Previously Unpublished

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!

I love the smell of paint. Recently, an office down the hall from our law firm was being remodeled and so the walkways were filled with the distinct smell of adhesive-color-from-a-can. I probably made twice as many trips out to the balcony to take a break, just so I could waft in the nice-ness of it all. It probably reminds me most of when I was young and my mom repainted rooms in our house in a never-ending effort to “fix up the place.” It just smacks of renewal and starting over and change.

Normally, I balk at change and then within a day, I’m over it and thoroughly embracing the new. So I guess the paint smell reminds me most of that. This affinity is brush and can-only mind you - I don’t share the same fondness for spray paint smell - so don’t worry, I’m not about to ruin a perfectly good legal career by huffing. Although I do find I have the same reaction to the smell in ice lockers at gas stations, however that probably has more to do with whatever chemical is in those rather than any fond early memories I might have of picking up ice.

Anyway, look for a ton of posts this weekend as I study for my ethics class final at the beginning of this next week, and then the state bar ethics exam at the end of the week. I’ll slowly wittle away at all the post-it note ideas for posts that I’ve been collecting from work, as mentioned in a previously.

-jd

Adjacent to my office building is a little restaurant, or more likely diner, that is called Fathers. It is housed in some sort of modern art-converted boxcar deal that actually looks sort of cool. When I’m in it I always imagine that I’m in one of the post-apocalyptic novels I like to half-read and real buildings have been destroyed and the remainder of humanity is surviving by converting things like old railcars into diners.

Anyway, in the shower this morning, I was thinking about the name Fathers. The people that work there are all immigrants and I’m pretty sure they’re all related. They seem to work very hard and they have sort of a sense of ownership over the place that results in good food that is prepared quickly and at a very reasonable price. They seem to have pride in making the food and getting to know the customers. So I’ve imagined all along that perhaps the patriarch of the family owns/runs the joint and they all work hard to make their American Dream work for them.

The name of the place was what helped fuel my little fuzzy fantasy the most. I had somehow got it into my head that the head of the family had perhaps come over and named their boxcar diner after the dreams of his father and his father’s father who dreamed of one day owning a restaurant and making quality food for patrons. Then it occured to me that in reality, it is probably very likely that the place is actually owned by (and the profits actually go to) some rich real estate magnet who got all his money through inheritence and just bought this quirky place to impress some girlfriend. His last name would of course be Fathers.

I guess it really doesn’t matter either way why the joint has the name that it does. If anything, it was probably a brilliant choice just because it might provoke people to assume it is family-owned and operated even if that is not the case at all. I’ll still eat there either way. I guess I’ll just assume next time I see one of the counter guys just sort of run in, make a wise-crack and wink at an older lady, do what looks like punching his time card, and then run out, that he’s just screwing the owner as every good employee is likely to do now and again, as opposed to just having sweet-talked mom into telling dad he had to skip his shift because he had a hot date.

Ah, misperceptions.

-jd

I’m sitting in lawyer ethics class and within an hour I will be at work for my first full work week, minus the 6 hours of class each week that are scheduled to cut into my time, since I started working a little over 3 weeks ago. Every week up until now has had some sort of break or off day either because I was on a family vacation or because of the 4th of July holiday. So Monday through Friday this week I will be toiling away at the old brickyard. Lifting one brick at a time, splashing mortar onto the bricks below, trying to build this small wall of experience into the foundation of a career.

I woke up this morning early so that I would be in class on time. I hate this routine of flopping out of bed before you are fully rested and then stretched and then satisfied that you are as done sleeping as artichokes should be when they come out of the steamer and are laid out for presentation on a table. No, when you get up for work on Monday morning, even if you went to bed by midnight, you are never fully prepared to tackle the day properly when you are awake before 8. I know I’ll get used to it eventually: the shower where the water seems to be doing more work than you are, the morning news where nothing the anchors say seems to matter and you get tired listening because they seem to be working so hard to make it big and move to a bigger market, the english muffin that makes you feel comfortable, but at the same time is deceptive as to how easy the rest of your day will be.

And I like my job and I don’t mind going to class.

I can’t imagine what people do who hate their jobs. The All-Star game is tomorrow night. Sure, I’d love to watch baseball all day and then maybe blog about it or write a daily column on baseball and just live in baseball utopia forever. But even that would have drawbacks because I’d have to either move to Connecticut to work for ESPN or else write for our smaller newspaper and have to write about other sports as well. For instance, about the great Italian football team and the great French team and then their captain who is good at giving head. But, other than the small, sadistic, and paradoxical love I have for the mechanical nature of toiling at work everyday, there is no way getting up on a Monday morning to go to work for 5 days just to get to the reward of a lightning-quick 2 days is ever going to be something I look forward to. I’d like to write a book about it instead.

Anyway, since I’m in class, I guess I’ll try to pay attention. Even if it is the beginning of the week.

-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’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!!!)