Previously Unpublished

So this is my first post using my dictation software. I’ve had the software for almost a year now. At one time, I thought this was the key to finally getting around to writing the great American novel that I’m all talking about. Further, you always see in the movies (and in real life) attorneys dictating letters and memos into a tape recorder for secretaries to transcribe. It only be assumed that the more high tact attorneys are doing the same thing with dictation software. Well, what first began to use the software all the command you had to know seem to make it more cumbersome than helpful. Basically, it is getting the way my creative juices.

Thus, after my hard drive crashed shortly thereafter, erasing the install program, I left it off my computer. Until now. It actually works pretty quickly, and you can usually talk at a fairly natural speed. My mind just isn’t trained to dictate like a pro. But, now it seems that the commands come easier, and moreover, I’ve found an effective use for the dictation software: For things such as dictating a blog or an e-mail or most importantly just noting my thoughts when doing class reading this program is perfect. I’ve always hated taking notes out of case books and am usually discouraged from trying the reading. It just seems to make the process take twice as long. However, if I can just sit and read with a microphone slung over my head, it makes notetaking for class a cinch.

Anyway time to finish the reading for my first classes of 3L. Dictation makes reading fun.

-jd

Our office uses a lot of abbreviations to classify different types of documents, clients, and employees in our online file system. For instance, everything I do has some sort of combo of my initials, a random alpha-numeric combo that stands for our client, and then a three letter combo that stands for the type of legal whatever it corresponds to in real life. Every firm does stuff like this to keep things organized.

In our firm, motions in limine are abbreviated MIL. However, when I see it, my mind fills in the clipped abbreviation and I see the one that is more familiar to my male mind. That would be MILF. I don’t have any particular fetish for MILFs and there should be no reason for me defaulting to one abbreviation over the other, except perhaps that I’ve seen MILF more often than I’ve seen MIL. See, e.g., I’ve been aware of MILF since the first American Pie movie (as noted in the link), and I’ve been aware of MIL since I saw my first mock trial approximately a year and a half ago. Thus, I suppose that’s why I see MILF when the text reads MIL.

Okay, so what, you have a thing for MILFs or something? Well, this doesn’t matter normally, except when you are reading off to a colleague the classification combo that she should use to find a motion in limine document you wrote up a couple weeks prior.

“Oh, you can just look that up under JD12345…MILF.” MILF!!! To a female paralegal with an attorney present. Hahahaha. I quickly recovered and said, “that would be motion in limine…it’s under the client’s folder.” The male attorney caught it and smirked. The paralegal didn’t say anything and fortunately she doesn’t have any children yet, so I guess no harm no foul. I spent the drive home today relearning MIL as an abbreviation for Milhouse of Simpsons fame. Hilarious.

-jd

Man, I’ve become flakey in this blog thing. Work just leaves no time for anything. I’ll have to step it up once classes start again. I have a lot of material, but no time to flesh it out, make it even a little interesting, or in the least, censor it a little.

It’s almost 3L time. Well, I guess I was a 3L this summer, but now it’s for real. (For real as in I will be prepping for the bar in 8 months, I need a job, and I’m hella in debt.)

-jd

It warms the cockles of my heart when I walk down a row in the library and see people quasi-studying with their computers broadcasting little renditions of baseball games, simplified into little green and brown diamonds with glowing red dots representing runners and a real-time box score updating the action. Give me some peanuts and cracker jacks and studying for professional ethics will be the same thing as being at the ball game.

Now, I wasn’t being sarcastic when I said the cockles of my heart were warmed. It is awesome to see so many law students focused on the game of baseball. Granted, it’s about the only sport you can “watch” via rudimentary baserunners because the game is so slow and is really at least 50% stat-driven, so it could be everyone would rather watch other sports, but those sports don’t translate well to the digital screen.

No matter, though, the law is a baseball-tainted profession. Both share lots of folklore from the past, have asinine strategies perfected to a strangled degree of frustration, and both allow old men to continue to perform long after their prime. And the slang is ingrained into our culture…I’d like to score with her…I’d like to sue the pants off her. Bad, example…well, hey I’m supposed to be doing crap for work…this post was originally the product of my procrastination while studying last week.

Okay, well…not supposed to work at night since I’m a summer clerk, but I have to so they won’t give me a bad referral when I leave in a couple o’ weeks.

Anyway, I’d also like to point out that my ants post got notice from Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground, which is hosting the Weekly Law School Roundup #30. The links from the Legal Underground are always appreciated and this week they are themed sort-of to songs from the Red Hot Chili Peppers catalogue.

-jd

Go Cardinals…bomb those Reds!