Inconsistencies 1 at 9:10 PM

Leviticus 19:33-34 (New American Standard Bible)

33 When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
34 The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt;

::Ant Out::
if we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. -francois de la rochefoucauld

Testin That Knowledge at 3:33 PM

Took my "first" test yesterday so I figured I would post on what goes on during a test. In past posts I have talked about what I actually do for class and studying. All of those tasks culminate in a big test. Midterms are around two hours long and finals usually run around four hours.

All that time before the tests we are reading and studying the rules that come out of each case. Before the tests, for each class, we make an outline, which is a couple pages long that keep track of all the rules and little tests we have learned to make decisions.

During a test we are given the facts of a case. Then depending on the question, we have to write essays about what we would do in each case and what rules apply. Other types of questions ask us to find the most serious charge or what liability a certain character owes. Each of these types or questions are separate essays so there is a lot of writing. You can hand write each essay but generally everyone is typing their essays during the test.

This is probably the last of my “What law school is like” posts. I'll post more interesting things next week about going out and interesting legal debates.

::Niners= NFC West champs::

if i were a girl, i'd despair. the supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them. ~sacha guitry~

Day in the life of at 10:07 PM

I figured that this week I would go over what I do on a daily basis. I usually get up around 7 or 8ish which means I lay in bed and fight getting up as long as possible. When I eventually get out of bed I mosey on over to my computer and read some news to get my brain going a bit and to catch up. I eat something small like cereal or fruit and hop in the shower. I get a couple cups of coffee in me then move it on over to class.

Classes are okay. Most of them are not too stressful except for when you are “on call.” If you’ve ever seen a law school movie being “on call” means you basically break down the case for the entire class and teacher as the teacher grills you a bit to get the point of the case across. My first week to be on call is this week; I will let you know how it goes. Otherwise, you can volunteer to answer some questions and the teacher just gets the answer they want and goes on.

Once classes or over or when I get a break in classes I get back to my place and make some eggs and toast to get a legit breakfast into me. If I am done with classes for the day then I get down to reading my cases and going through my studies to be done. Most of the time I screw around (something I need to cut down on but I have been good) but I have so far read for every class which I am proud of. I had to upgrade my chair as I spend 30% of my waking hours at my desk:

I usually finish around eight or nine (usually I just cut myself off since studying is never done). I play some video games or watch TV about this time and get to bed around eleven or twelve at night, making sure to say night to my girl.

I do this day after day after day. While skill helps, law school is all about endurance. You do not want to read every day. It might be impossible to read everyday with no real break. We shall see by the end of this semester.

::Antdog Out::

For many persons, law appears to be black magic--an obscure domain that can be fathomed only by the professional initiated into the mysteries.~susan c. ross~

Hypo at 1:18 AM

One of the harder things that a law student has to get used to is the suspension of judgment while reading a case or legal rule. When you read a case there is a certain set of facts that are the reason the case is where it is at. Sometimes the legal rule addresses those facts and sometimes they loosely follow those facts in order make an easy rule for someone to follow. The problem that arises is the hypotheticals that can come from them.

If someone is being beaten and you see them then you do not have a duty to help them.

A pretty simple rule that many can agree is not a bad rule. If someone is being hit with a bat in front of me then there is no legal duty to help them and in turn I do not get hit with a bat. While it might be morally a good thing to help that person it is not a legal duty.

Now to make it a hypothetical: If a baby is face down in a pool of water and you are not related to the baby nor have special relationship to the baby (such as babysitter or guardian) then you do not have to take it out of the puddle.

Welcome to Law School.

::The above hypothetical is one of the reasons I love the law::
cowards die many times before their deaths;
the valiant never taste of death but once.
of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
ot seems to me most strange that men should fear,
seeing that death, a necessary end,
will come when it will come.
~julius caesar~

Get Your Towels Ready It's About to Go Down... at 10:06 PM

I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer since I was younger not entirely knowing everything and after learning about lawyers I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly where I belong. Not only am I in the right profession but the right school. Nothing embodies it more than the three C’s of the school: competence, conscience and compassion. The last one drives it home for me and seems to separate it from other schools.

That is enough of that sappy crap. I’ll spin a little yarn about the beginning of my trip to San Francisco to have dinner with my cousin for her birthday. So I had gotten my train ticket and was waiting around listening to my iPod for the train when this Asian lady came up to me.

She had a little girl with her and I saw her at the ticket machine. She asked me if I had a $5 bill because the one she was using did not work. It looked fine and I had a five on me so I traded her.

Bill was fake…

::Feeling welcome in the city::

in life, as in chess, forethought wins. ~charles buxton

The Law School Grind at 1:45 PM

Just finished my first week at school! It was not that bad but I'm sure it will get worse as time goes on. I can tell it's not going to be so much about the work but the memory and endurance to get all the way through. Going to try and not burn myself out though.

To start this post off I'm going to repeat a (shorter version of) joke one of my professors said the other day:

A physicist, a mathematician and a lawyer are trying to prove the sum of 2+2. The physicist and mathematician fill up chalk board after chalk board to prove that 2+2=4. The lawyer looks at the board and asks the judges what they want 2+2 to equal.

It's supposed to be a joke about advocacy and I find it funny.

What we do from the day to day is read massive amounts of pages all relating to a central topic. One of those topics we read for the other day was jurisdiction. Instead of reading a bunch of definitions about that topic we read cases. From those cases we are supposed to figure out the rule or precedent that case sets and then we are supposed to put it all together to figure out the rules of jurisdiction.

One of the steps central to this understanding is writing case briefs. When we read a case we are supposed to keep track of all the cases we read because they come into play at the end of the year when we take our big make it or break it tests. When we read case we are supposed to keep track of its citation, facts of the case, procedural context(how we legally got here), issue, holding(rule set), rules the court used to get to the holding, and the reasoning for how the rules apply to the holding.

We do that for about 5 cases a day which takes a bit of time to read and understand. On top of the cases we are assigned it usually is a good idea to look up all the cases that directly relate to the cases at hand, taking the main idea from each of them. The archaic terms are also a good idea to understand and the laws some of the cases lead up to are also a good idea to peak at. After each case there are problems and questions that help to understand the case or put the case into a larger context. How the case you are reading relates to the case you read before types of questions. All this is done for each of my five classes, so it starts to add up.

When it gets closer to exam time I'll fill ya'll in on that but I figure a good post about what I do from day to day would be helpful. The next posts will be more fun.

::Antdog outs::

Truth exists; only lies are invented.~Horatius Bonar

So Law School Starts Tomorrow at 11:19 PM

Moved out of the AZ and made my way to Cali to do law school. Things are very different being this far away from home, for rizzle. It is nice, however, doing this big part of my life on my own. I guess that was the point coming all the way out here. Fam and Lara helped me move out here and I am all situated in my room:

As you can see I have too much stuff for my room. Place is pretty nice though. It will get the job done at least. I’m sure my desk and the library will be just as important as the bed for the next couple of years. Only 3 years for law school and the first one is the hardest. “First year they study you to death. Second year they work you to death. Third year they bore you to death.” That’s the motto at least.

Those are all my books for this semester. Plus my dictionary and one more book that is on backorder. Fun stuff. I’ll go more into the process of studying next post. Just filling ya’ll in on how I’m getting settled.

::Already know half my first cases and readings before reading...::
conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking. ~h. l. mencken~

Creepiness at 2:53 PM

Just a creepy song many didn't pay attention to at the time. Weird.



::Ciroc Obama Out::
if you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live. ~james baldwin~

The Bisbee Epic at 12:02 AM

Ms. Lara and I headed down to Bisbee last weekend to take in the great Arizona landscape. You don’t know how much you don’t know about your own state until you are about to leave it. My friend from work suggested a cool motel idea. It is called the Shady Dell which is an old time refurbished trailer park with all these old trailers from the 50’s/60’s era. Sounded cool enough so we packed a bag and headed on down.

The trip down was easy enough until the minutiae of trying to find the street the park is on. Lara and I do great when we know where the hell we are going. I don’t think it is just me but I get kind of mad if I am driving and the passenger doesn’t know where we are going. I don’t believe I am the only one though. This wasn’t her fault but we got into a tiff anyways. The rest of the drive down was fun and we got to have good talks about different subjects. It’s something about road trips that you can have full conversations you can’t always have in town. Maybe it is that the alternative is silent driving which no one is a fan of.

We get down to our trailer for the night and we decided to stay in the El Ray which is this beauty here:

It was a really cool trailer. No real bathroom (just a toliet) but it is the ambiance we went for which was amazing. Lara went to take a shower at the close by bathrooms which left me to fend for myself. Lara’s departure was perfect because our trailer was under attack. A bee had infiltrated our humble abode and it was up to me to conquer. These pictures tell the story:

The bee-

The apple cookie jar-

Victory-

Insurance-

The next morning we got up and headed into Bisbee proper to see the beautiful town. The main Bisbee attraction is the Mine Tour so we headed up the hill to partake. The mine was amazingly cool and amazingly cold. We got jackets, a helmet and a light. Dress up, I’m sold. Time to check out the shaft:

Bisbee. A must for anyone in the AZ.

::I think Fozzie is the best muppet::
you live and you learn -- or you don't live long. ~robert a. heinlein~