Tag: Law School

Law School Is Half Over

The end of my Evidence final came at 11:28am today. I am now chronologically halfway done with law school. (I think I’m a bit ahead credits-wise.) So, time to review my life.

Making the decision to go to law school was one of the hardest choices of my life. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but when I look at the time-line of my application process, it spans years and takes a few pit stops.

I took two years off after graduating from the University of Michigan in 2004. During those years I worked for two start-ups. The first, Ruckus, was a blast and forever changed my expectations for what I want out of a job – both good and bad. I was able to be creative and had very few limitations, but the down side of that was semi-chaos that left me anxious and beat at the end of the day. The second was K12, a start-up that was further along. It was more “corporate,” but still had a newness to it.

It wasn’t a complete coincidence that both Ruckus and K12 were education related. Ruckus provided digital entertainment to college kids (a slogan I’ll never forget) and K12 is a virtual curriculum. The people that helped me into those companies felt strongly about the importance of education and expanding education.

I can’t say with certainty what 1.5 years of law school has given me. There have been plenty of highs and lows. I’ve been to China to study, something I never took the time to do in undergrad. The coursework is becoming more interesting and application of it comes with more ease.

What I still lack is the notion of how to bring together prior experience, my undergrad studies and what I’m learning in law school. And then, once it’s together is some loose metaphysical ball secured with mental twine and spare post-it notes, how to apply it.

I look forward to figuring that out. Meanwhile, I have a month-long break before I start in on Law School: Part Deux.

Copyright Final Exam

I’m about to take my Copyright Final. It’s a three-hour essay examination. I’m stoked. OK, not really. But, for the first time in my law school experience, we’re allowed to write an in-class exam on our laptops.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. We can only use Microsoft Word and we can’t use any of the drop-down menus, spellcheck, etc. I think we can use bold, italics, and underline.

We had the option to choose to write in a bluebook. Several people chose this, but I’m not sure why. Either (1) they don’t have a laptop or (2) they’re weary of a new and different testing experience.

I say, “bring it on.”

Bring it on!

Studying for Business Associations

I’m studying for my Business Associations final next Tuesday. We’ve covered four general areas:

1. Agency
2. Partnership
3. Corporations
4. Securities

My outline for 1 – 3 is 27 pages long; it’s 40 pages long for Securities, but I haven’t cut that down yet.

Fun fun fun fun fun fun.

Last Day Of Class

Today is my last day of class for this semester. I’m actually sitting in it right now. It’s Evidence and we’re talking about the admissibility of scientific evidence.

I can’t wait for exams to be over in a week and a half. Studying for them will be fine, but I’m burnt out on reading for classes. In law school you rarely feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you’re required to do – at least after you get into a rhythm. What you don’t realize is that you’re constantly studying or thinking about studying. The reading assignments are relentless.

I’ve been fortunate to not have writing assignments this semester. This is a polar opposite from how I felt about midterms and exams in undergrad (I majored in Economics). Back then I loved courses that required me to write papers instead of taking exams. I preferred to have time to think through the papers and felt that writing them gave me a deeper understanding of both the principles I was applying and the topic the paper was based on.

Legal writing is different. It’s a chore. It’s mechanical. It’s dull. However, it is clear. If I had to write an term paper for an Econ class today, it would be better organized and make clearer points (I hope). At least, those would be goals of mine.

All of my exams this semester are in-class and two or three hours long. Most are a mix of essay, short answer, and multiple choice. Professors do this because they want to provide a mock-Bar Exam experience.

I don’t care much about the format. Multiple choice are easily my least favorite because they are the easiest to mess-up. Professors can dupe you easily, which is annoying. The pro for MC is that it requires the test taker to know exactly what they are looking for. Precision is good, however difficult to obtain under test-taking conditions. An essay on the other hand allows a little more leeway for the writer and places the burden of precision on the professor, who must grade precisely and consistently.

Anyway, I can’t wait for the semester to be over. I’ll be halfway through law school. At times, it has seemed to pass slowly, but overall it has been a fast year-and-a-half.

Ban Laptops in the Classroom?

We’re talking about whether laptops should be banned in class. We read this article.

A few of the problems laptops (and their users) cause are that they are a distraction to other students, students watch porn, and professors don’t have students full attention.

I’ve been reading news during this discussion.

Update: I’ll be taking my Copyright final on my laptop. That will be the first time I’ve ever taken an exam on a computer and not in a blue book