Apologies in advance to both of my loyal readers. This week’s edition of Law School Lessons will be brief for two reasons: (1) I spent the better part of my weekend working on a draft closed memo, (2) the season finale of True Blood is on HBO in an hour and nothing — NOTHING — will keep me from watching it.

To start, let’s just address a real problem I have with law school. I had hoped that there would be some perks that came along with being in my 30s. For example, I thought by now I might have gotten old enough to stop worrying about ACNE?!?!? WTF?!?!? The law school giveth, and the law school taketh away. And this week, the law school giveth me a giant zit under my nose. Not quite this big, but close.

I like how the guy moved his hair out of the way just in case you couldn't quite see the whole thing.

TORTS

• We’re mostly finished with consent and privileges/defenses, so next week it’s on to negligence. I’ve been told that this is where it starts to get more difficult. Torts is still my favorite reading.
• I believe we’re also supposed to get a practice exam pretty soon. Can’t wait to see what that looks like. None of my professors have practice exams available in the school’s database. FAIL.
• This week we were discussing a case in which a football player hit another player during a game, and whether the one was liable for battery. Professor Torts said, “I didn’t get to play football; I was on the debate team. We called it ‘Jewish football’ because none of our mothers would let us play the real sport.”

LEGAL PRACTICE

• Well, I knew this day had to come. Legal Practice is starting to be a pain in the posterior, and it’s only gonna get worse. This week we had to take a writing proficiency exam, which wasn’t hard, but it required that I come back to school on a Friday afternoon, and that ain’t cool. Should have the results of that test in a week or so. We’ve been informed that if we don’t like our grade, we can take the test again and they’ll take the higher grade. WIN.
• And about that closed memo: not really very pleasant. I hate to bitch about it too much, though, because I know in a few weeks I’ll be longing for the days when my research was done for me. It’s due tomorrow at 9:00, and frankly I’m bursting with pride because I finished it this afternoon instead of starting it after True Blood. How very adult-y!

CONTRACTS

• Contracts this week was quite eventful. First of all, you already know that I’m highly entertained by Professor Contracts. The thing is, when he says funny stuff, you don’t always know it’s gonna be funny until after he’s already said it, and then it’s too late to start writing it down. This happened one day last week, when Professor Contracts had the most elegant moment of poetry, and I realized it just a little too late. Luckily for me, the Contracts tutors dutifully recorded it word for word, and I reproduce it for you here in all its profundity:

We are engaging in an astonishingly boring activity. You are going to find in law school you are going to spend a lot of time looking at the most boring concepts in the world. But part of the motivation is fear, and that works for me. You are going to be afraid of not knowing these things in December. Once you get out in practice, you are going to be doing the same horribly, horribly boring things.

• I got called on in Contracts this week while we doing promissory estoppel. Go ahead. Ask me any question. I’m an expert now. I was on for this one case and I did okay, and then he moved on to the next case and called on someone else. At that point, I completely checked out. I mean totally. The people on G-chat in front of me were providing me with plenty of entertainment and I had no idea what was going on until I noticed people in front of me turning their faces upward to look at me. Wut? Sure enough, Professor K is saying, “Are we still on up there?” So I stumbled around and looked like an incompetent boob for a few seconds, and then I managed to figure out what he was looking for. Good god, man, don’t you know it’s not nice to double dip??? FAIL.
• One last thing about Contracts this week. This was by far the funniest thing EVAH to happen in class, but when I retell it you won’t think it’s so funny. Anyway, I’m gonna tell it anyway. So we were in class on Friday morning, everybody was half asleep because, well, it was Friday morning, and Professor Contracts is talking about the Lucy v. Zehmer case. You know, the one where the dude got drunk and sold his farm? Prof. K asks a question and a girl toward the front raises her hand to answer. Right when she started talking, the fire alarm went off. LOUDLY. Everybody in the room jumped a mile, some people started acting like they were headed for the door, and there was a general sense of confusion. Without missing a beat, Professor Contracts gets this kinda crazy look on his face and yells out, “You won! You won!” The whole class dissolved into hysterical laughter, and it took forever to get back on track. WIN.

CIVPRO

• Okay this may sound weird, but I don’t hate CivPro anymore. At some point early in the week last week, a little tiny light bulb went off in my head and I saw the light. Yay! We’ve been discussing Rule 12 and all these motions you have to file, some all at the same time, some not, some favored, some not so favored… It all appeals so much to my OCD self. I confess. Don’t judge.
• We did have one pretty hilarious moment in CivPro this week, also. We were talking about anonymous plaintiffs and when that’s appropriate and when it’s not, blah blah. So we had a little squib on this case where this girl was suing her (former) boyfriend for distributing a sex tape they made, and she wanted to remain anonymous but the court wouldn’t let her. Anyway, we were discussing this and out of the blue Professor CivPro hits the button and the giant movie screen starts dropping. The whole class started quietly giggling, then laughing louder, and louder, and Professor CivPro kinda looked at us like we were crazy. Then she realized what we were giggling about and she said, “Oh! No! No, I’m not gonna show you the sex tape!”

Yeah, so much for brevity. Perhaps I should start doing this more frequently so these aren’t so freakin long. FAIL.

But the True Blood finale was freakin awesome. WIN!