Elements is solved!

Hooray for Prof. Froomkin's recent post pointing out that the mysteries of Butler v. Wolf Sussman have been solved! Well, sort of. Ok, not really. All right, not at all, especially since the guy was a bigamist and unless I'm remebering it incorrectly, I don't think Butler involved bigamy. I'm still at work but maybe if I have some time later I'll go see if I can find the opinion online to see if it cites Butler. Somehow, I doubt it. Oh well...

bars

The library is quiet today. The bar exam is tomorrow and Wednesday. Last week I was going to write a post about how the library had become increasingly crowded over the past couple weeks with graduates lugging their yellow Bar-Bri books. Lots of them had that vacant, thousand-mile stare commonly seen on 1Ls during exams. But I didn't write that post because then I thought, "Hey, a year from now, that'll be me. And that sucks!" And I can write about it then (I know, I know, the previous post is about possibily discontinuing this blog and I'm already thinking about what I'll write a year from now. It's just a thought. Don't hold me to it. Don't hold me to anything, actually). I know the whole process of studying for the bar exam is no fun so I'll do my best not to worry about it for another 9-10 months until it's time to actually worry about it.

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Did you see that they extended the deadline to register for OCI Phase I? Apparently they added another employer. So we now have three total firms hiring 3Ls. Three. Awesome. Could I ever stop complaining about OCI? I'll try, I guess, but it's frustrating, to say the least.

Is the end near?

I’m still here. I just have nothing to say. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have lots to say, but I don’t want to say it on this blog.

For what it’s worth, I’m thinking of shutting down this blog. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. I'm not trying to be coy. I just don’t know. I think I'll wait until August or September to see if the start of the school year inspires me to write more. For now, there’s nothing going on in law school that I want to write about and unlike some people – I try to keep the personal stuff to a minimum.

I find that the blogs (or blawgs, I guess) where people open their minds and write about all their insecurities are the most interesting. We all have insecurities so I guess it’s a voyeuristic thing – we like to see others bare their souls. And law school started out being such an intense experience that reading blawgs made me feel like I had a kinship with all these people in all these places. I guess there’s comfort in knowing you’re not alone. But with only one year left of law school, the experience, while still stressful and intense (at times), is nowhere near as all-encompassing as it was when we were 1Ls. It seemed so important and it took over my life. Now, not nearly as much. Anyway, so even though I have another year of law school, it feels like one foot is already out the door and with each passing day the other foot gets farther out the door.

Law school is still a ton of work (I’m filling out those clerkship applications and just putting the stuff together is like clawing through quicksand) and I’m sure being a 3L won’t be like being a second-semester high school senior (where you did basically nothing), law school is less of my identity than it was two years ago. Much less. I don’t know about you, but back then, law school was my life. True, I was married (and I'm still happily married!), so I did see my wife and I went to the gym, but I’d say law school took up about 90 percent of my brain. Now, it’s much less.

Does that make any sense? So I started this blog (actually, I started my old blog, then got rid of that one for this one) because I wanted to write about my experiences in law school, offer my thoughts on what I liked and didn’t like and point out the absurdity of it all. But now that I’m in my third go-around with it all, it seems less interesting. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just in a slump because it’s summer. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not down or depressed. I’m having a great summer, but part of the reason is because I’m not in law school, although one of my jobs involves being at the school three days a week so it’s not like I got completely away. I’m just down on my blog. So I guess I’ll see what happens.

Sad

What do you do when you say hello to someone you know only peripherally and he tells you about an unspeakable tragedy?

Do you know Vernell the handyman at the law school? His son was murdered last month. Vernell says he was shot and that the cops know who did it but haven’t caught the killer yet. I’d guess that most students don’t know Vernell or even know his name. He’s a big guy but he moves around with quiet stealth, especially in areas crowded with students. It’s like he’s invisible sometimes. Maybe it’s an awkward dynamic in his mind because he feels like he doesn’t fit in among the students. I don’t know. But a friend of mine at the law school introduced me to Vernell last semester and we talked a few times. I found him to be one of the nicest, humblest people I’d ever met. He has a good sense of humor and is a huge sports fan. He’s an ordained minister and is deeply religious, although not to the point of imposing his beliefs on you or forcing you to talk about religion if you want. In fact, he even came over to my house once because he was thinking about lending his expertise as a handyman/jack-of-all-trades and helping me out with a project. (It never materialized).

And now, this.

There isn’t much you can say to someone who experiences this kind of tragedy. If there is, I sure don’t know what it is. So if you’re the praying type, keep him and his family in your prayers. And if you’re not the praying type, say hello to the big guy next time you see him.

So it goes

It’s raining again. I know it’s the rainy season, but this is getting ridiculous. And it’s not that usual Miami 10-minutes-of-apocalyptic-rain-then-back-to-unbearable-humidity stuff. It’s been raining for hours at a time. Better than hurricanes, right? This time last year we'd already had Dennis. So far we've only had Alberto, and he was nothing.
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Read student’s rant about blind grading. I agree that the theory is nice but the application has flaws. Especially notice his last paragraph, in which he states that no only is his rant sour grapes, but he has a perfect 4.0 GPA. Good for him.

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I heard that they’re mailing out the class ranks on Monday. So it only took two months to get everyone’s grades back. Efficient.

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About that complaint from the other day about not having a scanner to scan my reference letters for clerkship applications? Um, never mind. There’s a scanner you can use attached to one of the computers on the first floor of the Richter library.

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Are you bored? Read SuperBee’s description of a really crummy meal at a lousy Chinese restaurant. That SuperBee can be a prolific blogger at times.

wanted: a career

It’s always nice to know that the career center is looking out for us. It’s the summer, so you figured they’d slow things down, but not at this school. In fact, there are two recent developments that you should be aware of:

1. Registration for OCI has started! Surely, you might think, now that you’re a 3L, OCI would finally have something to offer. After all, a summer job is important, but a real job is REALLY REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT, right? I mean it’s not like we’re coming back to be 4Ls. So sure enough, there are exactly two firms interviewing 3Ls. Two. I thought I might have made a mistake since we got a new computer OCI system so I e-mailed them to make sure and they confirmed that there are exactly two employers looking for 3Ls. Two. Great.

2. At the career center, there’s a woman who helps people looking for clerkships. She seems very dedicated to this and sends out these lengthy messages that contain excruciating detail about how to use the unbelievably complicated computer system that apparently is used by federal judges around the country to find clerks. Nothing about this system can be blamed on the career center at this school. (So, for instance, don't blame her that the system wants you to write cover letters directly on the system -- not on Word -- because if you upload what you wrote on Word to the system, the formatting will screw everything up. Yeah, that makes sense, because only about 99.98 percent of law students write everything on Word. Brilliant). But … but one of the best parts about this system is that if you get a letter of reference from someone other than a professor, it has to be scanned and uploaded as a .pdf document. Not a problem, right? Just tell me where to find the scanner. Oh, that’s right, the career center’s scanner is broken and according to the woman there, they have no idea when or whether it will get fixed. Yeah, that makes sense. Admittedly, this isn’t a big deal but I love how they place one obstacle after another in your way. As if getting a clerkship from this school isn’t enough of an obstacle…