Dubitante

I'm done. I have obsessed enough and it is time to go to bed.

Silly, silly me. I nearly forgot I still have all my reading to do for tomorrow's three classes... Looks like the mind-numbing revisions will have to stop for a few hours...

Who loves law school? I do, I do.

So, my LRW take-home final is technically complete. I could go turn it in to the Registrar this afternoon and avoid tomorrow's torturous spectacle of inefficiency that is the designated hand-in time, but I can't. I am held hostage by two of my more overbearing character traits:

1) I am lazy. Real lazy. To turn it in this afternoon would require a shower or, at the bare minimum, changing out of the comfy fleece sweatpants I've been wearing since I started working on the final, five days ago. I'd also have to comb my hair and put on real shoes. Not to mention the fact that the fiancee has the car, so I'd have to endure the 90-minute Metro roundtrip. I can't do it.

2) What does "done" mean, anyway? My OCD simply prevents me from being "done" until I absolutely have to actually be done (when I leave the house tomorrow morning). There's 17 hours till then. I can't help but read through my paper about 100 more times before then. What if there's a missing comma or I forgot to close a quote? What if a pinpoint cite refers to the wrong page? What if there's only one space after a period instead of two? What if, what if, what if?

And so it is. I am powerless. I will have to turn it in tomorrow. In the meantime, I look forward to driving myself insane with eye-blurring, perpetual, and, ultimately, inconsequential revisions. That's just who I am.

Anonymous Lawyer recently posted about the controversy currently brewing in law firms over the blawgs of associates (including summer hires!). Just as I have always feared, despite the sheer vastness of the Web, there is no such thing as anonymity. People (including hiring partners) are watching (and reading).

A few months ago, I received an IM from someone who really liked my webpage. The thing is, I didn't have a webpage a few months ago. Where did she find my IM address? Why did she think I had a webpage? After a short IM conversation, I realized she was viewing a webpage I had created my freshman year of college, 8 years ago!!! I did a couple Internet searches and, sure enough, there it was, in all its ignominy. Buried deep within the files of my former roommate's engineering account, my website persisted, nearly a decade since the last update. Most of the links still worked, and, more troubling, all of the content remained. What I though was funny when I was 17, will keep me off the Supreme Court when I'm 67.

I don't anticipate these revelations will affect my posts on this site. But, I will be watching my words so they won't be able to haunt me in perpetuity (Isn't there some sort of Rule Against Perpetuities?) And, if you know who I am, this is not my blog and nothing I say is true.

As I seem too busy of late to post often enough to satisfy my readers' insatiable appetites, and because law school is rougher on the significant others of law school students than it is on the students, themselves, I am pleased to announce a new contributor to Dubitante. From here on out, my fiancee, EAA, will be making the occasional post. I hope you'll enjoy the new perspective. I know I will.

Courier New, 12 point, is pure evil. It makes Arial look small. It turns a 5 page paper into 8. It allows only 6 words per line. It relishes bumping the 13-letter topic of your paper to the next line. It taunts you with its ridiculous spacing between letters. It laughs at your efforts at conciseness. It mocks your page limit, as it discusses the preferability of word count limits. It wallows in its largeness, ridiculing standard fonts like Times New Roman. It haunts you.

(sighs in resignation)

Apparently, we have a new Dean (thanks to Disputation for the heads-up). I'll leave it to smarter people to comment on whether this is a good thing or not, though I assume it is. Until then, congratulations to Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff and a happy return to teaching to Dean Judith C. Areen.

Some recent observations from my ethics class:

Apparently, I'm a bad man. In the endless parade of hypothetical situations we are confronted with in class, very few have even tickled my moral barometer. This concerns me a bit. I don't think I'm an immoral person and I don't intend to be an immoral lawyer. That said, I think lawyers have a unique role. We have a duty of zealous advocacy for our clients. In my eyes, that means you do whatever you can, within the bounds of the law, to help your client win. Certainly, there are situations where the moral price of such advocacy is extremely high and the lawyer must make a choice: win or do the right thing? Or is winning the right thing?

We watched a video about negotiation the other day where high-powered Attorney A walked the line of dishonesty during settlement negotiation with less experienced Attorney B. Attorney A told no lies, but also didn't freely offer any information. In the hypo, the law had recently changed from contributory negligence (barring recovery for B's client) to comparative negligence (allowing recovery for B). B was unaware of the change and A did not tell him about it. As a result, B accepted a very low settlement offer. The Prof intended the video to elicit outrage about Attorney A's behavior and, indeed, most of the class thoroughly attacked A. Yet I sat there thinking "B should have done his research. Good for A."

In nearly every other hypo we've discussed, the bulk of the class* takes the moral highground, promising to recuse themselves from the case, refuse the client, or quit the job. Such thinking is absolutely absurd. You simply cannot quit a job every time your idealism is challenged. What about the mortgage, the car payment, the wife's shoes, the kids, the student loan debt?

That said, I believe there are certain things you can do to minimize the chance of ethical distress.

Choose your practice setting carefully. I believe this is the only true moral choice a lawyer gets to make. When you choose to be a criminal defense attorney, you are signing up for a whole slew of moral dilemmas. Except as a criminal defense attorney, you cannot afford to have them be dilemmas; you must play your role and do your job, regardless of personal belief. The same goes for other practice areas. If you want to make more money than G-d and go to work for some high-powered corporate firm, be prepared to compromise your own beliefs to those of the client or your bosses. Quitting is not an option, but choosing where to work is.

This seems like common sense to me, but apparently much of the class doesn't get it. And, frankly, I am concerned that many of them are either poised for a very rude awakening or are simply not pursuing the right profession. I am not suggesting a lawyer gets a free pass to act immorally, but am only pointing out that a lawyer also doesn't get a free pass to forget he's a lawyer when confronted with a difficult choice. The bottom line is: do what you feel comfortable with; don't lie; don't break the law; choose your practice setting carefully; and all will be well.


* Interestingly, the other students from my section tend to be closer to my views, taking a more realistic view of the hypos and being less inclined to up and quit a job when faced with a tough choice.

Today, in Criminal Justice, we discussed the profoundly troubling case of Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540. The case concerns government entrapment of Jacobson on child pornography charges. The government spent 2 1/2 years sending fake correspondence to Jacobson, including phony "pen pal" letters, promoting the desirability of child porn and lamenting government censorship of it. The court found for Jacobson and the majority opinion demonstrates the apparent evolution away from a purely subjective test for determining entrapment.

The legal stuff aside, it turns out Professor Crim was clerking for the Court when the case was decided and was able to provide the class with copies of some actual evidence presented in the case. And, the grotesque proclivities of Jacobson aside, this is where the case, and the government's "investigation," truly becomes disturbing...

For example, one of the fake "pen pal" letters says: "I know a guy in Omaha who's [sic] fantasy it was to tie up Scott Baio (Chachi in 'Happy Days'), he had about 100 pics of Scott Baio."

Bizarre. Charles in Charge? Why? I can't help but wonder what was really going on with this investigation...

It's my birthday...and I'll stall if want to.

Productivity is a bit down this weekend, but fear not faithful reader (and co-signers of my loans), it will all get done... Up next, reading cases for the brief and writing a personal statement for my law fellow app, and then I take the rest of the day off in honor of my birth.

In other news, Charlie Kaufman has done it again. Though perhaps not quite as good as his Spike Jonze collaborations, Kaufman's latest mind-bender, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is simply fantastic. I highly recommend it to all.

And today's horoscope, courtesy of Astrology.com, is:

"You're a legend around here. Your exploits make what passes for headlines in the gossip community. Even though fame and fortune move in cycles, people always nod their heads and smile knowingly when your name comes up. If you really need to analyze this phenomenon, it's your air of deep mystery that makes you so great. You're usually in the middle of some assumed adventure even when you're quietly minding your own business. Why not play the game and live up to your reputation? You'll get more invites and dates that way, positioning yourself to really get things cooking."

I must say, truer words have never been written. I wonder if staring blankly at a stack of cases and accomplishing absolutely nothing today will add to my "legend."

Pet Peeve o' the Day: Lexis freaks.

Why do people insist on printing out 1,000+ page entire ALR articles, forcing the rest of us judicious, courteous, and reasonable users of the Lexis printers to wait for ages as these idiots consume entire forests? Let's be honest: you are neither going to read that entire ALR article, nor do you need it. We only have 10 days to complete the Final. The subject matter is something we have already written about. Furthermore, it is a subject covered in our Crim class, and any and all necessary background material is amply covered in our textbook. Finally, our assignment is focused on a tiny jurisdiction where the number of relevant cases is far from overwhelming.

Come on, people, pull it together! If having a giant stack of paper you will never glance at makes you feel more comfortable as you write this amazing low-key and virtually stress-free Final, I can understand. I simply ask that you keep your insecurity to yourself and not announce it to the line of people waiting in the print room. I am not normally a vindictive man. So it comes with a sad reluctance that I must wish upon you a paper cut for every needless page.

I went to see my beloved Kings play the lowly Wizards last night. They lost. Too upset to write.

LexisNexis has announced it will begin offering its legal databases to prisons, beginning with (surprise, surprise) my home state of California.

Apparently, law libraries in prisons were outdated and understaffed (again, surprise, surprise) so Lexis has jumped to the aid of all the innocent people wrongly imprisoned and has installed touch screen kiosks for prisoners to use in researching their pro se appeals. The screens are shatter-proof so as to prevent prisoners from cracking the screen and using the broken glass as a shiv. I had no idea an innocent person rabidly researching the law to prove his innocence would be so prone to destroy property and then use it as a weapon. Go figure.

Spring Break is over and I am ever so anxious to get back to class (please forgive the blatant lie, I am trying a little psychology this cool Sprinter (as JCA aptly named it) morning where my bed and its soft & warm comforter looks mighty nice).

Class aside, what I am really thinking about is my childhood best friend, Doug. Doug lived across the street from me. We were fast friends when I moved in at age 3. Doug was a year older than me. I skipped Kindergarten in part to be in the same class with Doug. Today is Doug's birthday. My birthday is less than a week away. Growing up, I was a spoiled little snot. Every year, Doug would get something for his birthday, and I would get something a little better for mine a week later.

If Doug got a bike, I'd get a better one. If Doug got a skateboard, I'd get a cooler one. If Doug got a scooter, I'd get the most expensive one. This wasn't kind of me. Doug moved away when I was 13. Since then, I have grown far less spoiled and far more lucky. I wish I could apologize to Doug for being such a brat. In the meantime, I'll just hope Doug has a good birthday today.

Note to Self: Don't wait until the last day of Spring Break to start your reading assignments!

I awoke this morning with grand plans of hyper-productivity. I was going to do my reading, finish my law fellow application, work on my outlines, and still have enough time to watch my beloved Kings on the tube.

But, there's nothing like 40 pages of Property reading to drain me of all motivation qnd destroy what little joy I had left on the final day of Spring Break. I typically don't complain about my reading assignments. I'm a 1L. This is law school. It's not supposed to be fun. But, 40 pages of easements and the simply fascinating complexities of their creation, scope, and function is more than I care to endure.

But, endure it I must.

On the plus side, in the midst of the torturous assigment, I was able to read about Stevens v. City of Cannon Beach, 854 P.2d 449 (1993). Cannon Beach is an absolutely lovely village on the Oregon Coast, where I spent many a childhood day finding sand dollars on the beach and exploring tide pools. It is also where various scenes from The Goonies were filmed. Plus, there is a great bookstore, which I will someday own (when this law thing doesn't work out or pays me enough to retire early). I highly recommend a visit.

The house is empty again. Just me, my fish, my laundry, and my outlines. The wife-to-be is in sunny California until Wednesday; unfortunately, her impromptu trip is for less than sunny reasons. Despite our best efforts to the contrary, life keeps happening. I wish I could be there with her and her family, but the calculus of expense and time didn't work out in my favor.

On a related note, I learned yesterday that most airlines offer "compassion fares" for short-notice trips under unfortunate circumstances. American was so compassionate, they offered DC to Sacramento for $750; United was even more compassionate, offering to do the trip for $710; Frontier had no compassion at all. Bastards.

Turns out Orbitz was the most compassionate of all (without even claiming to be), with a United flight for $365.

There are many things in this world I will never understand.

Is it abnormal that my sole motivation for slaving away on my outlines is that I look forward to bestowing some killer outlines on a few lucky 1Ls next year (as a couple kind 2Ls have done for me this year)?

Outlining season has officially begun! I finally ran out of ways to distract myself or otherwise justify my rampant procrastination and I have begun to outline in earnest. Civ Pro is well on the way and Property is next. Last semester, once I broke down the wall of procrastination and opened the outlining floodgates, I proceeded fairly quickly. I only hope I can muster the same level of determination this semester. With 4 full days of Spring Break left, I could make some real progress if I can maintain my focus. I suppose disconnecting the Internet and closing this time-sucking blog would be a good start...I'm off.

I was wandering around my house this morning, trying to quiet the voices in my head screaming "outline, you fool, outline!," when I stumbled across a book of Tennessee Trivia amongst my fiancee's knitting supplies*. What is this book? Why is my wife-to-be studying about Tennessee? Who is he? Is he better looking than me? I will gladly "volunteer" to challenge him to a duel to defend my honor. I shall not be defeated...

Actually, my paranoia does not run quite that deep. Plus, I'm a bit of a wuss and probably shouldn't be dueling anyone. But the book was a curious find...

*Knitting isn't just for old people anymore...and my fiancee recommends this book for those interested in a new hobby.

A billboard outside the "Casa Furniture" store on King Street in Alexandria, VA reads:
"Credito sin papeles de gringos"

My resume tells me I have 5 years of Spanish education and I believe the rough translation of this is:
"ILLEGAL ALIENS SHOP HERE (and pay later)"

G-d Bless America...

In an eerie display of parallel reasoning, Disputation has bowed out of Moot Court, as well. There goes the team.

Given my good fortune of late, I have decided to give a little something back to the law school community.......I have decided to graciously withdraw from the Moot Court competition...

I just couldn't pump myself up to read a 186-page packet and write a 15-page brief over my Spring Break to try to get selected for a resume notch I have no real interest in participating in. I am hoping to be a law fellow and make a journal, and there simply would not be time for Moot Court, too. (Not to mention the fact that I know Disputation really wants it and I would hate to get in the way)

I discussed the matter with my career advisor and a trusted professor and they tended to agree with my reasoning. Absolute worst case, if law fellow or journal falls through, there is another Moot Court competition in the Fall. In the meantime, I think my time is better spent outlining and studying for my classes. I seem to have caught JCA's outlining bug, and I have to remind myself that all the resume notches in the world won't amount to much if I bomb out this semester.

It's official. I have accepted the summer internship with the District Judge. Hooray for me! I also had the somewhat enviable and simultaneously awkward chance to inform the other Judge's chambers that I was withdrawing from consideration. It was somewhat flattering and simultaneously awkward to learn they were prepared to offer me the position, as well! Oh well, I'm pleased with where I am heading and really couldn't have asked for better. In other news, the first Judge finally got back to me with a big fat denial. Oh well, he was Dubya appointee anyway.

Scratch one off the to-do list. Yours truly has received an offer for summer employment! Best of all, it is the position I wanted most.

And just in time, too. I was growing increasingly frustrated with my summer job search. I go to a good school, I have respectable grades, dogs and kids like me, and no one was giving me the time of day. Slowly, call backs began to trickle in and I landed three interviews in the last 10 days. I am fairly confident two of those will result in an offer. And if they don't, it no longer matters because the position I wanted most offered me the job on the spot yesterday. Needless to say, I was initially floored and then incredibly excited by the opportunity.

I will be spending my summer volunteering my time for a very reputable and astonishingly brilliant federal judge. This was the goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year and now I have achieved it!!! If all goes well, I will end the summer with a good writing sample and a heckuva letter of recommendation. I only hope my research and writing abilities will be up to the task...

Up next on the checklist:
1) Get selected as a Law Fellow for next year (4/19)
2) Maintain or improve my GPA when the 2nd Semester grades come in (6/15)
3) Make Law Review (8/1)

Attention all divorce lawyers:

This bit of advertising from a Canadian firm is priceless. Though I'm sure their services come with a price...

Spring break begins today. I have two judicial internship interviews tomorrow and I am also supposed to receive the verdict of an interview I had last week. I have reached the midway point of my second semester in law school. I am sacrificing my entire spring break to read through a 186 page packet and write a brief for the Moot Court competition. One of my fish died today.

Above you will find an abridged version of the mental list of excuses I came up with to justify today's somewhat extravagant purchase. I bought myself a nice pair of wingtips. Why you ask? I was told it was a good idea and I believe everything I'm told.

Lawyers are a funny group of people. They cherish tradition. Suits are black or blue. They have two buttons, not three. And shoes have wings. It's all pretty silly, but I simply couldn't restrain myself. Plus, the shoes are "airport friendly." For the price I paid, they ought to give me the power of flight...

Although, given the ambition of the typical law student or lawyer, maybe the power of flight wouldn't be such a good idea...

In case you seek additional proof of either the general dumbing down of America or the ridiculous privilege afforded our star athletes, the NCAA has released the contents of a final exam given to members of the University of Georgia men's basketball team who were enrolled in assistant coach Jim Harrick's Coaching Principles and Strategies course.

After viewing the test questions, I am simply at a loss for words...

Chris Webber made his triumphant return to the Sacramento Kings and on behalf of all Sacramento fans, I would like to apologize to the rest of the league.

Of course, Webber's excellent performance was to be expected; he's been playing pro since he was 14...

The wife-to-be is gone. She is at a job-related conference until Sunday. The house is eerily quiet. I now have no real reason to leave my office and I suddenly find myself consumed with easements and servitudes and minimum contacts and crime-fraud exceptions, with no one around to pull me back to reality. Who will remind me to eat? Who will tell me when The OC is on?

All the law school "guides" I read before starting school warned of the dangers of trying to maintain a relationship during the first year of law school. They quoted horrifying statistics of relationship demise; asserted depressing estimates about available time to spend together. They all but told me to break up now to avoid the inevitable. They were wrong.

I can't imagine surviving law school without the grounding force, willing ear, and moral support my fiancee provides. Not to mention the fact that being able to say I'm struggling through it for "us" instead of "me" somehow makes it seem more worthwhile. I know that much of my success (past and potential) in law school is due to the significant other the books told me I was sure to lose; and I know that all of my potential failures will be mine alone.

So to all the prospective 1Ls out there: go with your heart and ignore the guidebooks. The only thing I gained from reading various "insider's guides" to law school is an unhealthy obsession with multi-colored highlighting. But, I probably would have had that anyway.

This is my peace. Each morning, I awake to the incessant ramblings of a deejay at one of the universally bad DC area radio stations; I roll out of bed and stumble to my desk. Blurry-eyed, I turn on the computer.

I check the weather, read the headlines (and how unfortunate they are), check my mail, check the box office, download my bank transactions. This is my time. It may reak of OCD, but it is still mine. Stress-free for 15 minutes. Not thinking about class or the outlines yet to be done. Not worried about the Moot Court competition or making a journal or finding a job. Not doubting my abilities or worrying about my debt. These are my precious moments. My time to ground myself before the day, and the stress, and the worry, and the pressure start again.

But, I know it is fleeting. Alas, the incessant rumbling of the trains outside my window reminds me the moment is over. It is time to go. Back into the fray...