at last roadworthy and I was ready to roll. Just as it started raining...

Edited.

Don't put off going shopping (particularly for things like umbrellas) in a place where it rains. Often.

(In Hambug's defense - and I suppose my own - the first two weeks I was here the weather was fabulous. All to lull me into a false sense of weather-security, I suppose. This is where my Californization was my undoing, because in California, if it's sunny one day, it will likely be sunny for the next 159...)

(Every day I learn more.)

I'm still plugging away at my German. It remains frustrating to communicate, at least as fully as I'd like to, but I think I am ever so slowly beginning to turn a corner in terms of not being so completely locked out of this world. In fact, in the past few days I've had a couple of mini-conversations entirely in German. In one, I went to a store to buy a tool for my bike. There were two tools for the same price, but one came with two other tools in the package and the other didn't. I asked, in German, why they were the same price and the clerk explained to me, in German, that one without the other pieces was made with better materials. Then I asked him (not leaving well enough alone) whether it would really matter for my needs. He seemed to really want to sell me the better one, and explained why, but I couldn't really understand what he was saying. But then, INSTEAD OF SWITCHING TO ENGLISH, like nearly everyone else does when I inevitably struggle, he kept speaking German and rephrased his answer. This time I heard him say that the lesser tool would become "schnell kaput" and immediately understood that he meant it would break more quickly. I still bought it anyway, but at least I knew what I was getting...

Also, people - German people - are beginning to randomly stop me on the street to ask me things. This used to happen to me a lot in France; I guess I look like someone who knows stuff... However, it may all be a facade. Last night, for instance, some men asked me, in German, where the train station was. I answered them, also in German, and gave them directions that they understood, without anyone having to resort to English.

I felt quite proud of myself until this morning, when I realized the directions I gave them were wrong...

9/26: Subject line edited. My teacher swears that the time expression "jeden Tag" requires the accusative case. It doesn't make sense to me, but I guess she would know....

Because some obligations from this semester will carry over until next semester, I've had occasion to think about my schedule for the spring again.

I'm still planning to take the three courses I was already sure about: Tax, Trademark, and Telcom Law. But I'm waffling between two choices for the remaining one: Trial Advocacy (Advanced) and Criminal Procedure. I'm currently registered for Trial Advocacy, which would lend a lovely alliterative quality to my curriculum. However I'm not sure that's one of my main academic priorities...

More substantively, it would allow me to further develop trial advocacy skills, which I'd begun to work on earlier. But that's just it: by its very nature, it would be an enhancement of skills that for the most part I've already been taught. Whereas Crim Pro would cover an area of law I've had very little formal education in, and feel I really should know something of by the time I graduate.

Another consideration is that, as a practical matter, the years of heavy workloads are starting to take a toll. Meaning that the demands of the courses themselves is an operative concern. The Crim Pro class is 4 units, meeting both Tuesday and Thursday late afternoons from 4:20 to 6:20, while the Trial Advocacy class meets from 4:30 to 7:30 only on Tuesdays. Plus it doesn't have a final exam. PLUS it will probably be more fun than sitting through Crim Pro lectures. But part of me feels guilty about choosing it for those reasons. In my mind it seems that as long as I'm in law school, I should choose to take the most substantive things. Or maybe just this substantive thing. There are other substantive classes I don't feel nearly so compelled to do. This one, Crim Pro, despite its notorious rigor, feels like it deserves my attentions more particularly.

I don't have to decide this right away. In fact, I think I can try out both classes for the first two weeks before making a decision (although with some difficulty since they both meet at the same time on Tuesdays).

But either way, it still might be my easiest semester ever, if I just do the four classes. I don't think I've done just four classes in any of my semesters. Even the ones where I only got 15 units they still all involved 5 classes. And that's really the biggest hit in terms of workload - regardless of whether a class is 3 or 4 units, if you have to THINK about the class at all, that's the essense of its burden. (For instance, my semester of 5 classes of 18 units was not that much more difficult than the one of 5 classes for 15.) So there's something luxurious about contemplating a semester with ONLY four classes, but then again, knowing me, I'll probably figure out a way to pile on the work somehow...

I just dropped a course! I don't remember when I last dropped a course. Have I ever dropped a course?

I dropped Law of the WTO. I really wanted to take it because of its implications on international intellectual property law through WIPO and TRIPS, etc. But it isn't clear that what I'd learn would directly bear on those issues, and the scheduling of that particular class precludes a whole bunch of things I might like to do later this term. So I dropped it.

I may still attend, when possible, to glean whatever I can. But it's sort of a relief to not have to stress about showing up all the time.

However, lest you think I've gone all soft, I did add a class today: I got into an alternative dispute resolution course. (It was impacted, and a space only just opened up.) It will be half foreign students and half Germans, and I've never taken an ADR course before. But that won't start until late November, so there's nothing to say about it now.

I also signed up for an arbitration-advocacy moot court class, and later on I'll be taking a comparative constitutional law class. So I don't anticipate being bored any time soon...

Edit: Well, that didn't take long. I suddenly find myself in an Internation Commercial Transaction course. A course I am taking for the Stupidest Reason Ever. Not that I will say what that reason is, but you can pretty much imagine a stupid reason and it may very well be the one. I'm not currently obligated to take it, so I could still change my mind, but so far I find it vastly more interesting than I thought it would be. It's also interesting because it's in English, but half the class is German students. It really is an international International Commercial Transaction course, which I think may alone make it worth taking.

Last night the Bucerius students threw their first school party. After much cajoling I decided to go. I guess it's good to go to these things from time to time, to come out from under my rock and get face time with the people who attend things like these more regularly.

I had a nice enough time, but parties like this are really not my thing. Crowded, loud... there were lots of people there I liked and wanted to talk to, but it wasn't really possible. After a couple of hours I got a little claustrophobic, and my voice was starting to hurt from all the shouting, so I went home. Besides, I had a 9am class the next morning that I wanted to be slightly conscious for.

And I was. Slightly conscious. That one beer I had (I didn't have more for fear of falling off my bike when I went home afterwards) apparently did me in, and this morning my brain felt three feet thick.

The most interesting part of the evening though involved getting there. I rode over on my bike with one of the German students so I could figure out where it was. It was at the St. Pauli Football clubhouse (or something like that), and getting there involved off-roading over this large, rain-soaked dirt field in the still, thinly-lit Autumn darkness. For some reason the ambience made me feel like I was in the movie E.T....

Then I left, to go home to change and then come back. It was a good thing I did, since I got very lost. Hamburg is not a particularly linear city, and roads swoop around and change names constantly. Plus the intersections have their own names too. Even during the day it's hard to figure out, but by now it was dark. And I'd managed to lose my map. So a 10 minute trip instead took about 40 confused minutes of wandering aimlessly through the St. Pauli neighborhood. Which, while not unsafe per se, is not a neighborhood I really wanted to be wandering around lost in at 1 o'clock in the morning, so I'm glad I worked this all out earlier.

Although what baffles me is that despite my complete confusion, people STILL came up to me and asked for directions. I really don't understand how I manage to exude an appearance of language and directional competence when I'm so clearly lacking both, but perhaps this is a talent I can one day exploit?