So rather than bore you with a lengthy account of my first week, which was probably very similar to your first week as a 1L, I thought I’d just do a brief recap of my week by class. Hopefully I can do this as a weekly series.

But first, I do have some general thoughts:

• I just love my law school. Love. I realize I’ve only been there a week, and all you seasoned law students are at once rolling your eyes and thinking to yourself, “Let’s ask her how she feels in three months at exam time.” I know I may be a little doe-eyed at this point, but seriously, it’s been great so far. The building is nice (especially the new add-on), there are lots of comfy chairs and couches and nooks and crannies in which to study, and it just has a good vibe. Most of the professors are pretty un-scary and everybody seems to be very willing to help when you run into a snag. I’ve met some nice people and some fellow snarksters and some who annoy the crap out of me, all of whom make for a very entertaining day.
• I didn’t spend enough time doing the assigned reading before classes started, and as a result I was barely able to keep my nose above water as far as reading for class. Luckily, the gambles I made paid off and I didn’t get caught unprepared, but I have to get a little farther ahead in my reading. This week I had a mandatory parent’s meeting at Ninja Kid’s school and that two hours cost me.
• On a related note, it took me about four days to realize that this formal case briefing business is for the birds. It simply takes way too long. If you have some extra time or you just want to make the time, more power to ya. Instead of formal briefing, I’m just highlighting (color coded!!) and making notes in pencil in the margins of my book.
• Waking up at 5:45 every morning SUCKS. Is there some sort of button I can push to make myself go to sleep at 11:00 instead of midnight or later? For some reason, no matter how tired I’ve been all throughout the day, shortly after supper I get a second wind and I can’t make myself go to bed at a reasonable hour. This resulted in my falling asleep with my head in my torts casebook by the time Thursday came around. I really, really need to get this under control.
• I love OneNote for organizing all my class materials. Can’t say enough about this program. However, I’m kindof at a loss when it comes to taking notes in class, especially in those classes where we spend inordinate amounts of time on details of cases rather than the big picture. I can hear some of my classmates typing furiously throughout the entire class period, yet for some of my classes I barely have half a page of notes for the whole week! Just when I was starting to think I was missing something, I came across this post on Fearfully Optimistic. [Sidebar: If you're not reading Fearfully Optimistic on a regular basis, shame on you. It's brimming over with helpful, practical advice and you owe it to yourself to check it out if you're a current or future law student.] Anyway, I feel better about my lack of notes now. Thanks, John!

And now, for this week’s installment of Law School Lessons!

TORTS

• I like Professor Torts. He’s got a good sense of humor and he makes funny jokes. He uses PowerPoint and he posts it so we don’t have to copy down a bunch of stuff if we don’t want to. Better yet, at the end of each major concept he hands out an outline of the pertinent points. So helpful! He generally takes volunteers, and so far he hasn’t called on anyone out of the blue. There are a lot of people in my section who like to talk.
• This week we studied Intent and Battery; next week we start with Assault. What’s cool about Torts is that the cases are interesting and sometimes even kinda funny, so reading is not a chore.
• Somehow this week, while talking about intent to harm, we got off onto a discussion of duty versus obligation to help someone in need. He mentioned that in some instances, if you stop to help someone and you end up harming them in the process, you may be held liable. One student was incredulous and asked, “You mean if you just try to help somebody they can sue you later?” Professor Torts replied, “Well, the basic principle of life is that it sucks and then you die, so… yeah.”
• Regarding the obligation to help someone in need, Professor Torts explained that if we see a fellow classmate whom we don’t particularly like drowning in the local lake, it’s legally okay to “pull up a lawn chair, light a cigar, and watch the show.” Totes.

CONTRACTS

• Professor Contracts is great. He sports a bow tie on most days, and Fridays are Hawaiian shirt days. Snazzy! He’s pretty laid back and a slow talker, and he also has a great sense of humor.
• On Friday, Professor Contracts announced that it had come to his attention that some in our class were concerned that we weren’t moving quickly enough through the material and that we needed to pick up the pace. He assured us that he knows what he’s doing. WTF? Somebody actually complained about that?! In the first week of class?! WTF is going on here? I guarantee you, if I find out who it is, I’m gonna have my posse boil their bunny on the stove stick a horse’s head in their bed attack them in the shower give them a stern talking-to.
• This week we studied contracts in general and we started talking about consideration. We were reading a case that referenced a “noted thinker” named Chitty. Professor Contracts said, “Okay, Chitty on Contracts. Why do we give a chit?”

CIVIL PROCEDURE

• Professor CivPro is the most intimidating of the lot. We can’t use laptops in her class. When you get called on in her class, you have to stand. And you don’t just answer a couple of questions; you have to stand there for about half the class period (20-30 minutes) and respond to hypotheticals.
• This week we studied due process. Professor CivPro’s class tends to devolve (or maybe it’s intentional) into discussions of public policy, such as the fairness of the welfare system or the disability benefits system, instead of focusing on the law. This aggravates me for two reasons: (1) isn’t this what we did in undergrad? (2) is it even relevant if my classmates think it’s unfair to rely on the testimony of doctors in determining disability benefits because a friend of a friend once had an on-the-job injury and the one doctor said she had this percentage of disability and the insurance’s doctor said she had less disability, so therefore doctors could be biased and we should just give Mr. Eldridge the benefit of the doubt when he says he’s in pain…? Now I’m not saying I have no empathy, but I just don’t think it has anything to do with the case we’re talking about, now, does it? Grr.
• A lot of people in my section are spending an inordinate amount of time preparing for CivPro because of their fear of getting called on and not knowing every single little tiny miniscule detail of the case. As a result, one student already got caught unprepared when she got called on in Contracts. I think this is a losing strategy, and I ain’t fallin’ for it. Here’s my rationale: If I get called on in CivPro, regardless of how well I know the case, I’m going to end up looking like a fool because Professor CivPro is eventually going to get the best of me. Additionally, this will eventually happen to every single person in my class. So I’m going to read the cases and do my highlighting tricks, and I may jot down a couple of notes on a piece of paper to keep handy just in case. But I will not neglect my other classes just to join in the freak-out-over-CivPro party. Hopefully this strategy will pay off.

LEGAL PRACTICE

• This is the research and writing class and it lasts for two semesters. I have nothing but nice things to say about Professor LP. She’s pretty, she’s a fashionista, and she seems really, genuinely nice and very smart. She tells us stories about when she was practicing. Also, she bakes birthday cakes.
• For this week, this was my favorite class. That’s because it was so easy. We talked about court structure and that’s about it. It was like taking a freshman government class. But please don’t misunderstand: it was glorious, restorative therapy for my overloaded brain to get to sit there and relax for an hour. I realize that later in the semester I won’t be such a fan, but for this week it was just right. Also, my classmates who have different LP professors have already had one quiz and one group exercise where they had to prosecute/defend a fictional character. None of that from my Professor LP. No stress here (yet).

Okay, so this didn’t turn out to be as brief as I intended. In my defense, though, there was a lot to cover. I suspect when things settle down a bit this weekly post will, too.

And now, I must be productive.

[cue music: Beethoven, Symphony 7, Movement 2]

A hot summer Saturday. Law School Ninja, disheveled and visibly discombobulated, is sitting in her living room on her favorite chaise lounge with her Torts casebook, trying to do the reading that is assigned for her first day of classes, Monday, two days hence, at 8:00 a.m. Accompanying Law School Ninja on her chaise lounge are her cat and her dog, who are each angling for the best seat in the house — directly on top of the casebook. Unbeknownst to Law School Ninja, an army of midgets wielding weapons fashioned from crunchy beetle shells and hairy tarantula legs amasses just two blocks away. Vultures circle overhead, storm clouds gather, and hyenas close in as Law School Ninja commences the following monologue:

Okay, here’s my first case to brief: Garratt v. Dailey. Let’s see here… there’s the citation. Ha! That was easy enough! I’ll just fill in all the little categories that they gave me at orientation, and that’ll be that. Simple!

Facts are next. So this little kid pulled a chair out from under a lady in somebody’s back yard. Uncool. Oh, the lady fell and broke her hip as a result. Doubly uncool. Kids these days have absolutely no manners. Plaintiff sues the kid for battery.

Okay, next is the procedural history. Well, it looks like the trial court found for the defendant and the plaintiff appealed, seeking either $11,000 in damages or else a new trial altogether. Ha! Ha ha! I don’t get what the controversy is about briefing cases. This is just like fallin’ off a log.

Now for the issue. They tell us issue spotting is crucial, so I’ve gotta be sure to get this right. Oh, look! Here it is! The issue regards the intent of the little boy. Did he know that moving the chair would cause injury to the plaintiff? Is that right? ‘Cause if he did know that, then he’d be liable for battery.

So the holding is supposed to answer the question posed in the issue. Alrighty. Just have to find that… answer… hmmm… well, where is it… huh? The Washington Supreme Court remanded the case back to the trial court to determine whether the boy had such substantial knowledge… ?? Okay, so um, but what do I put for the holding? ‘Cause there really isn’t one. I mean, they made no decision about this. They just punted it back to the trial court. So what do I put in that HOLDING section of my case brief??? Hello? The holding can’t be “remanded,” can it? That’s more like the disposition of the case. Argh. Must consult the Tweeps.

[1.5 solid hours of tweeting]

Whew! That was some intense research! According to the Twitterverse, the holding is what would have been determinative had the appeals court not remanded. Does that make sense? It did to me, earlier. I hope it still makes sense to me on Monday.

Anyway, that misses the whole point of the case, which is trying to establish the concept of intent. Hey. What the… wait a minute… did I just spend hours and hours today trying to figure out what to put in one stupid little category of this crappy briefing template that they gave me at orientation, which distracted me from seeing the real point of the case? Did I just sit here and do exactly what everybody’s been telling me not to do, which is to get caught up in the minutiae of case briefing? Nuh-uh. No way.

[coyotes howl menacingly in the distance]

Please tell me NO.

[midget army advances]

NOOOOOO!!!!!

[fade to black]

Thus ends the sad saga of Law School Ninja and the Stupid, Crappy, Time-Sucking Case Briefing Template. It’s a tragic tale, but instructive. Learn ye from Law School Ninja’s mistakes. Put down your school-distributed, crappy, sucky case briefing templates! Join me in a fight against conventional wisdom! Take back your wasted hours as your own! It will be a fight to the death — nay, a fight to the pain!

The first section of the book, entitled “So You Wanna Be a Lawyer,” deals with deciding whether to go to law school, how to get a good LSAT score, the application process, choosing a law school, and paying for it. I skipped right over this section; clearly I’m beyond this.

Part two is called “The First Year, They Scare You to Death.” Now that’s more like it. This section is full of advice regarding what you should do before you start law school, such as moving to your law school’s city plenty early and getting into shape. I dog-eared the page that lists recommended supplements/commercial outlines for each 1L course. I mean, is this universally true, regardless of the professor? I have my doubts.

There’s a helpful chapter that briefly explains what you’ll learn in each 1L class, followed by a chapter on book-briefing cases. This is also dog-eared in my book. I absolutely love the idea of color-coding my casebook with highlighters. Seriously, thinking about it makes me have an OCD-gasm.

Next, there are chapters on law school etiquette, preparing for exams, getting a 1L summer job, making the best outline to take into exams (also dog-eared: case maps vs. bullet outlines), and the law review competition. Speaking of law review, how many of you competed? How many of you succeeded? If you competed and didn’t make law review, are you still glad you put forth the effort? If you didn’t attempt it, do you now wish that you had? Discuss.

The rest of the book deals with your 2L and 3L years and the bar exam. I flipped through all this, but I didn’t really read much of it. Just thinking about 1L is causing me enough stress, without having to start worrying about the barzam and actually finding a job. I may or may not refer back to these last two sections at some future date, but at this point I can’t bear to read them.

So, all in all, I think Law School Confidential is probably a worthy read. If the color-coded-highlighting-of-the-casebook briefing method ends up working for me, that alone will have been worth the price of the book. If any of you seasoned law students out there have experience with this book briefing method, or any other general thoughts regarding Law School Confidential, please comment.

COLOR-CODED WITH HIGHLIGHTERS??? **swoon**

Hi, my name is Law School Ninja, and I’m an office-supply-aholic.