The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I happened once to catch an episode of "Sex and the City," where a character bemoaned that the hard part of writing was being able to hold a thought in your head long enough to write it down.

I totally understand what [this fictional person] was saying. It's an apt insight into what the ability to write really is about. It's not just about coming up with interesting thoughts but also being able to capture them on the page.

Unfortunately I find my ability to write wavers from time to time. Sometimes it's because I can't come up with anything interesting to say (although this isn't often the situation…), but lots of times, like now, it's because my mind is too… cluttered? busy? distracted? to be able to hold onto my thoughts long enough to get them down. It's like having overloaded RAM - there's just no space to hold thoughts while I process them. Either I need to start deleting stuff or get a bigger swap file…

It's all very frustrating. I usually sense that there's a perfect way to articulate what I want to say, but I just can't conjure it up when I go to try. It ends up leaving me feeling trapped in my own head. If I really work at it I can sometimes eek something out, but I hate not being to capture my ideas perfectly. And sometimes an imperfect expressions just won't do. If I can't explain myself with precision and delicacy, I'm better off not even trying. (Thus I'm getting increasingly behind in all the things I want/need to write yet can't write quite right right now…)

BarBri has begun. So far so good, sort of. I've liked the lectures. "Charles Whitehead of USC" (how he is always introduced) did the last two days of lectures* on criminal law. Yesterday was on general criminal law, and today was on criminal procedure. He was fairly entertaining, all things considered, and it wasn't too hard to take notes on what he was saying. In fact, it was kind of interesting, since this is the New York version of the course. First they teach us the law that will be on the multistate portion of the exam (which isn't connected to any particular state, and when I say "isn't connected to any particular state" I often mean "is not law in any state in the union at all"…), and then they point out the New York exceptions that we'll need to know for the New York portion of the test.

Although it will be a mess to memorize, it's kind of fun to get this first inside look into the actual mechanics of New York criminal law. I see it played out all the time on "Law and Order," but now I finally have some insight on those particular New York vagarities that I often see portrayed. TV will never be the same after this…

As if I have any time to watch it. I still feel behind the 8-ball and am behind on all sorts of things that are hard to channel the energy for. I got some stuff done today, but there's lots more to deal with and I'm tired. In a way I'm just not ready to ramp up for this. I can handle going to the classes, that's fine, but we're supposed to study 5-9 hours every night as well, and I haven't gotten my head around that part yet. (Although I suspect that 2-5 will be the most I'll ever be able to do on any given day under the best of circumstances in order not to go completely insane by the end of the summer.) I presume I can catch up this weekend on the crim material since it wasn't unfamiliar to me, but I don't want to get too far behind at this point.

* By the way, these "lectures" are not live. We all gather in a large classroom to watch recordings of the ones done live in New York City last week. Oddly enough it's not really as off-putting as you'd think…

Day 3 of BarBri, and I still kind of like it so far. The lecturers have been pretty entertaining, at any rate. And there's been the running theme of them reassuring us that mediocrity is ok. In fact, it's better than ok - it's the only way you'll pass the damn test.

Today they gave us a brief overview of NY essay writing and then some tips on how to do the MPT part of the test (Multistate Practice Test, where they give us some information and some law and expect us to produce a lawyerly document in 90 minutes). I spent the time deciding that the MPT lecturer, Prof. Ruescher from St. John's, probably grew up in the Bronx, or maybe Yonkers. As opposed to, say, Queens or Brooklyn, etc. At first I was a little thrown because he doesn't sound quite like my dad, who in my mind has a prototypical Bronx accent (although he has been in NJ for 35 years, so perhaps it's less definitive than I've thought), since their long "o's" were a little different. But their long "i's" were very much the same. It's a very distinctive "i", and a little hard to describe (much less imitate), but, basically, when my dad says things like the word "buy," you can kind of hear the "u".

Now, you may well be wondering what all this has to do with the MPT, but then again you probably should be wondering what the MPT (or the whole bar exam) has to do with anything anyway. (You're probably much more likely to figure out the former than the latter...)

Everyone says you should travel after the bar. Since I'm such a travel addict, why should I object? Well, maybe because I've traveled so much in the past few years that lying on the beach somewhere seems like a better plan.

But after giving it some thought I got kind of excited about doing a Cathy-style trip. This is the kind of trip where the journey is the trip. No camping out in one place for days on end, it's all about going from one dot on the map to the next just to see what they're all like. And the perfect itinerary for this kind of trip I decided was the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

But then I discovered that I couldn't get to Vladivostok on a free plane ticket. In fact, I'm not sure I could get to Vladivostok at all even if I paid, nevermind doing a weird multi-continent open jaw Star Alliance itinerary. (Alaska Air used to go there but does not appear to anymore.)

So instead I've reserved a free ticket for a nearly two week trip to China. Which at first I thought I really wanted to do, but after having thought about the Russian railroad trip now doesn't seem quite as much fun as it did before.

Although maybe I'm just stressed because I haven't been able to reach my friend in Shanghai and may not be able to before the reservation expires in 3 days. This plan was originally born out of the idea that I'd get to see her and perhaps travel with her once I'm there. But since free seats are hard to come by (and money to actually pay for a ticket even harder...), I may have to just book it and hope I can work out an itinerary on my own later. Not speaking Chinese, however, may make this complicated...

(So I'm open for travel suggestions for China, or suggestions in the next few days for somewhere else in the world that might be interesting to go.)

Edit 5/26: Well, ask and you shall receive, sort of. Unfortunately I don't have $8-9000 to throw at this...

I wrote before about the problem I was having with my lender regarding my bar loan. Despite 17 years of meticulously-maintained credit and all my private student loans being with them (for which they'd given me a very favorable rate), all of a sudden I'd ended up in this Kaska-esque vortex of unfavorable interest rates when I went to apply for my bar loan. This isn't a rational result, I said. This is policy, they said.

So what are you, I asked them, a company of robots? SOMEBODY is making this decision. I want to talk to them.

And eventually I did. I got as far up as a VP. It went back and forth for a while as they recognized the problem yet still clung to the policy, but I kept pushing. And eventually it turned out that they were not, in fact, a company of automotons: the human beings agreed that there was a problem with the policy and they fixed it.

I am now extremely happy, at least as happy as anyone could ever possibly be borrowing $12,000... Pushing the issue will have saved me a lot of money over the life of the loan, but more than that, it makes me feel good about my arguing ability. It wasn't beligerance that won the day; it was a combination of obstinance (which I was always good at) and logic (which I've honed in law school). And it worked.

I might make a good lawyer after all...

What's the bottom line? Well, I do feel surprisingly down surprisingly often, but I also recognize that there are a lot of good things about my situation. I imagine I'll oscillate for a while, kind of like one's perspective does when looking at an optical illusion. You know, like the one where it's hard to tell if you're looking at a set of candlesticks or facial profiles, or the one where you can simultaneously see a picture of both a young woman and an old one. Every second your perspective might shift from one to the other, because both views are equally present and valid.

That's kind of where I am right now. Sometimes I see the donut, sometimes I see the hole. Of course I'm working on my donut-noticing skills because I don't think it serves my interests to be too negative. Who will believe in you if you always fixate on your inadequacies? But to be fair, it is a weird time. Transitional periods are always tough, and there's no sense beating myself up for beating myself up about it… I've got a lot to do, and I'll do as much as I can as well as I can. I've got a workable plan, and if I can improve upon it that will just be gravy (or icing, if we want to continue with the pastry metaphor).

So I imagine I'll go back and forth in the next couple of months between crankiness and confident fortitude. And all of which will be true, if not also apparently paradoxical. I suspect, however, I'm not the only law graduate in this emotional boat. Even those who have jobs and somewhat more clear futures are likely experiencing growing pains. Plus law school has this annoying way of making the grass always seem greener in someone else's yard, so no matter how awesomely set someone's life seems to be, there will always be some emotional ambiguity as one consciously chooses to foreclose some options and set forth on a new path.

Last week I took a few days to go out to California. It was ostensibly a job-hunting trip, but it ended up mostly being a time to catch up with old friends. Which was perfect, because that's really what I needed, particularly with not feeling so good about myself. Because there wasn't a person I saw who didn't give me the hugest pat on the back for my accomplishment: finishing law school. At first it baffled me, because I didn't think it was such a hard thing to do. I mean, while I found law school to be hard to be perfect at, but I didn't find it hard to do. I liked it, I understood everything… Yes it was intense, challenging, and a lot of work, but I still wouldn't say it was hard.

But then, I've been so busy staring at the hole that I may have missed the donut. Instead of defining myself by what I didn't do, my friends all wanted to define me by what I did do. It's good to have friends to do that. And by the end of my time there I was inclined to believe them…

The trip also had a couple of other really positive moments. One came with a visit to the place I worked last summer. I've sometimes had concerns about whether it was a good idea to have taken that job, since it involved neither litigation nor an area of the law I'm likely to practice in. But my visit erased all my doubts - it was absolutely the right thing to have done. Even if just for the people. They are some of the most dedicated, supportive, and generous people I've ever had the pleasure to work with. I'm lucky to have had that experience and them in my life. And yeah, maybe from a subject matter standpoint it stands out as a little esoteric on my resume - but that's a good thing. I'm obviously passionate about tech law and the related civil liberties issues, and that's not hard to see. But there's other things out there in the world, and other people with their particular needs for justice. Ultimately I will be a better person and a better lawyer for having had the occasion to really understand this.

Meanwhile the other positive moment came when I cold-called on a staffing agency. I picked one I'd heard of when I was a webmaster and got in touch with their legal services arm. I met two recruiters who generously went over my resume, gave me some great advice, and explained how to get into the system to be staffed out. And both of them confirmed that I am indeed employable. It was definitely a happy day to find out that, if my dream job should not happen to fall in my lap between now and then, come the end of summer I'll still be able to pay the rent.

Part III: The Whole Donut

I've been working on these posts for a couple of weeks now, trying to figure out how to articulate what's on my mind. It's hard because there's a hesitance to post anything that might be tinged with negativity, especially these days as I start looking for a job and expect possible employers to wander by. But I am committed to telling this story of what it is like to be in law school honestly, and that requires talking about the downs as much as it requires talking about the ups. To the extent that this blog serves as a chronicle of the law school experience in a way that can possibly provide a benefit to anyone else (and I have reason to believe it already has) it needs to be complete. Or at least not artificially peppy simply because the bad things aren't discussed. Besides, the ups are contingent on getting past the downs - without talking about the low points it's hard to really get a sense of the accomplishments.

Anyway, what I've been meaning to talk about is how surprisingly "blah" I've been feeling for a couple of weeks, ever since the semester effectively ended. I first noticed it a few days later in Memphis where I was supposedly taking this celebratory trip. "Shouldn't I be really happy right now?" I thought. Then why wasn't I?

The feeling carried through graduation. Apart from the portion of the ceremony where I walked across the stage to get my degree without falling on my face, I found the whole thing disappointing. Part of this, I decided, was because I felt like I was finishing without distinction: no awards, no cum laude by my name, and I didn't even get to make the student speech (something I'd really wanted to do with my polished rhetorical skills). I was suddenly awash with a sensation that I must have gone astray at some point. I went to law school to make something out of myself, not to be another indistinct face in the crowd. But that's how I felt. So what had gone wrong?

Well, nothing. I mean, nothing bad. I didn't fail at law school. Nor did I get through by merely the skin of my teeth. I did have lots of accomplishments, just not of the kind that easily translated into particular distinctions at graduation. The awards were won by people who far and away deserved those particular recognitions, and as far as the speech was concerned I did prepare a decent one that made it to the final round of judging before another worthy speech was chosen. I begrudge no one for any of this, not even myself.

There is, of course, the grade thing. Ignorance was indeed bliss, because at graduation I realized that though I may not know my GPA, I inadvertently inferred from all the cum laudes that apparently I wasn't in the top third of the class. Do I care? Well, I care to the extent that I'm forced to care by people for whom grades are taken as great proxies of worth. I think that's silly, but silly or not that's what some people do and as a result certain doors to future opportunities may be open or closed to me based on them. So I care not because they should matter, but because they apparently do matter.

But what I really care about with respect to my grades, something I hadn't thought about in a while, is why I couldn't manage to make the top third. Well, it doesn't all bother me. For instance there were certain things I couldn't control, like the vagarities of grading and the fact that, to the extent grades and rank are relative, I went to school with lots and lots of smart and talented people. So while I might have objectively kicked ass, if my classmates kicked more ass they'd get better grades on the curve and a higher rank. OK, that's all fine. Then there were things I could have controlled yet didn't necessarily, like taking better notes or focusing more on fewer courses. I could kick myself a little, but I chose breadth over depth and I'm willing to live with the results of my decisions on how to spend my energies.

What bothered me at graduation, though, and what I hadn't thought about in a while, was the effect that my first year roommate had on my overall GPA. Let's not kid ourselves: I wouldn't have gotten straight A's. And I'm all for taking responsibility for the things I could control. But first year put me in a hole that I was never able to work my way out of, and through absolutely no fault of my own.

I worked incredibly hard. I acted responsibly (no drinking or late night cavorting, etc.). I read, I studied, I did all the things you're supposed to do. But over the course of the year I was worn down to a nub. I couldn't control when I slept, because the roommate would wake me up at all hours. I couldn't control what I ate, because the kitchen became too disgusting to cook in so I could only eat pre-packaged food. I couldn't control when I relaxed, because even ensconced in my room I could not get away from her noise or cigarette smoke. Law school is plenty intense, and I was totally up for that. But everyone knows you need some refuge from it, yet I had none. Not only was my home no place to recharge, but it ended up a place to fester in impotent distress as I endured not only the impact of her behavior but the daily "fuck you" slap in the face her refusal to do anything about it entailed.

I did what I could and tried to ride it out. And after the year was up I tried to keep pressing forward and not looking back. But at graduation, as I felt all my work had come to naught, I couldn't help but look back at it and wonder what I could have achieved in law school if I'd not been so hobbled my first year. I'm really not exaggerating its impact (as it foreclosed various 2L job possibilities and did a nasty number on my self-esteem), nor am I exaggerating how horrible or sapping the situation was. Just thinking about that year makes me want to cry. And throw up. It was one of the worst years of my life. In fact it's amazing I did as well as I did. But, you know, when one of the members of my study group was cum laude, and the other was magna cum laude, and you couple that with the fact that I was neither an idiot nor lazy, it helps support the theory that there was something particular to my situation that year that prevented me from succeeding to my fullest capacity, and that's what's most upsetting about it. It doesn't really matter what the actual grades are, or whether I missed the top third by two people or two hundred. Because of her I never really got to find out just what I could do.

But what's done is done, and I think that's the real reason why I feel bad in general: law school is done. Over. No more. No more semesters, no more opportunities to achieve. Not just in terms of GPA, but in terms of any of the opportunities law school has to offer. I may not be thrilled by the statistical distillation of my time there, but I loved being there. And so, yeah, I was relieved to have the semester end, but there's no relief in having the whole thing end. It was the definition of my life for three years: I was a law student. Every day I got to learn the law. It was a decadent existence, and I'll miss that. But more importantly, it forces me to face a question I currently feel unprepared to answer: now what?

Part II: The Donut

Edit 5/31: Law school is a process, and every day is a new day, with new ways to think about things. This particular post is fairly sour, having been written at a time when I felt fairly sour. Knowing that I would probably feel differently later I still opted to post it because it did capture a truth of the time, both about the way I was feeling generally and the specific subject of my gripes, and I felt that was important to include in my story. I stand by that decision, but I offer the following caveat to readers who might be tempted to overread this as a definitive portrait of me. It's not; it's a snapshot. And only a partial one at that. Please then do read the other connected posts and the comment below for a more complete (though still necessarily limited) view.

In the past month or so I've started getting a whole bunch of emails from technical recruiters pitching web jobs at me. They are clearly working off of very old versions of my resume (my current one has nary a technical buzzword on it) but it is kind of interesting/flattering/reassuring to be getting these. It's been 3-4 years since there even were any jobs like this around.

I imagine that actually taking one of these jobs would be quite difficult from a technical standpoint. My (x)HTML skills are ok, but I'm a little out of the loop with the latest CSS/JavaScript/AJAX innovations. On the other hand, I essentially know what they are, and if I were to pursue this avenue I would be more interested in project management than hands-on coding anyway.

But then again, I shouldn't even be thinking about this. I'm a[n almost] lawyer, dammit! Still, the sad thing is that if I did take a temporary technical job instead of a temporary legal job, I'd probably get paid a lot more. (Potentially 2-3 times more.)

Money aside, though, it's something to think about. If I went back to tech I could be in management with a significant degree of responsibility and ownership. Whereas with law, I start from the very bottom and will need to do whatever bits are thrown at me. Obviously, of course, with law I have much to learn, but at the same time, I do crave a job where I can actually feel empowered. With tech I think I could have that right away. With law… it may be a while.

I stayed up too late on Wednesday running through tutorials on Lexis Nexis. I got through as many as I could stand, which was four, although I was allowed to do as many as six. OK, technically I was allowed to do all of them, but I could only get bonus points for six of them, and Wednesday was the last day I could get any points at all. So while it wasn't a bad pedagological exercise, the real reason for the effort was point acquisition...

For non-law people, Lexis Nexis (like Westlaw) is an online information service that students get free access to while in law school in order to get us hooked on their brand of digital crack and thus be willing to pay through the nose for it when we are practicing attorneys. Both services like to throw lots of perks our way to get us to use them, including via a system of reward points you can eventually cash in for things.

Since I could no longer accrue points I cashed out today. I suppose compared to some I didn't have that many points - only 4105. Some people end up in the tens of thousands, I think, although I don't exactly know how (but if I had to hazard a guess, probably by seizing every possible opportunity to collect bonus points). And some may have fewer because they use Westlaw more, so many of their points may be on that system. I should actually go see how many I have over there (assuming I still can) because early on in law school I mostly used Westlaw. But about halfway through, I think , I got fed up with Westlaw and switched to Lexis. The problem with Westlaw is that if I went idle for a few minutes it would kick me off the system and I'd lose my place in my document. I found this very disruptive to my work flow and so switched to Lexis, which would let me stay in the same place for days and days and then continue on when I was ready, without needing to log in again.

At Concurring Opinions Jason Mazzone asks recent graduates what advice they'd give to their 1L selves.

Well, some flippant things come to mind, like don't move in with the evil roommate!!! More substantively, I think recommend to myself taking some pre-law school courses just to have given myself an edge. (I'd heard mixed things about them, and I didn't need them to get through school, but I do tend to perform better when I am not encountering something for the first time so for me it might have been worth it.) I also would recommend to myself to have been more disciplined with my note-taking and outlining.

Beyond that I don't have too many regrets. Except perhaps for my third year. I'm not reflecting favorably on it, and I think that's a large source of my lingering (though slightly lifting) crankiness.

To be clear, I don't regret Germany. I do vaguely regret not taking German Law as P/NP, but that's neither here nor there… I also don't regret not traveling more, for the most part, since I've traveled so much and already seen most of Europe, yet I do regret not making it to Greece, as well as a particular circumstance that interfered with my ability to travel a bit more, but that's neither here nor there either.

I also don't regret any of my US classes. Well, I wish I could have taken a few more of them, but there were only so many that could be squeezed into the schedule. I do vaguely wish I had taken Wills and Trusts or Consumer Law instead of Tax, given the relative utility value, but it's not really because there's a problem with having done Tax (it's just that I didn't get to do the others too).

The problem is mostly with extracurriculars. Every year I liked to accomplish more things beyond just school. That was key to my being satisfied with my life choice to become a student. And to a certain extent I did do other things this year. For instance, I'm very glad about the moot courts. The bigger problem is the journal, because it sucked up a lot of cycles with very little to show for it. The biggest part of that was the colloquium. A lot of effort was dumped into making it happen, and then it didn't happen, so I had nothing to show for all that effort. Looking back I wish I could have reclaimed it for something else that would have resulted in something tangible. Plus there are other frustrations too (e.g., I'm not sure being an article editor is all that it's cracked up to be). On the upside… well, I'll save that for when it comes to fruition. But I do find when I think back on the year that the journal took more than its fair share of my life, and I'm not sure I'm ok with that. Too many other things I wanted to do got sacrificed, and that's a lot of why at this moment I have the sense of regret that I do. (Especially since my obligations for it have not yet ended and I'm worried about what else it will cut into.)

Anyway, I realize as I write this that I've used the word "regret" quite a bit. Granted lots of those occasions was in the context of "don't regret," but still it's a little weird for me to throw that term around because I'm not normally someone who sits around wallowing in regret. I kind of don't believe in it. And for the most part, I've not had to experience it. A lot of that is because I'm usually good at making important decisions. Like coming to law school. It was a decision carefully and thoughtfully made, and thus there's no regret about it. But my decision-making process is a necessary defense mechanism. While my choices usually work out, I hate it when they don't. It's not that I expect everything to work out perfectly, but I try to minimize the risk or at least be able to anticipate the possible costs so I can accept it when things don't work out optimally. The problem here is that I really hate making bad bets. I so rarely do, but when it happens I don't like it at all.

While I was in New Jersey I used the opportunity to go to the dentist. I saw the new guy again. It's sort of interesting - I came into the practice when I was four years old. Which was exactly when this new dentist was born...

Anyway, because he's a recent arrival to the profession his licensing exams are still fresh in his memory, so we compared notes. In some ways dentistry exams are better than bar exams. Like in the fact that they are regional, meaning that he could practice in any state in the northeast without needing to be retested - a luxury lawyers don't have. (He would have to take the test again if he wanted to change regions, though.)

They also contain a clinical component. Now, in some ways bar exams do too, like through devices such as the Multistate Practice Test, where we are given some facts and need to prepare a brief or memo from them. Arguably that portion of the test is a little less "hands-on" than the dentistry exam, but then again lawyers are a little less hands-on with their clients than dentists are anyway.

However the dentistry exam seemed to share the bar exam's predilection for testing on the least common denominator of the practice. For the bar this means that we're tested on all this common law that no longer is in use in any jurisdiction. But because it is not used in any jurisdiction, it's equally wrong in all of them. Whereas if they tested us on actual law of a jurisdiction it would only be right sometimes, and it's apparently better to be wrong all the time than only sometimes. For the dentistry exam this testing attitude meant that he had to perform some outdated techniques.

Now, that would be bad enough if he were doing them on a mannequin, as was the case for some of the skills he demonstrated. But for other skills he had to perform them on a real, live person. Like filling cavities, which he did on his mom and his brother's friend. Of course, after he told me he'd done this on them I got to thinking that it was awfully fortuitous that his mom and brother's friend just happened to have had cavities he could fill for his exam...

Turns out there was nothing fortuitous about it. He, like all other dentistry students, had had to go to great lengths to find potential patients. He did it by throwing a big party and then screening all the guests, and as it was he still had to pay his "patients" $100 for the privilege of fixing their teeth. (Apparently his classmates were also forced to bribe people as well.)

So I guess on reflection maybe law students don't have it so bad. If our tests were more like the dentists' we'd have to go pay people to rob a bank or something...

Even though BarBri has been completely boring lately, I did find it interesting that FOB came up in today's material. Unfortunately I don't think it was the INCOTERM FOB, but rather the American usage, which is different. Here, you can see my lovely, painstakingly-illustrated PowerPoint presentation about the INCOTERM that I gave during my International Commercial Transactions class in Germany. It was quite well-received. Even the prof was raving about it weeks after!

Also in today's material was a discussion of assumption of risk. What I thought was interesting is that the default rule we are learning is exactly what I said it should be - that the owner maintains the risk, not the renter.

Unfortunately, it seems like material we learned already in BarBri may now be wrong. For instance, we were explicitly taught that if there was not a knock on a door before entering, a police search would not be valid. Now it's not clear exactly what might happen if there were no knocking, but in any case what BarBri had told us now seems to be wrong.

The other day my computer hiccuped while my Palm Desktop software was running, and as a result it somehow managed to eat a large chunk of data. I've grudgingly become used to losing any new data not previously saved (and annoyingly the Palm software only seems to save on exiting) when my computer crashes, but in this case everything seemed to have survived intact EXCEPT for all my appointments after May 2005. I have no idea why anything would have disappeared at all, or why only calendar data was affected, or why only data since that particular date vanished. I also have no idea how to recover it (especially since the Palm device itself has been unwell so I've not been syncing it to that), so I guess I'll have to re-enter everything from scratch.

Still, I guess things could be worse. I'm a little sad about losing the past data (sometimes it's nice to be able to see where I was a given day) but it won't be too hard to reconstitute the future appointments. Except for a few doctor's appointments I had to call up to get the details of, my life from here on out is pretty simple: bar review, bar exam, bar trip. The end. I have not a single appointment after September, and almost none after the middle of August. Which, while a little scary as an existential predicament, will make reprogramming my datebook a much simpler operation. Guess sometimes it's good to have no future...

Apparently there are nearly 300 million people in the United States. And most of them are not reading my blog. But for the select few who do... the creme de la creme as it were... I would like to extend my sincere apologies for being so boring lately. It seems to be all I can muster to bitch and moan about bad BarBri lecturers, because that's where my brain is: getting stuffed full of random bits of law. While there are many other interesting things I'd like to talk about, I'm having a problem quieting the internal frenzy enough to be able to blog about them coherently and cogently (or even just one or the other). I suppose I'll give it a shot anyway when I get a chance, but please lower your expectations accordingly.

In the meantime, I would like to offer props to the BU registrar's office for getting our law school certifications sent off so quickly. A quick perusal of the NJ bar deficiencies list suggests that many other schools have not been so quick to do so. Happily I am not on that list (which also means they got the results of my fingerprinting).

Plus I would like to add that the BarBri Torts lecturer is very good. (Well, we may not be learning a ton of law, but we are getting to laugh a lot, which surely we wouldn't be doing on our own these days...) And that I hereby recant my criticisms of the Contracts unit, since in going over my notes the other day I realized that they actually were pedagogically sound after all. The essay guy is still terrible, however, and now I'm wondering if I need to fork over some money to do the 1 day essay course since I find myself so confused on this front. Bad, bad BarBri for profiting from the confusion it inflicts...

So as we all know, I converted my Lexis points to a Macy's gift certificate and a series of 1970s retrospective DVDs (The Electric Company, Season One of the Muppet show, and a Moody Blues concert to replace the VHS version I have since my VCR is broken and I probably won't replace it, although it should be noted that the concert in question is technically from sometime in the 1990s. But I digress...).

There were, of course, Westlaw points to cash in too.

So what did I get for them? Why, Eugene Volokh's Academic Legal Writing book, of course.

I am such a geek.

Today in BarBri was more on tort law, and in the course of the lecture the professor went over animal law. Basically, if you have a domesticated animal that hurts someone you must have behaved non-negligently with respect to the animal in order not to be liable for the injury. But if you have a wild animal you are liable for any injury it causes no matter how much care you took trying to prevent it.

The professor went on, "Look, on the exam, for a domesticated animal the example will be a dog. And an example of a wild animal will be something like a lion. Don't drive yourself crazy while you are studying trying to figure out the rules for weird animals like llamas and such."

I'm sure he thought he had come up with an obscure hyberbole to illustrate his point, but he was wrong. First, a friend noted that it was not an academic question, since one of his relatives actually had a llama farm. It might therefore have actually been handy to know, in fact, what the related liablity would be.

Then during my swim lessons later today, during Zoo, when it was my turn to pick the animal, on a lark since they were on my mind I proposed that we be llamas. I was prepared for my suggestion to be too esoteric and stump the kids, at which point I'd have to explain to them what a llama was, but I was wrong.

Me: "Do you know what a llama looks like?"
Girl: "I saw a llama today."
Me (incredulously): "Really???"
Girl: "Yes, there was one at the zoo."

Llamas, it seems, are everywhere. Which is just further confirmation of what everyone says, that the bar exam doesn't test law that anyone uses. Because if it did, clearly we would have learned about llama liability.

Edit 6/28: ¡Cuidado - hay llamas!

Photo by Adam Badik. Used by permission.

By the way, according to BarBri, as of this weekend I'm allowed to be a jerk for the rest of July.

Just so you know.

It's been an intense couple of days as I've managed to massively increase my productivity. I've synthsized a bunch of notes (though I still have more to do, having gotten behind at the beginning), I've done a bunch of practice questions (210 total, 105 of them yesterday), and simultaneously made some headway on some unrelated things I need to take care of. The result: my brain's tired. Very. But there are some hopeful signs:

Yesterday was a practice essay-writing session. I don't think I did very well on the essays - I couldn't remember the NY Practice materials, and I have almost no Wills and Trusts material stored in my head anywhere - but it was the first time I'd done an MPT. I'm very curious to get my score back, but I feel like I did pretty well. I didn't write an introduction, which may have been bad, but I think I caught all the issues and it was appropriately organized. I hear that's all you need to do ok. And in a weird way, it was kind of fun. With the MPT you don't need to know any law. You just have to demonstrate that you can think like a lawyer by parsing some law and facts (that they give you) into a sensible written communication. I like doing this; it's one reason why I want to do more appellate advocacy because brief-writing taps into these skills.

Then today we all migrated to the World Trade Center in South Boston for a simulated MBE, the 200-question multiple-choice part of the bar exam. It was 3 hours before lunch and 3 hours afterwards. On the way home I graded myself. I got a 116. While this isn't high enough to pass, it's good news anyway:

• For one, they say that the average score on this practice test will be about 105, and I beat that.
• They said that the average increase is 28 points between now and test day, which is enough to pass even with a 105.
• The actual score will be scaled, which tacks on even more points.
• There's still three weeks of study time left, plus the PMBR for more review. (And that's a pretty good score considering how much I haven't studied...)
• Most of my wrong answers tended to clump around certain subjects. So getting a better handle on any one of just a few subjects should get me several more correct questions.
• My score tends to suggest that when I'm unsure, I'm making good guesses.
• My accuracy got better as the exam went on, which suggests I was learning more than fatiguing.
• I'm not having any time problems either. I'm fast on my practice questions, and today I finished both the morning and afternoon sessions with 30-45 minutes to spare each.

Now, in theory going fast could be a little bad because I wouldn't want to rush too much and miss important details that an answer turns on. But I don't think I got more than a small handful of questions wrong because I went too fast, and I think the speed will be good for me. And not just because it'll mean I'll be able to get a jump on my commute down from Albany to New Jersey* for day 3 of my exam... I think it's good to be fast as an antidote for brain fatigue. Even today, as I was experiencing the symptoms of it, I was able to press through, and the momentum I had helped insure that I didn't stall out. It's really easy when you're tired to just glaze over and stare at a page without processing it. And there's just not enough time in the test to spare for that. So instead the speed helps feed my curiosity. I read the question, ponder an answer, and then get curious to find out what the next question is all about. That curiosity is a good thing, as it keeps me turning the pages. (200 questions are a lot to get through!)

I also don't seem to be having time problems on the writing parts either. I'm having law problems on the essays because I'm unfamiliar with the New York materials still, but otherwise I'm able to stay within the recommended parameters. I finished the practice MPT with about 5 minutes to spare following a pretty complete answer.

Obviously it's no time to rest on my laurels. But I was feeling tired, stressed, behind and worried about what my performance today would be like... so it's nice to see some sign that maybe I can pull this off after all.

* By the way, the New Jersey locations were finally announced this week**. Secaucus, here I come! That's not so bad, actually. Better northern New Jersey than southern given the shlep down from Albany. However, where in Albany is still a mystery, which is kind of annoying given the imminence of the exam.

** Before Trenton flooded and before the government shut down...

Edit 7/1.

Yesterday's practice MBE was held where many people will be taking the actual MBE later this month. As I was leaving I happened to notice how incredibly close it was to the venue where Huey Lewis and the News (and Chicago) will be playing that night. So as a public service, I decided to post a warning for the band and attending fans:

The second night of the shows in Boston coincides with the first day of the Massachusetts bar exam, which will be administered about a block away from the venue. So if you arrive at the show early, do not be alarmed by the thousands of dazed, pale people who may be wandering around. If you do not provoke them, they will not hurt you. So do not poke them with sticks (battery!), or shout at them (intentional infliction of emotional distress! er, maybe...), or run them over with your car (negligence!). Just let them be, and soon they will scurry away into the shadows to prepare for the next day's testing without inflicting upon you the Article 2 distinctions of contract formation, the different types of future property interests, or each of the elements behind the various common law property crimes. Trust me on this, you wouldn't like it one bit if they did. (For instance, ever wonder why we have the expression "dying of boredom"? If you don't take these precautions, you might find out.)

Just trying to be helpful.

In reflecting on my day, I realize that I wasn't just a dork when I met Wil Wheaton. I managed to be a dork before meeting Will Wheaton too. My brain is in sad, sad shape. I think I'm starting to turn into a zombie, quite frankly. This is probably par for the course, although BarBri only said that we were allowed to be jerks in July, not the living dead. So I may be taking liberties here.

In any case, my hopes for being massively productive this weekend have been dashed on the rocks of reality. While there's plenty to do, it was clear I needed a rest before heading into the home stretch. I did do a little studying yesterday, but today and tomorrow I'm mostly taking off.

Last night my friend spent hours and hours helping me resurrect the data from my laptop. The root of the problem, fortunately, is not the hard drive so the files were all still there. We took it out of the laptop and attached it to a USB converter, which allowed us to plug it into his computer as an external drive so we could see all the files. I grabbed the most mission-critical ones and copied them to alternate media, but I'm still a little out of sorts without being able to run a few applications (e.g., the Palm Desktop, because though I do have a reasonably current export of the data it's not totally current, and anyway, I need the application to be able to parse the data that I do have). Still, if I wasn't reeling from the inadvertent 2am bedtime caused by all the geeking around, I might actually feel relieved...

We did in the course of all this nearly kill my iPod, however. I tried using it as a back-up drive - at 60 gigs it's bigger than my actual hard drive! - but there must be some technique for using it that way that we didn't know. Somehow the song database on it ended up getting rebuilt, and in the process it rolled all the backed-up non-music files into it. So to clean it up we took them all off, but then something weird happened and the iPod forgot that it had any songs on it at all. Fortunately something else weird happened and it mysteriously suddenly remembered, but we're not entirely sure what went on. And so much for using it as a back-up drive. But at least I have nice music to stress out to now.

By the way, this is the friend that I met on the plane back from a Huey Lewis and the News concert. Hence the logical conclusion that but for Huey Lewis I would still be in even deeper technological hell. Because it if had not been for Huey I would not have gone to Mississippi, and if I'd not gone to Mississippi I would not have met my friend on the plane coming back from it.

What is odd, however, is that the flight where we met was on Delta...

Today was the last day of swimming lessons. It was good to teach again. Hanging out with little kids was a great antidote to bar stress. The littlest ones especially were so silly. Today their imaginations ran away with them and they pretended to feed the fish in the pool. Then they decided the fish were thirsty, so they had to give them some water to drink. Yes, they were very silly, these kids.

On the other hand, it's good to simplify my life. According to BarBri, pretty much every waking moment should be spend on studying. OK, that's not exactly what they say, but they are calling for 11-12 hours of study a day. I don't think that's quite going to happen, but it's clear that many, many hours will have to be spent on it, so the fewer things competing for my attention, the more studying I'm likely to do.

The annoying thing about all this is that it's hard to tell how much studying is enough. Relative to how much I usually study for things I am studying a lot. But will it be enough? I don't know. I'm shooting for doing as much as I can stand, but I'm not sure it makes sense to push myself beyond that even if I haven't done everything they recommend. Mental fatigue seems as great an enemy as ignorance. In fact it's worse, because it causes ignorance by making it impossible to learn and/or recall. Last night, for instance, I really should have done some more practice questions. But I realized it would be a complete waste of time since I would not be in a place where I'd be able to learn anything from the endeavor.

So right now I'm trying to get all my notes together, although I may start taking shortcuts and use the conviser book for a couple of subjects since otherwise it's taking too long to be worth it. I'm also going to have to adapt the self-paced program, at least for the next few days, but hopefully I'll be able to hit the big subjects often enough, do enough essays, and get in enough practice questions to get everything nicely reinforced without also going insane.

Hard at work poring over my notes, I was interrupted by the arrival of the mail. Included in the mail was my Notice of the Class Action against BarBri. Such irony! Or is that all part of the BarBri method, to make the material they've been teaching us “come alive” through real world examples?

I actually liked BarBri. Except for the writing parts, I thought it was a reasonably effective way of filling my head with all sorts of stuff I probably wouldn't have filled it with on my own. Of course, we need to still see if I pass the damn test, but assuming I do I would recommend BarBri.

That notwithstanding, however, I'll still stay in the class action. While I think BarBri can compete successfully in the bar review course market, it's a problem if they're not competing because it means there's no pricing pressure. Or any other pressure. Maybe BarBri would have been even better if it had to be.

Besides, the deadline for withdrawing from the class action is August 13, and who among current bar takers has time to mess with all that now???

Of course, it remains to be seen what the plaintiffs, if they do win, might win for damages. Because a discount on a future BarBri course is not going to be much of a prize...

One of the pieces of advice BarBri had given was that we should be preparing a condensed version of our notes for our final review purposes. Well, I did that. But the problem was, it took so much time that now I feel behind. And my hands hurt from all that typing. But at least it's all nice and neat and orderly in a binder...

So now I need a final strategy for the last week. I think I will not follow the paced program per se because the holes in my knowledge are not necessarily where BarBri thinks they might be. And I'm going to need time to hit some things more than once, plus there's PMBR sitting in the middle of the remaining time, and I will probably lose a lot of study time tomorrow. The PMBR will mostly take care of the multistate subjects and get some additional questions in. What I also need is a few occasions to get the NY subjects in (particularly the big ones), a lot more NY essay practice, and at some point a few stabs at the NY multiple choice questions. And some more multistate questions. And some more review. And... and...

(For what it's worth, I am coming close to 12 hours of study a day. Some of those hours are more productive than others, but I'm blowing off very little of the day.)

Today we took the 200-question PMBR simulated multi-state test. I still finished early, but a lot less early. And I actually did two questions worse on my score!?! BUT, PMBR says that we should add 36 points to it to get our scaled score. And if I do that, I'm fine. I might even be fine enough to pass California's higher score requirement. Still, it makes me nervous not to be scoring better at this point. Now, they did say that this practice exam is particularly hard. But at the same time, I noticed several significant areas that weren't on it at all. Which makes me wonder how we are going to review them tomorrow and Wednesday. So I've decided to bring my final study document with me to the lectures, and if what they are saying doesn't seem engaging, I'll just use the occasion to review my own notes. There are definitely a few areas where I know I need to plug some holes.

Anyway, tonight is for cramming some more NY law into my head. Then at some point I have got to figure out how to do more essays. I think at this point I may just take a day to do nothing but essays, since squeezing them in here and there doesn't seem to be working. I did ok on the practice MPT, though, so I think I'll let that part pretty much go.

Gah, I wish there was more time...

The PMBR thing seems to be turning out ok now that the lecture has started. The woman giving the presentation is very listenable, and when I'm not interested in what she's saying I can read my handy dandy final study document instead. It's a pity that easments didn't end up on the practice test because they're tricky and would have been good to review, but otherwise the course will probably have a decent effect on my eventual score. Especially since I pretty much blew off the BarBri practice MBE lectures, and especially since I've been learning more effectively through listening than reading, it's probably a good idea to have decided to do this, at least for me. Plus it keeps me off the streets...

What is a little weird is that even though it's being held at BUSL, the course is full of non-BUSL grads. I think it's the only Boston location, so there's people from BC, Harvard, and probably the other local law schools. While we BUSL students know our way around the building and neighborhood, there are throngs of confused people stumbling about our law tower looking for the restrooms. And then the local businesses are also getting confused by why, instead of being slow for the summer vacation, there are several hundred people suddenly descending on them during the lunch break.

- the PMBR lecturer today.

It's amazing how much better you can feel about the state of the world when you have no idea what's going on in it. My excuse is bar review; sadly not everyone has one nearly as good justifying their sense of bliss...

Anyway, PMBR is now over. I'm satisfied, although I recognize that its utility may vary from person to person. While it worked for me other people learn differently and might have preferred to have just holed-up with an outline. Also, I think part of the reason it was good was because of the live lecturer, Professor McElroy, who was great. She had a ton of energy (the fact that she could manage to walk us through 200 questions without herself getting bored, despite having done this over and over in recent weeks, was quite inspiring, actually), good humor, and decent and accessible explanations with helpful restatements of rules. The only significant downside is that, particularly in the area of property law, there are a few things PMBR says that conflict with BarBri. She acknowledged them, and cited the source of her authority, but it's still hard to know whose rules to follow.

In the meantime, it's time for the homestretch. Nearly everyone I've talked to has scoffed at the BarBri 11-12 hours of daily study suggestion, but most people are getting in 6-8 (me too). Also, a lot of people are jettisoning the proposed BarBri curriculum (also me too) because it was just too hard to keep up with if you hadn't quite been on top of it from the outset. That said, everyone is recommending doing practice essays and questions, so for the next few days I think that's pretty much all I'll do. I've read about as much as I have patience for; now it's time to test out my memory and use the exercise to shore it up.

Everyone is also recommending bringing the study to a close by noon the day before the exam (Monday for me). I think I'll abide by that too, although I may save that afternoon to review the instructions for the test and look over the possible MPT formats. I got a decent enough score on the practice one that I'm not worried about preparing for it. Like I told my friend, “It's my gift to myself to not have to study for it. Sort of a ‘Congratulations for being competent.'” I think it's good to do that, since so often I don't feel competent... Besides, I have a tendency to actually learn the law that comes up on the practice MPT, and there's no spare space in my head to waste for that.

Back when I was having problems with my horrible ex-roommate I called up a friend of mine in desperate near-hysterics. She calmed me down and then consulted with her sister for possible solutions to my problem. “Why don't you put something like raisinettes in the shower? No one will be able to tell what they are, and they'll presume the worst,” they proposed. Alas, this was not a good plan because I shared the bathroom with two other roommates who were decent enough not to antagonize, and, anyway, the evil roommate probably wouldn't have noticed. As it was we kept finding her own candy wrappers in the bathroom...

But I appreciated the suggestion, and then really appreciated the gesture she followed up with. One of my complaints about the evil ex-roommate was that her lack of cleanliness was making it impossible to cook in the kitchen, and as a result I was not getting enough fruit and vegetables in my diet. So my friend decided to solve my problem by sending me a gigantic vat of raisinettes, with a note reminding me to get “five a day.”

The raisinettes were lovely, but it was the thought that meant much more. In that awful, trying time that act of thoughtfulness itself was one of the things that helped me get through it.

Similarly meaningful was the graduation gift she sent me. She's been going through a lot lately in her own life, and all I want is for her to be well. The last thing I wanted or expected from her was a graduation gift. But when I talked to her on the phone she was insistent about getting me one. And apologetic. “I've got it all picked out. I'm so sorry you haven't gotten it yet!” And I tried to assure her that it was totally ok, I really didn't expect anything, please don't go to any trouble, etc. It's always awkward to get gifts anyway, right? It'll probably be something totally nice but totally unneeded, and then you'll feel guilty that they went to the effort and expense...

But the gift that finally arrived was one of the most thoughtful things I've ever received. It was a crystal candy dish, engraved with my name, with a note that in my new job as a lawyer I should always keep it on my desk and filled. To get me started on that she also enclosed a package of raisinettes.

Meanwhile, as graduation neared another friend of mine started cheering me on, telling me how proud she was of my accomplishment. It should be noted here that these are non-lawyer friends. I neither know them from law school, nor were they already lawyers. They just happen to be friends who've come into my life through the course of it from other contexts. Anyway, this other friend has just gone back to school herself, and this spring we exchanged mutually-encouraging correspondence to get through our respective final exams. At some point she mentioned to me that she was now addicted to M&Ms because she'd been using them to bribe herself to study. “Well,” I said, thinking to myself about the above story, “You'll just have to switch to raisinettes!”

Eventually our exams all ended, but then my bar exam loomed. “Should I send you some raisinettes?” she seemingly jokingly offered. I don't think I've even responded to the email, caught as it was in my whirlwind. But in this case silence was apparently interpreted as acceptance, because in the mail today she sent me eight boxes of them!

Of course it's not the raisinettes themselves that's so touching. It's the thought, th