Hearsay Exception

For some reason this cracked me up. anyone who has taken evidence will know...

whoa

been awhile so just a quick post to let both of you (hehe) know that I'm still around. My schedule is pretty crazy this term, but I'll do what I can to update this blog occasionally. Almost done!

. . . And then there were four

Exams are finished and I'm now on break until the first week of January. Depending on what elective I take in the summer (still undecided), I am down to four exams left in law school, and only seven more required courses. If I can swing it, next summer I will have no exams (my last term of class work) from my four classes.

Pretty exciting stuff - I can see the end of law school and the beginning of the "actually working as a lawyer" part. Over the break I am working on my resume, cover letters, writing samples, and job searches. I need to find an internship for next fall on the west coast, no easy task. If everything works out I'll either work on criminal appeals for a public agency, or work for the court of appeals directly. fingers crossed!

Step one complete!

Part of the bar exam is a separate test called the "multistate professional responsibility exam" or MPRE, which is a test on the model rules of professional responsibility. Essentially, it's a test on the ethical rules all lawyers must abide by - lawyers policing lawyers. In many ways, this is what sets the legal profession apart from other professions, except perhaps the medical profession.

This test can be taken anytime within two years of taking the bar exam itself. I took it last month and a couple days ago I found out that I passed. Very excited am I! This is, essentially, part one of passing the bar itself, and I'm finished with it (assuming that I actually do pass the bar when I take it). It's strange how quickly time seems to be moving, I'm literally only a year away from being finished with school, and only about 9 months from finishing classwork (my last term will be entirely devoted to an externship). Soon I'll be out there actually practicing, so watch out!

Oh boy

So I'm not doing a very good job of keeping up with my blog, but as the saying goes, I'll soldier on the best I can. I have decent reasons for my neglect however. My law school carreer has crossed a threshold and I now find myself on the downward slope toward the end. A few observations, at this point in my law school carreer.

I am now a retired moot court competitor. I made it pretty far - won our intra-school tournament, won best brief for that competition, and was selected to be on our school's national team. That means that I was one of four people (out of nearly 2000 students) selected, quite an honor. We competed at the regional tournament a couple weeks ago, and although I made the best arguments I've ever made, we did not advance. So endeth this chapter in my studies. It was a blast while it lasted, and I'm still involved in our school's moot court program - I help out with the first year competition, I judge/help with practice rounds, and next term I will be a TA for the intra-school class. But for all intents and purposes, I'm finished with moot court. Now I can focus on the classes I have left - in a way, a relief. Moot court is very time consuming. I'm glad to have had the opportunity however, and I know how great it looks on my resume.

I only have six exams left in my law school carreer. Two this term, four next term, and my last term I will be taking classes with no exams. The end is near!

I met this week with a carreer counselor, and over winter break I will be working on my resume, cover letters, and beginning a job/externship search. I'm looking for an externship 2000 miles away from where I'm going to school, so it will be difficult. My carreer counselor wants me to make a list of 40 possible employers, and put together resumes/cover letters/writing samples/recommendation letters for all of them by January. Yikes! The end is approaching fast! I have three professors who will write recommendations for me, so that's good.

I will have 55/90 credits after this term. After next term, I will have 69/90. I'm almost done!!! Frankly, I'm ready to be finished and get out there and find a job. Law school has been a blast, but I am getting bored with classwork, I want to do the real work.

So here I am, at the crossroads, ready to move on. It's exciting and daunting at the same time. I welcome it either way.

Am I getting old?

I confess, I have a little bit of a TV weakness. when I'm not studying, I tend to watch the idiot box, and I've noticed a trend on commercials... why is it that the great, old, edgy punk rock tunes of my youth are now becoming mainstream on TV? why is Devo the theme for Intel, the Clash the theme for Pontiac, etc? Am I the only one irritated by this phenomenon?

and another thing. . . I was helping judge a moot court practice round for a local undergrad university a couple weeks ago, and one of the competitors had this shaggy hair hanging down in his face, and my first thought was "get a haircut kid"... and then, oh boy, it was like a slap in the face. I am my parents.

in other news, we leave this weekend for Cleveland for our regional moot court tournament. wish me luck!

2500

2500 hits on my blog, and strangely enough there have been over 400 just this month. By far the busiest month ever.

And. . . I have only posted once. who is reading this? I admit that I have neglected my blog for some time now, but I intend to keep this up and write more in the near future. The strange thing is, I enjoy writing. My favorite classes in school are always the writinig classes, and I seem to have no shortage of things to say, so why the dead air here? I don't have an answer. I will attempt to pick up the pace, perhaps I will even break my own personal rule and blog about social and political events... who knows.

At any rate, thanks for reading, whoever you are!

Bank error in your favor. . .

My evidence prof made an error on everyone's grade, and . . . everyone's grade went up! that means that I went from a B to an A! suddenly, last term doesn't look so bad! (now if I could just do something about that gawdawful PR grade).

Passed

Yes, I passed all my classes last term, but this time I am going to appeal at least one, and probably two grades. For now I'll leave it at that, but once the process is over I'll probably post some comments. Needless to say, while I did fine overall, this was not my best term (outside of moot court).

I will have my bluebooks this afternoon, and will have about a week to file the appeals. stay tuned.

Two down. . .

. . . two to go. This means that I'm still waiting on grades for two of my classes. It's like this every term. Our grades are posted electronically, and they are "due" by the Monday of week four (which happens to be next Monday). This means that, between exam week, break, and week four, as many as seven weeks pass while we wait for our grades. Now that wouldn't be so bad if we just got a report card in the mail, but some grades are posted early (graduating students' grades are due on the Monday of week 1, for example, and other classes which don't have exams are posted pretty quickly too), which ends up teasing us into checking . . . every . . . day. Even though we know that they are unlikely to be posted.

The other problem is when a teacher tells us that he turned in our grades two weeks ago, but they just haven't been posted yet. That happened for Con Law I this term. I have the same prof for Con Law II and he told us the first week of class that the grades were in. That was two weeks ago Friday, and the grades were finally posted yesterday. So it takes almost two weeks for them to scan the page and post it online?

Which means we could be waiting even longer, for the grades are "due" on week four, meaning that's when the professor has to have them graded. as for when they are "posted"? who knows.