law school ninja

Guess what time it is? Time for me to post a picture of someone’s belly button for us all to gaze upon. I promised Third Tier Amie that I would try to be less grody this time.

So July went by in a big hurry. We had the dance trip for a week, then last weekend we visited my BFF in the Dallas area, so we’ve done a lot of packing and unpacking lately. Add to that the death of my mom’s husband in between, and we’ve had us a really busy month. Now it’s almost August, which means school starts back for me and for Ninja Kid in about three weeks.

THREE WEEKS.

Gah.

Anyway, let the navel gazing begin.

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What, you guys didn’t like part 3 of free advice for future 1Ls? Weirdos.

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things to know for 1ls, first year law school advice (and others like this): See the top 5 posts above. There’s plenty of free advice here that you’re free to take or not take.

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So, 1L. That happened.

At most law schools, you don’t get to choose any of your classes as a 1L. You get put into a section (Section 2 RAWKS!) and your section (mine was about 50ish people) takes all the same classes together for a whole year. I do think at some schools you may get an elective or some limited choice, but generally the decisions about classes are mostly out of your hands. The classes that you’ll take as a 1L vary from school to school, too. First semester we had Torts, Contracts, Civil Procedure, and Legal Practice; second semester was Property, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, and Legal Practice. Some schools make you do two semesters of some of those classes and then you take some of the others as an upperclassman. At my school we only had a semester of everything except Legal Practice, and for that I’m exceedingly thankful for the most part, though I did really like Civil Procedure and I wish it had been a year-long course.

So, 2L. That’s about to happen.

It’s abundantly clear to me now why they take all the schedule-making decisions away from you as a 1L, because making a schedule? and choosing classes? and actually getting into them? all while keeping your eventual exam schedule in mind? It’s freaking hard. Like insane, even.

First, in early April, they release the class schedules and the exam schedules for the upcoming summer session plus the next fall and spring semesters. We register for all of them at once. I have a general no-summer-school policy, so I ignored that part. I printed out all the schedules and then I made two spreadsheets. YES, I DID. I MADE SPREADSHEETS. What? You guys don’t do that? Weirdos. Everybody knows that only the smartest of the smartest people in the world are also spreadsheet makers. These are facts.

Oh, also, coincidentally enough, the scheduling information is released right about the time you might want to start thinking about cracking down and studying for exams. Of course, if you’re busy having an OCDgasm over spreadsheets and scheduling details, you can’t think about anything else, especially nothing as mundane as exams. So there’s that.

So I worked and worked on my magical scheduling spreadsheets (one for fall, one for spring) and I plugged in all sorts of different possible classes that I might want to take, then I entered in when all my exams would be, and I found some conflicts, and I adjusted, and I adjusted some more, and then I color coded the spreadsheets, and then I made the Most Perfect Schedule in all the history of the world, forever and ever, AMEN. I had all sorts of possible combinations of classes that could and could not be taken together because of the exam schedule. For example, I didn’t want to take two classes who had exams on the same day. Um, no thanks. But everything was color coded, people. It was a beautiful thing.

And then. Chaos.

The (then) 2Ls got a week to register for classes before we, the (then) 1Ls, got to. It works like this. After you finish your 1L year, you have 29 hours (15 first semester, 14 second semester). You need 90 hours to gradumuate. Of the 61 hours you need to take as a 2L and 3L, 26 of those hours are advanced required classes. And of those 26 advanced required hours, you have to take at least 15 of those hours as a 2L. So complimicated. We were advised not to take too many of those 26 required hours as a 2L and to save some of the 4-hour classes for our 3L year, or else we might be stuck taking like eight 2-hour classes one semester just to get all the necessary hours to gradumuate. But they let the 2Ls register first so they can be sure to get into all the classes they’ll need during their 3L year.

Still with me? Hey, wake up! I’m still talking. Rude.

So, needless to say, by the time the 2Ls had chosen all their classes, my Most Perfect Schedule lay shivering, naked and beaten, left for dead. I had to start completely over. By this time, I really REALLY should have been studying for finals, but ZOMG MY BABY SCHEDULE NEEDS ME. I worked and worked and color coded and worked some more, and finally I came up with a schedule that, while not ideal, was Tolerable.

And then. More chaos.

I sat at my computer with all the code numbers of the classes I wanted already typed in, just waiting for the clock to strike midnight so I could hit SUBMIT. I waited and waited. I drank some beer. I drank some more beer while I waited some more. Then, finally, midnight. I clicked on SUBMIT and waited for the next screen to pop up, which would tell me which classes I’d gotten into, then I’d consult my handy-dandy spreadsheet to see what alternatives to try instead of the ones I didn’t get into, and then in a matter of moments I’d have a Schedule. Not a Most Perfect Schedule, mind you, but a Tolerable Schedule nonetheless.

I waited and I waited. I drank some more beer while I waited some more. The little round circle timer/busy signal thingy just kept going around and around, like those chaser Christmas tree lights or the chaser lights on a Vegas marquee. I waited and I waited. More beer. More waiting. Still with the chasing strobe lights. Finally, I opened a new tab and checked Facebook out of sheer boredom. Every single person from law school that I’m friends with on Facebook was complaining about the same thing. Massive failure from the school’s server, apparently. Since I had an 8am class the next morning and it was already almost 2am and I was pretty buzzed after all that intoxicating waiting, I decided to just leave the chasing lights running and go to bed and hope for the best.

So when I got to class the next morning, I found out that a ton of people had stayed up like all night waiting for the chasing lights circle to go away. Of a class of over 100 people (two sections combined), maybe 20 of us showed up for Property at 8:00 the next morning. Rawr. That professor was hyper-vigilant about taking roll, too, but because there were so many people absent, he decided not to bother. So basically I showed up to class for NOTHING. AT 8:00. RAWRRR.

Anyway, all the people who stayed up all night also took all the classes I had lined out on my Tolerable Schedule. Not only that, but they submitted their names for the waiting lists for all the other good classes that had been taken by the 2Ls. Basically, I had to start mostly all the way over AGAIN. My Tolerable Schedule became my Schedule of Last Resort. I made changes here and there over the summer, getting into previously full classes when spots opened up. Then they released the list of classes that will be taught by adjunct/visiting professors, and those classes opened up for registration on Wednesday morning (yesterday) at 9am.

And guess what, you guys? After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I’m happy to state that while I don’t have the Original Most Perfect Schedule, I do have an Almost Perfect Schedule that I’m pretty happy about.

Fall 2010 (16 hours)
MW 8:00 Criminal Practice Skills (2 hours) (squeeeeeee!!)
MTWR 9:00 Commercial Law (4 hours, advanced required class)
MWF 12:00 Creditor’s Rights & Bankruptcy (3 hours)*
MTW 2:00 Criminal Procedure (3 hours, advanced required class)
MW 3:00 Business Torts (2 hours)
TR 3:00 Entertainment Law (2 hours)

*I’m on the waiting list for Texas Pretrial Procedure, and if I get in there, it will take the place of Bankruptcy in this time slot and on the exam schedule. I know you were wondering this.

Spring 2011 (16 hours)
MTWR 9:00 Income Tax (4 hours, advanced required class)
TR 10:30 Family Law (3 hours)
MTWR 2:00 Evidence (4 hours, advanced required class)
M 3:00 Texas Juvenile Law (2 hours)
TR 4:00 Legal Malpractice (3 hours)

So. It’s kindof a lot of hours, or at least a lot of classes because of the 2-hour ones, but I think I’d rather load up as a 2L and have an easier courseload as a 3L than the other way around. I’m 100% sure that by the time I’m a 3L my motivation for studying will be deep into the negative numbers. I mean, farther into the negative numbers than where my motivation already dwells, which is somewhere between -23,498,723,498 and -23,498,735,745, give or take 10,000 or so.

So, to summarize, there are four morals of this story:

1. Spreadsheets are for smart people. If you don’t like them and use them as a problem-solving tool for life’s problems, you should start. Or else you won’t ever experience an OCDgasm, which is quite an experience.
2. Don’t think you can drink enough to make the chasing lights timer/busy signal thingy go away. You can’t outlast it.
3. If you show up to an 8am class after a major server crash during the registration process, resulting in nobody being able to register until 5am at the earliest, where the professor normally takes roll every single morning without fail, you will be in the minority, and you will not be rewarded for your attendance. Rather, you will be reminded that sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be responsible/conscientious/neurotic.
4. There may be times when you will eat your words. For example, if you loudly proclaim to your friends and acquaintances multiple times that “never again after this will you ever EVAR see me at this law school for an 8:00 class,” you can be 100% sure that the one class you desperately want to take (Criminal Practice Skills) will be offered at 8am, thus presenting a horrible dilemma wherein you must choose between your future career and your current sanity and sleep cycle. Of course, I myself have never eaten any words, but you might have to.

Today begins the bar exam for newly graduated law students around the country. Eeep. The barzam strikes fear and loathing in the hearts of all law students, past and present. I don’t think future law students are sufficiently scared of the barzam yet because they’re too busy being scared of law school. But they should be.

I follow a lot of people on Twitter who are taking the barzam this week, and their angst-filled tweets have grown more and more angsty leading up to today. I have no doubt in my mind that I’ll be an intolerable BEAR when it’s my turn. I mean, more than usual. Whatever.

So that got me to thinking about how I could reward myself and Ninja Kid when it’s all over. Of course, I’ll be rewarding myself for having made it through law school and barzam prep and the barzam itself, although the results of the test aren’t known for several months afterward. Still. I deserve a reward. I’ll also be rewarding Ninja Kid for putting up with my bearyness for the three years of law school and the barzam prep and the stupid test.

You’ll remember that it’s a well-established fact that I like to travel. So, what better reward than a fantabulous trip to somewhere fantabulous?!

You’ll also remember that I have multiple quests underway all at once. There’s the quest for the perfect shampoo, the quest for my favorite beer, and the quest for the most wonderful facial moisturizer. All these questions (and more) are lacking answers; hence the quest. And now I have a new quest: the quest for the most fabulous trip of all time, ever and evar. Because that’s the trip I want to take with Ninja Kid after I finish the barzam.

This quest is complicated because I have to strike a delicate balance between too much activity and not enough. If it were just me, I’d be happy to plop myself down on a beach somewhere and stare at the water for about four or five days. Ninja Kid will not be entertained by this lack of activity for that long, however, so I want to go somewhere that has enough options to keep us satisfied. On the advice of Twitter, I don’t want to go someplace where I’ll feel like I need to do a bunch of sightseeing, like Washington DC or New York City. I definitely don’t want to go to an amusement park and stand in long lines in 453° heat with 148% humidity, which was Ninja Kid’s original suggestion. (She wants to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and ZOMG so do I, but not after the barzam.) Also, I don’t want to go anywhere in the Caribbean because it will be August, which is prime hurricane season. Believe me, people: If a hurricane would ruin anyone’s barzam reward trip, it would be mine. Let there be no doubt.

So, we’ve narrowed it down to a few destinations, but we’re still open for new suggestions on where to go. This is where you guys come in. You can vote in my poll and pick one of the spots we’ve already considered, or, if you have another idea you can leave a comment and/or vote for “other.” I mean, I know we’re talking about a trip that’s right at two years away. I know. But humor me, okay? Vote. Don’t let the terrorists win (that’s what happens if you don’t vote).

Journal selections were announced earlier this week, and I didn’t get invited to be on any of them. Which is probably because I didn’t submit a write-on packet.

I had you going for a second, didn’t I? DIDN’T I??? C’mon, admit it.

I fully intended to participate, I really did. I went to the first mandatory meeting in April, where all the journal people got up and spoke (and spoke, and spoke, and spoke, and spoke some more) about their respective journals and why we should list theirs first. We have law review, an estate planning journal, and an administrative law journal. I guess pretty much everybody lists law review as their first choice, but if law review doesn’t pick you then your packet goes to the next in line on your order of preference. I also went to the second meeting in April, where we learned about editing and all the symbols and hieroglyphics to use on the editing portion of the competition.

Incidentally, contrary to what you might think, the acronym MOUS does not stand for Midgets Of Unusual Size, like I initially feared thought, nor for Mimes Of Unusual Size (DEAR GOD THE HORROR), but rather for Manual Of Usage and Style or something like that. I learned that at the meeting, too.

I don’t know what in the world is going on with that red flashing text, but that was the only video I could find. Okay, I didn’t really look that hard. Whatever.

Oh! And did you guys know that inside that ROUS costume is a REAL LIVE MIDGET?!?!? Not even kidding. He scampers, and he scampers like a champ.

So, back to me. I went to the meetings and paid attention. After my last exam, I went up to the third floor of the library and picked up a packet for the competition. It was filled with lots of paper. I read all the instructions. I even took the packet with me out of town and I read cases in the car. No, not while I was driving, of course. Ninja Mimi was driving. Reading while driving is NOT safe.

The task was this:

Here’s a packet of a bunch of cases. The first case (Snyder v. Phelps, 4th Circuit) is the one you’re going to write a comment on. For your 10-page comment with footnotes, you can only use the cases we’ve given you in this packet. You may not do ANY outside research. None at all. In fact, we’ll be monitoring your Westlaw and Lexis Nexis accounts to see if you’re logging on during the two weeks you’ll have to prepare your comment. You may not need to use all of the cases we’ve provided you, and that’s okay, too. You just can’t use any others. The comment is worth 60%-70% of your score, depending on each journal’s standards.

For the remaining 30%-40%, you have to complete an editing exercise. We’ve provided you with a pretty darn crappy writing sample that’s chock-a-block full of errors of all sorts: spelling errors, citation errors, grammar errors, word choice errors, etc. You must go through this sample and correctly mark each and every error you find and provide a notation citing which rule in which book is being violated. So, for example, if you come across a citation error, you’ll mark it appropriately and note that it violates rule 10.2 of the Bluebook or whatever. All this editing business must be done in red pen. No exceptions.

Both parts of the packet are due two weeks from today. You just thought you were done with school for a little while.

So! I took my packet of cases in the car and I read Snyder v. Phelps (which is really a very interesting case, by the way) and some of the other cases, and then I fell asleep in the car and didn’t wake up until we’d reached our destination. And I don’t know, y’all, but something weird happened to me while I was asleep in the car. When I woke up, I was all of a sudden around 97% sure I did NOT want to do the write-on competition. No particular reason. I just knew I wasn’t going to do it.

Does this happen to any of you? Your brain makes a decision for you and you didn’t even ask it to, and you don’t know why it did? . . . No? Just me? Hm.

Well, naturally I set out to try to figure out exactly why I wouldn’t be participating in the write-on competition, since my brain had apparently come to this conclusion completely on its own initiative–sua sponte, if you will. Bwahaha. Look at me, so fancy.

I called my brother and asked him to rate his level of regret for not being on a journal, with 1 being the least amount of regret possible and 10 being maximum regret. He rated it a 2. Then he asked his wife, my most fabulous sister-in-law, and she gave it a 2. My brother is doing exactly what (I think) I want to do when I get out of law school: solo criminal defense. My sister-in-law is doing what I hope to be doing if I change my mind or the solo thing doesn’t work out: working at a firm. Neither of them was on a journal, and neither of them regrets it. Hm.

I did an informal Twitter survey and asked what people thought about the importance of law review. The replies I got were overwhelmingly in favor of not submitting a packet. Hm. A few did encourage me to finish it, though, and they made a good point: why not? Law review looks great on your resume, and you get good writing and editing experience. In some schools (including mine), you can get an hour or two of credit for being on a journal. And anyway, it probably opens some doors that might be closed to people who weren’t on law review or another journal. These are all really good points.

However, I had already succumbed to The Meh, so these good arguments in favor of law review fell upon deaf ears and a heart of stone. The Meh is an insidious entity that creeps in, rather ninja-like, actually, and takes over your soul and makes you feel pretty much just like this:

In short, The Meh is 100% incompatible with law review. They’re diametrically opposed. Polar opposites. Night and day. Chocolate and broccoli. Choccoli? Gross.

I mean, I don’t aspire to work at a big firm. It just doesn’t even appeal to me, really. I’ve been my own boss, more or less, for the past 12 years. I like being my own boss. I like it a lot. In fact, it’s hard for me to imagine myself not bossing myself around. So, my bossy self told my angsty self to throw away the write-on packet and fuhgedduhboutit. For me, the potential payoff was not proportional to the amount of work that would go into it, and I don’t mean only the write-on competition. That’s just two weeks. I also mean the shit work that the 2Ls on journals do, cite checking and the like, plus you have to write a comment for potential publication, etc.

Plus, at the time I had to make this decision, I still didn’t know whether I’d been selected as a brief writer for one of the national moot court teams, and I was completely and totally sure I didn’t want to do both a journal and a moot court brief. I like legal writing a whole lot, like probably more than most normal people, who probably actually hate it. But even I have my limits, people. So I hedged my bets, dropped out of the write-on competition, and waited to hear back from the professor who selects people for the moot court teams. As you know, because you read the post, I did get selected, so in the end it worked out just peachy.

Congratulations to all my friends who made journals. You are teh awesum. And, don’t tell anybody, but I may have possibly experienced a wee bit of dropper-outer’s remorse when the announcements were made. Just a little. But I’m over it now, and I’m sure whatever residual remorse remains will be obliterated by the process of writing my moot court brief in the fall. Thanks, brain, for your sua sponte-ness.

If you are a regular reader and/or you follow me on Twitter, you’re aware that Mr. Ninja Mimi (my mom’s husband) was found to have a lung mass about a month ago. As we expected, that mass turned out to be lung cancer. He was not a candidate for surgery, and the best-case scenario the doctors could offer with chemotherapy was a 30% chance at merely reducing the tumor’s size, with no hope of eradicating it. Pretty much the only reasonable option was for him to go under hospice care at home.

The doctors gave him between six and eight months to live, but he didn’t even make it one month. On Wednesday, July 14, 2010, Sam passed away. He donated his body to the local medical school and we had a memorial service for him this past Saturday, which was lovely.

Sam was a cotton farmer for most of his life and he had some of the funniest sayings. He’d say someone was “fat as a town dog.” Anytime he rode in the car with us, once we got to the destination he’d say, “Wellsir, thank you for the buggy ride.” Haha. Buggies. When something good happened to someone, he’d say they were “cutting a fat hog” or they were “standing in knee-high cotton.” For some reason, he’d refer to an extra early wakeup time as “2 GM.” No idea why. I know there are dozens more Sam-isms that I can’t recall at the moment.

Sam didn’t finish high school, but you’d never have known that to talk to him. He was well read, very intelligent, and self-educated on all sorts of topics ranging from finance and investments to foreign relations to physics. He loved to talk politics. He believed in the power of the mind. He’d say that changing your mind is something you do, not some accident that happens to you. Want to lose weight? Quit drinking? You have to change your mind, change the way you think, and convince yourself to stop (or start) whatever behavior it takes to meet your goal. It sounds simplistic, but it was his mantra.

When my mother met Sam, she had gone on a few dates with a guy who was really nice but a bit boring. My mom loved (still loves? she hasn’t been in so long) to go two-stepping and the guy she’d been dating was an okay dancer, but not a ton of fun. She said she wanted to date someone who was a little more feisty. Then she met Sam, and she told me that she really liked him because he was so much fun to dance with. She invited me to go out dancing with the two of them one night, and sure enough, dancing with him was a blast. He was feisty.

Sam liked to gamble and he liked to fly. He had a pilot’s license for a while and he always wanted to build a kit plane of his own, although I don’t think he ever actually did that. He wanted to ride in a helicopter, but he could never get my mom to ride with him. When he discovered that Ninja Kid and I were very willing to ride along, he booked a helicopter flight for the three of us from Las Vegas through the Grand Canyon in about 2004 or so. It was so much fun and the scenery was stunning, and it is one of my favorite memories.

Sam was always very generous with his money and his time. I believe he thought of me, my brother, my sister-in-law, Ninja Kid, and Ninja Nephew as his own.

I’m thankful that Ninja Kid and I got to see him one last time before we left for Myrtle Beach. He was in good spirits that day, joking around with me as usual. It was a couple of days before he had to begin scheduled morphine and Ativan to combat the pain, so his thinking was still pretty clear. I’m thankful for the hospice care providers and the nurses who sat with him during the day, making his last few weeks tolerable and relatively pain-free. I’m thankful that his passing was a quiet, peaceful event. Mostly, I’m thankful for having known him for the eleven years that I did. Sam was a good man, and he will be missed.

Note to stalkers: Kindly close your browser and do not read any further. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I’m on an airplane with Ninja Kid, Ninja PawPaw, and about a dozen other preteen and teenage girls and their parents. Oh, and my flask. Ninja Kid’s dance competition/convention is next week in fabulous Myrtle Beach. I know, I know, you’re sad for me. It’s okay. I’ll manage. My life is hard, but I’m used to it.

Okay, enough gloating. Maybe.

Further note to stalkers: We had a case in Property where some homeowners rigged up a shotgun to fire at any intruders who might open a certain door or something. The court held that one can’t use deadly force in the defense of property, but I don’t care. I have that exact mechanism up and running at my house right now. You don’t want to find that out the hard way, trust me.

Actually, it’s not all a bowl of cherries. For starters, we’re headed into humidity. You guys have no idea how much I hate humidity. And sweating. I hate hate HATE sweating. I’m afraid I’m going to be doing a lot of sweating. So there’s that.

However! I’ve got one word for ya: BEACH.

The worst part is having to leave Ninja Dog at the pet hotel while we’re gone. You guys have no idea how much I love Ninja Dog. Luckily, Ninja Dog loves loves LOVES the pet hotel. In fact, we have to spell its name now (T-I-P-T-O-N) rather than saying it or else she goes bonkers with excitement. Not even kidding. But I’ll still miss her terribly.

Final note to stalkers: I also have five huge, angry, protective crocodiles in my home who eat human fingers for snacks. Trust me, you don’t want to find that out the hard way, either. Just stay away.

Anyway, I don’t know how much time I’ll have for blogging while I’m gone, but maybe I can get a few short posts in. The actual convention starts Tuesday, so we’ll have a couple of fun beach days before that starts, and Ninja Kid competes on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I KNOW you all will be refreshing this page incessantly on those nights to see whether or not we win.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Obviously, this is merely the first installment in what promises to be a very lengthy series. The list of things I dislike is gargantuan, so there’s a pretty deep well for writing material here. For now, let’s just focus on one offender at a time.

Today we’re going to talk about feet. I dislike them very much.

I do not like them when they stink. I do not like them when they’re pink. I do not like them on a man. I do not like them in a van. I do not like feet when they’re dry. I do not like feet in my eye. I do not like them, warm or cold. I do not like feet, young or old. I do not want them touching me. I do not like feet, can’t you see?

Now before you get all whiny on me about the picture, just know that there were a gazillion pictures of feet that were even WAY MORE disgusting than this one that I could have chosen to display, but I spared you. You’re welcome.

The worst feet of all? Man-feet. G-R-O-S-S. In a Law School Ninja Administration, the people of Amurrika will not be subjected to the visual assault perpetrated by man-feet. My second act as Ruler of the Free World will be to make it illegal for men to wear sandals or flip-flops or any other shoes that leave the feet exposed. My first act? Of course, my first act as Ruler of the Free World will be to ban unreported cases and make all cases reported. But that’s for another post.

So remember I told y’all that Ninja Kid is in a competitive dance company? Well, the dance competition and convention is coming up next week, so we’re headed off to the awful hellhole known as Myrtle Beach, where I’ll be forced against my will to sit on the beach and drink pina coladas for about a week. Remember also that I told you guys my life is hard. Never ever forget that.

Ninja PawPaw goes with us on these dance competition trips every year. This year is Ninja Kid’s third year in the company and Ninja PawPaw has gone on every adventure thus far. Ninja PawPaw’s life is also hard, although not quite as hard as mine, because of all the people in my whole family, nobody’s life is as hard as mine. But Ninja PawPaw has to sit with me on the beach for a week and watch me drink pina coladas, so he gets an honorable mention.

The other day, I was talking to Ninja PawPaw on the phone about our upcoming trip, and I reminded him that when we go through airport security we’ll have to take off our shoes so that the wonderfully competent Transportation Security Administration can check our shoes for explosives. Therefore, I advised Ninja PawPaw not to wear his sneakers on the days we’ll be traveling.

What follows can only be described as my worst nightmare.

Ninja PawPaw replied, “Oh, I thought I’d just wear flip-flops the whole week, actually.”

click for source

And with that, panic ensued. Ninja PawPaw exposing his man-feet for the whole week?? This will never do. NEVER. There isn’t enough alcohol/Ambien/horse tranquilizer in the world to allow me to tolerate man-feet for a whole week. A whole week? Oh-ho-ho no. No. No way. Not on my watch.

Ninja PawPaw’s feet are particularly offensive. You see, there’s a hierarchy to this. Generally, I dislike feet. Specifically, I really dislike man-feet. And in particular, I intensely dislike Ninja PawPaw’s man-feet. Ninja PawPaw’s man-feet are the oddest feet I’ve ever seen. He has canyons in them, y’all. Like the Grand Canyon of Man-Feet is found on Ninja PawPaw’s right heel. I have never seen foot crevasses like these before. It’s just plain creepy. I imagine little creatures are offering little mini-helicopter rides through there, just like the ones you can take from Vegas through the real Grand Canyon. Sorry, Ninja PawPaw.

(It occurs to me now that it’s probably a good thing I’m single. The constant presence of man-feet in my house might be enough to drive me the rest of the way insane. Shut up. I’m not all the way insane yet.)

(Also: I almost tagged this post with “why I’m single.” Then it occurred to me that I could probably use that tag on pretty much every post here, effectively rendering it meaningless. Sigh.)

Anyway.

So, being the brilliant, resourceful, self-absorbed, and thoughtful daughter that I am, I decided to buy Ninja PawPaw a pair of Sanuks. They’re comfy and kindof ugly-cute and even kindof beachy, and they just slip right on and off like nobody’s business. It’s his (belated) Father’s Day present. Yes, you read that correctly. For Father’s Day, I bought Ninja PawPaw something that’s all about me. Shut up.

Ninja PawPaw will like these shoes; nay, he will love them. Ninja PawPaw will wear these shoes in the airport and he will only take them off when it’s mandated by the wonderfully competent Transportation Security Administration, during which time I shall divert my gaze, and then he’ll dutifully put his shoes right back on so as not to expose the world (mainly me) to his man-feet.

He will. I just know it. But just in case, I’m gonna bring along my flask.

(if you’re new to the series, see part 1, part 2, and part 3)

Before I started law school, I got a lot of advice. I’m sure you have, too, by this stage, if you’re starting law school in the fall. Of all the advice I received, two things still stick out in my mind as being particularly useful.

1. Your classmates today will be your colleagues in three years.

It’s said so frequently in law school orientation that it becomes a cliché: “Your reputation as a lawyer begins today.” I suppose the reason it’s emphasized over and over is because it’s true. When the hellacious ride known as law school is over, you will be an attorney. And so will the out-of-control guy who showed up to class hung over more often than not, and so will the out-of-control girl who slept with 20 different guys (that you know of). You get the picture. Later, when a client brings you a problem that you can’t handle for him because he’s in a different city or the problem is beyond your realm of expertise, you’re going to want to make a referral. If you know two attorneys in Pleasanton that you went to school with, and one of them threw up on your shoes at a party every semester and regularly turned assignments in late and demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to follow simple rules, you’re probably going to refer your client to the other person, all else being equal. Just keep this little piece of advice tucked away in the recesses of your brain somewhere and it’ll serve you well.

2. Don’t take it too seriously.

At first, you might think this contradicts our first little nugget of wisdom, but in fact it’s a nice complement. You want to strike a balance between being sociable and serious, and it’s not always easy. If it’s possible to develop a negative reputation by being too sociable, so to speak, it’s also possible to develop a negative reputation by not being social enough. This is particularly true if you’re a nontraditional student (married, parent, older/career change, etc.). Don’t look down your bifocals at the “kids” and decide that you’re too mature to go out to the bar and knock back a few. If alcohol is just not your thing, what the hell are you doing in law school you can still be sociable without having to drink. Just get out of the house/library/carrel once in a while with some fellow law students and laugh and have a good time. Referring back to our hypothetical situation above, if you need to make a referral and you know two attorneys in Pleasanton who were your classmates, and one of them camped out in the library every day until 9:00 at night and never attended any social functions and was your sectionmate for your entire 1L year although you didn’t know it until the 12th week of your second-semester classes, you’re probably going to refer your client to the other person, all else being equal. Just as you wouldn’t refer someone to an attorney who was completely out of control in law school, you probably wouldn’t refer someone to an attorney with whom you had absolutely no social relationship with at all. If you discover at some point that your conversations at school are largely dominated by school-related topics, I’m talking to you. Get. A. Life.

Plus, law school sucks. Not so much because it’s hard, although that’s part of it. The main thing is that it’s just so different from undergraduate work, and the only people who can really relate to you are people who’ve either already been through it or who are going through it with you. You’re going to want to have friends in law school who will understand your silly adverse possession jokes and who will commiserate with you about your constitutional law class. When you develop ASS Syndrome, you’re going to want friends who sympathize and probably suffer from it, too, so you can sit around and collectively wonder how you’re going to get motivated to study for exams. Beyond that, though, some of the friends you make in law school can be lifelong friends, and everybody needs more of those.

So take the time to build and cultivate friendships with some of your classmates. Go out, have some drinks, socialize. Have a lot of laughs. Our section had a little dinner party rotation on Thursday nights and people would take turns hosting throughout both semesters. Form study groups. Join some law school organizations that you find interesting. Get on an intramural softball team if that’s an option. Just don’t be a study hermit.

**********

I may have one more of these free advice posts in me, but I’m not sure. Are there any topics you’d like to see covered or questions that remain unanswered for you? If so, leave me a comment on this post and I’ll do my best to address it.

I’ve been doing some work this summer for an attorney who lives in another city. Let’s call him BB. I’m working on this case for BB right now that’s bothering me. Granted, I haven’t had all that many real cases to work on yet. Okay, okay, so this is only my third real case; I’m still very, very green. But still. This one bothers me.

This lady. I don’t know about her prior record, but somehow she wound up on probation for seven years. She’s a single mom with six children. SIX. Now for the last however many years she’s been on probation, she’s never once missed an appointment with her probation officer. She’s never once had a positive drug test. She’s made payments on her fines as she could along the way, but she’s not making much money. She lives in the ghetto with her six children. She has a job, but no car, and she’s been trying to work her way through the probation so she can move on with her life with her six kids.

Her younger brother lives with her, too. I don’t know how long he’s lived there, or why he lives there. But he lives there, in his sister’s house, with her and her six children.

She came home from work at an unusual time one day, just in time for the police to raid her house. The police, who were tipped off by a confidential informant, say they found drugs in the brother’s bedroom. The amount of drugs they found (I don’t know what kind of drugs) was sufficient to charge this lady with possession with intent to deliver.

The drugs don’t belong to her, she says, they must belong to her brother. She says she didn’t know they were in the house. She’s not using drugs–she’s never had a positive drug test. And she’s probably not selling drugs–she can’t even make her probation payments sometimes, and again, she has no car. And six children.

Did I mention she has six children? She has SIX CHILDREN.

Of course, the state files a motion to revoke her probation. This motion is going in front of the most pro-state judge in the county. According to BB, in all the years that this guy has been a judge, he’s never once granted a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence. Just an example. This judge basically thinks the police can do no wrong. And this lady is most certainly going to lose at her probation hearing and she’s going to go to prison for a while.

BB helped this lady once before when CPS came to take all of her children away for some reason. I don’t know the particulars, but BB was appointed to represent her, and he successfully kept them from taking her kids. In fact, the CPS case was so ridiculous that the judge scolded them in court. BB says it’s the only time he’s ever won against CPS in the first hearing.

Anyway, this lady came back to BB for this new problem, and he contacted me to research the possibility of compelling the state to disclose the identity of their confidential informant.

Spoiler alert: It’s a really long shot in her case. Long, as in almost impossible. Here’s why:

The informant was not a participant in the activity for which this lady was arrested. The informant wasn’t present for the arrest (as far as we know). The informant didn’t even arrange for this lady–the alleged drug dealer–to meet up with an undercover agent and sell him some drugs. This informant, whoever he or she is, basically picked up the phone and called the police and said, “Hey! This lady who lives in this house is a drug dealer,” or something to that effect. And the police went and got a search warrant and then raided her house and found drugs.

It’s not enough that the informant’s tip formed the probable cause that allowed the police to get a search warrant. It’s not enough that this lady wants to know why in the world this person singled her out. It’s not enough to speculate that the informant might give testimony relevant to determining this lady’s guilt or innocence. Some evidence has to be shown to prove that.

It would be enough if we could cast doubt on the informant’s credibility such that the judge feels that disclosing the informant’s identity is necessary for a fair trial. Of course, I have yet to learn how one can cast doubt on the credibility of some person who remains unknown and nameless.

In any event, this lady’s probation is going to get revoked.We can attack the charges against her in other ways, but while we work on it she’s going to sit in a cell.

The only person in the world that this lady has to help her out is her stepmother, who’s currently taking care of the six kids. The stepmother has back problems, though, and she called BB’s office the other day to tell him she can’t do this much longer. BB told her to try to hang on a little while, but if she can’t, all six kids will become wards of the state and they’ll go into foster care. The client will most likely have her parental rights terminated, and then the kids will either be adopted out or they’ll grow up in foster care. And if at least half of those kids don’t end up in the criminal justice system themselves at some point in the future, it’ll be a damn miracle.

I fail to see any justice being done here. Who is the victim in this case? Some imaginary user who would have eventually bought the drugs that were found? Of course not.

BB says that the other day he was talking to a friend of his who used to do criminal defense work, but he was unhappy with that and is now a prosecutor. BB asked his friend if he liked his new job better than his old one. The friend said that he had sure thought he would, because he thought he would perhaps be able to relate to his clients better as a prosecutor. But then he realized something: it’s a lot of the same people. The same people who needed his services as a criminal defense lawyer were now needing his services as a prosecutor. According to BB, it works like this: One person gets into trouble, and in order to get out of trouble, he offers to snitch on someone else. Then the next person in trouble offers to snitch on someone else. People cynically use the system as a weapon either to exact revenge for previous transgressions against them or to improve their own lot. Or both.

If an acceptable solution to this exists, I certainly don’t know what it is. I also don’t know if this is a problem that is specific only to this city, but I suspect it’s probably happening to some degree everywhere. Maybe it was naive of me to not have thought critically about the justice system in this way before now. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m not all that surprised to learn about this sort of abuse of the system. It’s not right, and now this lady and her six children are going to pay for it.

You guys. Honestly, I hate summer. I hate its guts. It’s hot and there’s nothing going on. It’s characterized by a horrible lack of deadlines and lack of structure and lack of effective alarm clocks. I spend the other three-fourths of the year wishing for summer, and when it gets here, I love it for about 3 weeks and then…

I HATE SUMMER.

Ninja Kid hates it, too.

This is no surprise, really. Ninja Kid is so much like me, it’s terrifying. Sometimes at night I lie awake, staring at my ceiling, unable to sleep at all because of the implications.

Compounding this terror is Ninja Mimi, who seems to get immense pleasure from this horribleness. Every time Ninja Kid does something very ninja-y, Ninja Mimi howls with laughter and mutters something about paybacks. Rude.

Anyway.

During the summer, I’m always on this quest to find things for Ninja Kid to do. If left to her own devices, Ninja Kid would play Sims 3 for 8 hours a day, interspersed with reading Jane Austen and listening to her iPod in her room and singing at the top of her lungs. This drives me a little bit nuts, so I have to set limits on the amount of time she’s allowed to do these things. This, of course, results in periods of inactivity for Ninja Kid, during which time she has a tendency to (1) stare at me and wait for me to give her something to do, or (2) start an argument with me.

So the other day, Ninja Kid started talking about her upcoming 7th grade year and how excited she is for it to start, etc. Then this happened:

NK: Of course, you won’t let me have a computer to use in my room, so I guess I can’t do my homework in my room [rolls eyes, generally looks disgusted].
ME: Hmm. I’m pretty sure you can do your homework in your room, and I’m pretty sure you won’t need a computer for most of it. If you do need the computer, you can use it in here.
NK: UHHH! All my friends have computers in their rooms!
ME: Really? Like who?
NK: … Suzie.
ME: That’s it? Suzie? Well, I’m not Suzie’s mom.

(sidebar: YESSSSS!!! I love it when I get to recycle the lines that were used against me as a kid. Me: 1, NK: 0)

NK: Mohh-ooohhmm, you know what I mean.
ME: I don’t care if you use the big laptop in your room, but you may not use the Internet in your room.
NK: UHHH! Whyyyy?
ME: There’s nothing in the world that you should be doing on the Internet that can’t be done in the living room. If you’re doing things on the Internet that you don’t want me to see, then you shouldn’t be doing them. End of story. The Internet is for the living room ONLY.
NK: FINE. I’ll buy my own computer.
ME: FINE. You still can’t use the Internet in your room.
NK: [tearing up] I just don’t understand what is the big deal???
ME: Neither do I. What IS the big deal about having the Internet in your room?
NK: FINE. I guess I’ll just sit in the living room for my WHOLE LIFE.
ME: Okay, if that’s what you want to do, it’s fine with me.
NK: [storms off, turns on loud music in her room, waits approximately 3 minutes, and comes back] So, I guess you’re NEVER gonna let me use the Internet in my room??
ME: I didn’t say that. I just said that right now you can’t.
NK: [storms off again, starts the loud music again, comes back in 3 more minutes] Not even if I buy my own computer?
ME: Not even.
NK: [more loud music for about 20 minutes, then back to the living room with humble look on her face] Is there anything I can do to change your mind?
ME: Maybe. You come up with a good reason why I should let you use the Internet in your room–a GOOD reason–and present it to me in a calm, rational way, and then we’ll talk. I’m not making any guarantees, but I’m saying we can discuss it again if you come up with a good reason. And I don’t mean the whiny, accusatory tone where you pretend like I’m the worst mom in the universe. Calm, reasoned discussion, like adults. Fair?
NK: Fair.

And I didn’t think about it again after that. First of all, she has great difficulty making herself save money, so the possibility of her saving enough for a netbook (which is what she really wants) is pretty damn remote. Secondly, there’s no chance of her coming up with a good reason to use the Internet in her room as opposed to the living room. NO CHANCE.

Also, just so you get the proper mental picture, the music that Ninja Kid blares when she’s storming off to her room is the Glee soundtrack.

Fast forward about four days. Ninja Kid walks purposefully over to me with a spiral notebook in her hand, a spring in her step, and a rather frightening, conspiratorial, I-shot-the-sheriff grin on her face.

ME: Whatchya got there?
NK: My five-point argument about getting a netbook.
ME: Great!  Let’s see it! [forced smile: OH HOLY SHIT]

I’m not even kidding, you guys. She used those words. She actually said the phrase “five-point argument.” I wish I was making this up. I SO WISH.

And here it is, reproduced in its entirety, for you all to enjoy.

Why I Need A Computer in My Room for School

1. Because I feel more comfortable in my room to do homework, and I can concentrate better, and it’s quieter.
2. Because I can put my homework on it and not have to go back and forth between the living room and my room to do homework or type something in Word.
3. I will agree to no Internet in my room and if I need to look something up on the Internet I will do it in the living room.
4. I will pay for half of the computer.
5. I will use the computer strictly for school, so you can buy me a cheap computer that we can both pay for half.

Well. Technically this isn’t really a five-point argument; it’s more like a two-point argument coupled with a three-point offer in compromise. But whatever, y’all. This is too adorable! If you don’t think this is adorable, then you, sir, are worse than Hitler.

So I agreed to the terms of Ninja Kid’s request for a computer of her very own. If (and it’s a BIG “if”) she manages to save up half the money for a netbook, I’ll pitch in the other half. But I can’t wait for the summer to be over so that Ninja Kid and I can be horribly busy again and she won’t have time to make any other reasonable requests. I’m afraid I’ve created a monster.