Previously Unpublished

Well, not much time to write except to say that I didn’t exactly end up where I wanted to on my memo. I’m half tempted to print out a bunch of cases and take them with me on the family reunion. I mean, what are we going to do after 9 PM anyway? I’m pretty sure most of my family goes to sleep by then. But alas, no. Hopefully I still remember all the new things I have to look up when I get back. I’m really just worried now because the assigning attorney wants to give a copy of my memo to the prospective client.

In my head, this means it is evidence towards a malpractice suit if it turns out that I’m wrong. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the law down, but I could probably spend another week on it if given the time. I know it is horrible, but I wish I had the weekend to polish up the memo and just spend time on going through the caselaw without any time pressure. There is a whole lot of work piled up for me to do on other stuff when I get back, plus I’ll be behind in summer school and for my journal committments. It is my first work product after all. Well, that’s not true. I turned in a letter for a client today and it was apparently good in substance even though I had to re-organize it to be more stern and play better mind games with his adversary.

Oh well. Must not stress out too much. I’m sure I’ll be able to go back and laugh about this eventually. That’s what a blog is for, right?

-jd

Today was a little better than yesterday. On the bright side, I got to write a letter to an adversary demanding a judgment be paid. I also got to call a client on the phone and sound as if I knew how to make his world right again. Um, well he was really just acting like “whatever,” but it still seemed like I was relaying important advice.

I’m still working on the memo. There is something near our house that reminds me a lot of the facts of the case I’m working on and so I’m reminded of my inability to write a memo in less than 2 days everytime I go back to my place or the school. It will probably take half of tomorrow to complete as well assuming no one gives me any more work to do until I’m done. I think I’ve got the general idea and I would probably get the thumbs up if I was working on this research for a law school class, but this is a real client and so it seems like I have to have everything down cold in case we were to pursue action based on my research.

So I stayed late again today and also went to the law library later on in the evening. Moreover, as I was driving back from T’s apartment, I could see the office in the distance and I think the assigning attorney’s light was on. Seriously; I’m pretty good at direction and orientation. I’m pretty sure it was his office. Whatever. 24 hours from now, I’ll be on the family vacation at a lake. Well, actually I’ll be on an airplane on an overnight flight.

So I guess I better finish the memo tomorrow. Besides, I want to write more letters to adversaries and get more people on the phone. That was fun.

-jd

I went to work for the second time today. I was pretty pumped up having just come off of volunteering to analyze one of the prof’s favorite cases for my summer school class. I did okay and she saved me a couple times. Should make up for missing next Monday on the family reunion trip. The class also got her to concede the following Monday as well given its proximation to the 4th of July.

Speaking of proximation, which brings to mind causation, which brings to mind torts, my least favorite and worse showing in a law school course; I got my first big assignment today. Holy crap, I want to hurl. I still do even after coming home and researching for another couple of hours. I spent 3 plus hours at the firm research this issue vaguely having to do with land torts and damages and statutes of limitation and apparently I was not on the right track. So we went from an oral debriefing to a memo now being due.

I didn’t learn about these kinds of torts in law school. I barely knew where to look. I still have just the slightest grasp on the concept and what I ultimately need to do. Unlike a law school class memo where you have like a month to work through a single issue, there are unlimited issues that could arise. I am supposed to exhaust theories that could be used for causes of action unless one proves fruitful and then elaborate on that. OMG. Talk about insecurity and anxiety. It is so draining to have no command whatsoever over your tragectory.

Anyway, I am compelled to document this because holy sweet god damn, it has to get better than these feelings of “I’m totally screwed.” Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. I can learn tort law and write a memo about it as it relates to the facts of my case in the next 24 hours.

In other news, I’m totally torn on whether to consolidate my loans or not. I might have already missed the deadline. That would be the worst, to miss the deadline and still lose the grace period. It just kills me though to do this without any guarantee that I will be able to maintain a grace period for some other reason like I don’t have enough money because I’m studying for the bar, etc. Oh well, I’ll fill out the form and see if I can talk to someone tomorrow morning.

-jd

Started work today. In a law firm. For the first time.

As expected, it was a little overwhelming. It is hard to reconcile basically knowing jack-shit with the idea that you have been in graduate school for 2 years on top of 4 years of college and another dozen or more years in primary and secondary school. On the other hand, everyone is really nice and it is sort of fun to learn practical stuff like how you are actually supposed to make money in this profession.

I obviously am not going to comment specifically or too often about things that happen while at work, however, I do want to capture this feeling of setting foot for the first time in a real law office doing the fundamental groundwork that will lead to settlements, motions, trials, or basically anything billable and leading to a solution for the client and a payoff for the firm. Unlike any job I’ve ever had, it is clear that I am destined to eventually become a moneymaker. I am no longer assigned regular duties to be performed daily. I basically have to generate work for myself. Sitting in the office alone is a problem.

I have an office. I have phone lines and email and my name is about to be attached to a plethora of cases. It is exciting and stomach churning and while before I was just sort of waiting in line at the amusement park after having spent a hell of a lot of money to get in, now I’m on the ride and the coaster is starting to move. I have mixed feelings and I’m a little nervous, but there is no turning back now and the best thing to do is enjoy the ride and make the admission price worth it.

Day two is tomorrow. Once I get into a routine, I have lots of supplemental posts about things like shopping for firm-appropriate clothing, etc. However, this week there is too much going on to give many updates. This was just an occasion worth remembering.

Cheers,
-jd

I was feeling pretty good despite a recent bout of fever and flu, sipping cool Vernors with beads of condensation sweating from the glass and beads of sweat condensing on my forehead. I had the volume up loud watching the new Scrubs dvd I got from Netflix and so I almost missed the phone ringing. I answered and recognized the voice of one of the secretaries of a firm I had recently interviewed with this week (I believe this was my lucky number 13th interview from the end of Spring OCI (April) to now.) She hesitated and I knew that I had prevailed. It was sort of like how if you get a very thin envelope you know before you open it that you got rejected (yesterday.) If there is a pause like the caller is preparing to deliver the Publisher’s Clearinghouse line, then you should be pretty confident that you are in.

So finally, over a month into the summer, I have secured employment. It’s a fairly young firm, but it has extremely experienced lawyers. The least experienced still has over a decade of legal work behind him. It covers in a roundabout way all the potential areas of practice I am looking to go into. It is really close to me locationwise which is good because I’ll have 30 minutes to get from summer school to work some mornings and my apartment is right on the way in case I forget anything.

And the key to getting this job? Well, I’m not completely sure, but I think a little gamble I made this morning paid off. I have been routinely sending thank you letters to all my interviewers, however the turnaround for this job was short because they want someone to start Monday. So I decided to use email to reaffirm my interest in the job and then I also volunteered to work for free. Well, I just asked that my title be law clerk instead of legal intern. I don’t have to work for free (Well, I suppose the hiring partner could have not checked his email and decided to hire me anyway, and then potentially could see my offer to work on a voluntary basis. That would be interesting. I’ll have to double check the contract that is being emailed to me.)

So yes, the summer just got a whole lot busier, but I finally get to work in a real law firm with paralegals and case files and leather chairs and inspirational posters and conference rooms and clients and attorneys!

-jd

Whenever I think of heated exchanges between two people, I think of “Say, Say, Say,” the duet between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. Ultimately, they had a falling out over the ownership rights to a bunch of Beatles songs that Michael outbid Paul for, and neither has really been the same ever since their string of duets together. Anyway, I’m not even sure exactly what the song is about, since “The Girl is Mine,” is their only joint compilation I ever really listen to.

This morning I woke up to two emails from a guy who bought a book off me through Amazon approximately a month ago. He’s got a pretty stern, mock-lawyer tone to his message, beginning with his salutation of, “Dear Sir.” The next email is a forward of a neatly cut and pasted portion of his order receipt. I didn’t want to be confrontational and I remembered the order because it had a weird address in the middle of Manhattan. I took one look at that and opted to pay extra for both delivery confirmation and insurance. Normally, that’s another $5.00 or so into my earnings, but this was my most expensive book. Plus there was something about the sure prospect of the package just sitting in some hallway in NYC that made me think I should insure this one. I was actually impressed with my foresite that something went wrong with this order; it seems like years since I sent out that book. I have sometimes waited over the 14 days for orders that media mail sometimes amounts to. I sent the package from my end on time.

My email back pointed out these factors and Amazon shipping responsibilities, but I was very understanding of his obvious displeasure. I was sure based on the first email he was trying to decide what claims he might have on me. My bases were covered though: miraculously, I found the paperwork, given the state of my room, and so I checked the number on the USPS website. Turns out it was delivered almost 10 days ago and a notice was left on his door not once, not twice, but three times (Say, Say, Say indeed!) so they wouldn’t have to leave a package sitting in the hall (probably because I had insurance and they didn’t want it to be stolen). He was supposed to go pick it up (yeah, this is a pain, but I didn’t ask for a signature, he probably just has some small box. Hell, they chuck my book orders into my patio).

Bottom line is that I imagine since it’s been close to two weeks without someone claiming the package, they might have shipped it back to me. Not sure what happens then, because it cost me almost $10 with shipping and then all this confirmation/insurance jazz. He would probably either want to cancel at that point (oh right, so then I lose the shipping and Amazon fee), or else have me ship it back expedited (again, more shipping costs). Hopefully the package is just still there. He actually sent a third email outlining courses of action that could be taken - with most of them on me to contact people. Oh, right! Idiot.

I don’t want to piss him off since my ability to sell is affected by the rating he gives me on the transaction. However, I wasn’t going to put up with any shit from this quasi-lawyer. I sent him a reply saying to ask his roommate where the delivery notices went. I then included the tracking number so he could figure out which post office was holding his package. Then I wished him good luck with a definite air of finality. Don’t email me again, dumb schmuck. Stop having a feud with your roomies and stop screwing up the good trade vibes and refunded money I get off Amazon! Say, Say, Say!

-jd

I’m starting summer school in about 7 hours. The class is at 8 AM and is professional responsibility. There’s a pretty good chance I’m on call based on prior experience. I did the reading about an hour ago. It was actually okay, and fairly interesting even if it was sort of dense and stupid writing. Most of the concepts I have already been exposed to in other classes. For instance, we talked about civility and hardball tactics a little in Negotiations. We talked about leaving out authority, frivolous cases, non-cases on appeal, and skewing facts in Lawyering Skills and Crim Pro. We talked about penalties in Civ Pro. So I guess I’ve been preparing for this class for two years now.

Speaking of time passage, I noticed in the “One month ago” category in the right hand column of this blog, I posted that I was officially a 3L. That would be because it has been a month since my last final, last semester. Yeah, a month. I have no idea what the hell I’ve been doing. Well, I have one great positive to show for that period of time, but beyond that, my room is a mess, I never fixed my budget with all the receipts I save in the tin by my desk, I still haven’t consolidated my loans or decided whether it is worth it, I don’t have a job even a whole month in, I’ve worked minimally on the paper that I’m going to steer in the fall, I haven’t finished one chapter of my great american novel. It’s a disaster. But I’ll recover, I always do…

…Due diligence that is. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. School in the summer at 8 in the morning. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Crazy time. C R A Z Y. I feel like I should start drinking espresso shots right now.

-jd

On the other hand, I imagine being in a classroom with my computer will mean I will post more often again. (No! Amjur, amjur, amjur!!!)

A while ago I had an interview with a civ lit firm during our school’s on-campus interview period. Competition to interview on campus is intense because there are only maybe 20 or so firms that come on campus to interview and out of that only about 5-8 were business planning/transaction oriented firms that I was interested in working for. There were also another 10 or so public interest firms. I wanted to get paid and I wanted to up my odds of getting asked to interview since the employers pick out about 15-25 students based on the 100’s of resumes they get during the resume drop week at the beginning of each semester. Pretty standard at most schools. So to increase the chances of at least getting some interview experience, I applied to civ lit firms as well as business planning firms.

I would imagine having a decent amount of moot court experience was why I was chosen for 2 civ lit firms along with 2 public interest positions I was interested in (and one which I got for the fall) and no business planning firms. My other interest of estate planning, had no representatives coming to our campus. Well, so my thinking was that I could get some good experience interviewing and who knows, maybe I would grow to like litigation. I have yet to actually conduct a trial, so no negatives. I also liked evidence and civ pro very much. So what the hell, right?

Well, I get into the interview and right off the bat the guy wants to know why I want to work at his firm. The obvious reason would be that I didn’t have a job lined up for summer and they were offering a hell of a lot of money, like more than twice what I’ve ever made even if converted to a per hour basis and adding in benefits from the bank job. I led off with moot court and my other research or skill-based endevours. He seemed okay with those, but still a little skeptical since I hadn’t done mock trial or taken any advanced courses in litigation. He asks if I saw their website. I reply that I did see their website and I even try to feel him out on moving into transactions.

“So I see you have a division for business clients. Does that mean at your firm there would be an opportunity to help clients plan out their business strategies or tax consequences, etc?”

“No, we just have an attorney on the side who will do that for a litigation client if they need something filed.”

“Oh.”

“So you are interested in transactions? I’m not sure we could come up with enough work to keep you interested.”

“Well, as I said, I’m looking to gain experience and at this point, I’m not adverse to litigation. Your firm looks like it offers a great environment to learn in.”

And this is where it just seemed that the interview was over. He gave me the impression that he had already made up his mind about me. I could see all interest in me draining from his face. I saw a very lucrative summer melting into the floor of the interview room. I literally recall seeing dollar signs disappearing (Yeah, I know, you should do what you love and let any money follow from that…but I’m pretty far in the hole like many people with law school debt and so at this point I still consider myself a stem cell law student, able to mold into any type of lawyer.) So then he delivers his final blow:

“So why are your grades so low?”

I must have given away that I was shocked he had asked me this. Look, this post is by no means meant to be a sounding board for how great I am or even to complain about any mediocrity. I sit a little above the middle of my class and I have friends who are very smart who are both below and above me and all do varying levels of other activities. I have not met someone who has made it through the first years of law school who would be considered stupid by the average meaning of that word. There are a number of dumbasses, but at least once you are into the second year, despite ranking and gpas and journal positions and on-campus interview hits, I think I am surrounded by capable people. So it seemed to me that since I likely got an interview based on my extra-curriculars since they already knew my grades, that this was a stupid question.

In hindsight, he may have been setting me up to defend the grades with some other accomplishment. However, it was just the disdain with which he looked upon my grades that shocked me. I looked up the lawyers who could be interviewing me ahead of time. None of them had order of the coif listed in their profile. I didn’t even see a cum laude. Granted, I’m not in the position to be questioning a founding partner of the firm that I would like to give me a chance, but I think in law school even students in the bottom half of the class who show motivation should be given a chance and certainly not leveled with this judgment over their grades.

Anyway, obviously I didn’t get this job. I think it was over way before the scales of justice tipped away from the favor of me and my lowly grades. In the end I was just sort of psyched that I had gotten any interviews. Usually it is the same collection of names on every sheet of interviewees. I guess most people already had summer jobs from the fall interviews. Lesson learned? Take comments like that in stride. I’m much quicker now at moving on to other aspects of my resume or to point out the diversity of courses I have taken.

-jd

No, this isn’t a post about the job search. That’s ongoing and indefinite. Rather I’ve noticed recently that a good quarter of the hits on this site are from the MSN search engine which points to my blog as the third most relevant hit out of about 16 million for people who search for, “You’ve Lost that Lovin Feeling.”

This is probably due to some recent change in the way the engine functions or perhaps the search spiders or web crawlers have finally found that post on my site (since this only started happening about 3 weeks ago). Of course the post that I titled using the name of the famous Righteous Brothers song is also the post that has garnered this blog its second biggest spike in visitors due to its substance alone when Evan Schaeffer’s website referenced it in the law school roundup about a month ago. So I suppose there is that outside possibility that people were so moved by it that they are looking it up weeks later to show friends and family. (1L’s receiving grades and needing some evidence of an even more dismal future to substantiate their misery?)

Anyway, since I got 5 more hits today alone by the time I woke up, I just thought I’d mention the phenomenon. Maybe I’ll title all my posts after famous songs (yes, I consider this a famous song because thanks to Maverick and Goose, guys everywhere are now expected to serenade the objects of their pursuits with this song using some sort of corny surprise attack maneuver. I’ve participated at least once during band camp when I was a freshman in high school and all the guys had to sing to all the girls. Yes, band camp.

Might also work in the student lounge at law school. Or not.

-jd

I’ve never read Moby Dick, but I think this is the correct analogy. It sounded right anyway. While I was looking online to see if summer school financial aid came in, I accidentally pressed the link to see my grades. I wasn’t expecting to see them yet and hadn’t braced myself for the impact of seeing them and yet there they were. All but one of my classes present.

However, one thing was lacking: A grade that signified not only that I had passed the course or even done better than average, but that signified that I had mastered and dominated my classmates in the subject matter. I have yet to secure such a grade in law school. The class that I am missing is the one I think I did the worst in, and which was probably the worst final (poorly written), and which had everyone failing and thus will take forever to adjust a small variance between getting no points, failing really badly, or just failing a little to the appropriate curve. So basically, I’m not counting on it of all the grades I have gotten so far in law school, to be the one that puts me over.

As per usual, it is hard for me to complain overall. So far (knock on wood, a lot of wood) this would be my best semester so far. However, it’s hard to consider it a good outcome when the overall results are still just somewhat above the average. I used to take consolation in the fact that I learned everything evenly and didn’t do overly well in one class while completely screwing up in another. I always give a balanced amount of time to every class. The thing is, some people do that and also amjur everything. Sure I did a ton of extracurricular stuff, more than in my whole school career, but still, other people do the same thing and work and ace everything.

So I don’t know, this is a frustration post I suppose. It would have helped in the interview process if I could have reported a couple really primo grades to bolster my transcripts. No one has complained about my marks recently, but it’s not like they are a point of excitement either. You can definately tell the hiring attorneys who were at the top of their class from the ones who were in the middle and then those from the ones who did not place in the top half of their class. The important thing to note, boys and girls, is that they are all hiring partners now.

-jd

P.S. I’m amjuring PR this summer.