Casebook Word of the Day

Administratrix: (n) presumably the female form of administrator. Perhaps with whippy/leathery overtones.

Bob Atkinson Redux

A classmate showed her mom what I wrote about the Gonzales v. Oregon moot, and it turns out she used to work with Atkinson, whom I compare favorably to Zorro. Naturally, she passed the column along. I don't seem to have embarassed him too thoroughly, and he passed on some helpful words, the gist of which is that at least law school isn't as hard as the Army's parachute school. So that was nice.

Snow: False Alarm

Today it's back to sunny blue skies, with green grass and temperatures in the mid-sixties. Maybe the whole daylight savings thing made the weather go haywire. I took these pictures this morning.

Costume Update 2

I look like this:

A few people misinterpreted it as Giant Chicken instead of Tibetan Monk, but all in all I was happy. My neighbors and I demonstrated our immensely superior creativity, sweeping the awards at an impromptu costume contest. I didn't win, but placed second behind a hallmate dressed up as a bombed-out smurf, a la that UNICEF ad.

Winterfall

The first snowman of the season!

It's Snowing

This is ridiculous. I was wearing a t-shirt outside two days ago. It's October, dammit!

Google's Cathedral

George Dyson on visiting the company's campus:

My visit to Google? Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people," explained one of my hosts after my talk. "We are scanning them to be read by an AI."

Link.

Costume Update 1

Hallmate Cory, in his mask, really looks like batman. You'd be amazed.

Tabloid Gossip

Is Jennifer Aniston dating Swingers and Wedding Crashers star Vince Vaughn? I can only say well done Vince. Well done.

Halloween

I had two requirements for a costume this year: it had to have bright colors, and involve a big hat. So when I saw a bright orange faux-velvet curtain at the thrift store, I knew there was really only one option. After some work this afternoon with a neddle and thread, and the high-capacity stapler in the computer lab, I now have the loudest Tibetan monk costume ever made. Hopefully, pictures to follow.

Socratic Target

Yesterday morning in Contracts the professor tried to cold-call me. It didn't work of course, since I'd been out all night and slept through class. So this morning I was public enemy numero one. I was called upon to expound upon Travelers Insurance v. Bailey for about half an hour, and even the valiant efforts of the butt-savers in the third row (who have styled themselves the rodeo clowns of contracts class) could not shake the prof. But I kept my cool, and I think I handled things well.

Two reasons for this: one, contracts is my favorite class, and the one I think I understand the best, and two, after hearing that I was called on in absentia, you better believe I read carefully last night.

Record Column: Dead Letters

My third piece. I held off on posting it because I thought is was a weaker effort, but a pair of classmates said some very nice things to me today, so I figure I'll put it up. Plus, my legal writing prof called me out in class today for writing it, so now I suppose it's a matter of record.

I used to think I knew how to write. I thought I could craft a sentence, build a paragraph. I was even so bold as to think I could turn the occasional clever phrase. Mere hubris. Fortunately I have been shaken free of that complacency. It's not like I forgot how to spell, or to type, or to scribble lines and curves out into words on a page. I had the mechanics down. Or at least some of them. What I had yet to learn that writing - good writing - is all mechanics. It should have the clean, shiny finish of nineteen-fifties aluminum, smelling like diner countertops and freshly-milled airplane parts. Rap your knuckle on it, and it should ping.

My prose, in contrast, laid about in a kudzu sprawl. I foolishly thought this made it more interesting, that the twisty and knobbly bits served some purpose, even if I couldn't articulate it. Writing was meant to be organic, to spread of its own accord, driven onward by indirect but irresistible forces of nature. It would latch improbably onto the sides of mountains, cling resolutely to windswept deserts, pry up paving stones and sidewalks, driven by an unknowable will. At most, it could be guided, pruned, gently encouraged to grow in a certain direction. But when you got down to essentials, to late nights and missed deadlines, it was always a wild thing, beyond control.

The law, of course, cannot abide such unpredictability. Such imprecision. Words should whir and click. When they are forceful, they should clang. When they are soothing, they should buzz, or hum softly. They should certainly not be alive. The law has met living things before. They were messy and sticky and squishy. They gummed up the gears and left dents on shiny surfaces. It didn't go well. The law works best when things are good and dead.

The time came when I had to produce some words for class. Some hard, disciplined words quite unlike the ones I get in this garden the Record has given me to play in. I sat down to write, trying to think of straight lines and sharp corners. I tried to cram prose into little boxes labeled "Question Presented" and "Umbrella Paragraph." I stumbled through the instructions for assembling a CRuPAC, banging my shins on its odd angles. I tried building another and another, but each attempt felt as alien as the one before it. I pressed onwards, trying not to look back at the detritus I'd left strewn across the pages above. At some point I must have shuddered to a stop. Certainly no graceful finish, for I would have remembered finishing if I'd done it well. As it was, the whole experience was so disjointed, so full of abrupt shifts and brutal halts, that the last sentence felt no different than any that came before it. Exhausted, I sent the thing on its way and collapsed into sleep.

I put off looking at it for days, waiting until we had to produce them for class. And with good reason. It was hideous. I had at least made sure it was dead, a papery, frail, desiccated thing. But it also lacked any of the strength the law would demand. It sat in a crumpled heap in front of me, appendages awkwardly tacked on at odd angles, creaking and rattling as I poked it. I gazed mournfully at my classmates' creations. Sure, many showed signs of rough workmanship. One was smoking. But a few gleamed in the glow of laptop screens, bristling with martial focus. They were positively frightening. And they all down to the last one seemed to have a sense of direction, a hint of a useful purpose. Already the class was moving on to talk about refinements to be made. They earnestly compared notes as we were lectured on how to make everything cleaner, straighter, sharper.

I looked back at the jumble in front of me. I could see it was beyond salvage, that the more I hacked and sawed at it the more creaky it would become. I didn't understand the principles behind the design, the secret wisdom that informed the structure, but I could still at least recognize traces of it in my work. That would have to do for now. I sighed and gave the pile a desultory prod, one dead thing to another. It clattered sympathetically. "Don't worry," I whispered softly, "I'm sure the next one will be merely bad."

Trevor Austin wrote this column instead of a memo about summary judgment. If you don't want to do your work either, write him instead at taustin@law.harvard.edu.

The original is available here.

Yes, I Am A Scoundrel

Josh is entirely right of course. I am not one to be trusted. But he doesn't even know the half of it. Crashing another section's happy hour, I decide to accuse another student, a bona fide section 1, of being there under false pretenses. "What," I slurred at her, "are you doing here? This isn't your section!" So we argued for a few minutes about who was really the impostor. I don't remember all too clearly, but I think I may have won.

By the way, John Harvard's makes a really excellent house IPA. I recommend it.

The Best Defense Is A Good Offense

The class was giving Professor Civil Procedure a hard time today, asking lots of tough questions about federal jurisdiction, not letting anything slip by. Myself, I demanded to know XXXX. Prof. CP wheeled on me. "Okay Trevor, why don't you take us through the facts of the next case."
Score! I hadn't been prepared at all for Civil Procedure, but we'd read the case for Contracts, and just discussed it early in the morning. This was the one thing I was qualified to talk about.
"It's a slip and fall case. The plaintiffs went on a cruise and one got hurt so they sued the company for keeping the boats too ... slippery."

Semper Fidel

File this under Things You Don't See Every Day: A classmate, former USMC lance corporal, wearing an olive drab Che Gueverra t-shirt with matching Marine Corps hoodie.

I'm Too Sexy For This Blog

A neighbor tipped me off that over at the rough and tumble xoxo message board I'm considered, "cute in a geeky way."

Hell, I'll take that.

Sox Win

after 14 innings, the longest world series game ever played. Says a Chicago fan who watched the game with me, "I have a bunch of uncles in Houston I should call up and talk shit to. But they just survived a hurricane, so that wouldn't be cool. Plus, they're wusses."

Rainy Day Music

I've listened to "Bananna Pancakes" of Jack Johnson's latest at least five times today. I never really got into his new stuff before, but I'm giving it a closer listen now that I'm holed up in here.

Can't you see that it's just raining.
There ain't no need to go outside.

The Ingenious and Stylish American Woman

The Supreme Court of New York finds:

The purpose of this style change was to permit the purchase at individual prices of various skirts and blouses, which, when worn together, look like dresses, and yet at the same time can be worn separately with other garments – thus increasing the number, utility, and variety of the garments which the ingenious and stylish American woman, ever desirous of being variedly well-dressed, has at her disposal – and this, notwithstanding a limited pocketbook.

Weinberg v. Edelstein
201 Misc. 343, 110 N.Y.S.2d 806

Hi Mom

I know you're reading this. I have my ways.

Law Student Life Cycles

Last week (and by "week" I mean "Monday through Thursday") was so long and so busy that I wound up spending the almost entire weekend sitting around just to recoup. I didn't do anything more substantial than watch a movie or buy cold-weather clothes.

A lot of this is because I partied way too hard on Thursday, a practice that's already become a kind of law school tradition. It's our longest day, culminating in two grinding hours of legal writing. When that class gets out at five, there's nothing I want more than a cold beer. Luckily, the student council has stepped up to enable this addiction by putting a keg out on the lawn every week right at five. It's pretty much all downhill from there.

And now I'm back, tanned rested and ready, with my sleep-dep slate wiped clean and a new gym scedule all worked out. So what am I doing? Writing the second draft of the same millstone of a memo that dragged last week down. Here we go again.

Colbert on Centrism

In an interview with Fareed Zakaria on The Colbert Report:

"Isn't a centrist just someone who doesn't have the balls to be a fanatic?"

The Days Are Just Packed

My calendar for this week looks like a color-blind kid build a wall out of Legos.

Of course, after staying up late to finish the memo for yesterday morning, I keep sleeping through the top bricks.

Inside Admissions

The new (interim?) dean of admissions at the law school held a workshop for students tonight to talk about what kinds of changes should be made to the admissions program. There was free pizza and beer, so of course I went.

There was no talk of changing who gets admitted, except for a few trial ideas he had about how to weed out "the people you can tell are jerks in five minutes." Proposals for some kind of telephone interviews were hotly contested. Most of it seemed to focus on convincing admitted students to decide to come here instead of going somewhere else.

Now I was highly suspicious of this place until I got here and met a few living, breathing students (and saw that there weren't any that I reflexively wanted to stab in the eye), so I was delighted to see that he was trying to come up with ways to connect admits with students that they could see weren't part of some potemkin village. I think the best idea was luring current students into meeting admits with free food. There were other good ones about trying to get student groups to share what they do. He even wanted to try running a blog at the admissions office and experimenting with podcasting student interviews.

Best of all was spending most of the meeting soliciting ideas and feedback from us. Feedback like: give us a t-shirt instead of that ugly tote bag we can't carry anywhere. Or: yes, the admissions binder was really boring and not very helpful. Or: you know what would be great? Meetups with recent alumni in My Hometown.

So that was all neat stuff. If you volunteer to help with this retention-maximizing scheme, your title is Admissions Fellow. "Because it seemed like everyone around here was a something fellow. It sounds nice."

Also, I met an older student who lived less than a mile from my house in San Diego, right up the street form my favorite burrito joint.

First Mediation

"We're not here as judges, and we can't make rulings. We're just here to try to facilitate a dialog."
"Why?"

So that didn't go so well.

Memo: 8 Pages Too Long

Toy Memo The Second is about whether a lawsuit against a gun maker and distributor is likely to survive a motion of summary judgment. I want to send a short reply:

To: Fictional Parner
From: Fictional Associate Trevor
Re: Summary Judgment

They changed the statue this year, so anything could happen. But what does it matter what our chances are? We're suing them anyway.

But no. I have to write some 8-page memo about it instead. And you wonder why legal work is so expensive.

Justice

Even your gimmicky bullshit green jerseys can't save you, Notre Dame!

Dating Shows Are Good For the Soul

People on them always have their flaws cast in to high relief, but they're fallible in such ordinary, harmless ways. I watch Fog of War and get all depressed about how incredibly blind we are when countless lives are on the line, but you watch Next or Elimidate and start to feel good about people again. These are people who can deal with life on the appropriate scale.

Smoke Technology Here

Assorted magnetic poetry seen in the offices of the Lournal of Law and Technology:

"we need a copyright
on that tequila method"

"drunk students ask
what good is the law
without love"

"learn horrible
trade secrets"

Titles

"How come Lanchi's not in the facebook?"
"What name are you looking under?"
"Lanchi Ra."
"I don't think that's her last name."
"That's what it says on her door."
"That's because she's our RA."

Boston Legal

Is it the best show on television? It may just be.

"This isn't a meaningful life ... practicing law ... drinking Scotch at nine in the morning."

Legal Writing

I get back my first memo.

32.5/50.

A little back of the envelope calculation reveals that's a 65%, which is a solid Not Failing. Right on.

General comments:
"Your first draft was solid, but unfortunately, your second draft was largely unrevised"

Response:
"My first draft was largely uncommented-upon."

Now With 35% More Love!

Blogroll updated at right.

Advice From the Bench

There was a judge from Alabama in my mediation training class, and he was every inch the kindly southern gentleman. We had an impromptu happy hour to celebrate completing the program, and he asked all of us about what we wanted to do with the law. Interestingly, he advised us to stay out of criminal law, warning us that we wouldn't find it intellectually challenging enough. You'll get bored after a year, he warned, because the cases rely so heavily on statute and are all more or less the same. Civil law would always be more varied, because, "There's no end to the kinds of trouble people can get themselves into."

Grand Challenge Won

It looks like three entrants in this year's DARPA Grand Challenge actually finished the course, racing 131 miles across the mojave desert without any human control. Stanford'e entry, Stanley was among them. That's just so damn cool.

A Calling

A handout from the public interest center on landing a job at the US Attorney's Office says they sometimes frown on assistant DAs because of their "shoot from the hip style."

Perfect.

How Continental

"So that window, it is closed?"
"Oh yes. Closed."
"Oh well. C'est la vie."
"I thought that was one you wanted closed."
"It was."
"Ah."
"Ah."

Seventy-Seven Inches of Trouble

"Trevor, can you break into Paul's room for me?"
"Sure, why?"
"My booze is in his fridge, but he's not here."
"Are you sure this is your booze?"
"Yes."
"Okay then. No problem."

Selling the Sizzle

Great Post today over at the Barely Legal Blog about following the rules, and knowing when to ignore them.

Don't Hire Me To Kill Anybody

I believe I am only the second person in my section to be eliminated from our assassins game. Lacking even the most elementary levels of foresight or awareness, I was caught with my guard down less than 24 hours after the game started. A stone-cold killer I am not.

Real Life Problems

Went to mediation for the first time today. Would say more about it, but Emily already has a better roundup than the one I was going to write.

Really, I was more comfortable with the made-up problems on Boston Legal.

A Modest Proposal

Let us leave little marks on a piece of legal scholarship where sloppy or careless professors get their citations wrong. Something small and discreet, but still embarassing to have sprinkled all over the page. Give them some incentive to get their own sources right.

Never Completed, Only Abandoned

I'm trying to edit a toy memo I wrote for Legal Writing. We didn't get any specific feedback on the rough drafts, so I'm not really sure what to change. I should have written an obviously bad first draft, if only to give myself easy things to do now.

The Opinions of Stangers

This showed up in my mailbox this morning, and it has completely made my day:

Re: "Suddenly, This All Makes Sense"

I was searching for sentences for a vocab assignment when I ran across your article (the word I was looking for was "edifice"). I felt it necessary to compliment you on your writing. So, compliments it was hilarious, well written, and enlightening. You are well placed at Harvard. You have a wonderful voice.
Regards,
[person I don't know]
P.S. As you are on your way to becoming a powerful and scary attorney please know that I cited your work-don't sue me

Whee! I always have been a sucker for flattery.