2008-09 Law Review Schwag

Law Review t-shirts are often a subject on this blog. Most notably for their effect on intoxicated undergraduate women. So without further ado, I present the 2008-09 Law Review T-Shirt:

As you can see, this year's model reflects seniority. Also, in accord (get it?) with the third-year lifestyle, this year's design will include a beer koozie:

FRONT:

BACK:

Finally, a Good Day

After a week of hell dealing with my student comment and dead hard drive drama, today has been absolutely brilliant. I finished my student comment during my last class, and I think it has at least a slight chance of getting published. However, I'm not going to get my hopes up too much about this one. Just finishing the damn thing removes a HUGE weight from me that has been there since last August.

My girlfriend also landed a summer job. This relieves a lot of stress from both our lives. I am also ecstatic because she will be in this state within driving distance of me during the second half of the summer. This is what happens when you get used to spending every day together.

On top of those two amazing events, it is a beautiful day outside. Upper 60's, slight breeze, clear skies, birds chirping, the works.

Disaster is coming, I just know it.

Law Review Is a PAYING JOB?!?

Yesterday, I heard something quite interesting from a friend. Her 3L boyfriend at another public school in this region gets PAID to be a law review editor.

Well, I THINK she meant he's a law review editor. Perhaps I misunderstood what she was talking about.

Can anyone confirm that some student law review editors have paid positions?

Edit: Do the editors who get paid also get credit hours?

Law Review: Outlook on Another Year as a Peon

One has to wonder what drives law review editors after managing board elections are over.  I'll weigh the pros and cons of currently being a law review junior editor who will not be on next year's managing board.

Pros

1.  looks reasonably good on resume

2.  less work than most of the managing board positions

3.  might be able to coerce friends on managing board to give me lots of "Best Editor" awards to fill resume space

4.  knowledge that I will have memorized most of the Bluebook by the time I graduate

Cons

1.  doesn't look as good on resume as a managing board position

2.  employers, particularly those familiar with this law review, will interpret "Senior Editor" title as a sign of laziness or intrinsic personality flaw, regardless of the fact that I actively sought a position with more responsibility

3.  10-15 hours of infuriating work most weeks in addition to normal school-related activities (this can be a con because I have reason to believe the work of the positions I wanted is less "infuriating" than the work of a junior/senior editor)

4.  waiting in line for moot court partners who are monopolizing the only two available copiers to reproduce every single sample brief in the library

5.  prospect of Phaedrus telling me to "add authority" next year for the statement "the sky is blue" (or "litigation is expensive," an ADD AUTHORITY gem from my last assignment)

6.  no recognition for the effort I put forth and the damn good work it produces

7.  unproductive (read:  pointless, yet inevitable) feelings of resentment and superiority toward next year's managing board

8.  the reward for doing good work really IS more work (see, e.g., how they managed to stack most of the best junior editors on an assignment involving sources from Texas in the mid-1800s, very few of which are actually accessible to people outside of Wharton County, Texas)

9. knowledge that I will have memorized the Bluebook by the time I graduate (yes, it's also a con)

I really wonder how they motivate those senior editors.  Let's not delude ourselves.  I'm guessing that less than 5% of law review junior editors (or whatever they're called at other schools) actually enjoy the work.  Right now, my only motivations are my personal desire to associate my name with good work, the regret I encounter when I could have done a better job, and the idea that I will get kicked off law review if I stop turning in assignments.  The latter wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that I would have to take it off my resume.

An Open Letter

Dear [Friend and Fellow Aspiring Law Review Managing Board Member]:

We have been friends for a little more than one year.  While we are not the closest of friends, I would like to think that we enjoy spending time around each other (usually in a large group).  I also think we respect each other enough to avoid actions that could adversely impact the other party's resume.

I noticed that you have recently signed up to run for one of the same law review managing board positions as me.  While there is no limit to the number of positions for which each individual may run, I wish you would have considered the potential impact of your decision to run for this particular position.  

The potential result is that neither of us will get elected to the position.  This explanation will be easier to read in the following list form:

1.  Law review elections are likely to be a giant orgy of popularity contests akin to junior high SGA elections.  

2.  Several of our mutual friends are on law review, and they probably form a sufficient voting block to get someone from the group elected to almost any position on the managing board even if they don't discuss their votes in advance.

By the third step, even someone without the slightest knowledge of who we are (or perhaps someone who deludes himself into thinking the junior editors will generally vote for the "best" candidates, not their friends) should see where this is going.  

Technically, we are not allowed to campaign or form voting agreements, and I am not suggesting that we should have done either of those things.  However, I had the forethought to avoid running for another position for which you were already signed up because I did not want to split our group's votes.  I just wish you would have taken the same consideration for me as I had for you when I decided not to run for the other position in question.  

Some people would call this "gamesmanship" with all the accompanying negative connotations, but I call it common sense in this particular set of circumstances.  I don't think there is anything dubious or dirty about not wanting to split the votes of our friends.  I am particularly qualified for this position, perhaps more qualified than the other candidates and definitely more qualified than I am for any other position, and I will be very disappointed if neither of us gets elected.  I am not angry at you for running, as it is your privilege as a junior editor to run for whatever positions you want, but it would have been nice if you had chosen one for which I am not running.

Sincerely,

Guy Fawkes

Effective Immediately

Dear Registrar, Law Review, and Moot Court,

In an act of sacrifice and remembrance of the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert, Noah spent on the ark, Moses spent on Mt. Sinai, Elijah spent walking to Mount Horeb, I will be abstaining from Moot Court and Law Review until the Easter feast. This is all because these things take up most of my time and it is less time to reflect upon religious matters (you know, the whole reasoning behind Lent). You may point out that I am not giving up school. Well, this is much like the practice that meat, eggs and dairy products are generally proscribed, but fish isn't. Aquinas reasoned that they afford greater pleasure as food [than fish], and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. (Summa Q147). Law Review and Moot Court afford greater pleasure and greater nourishment to my resume, therefore an incentive to lust.

I understand this may put you in a bind. Too bad. You are a state law school and cannot impose on my religious views. Please do not take any discriminatory or retaliatory action against me. See Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98 (2001).

New Semester...

...but pretty much everything about law school has stayed the same.  Professors are actually bigger slackasses than students, so grades aren't entirely posted until three days after they are due.  Grades are still arbitrary, and they start out well but end with mild disappointment.  Rankings still aren't out.  The holidays almost let us forget about law review, but it's still around.  In fact, managing board elections are next week, and I'm going run for a couple of positions.  As El Guapo would say, I'm probably the biggest sucker of them all.  I suspect that the "resume builder" of being on managing board will turn out a lot like being on law review on the first place (read:  it hasn't yielded any tangible benefit, but it exponentially increases one's stress level), but we shall see.  I'm still bitter about things I can't change and incredulous about others' ambivalence to those things.  I still refuse to use a thesaurus for blog posting.  Ever.

    

A few things have changed.  It's no longer football season, which means we have one less "fun" thing to do, but we actually get to rest on the weekends.  Instead of spending every minute of class time blogging, the All Against All Bloggers have gone weeks without a genuine substantive post.  El Guapo loaded his schedule with criminal law classes, so this is the first time we haven't had at least one class together since starting law school.  It's strange to look to the left and see one of these crazy transfer kids I've befriended instead of El Guapo.  

Phaedrus has vanished into his girlfriend, both literally and figuratively.  Phaedrus' disappearing act when he has a girlfriend actually isn't anything new, but it's a change in the law school context.  She goes to what Phaedrus likes to call the state's "short bus" law school in the larger city roughly an hour away, so Phaedrus is routinely out of town.  This is the same girl whose friend caused quite a stir at the Halloween party, an incident that almost got Phaedrus put in the Honor Court pillory.  Perhaps this incident is related to why Phaedrus is constantly out of town instead of having his girlfriend in town.

I also have the summer covered in employment terms.  One half is with the state AG's office, which is an unpaid position, but I will get paid at least a little bit working for the Office of General Counsel at a large university.  It's amazing how much less stressful this semester has already been simply because I'm no longer looking for a summer job.  It's also astounding how much easier the job search became when I said "fuck it" to working at a private firm and took advantage of the minimal connections available to me.  I don't hold connections against those who take advantage of them, but dear god, it sucks to be one of the people without any obvious ones.

Over the holidays, I visited Austin, Texas, a glorious city that has a gem called "SPEC's."  This place is quite literally a supermarket for gourmet food, beer, wine, and liquor.  I'm a liquor drinker from the Bible Belt, so this place was like nirvana.  I dropped roughly $250 on liquor that would have cost over $550 in my home state.  Hopefully transporting large amounts of liquor over state lines is not a crime.  If it is, the prohibitionists can go fuck themselves with their "sin taxes."

One other thing is different.  It SNOWED.  None of it stuck to the ground here, but there were actual flakes.  Of snow.  The snow came less than one week after temperatures were in the mid-70s.  My Environmental Law professor blames global warming.

The Joys of "Adding Authority" for Law Review

From a friend of a law blogging friend:

Metheus:  why the fuck do you have to cite to common knowledge?

Silly Little Law Student:  b/c everything has a source lol

Metheus:  "The sun rises in the east."  Fucktard, Stupid Shit Everybody Knows, But I Wrote it First Cuz I'm a Narcissist, 45 Fuck Me Law School L. Rev. 787 (2004).

Metheus:  Can you sense the hostility?  It's a bit subtle.

Original Post

Do Your Friends Speak Hindi?

If anyone reading this blog has an Indian friend, for the love of god...you MUST watch this video:

Bad Indian Music Video With Humorous (Even Worse)
English Subtitles

Dear...god. I can't stop watching it, and I don't know why.

Sanjay, I'm probably going to call you Benny Lava for the duration of holiday break. I'm sorry, but I'm sure you understand.

John Tool Bag, Esquire

There is currently an old Chevrolet Malibu parked in the student lot with a tag that reads "ESQUIR."  I might not think twice about it if it was parked in the faculty lot, but it struck me as odd that some student decided it would be cool to get a premature self-congratulatory license plate.  This person is probably destined to fail out of law school and be stuck with the ESQUIR plate as a constant reminder of failure.

On another note, one more paper is finished.  I somehow cranked out almost 8,000 words in just a few days, a significant improvement over the 3,500 words in a few weeks pace I managed on my law review comment.  I really think footnoting consumes roughly 2/3 of the time I spend doing legal writing, so it's a lot faster when the professor doesn't care about footnoting or pincites at all.

Oh joy, exams await.

Law Review Student Comment...Check

The first 3508 words of my law review student comment are finished. This will likely mean that tomorrow afternoon will be the last time I will know my own name for a little while. It's not that I haven't been able to drink in the past few weeks, but actually having some leisurely drinks for once without an impending deadline will be nice.

Oh wait, I still have to write a damn "pathfinder" (annotated bibliography) for Advanced Legal Research. It won't be intellectually challenging, but it's still just one more thing to do, paper to write, etc. Maybe I can have some "leisurely drinks" while reading more Establishment Clause cases and law review articles. This pathfinder is the only thing standing between me and holiday freedom, and by "holiday freedom," I mean finals. Oddly enough, I've always found finals to be relaxing relative to the normal semester because I'm not a person who can learn effectively by "studying" in the traditional sense. Such is the life of a 2L.

On a happier note, I actually did get a summer job offer a couple of weeks ago with the state attorney general's office. It's not a paid position, but the particular job (in the Opinions division) probably would have been one of my top choices if there was money involved. I have a couple of other promising interviews pending, including one with a private firm in my home county that is one of the only firms in the state with a local government law practice. This fact somehow escaped me until I was actually in the interview. Hopefully I didn't go overboard with the enthusiasm. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed about that one.

On another happier note, El Guapo has been coming to classes again since last Wednesday. A lot of law students attended a memorial service for his baby last Saturday. I was glad to see that so many made the effort to be there on a Saturday morning, even during this hectic time of the semester. The school is going to let El Guapo do his finals on a pass/fail basis, and the law review higher-ups pushed back his student comment due date. Hopefully things will be back to normal for El Guapo before too long.

Student Comment Bitching

Benefits of student comment:

1. only opportunity most of us have to get published at this point in our lives - degree of publication's benefit to resume is questionable

2. fulfills seminar requirement at our school - virtually meaningless for reasons explained below

Costs of student comment:

1. huge time investment

2. huge stress investment

3. kills the joy of studying/writing about an interesting topic

4. fulfills the seminar requirement - I counted this as a benefit as well, but seminars are essentially guaranteed A's, meaning that not taking one has a good chance of lowering your potential GPA. Think of it as an opportunity cost sort of idea. Students can still take a seminar, but doing that eliminates all the utility of having the student comment fulfill the requirement. It just doesn't strike me that removing the need to take a guaranteed A class is all that helpful. Perhaps I should have created a "neutral/meaningless benefits" category.

I'm not even that bitter about having to write this comment for some reason. I think it's largely useless unless it is selected for publication and probably useless even then. We've all seen how much putting law review on our resumes helped (zero). I'm at 2400/3500 words for the initial draft, and I just don't want to do it anymore. It hasn't even been that difficult so far, as I'm essentially going to turn in a 3500 word case discussion. This entire post reminds me of whining about something I have no good reason to not do, perhaps along the lines of the "but...but...I don't WANNA" argument. Blah.

Someone please make my comment finish writing itself so I can stop whining about it.

Love Letter to My Law Review Student Comment

Dear Student Comment,

I wrote a poem for you.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I'll fuck you with a garden rake.

Love,

Guy Fawkes

Does that sound too angry?

Edit: This post is made in memory of Law Bitches.