Scoplaw

And on a Slightly-More-Serious-But-Rambly Note (with Parenthetical Asides)

I’m going to head into work now, after a day of getting small house-projects done. I’ll be using substandard resources (no one would choose *this* level of resources to defend themselves) in an attempt to defend individuals constitutional rights and freedoms, to say nothing of their basic not-being-in-a-metal-cage-liberties, in front of an increasingly accepting and uncritical public. It’s the best job; it’s the worst job. But what else would I want to do with myself in the early 21^st century America? I hope my (frankly, highly theoretical) grandkid’s kids would not think me too much of a placidly embarrassing exemplar of this particular generation.

A lot of law-school-friend/acquaintance news has just rolled in, given the NY and CA bar announcements, which has sent me wool gathering. The juxtaposition of the reality of my job and my (thankfully fading) memories of law school is just plain scary. I must note, that some-small-bit out of law school, my opinions on the general ridiculousness/ineffectiveness of law school have not changed.  It’s rare that you see someone who brings their heart out of law school indoctrination in the same condition (I know I haven’t), unless, of course, your heart is so shaped that it can always and only hold a faux-race-neutral, empty-Christian, late 19^th Century Capitalism, expressed by combatively engaging others who disagree with you.  Meh. 

Where do we find the robust humanism which must inform both law and justice for us to survive as a moral and loving people? Everywhere I think, but in case-law. It’s certainly found in the small and normal acts of humanity expressed in the face of the very artificial law/law school/bar exam standards.

Thus I wanted to thank all the student blawgers, legal blawggers, and particularly the criminal law bloggers, who share themselves (aspects of themselves) with us. The most grand universal principals are always and only embodied in the particular, not matter how banal those particulars may seem to some. It means a fair bit to hear how you all feel about the profession, even if it’s via the tribulations of dry cleaning.  We all need to be reminded that people do these jobs – and that lawyers, judges, victims and defendants are, above all, people.

Of course, I’m proud of all my fellow law students who kept their soundly-emoting hearts, which is probably the vast bulk of Section 3 (including Section 3’s of the past, and I pray, the future). When professors, intentionally or not, provide a model for one-upmanship and snarky commentary by focusing on (when you think about it) unsystematic legal rationales (sans any equitable analysis) drawn seemingly blindly out of caselaw, AND you’re set head-to-head with your classmates for jobs which depend on your coming out ahead (just ahead) of your fellows in regurgitating those “principles”. . .well, it’s just plain remarkable how the core of Section 3 comported itself in the first year and beyond.  I think we’ll appreciate this more and more as we go. (Of course, one can be in Section Other and not prove yourself an asshole, as so many of our fellows showed.)

And (to continue my ramble by leaping about in quasi-related topics) I am happy to report that nearly  everyone I’ve heard from seems to have passed their various bars. I know a lot of you tried to keep your sanity through it all by actively resisting the BarBri Fear Mongers and the general snarkiness of law students, and (see above) I appreciate that and am glad you survived and passed and can stand in front of judges. I am also hella-glad (I keep saying this, but believe me, the pressure brings out random parts of you. . .) for those who helped us do this. 

Although all these bar-passages are significant accomplishments, I wanted to make a special shout out to the CAnarchist who got her good news yesterday. Although there are many unblogables here, I think I *can* say that there was a point where she really didn’t know if she should spend the money/time on this particular round of the CA bar, which is arguably the hardest bar in the country. She was behind the prep curve and had multiple friends (who had failed the CA bar) cautioning her not to get her hopes up. So, for her to have decided to go forward anyway, then cranked CA, well, that says something.  (We have the same job on different oceans, which kind of tickles me – defending from sea to shining sea. We may soon be joined by the James Bond Watch, provided he does not get assigned to do his JAG defender stuff overseas.)

And to all my friends who may not have (yet!) passed the bar of their choice, let me say that a difficult test is just that – a difficult test. Take a pause. Think about the worthwhile things you’ve accomplished; those non-multiple-choice-testable things like treating people right and being a good person. Have faith in who you are beyond the assessment of a bar examiner. Then take the damn thing again and rock it.

(PS – if anyone is thinking about taking the FL bar, feel free to drop me a line.  Ditto for anyone thinking about interning/interviewing at our office.  I also have a West Palm PD contact who I can refer you to - no guarantees though.) 

Most Excellent

According to this, I have passed both portions of the FL Bar exam. 

I am mildly surprised. 

The only logical thing to do is finally find a good fishmarket, get a bucket of oysters, and grill them over my Bar/Bri books. 

These results came at a good time - today was an awful day in court.  Looking back over the results, I think we actually came out ahead, in that my client's outcomes were in the acceptable-to-very-pleased range.  However, getting there was ugly.  U-g-l-y.  I need more courtroom chops than I currently have, as I was caught flat-footed twice.   If there's any way I can help it, I am never bringing 14 cases for trial on the same day; it was just kind of insane. 

The last time I announced I was having a glass of wine on the blog I ended up working instead.  But tonight, I think a celebratory drink is in order, proceeded by a libation to the  Goddess-of-Computer-Error-Which-Works-In-My-Client's-Favor and to the Herculean efforts of the Sensibly Hellish Law Student, Thinks Before She Speaks, the CAnarchist, and all those whose good will kept me going through what has, to this point, been the most stressful and busy nine months of my life.

Sláinte!

Done and done. For an hour at least.

Well, the Sensibly Hellish Law Student (no more) and I survived whatever it was that Tampa was dishing out. 

The FL state stuff seemed much harder than the MBE, but who really knows about any of this stuff?  Subjectively, I feel like I might have scraped by.  And I mean that. I just hope all the oddball stuff caught everyone else as flat-footed as I.  Still, I'd rather do 3 MBEs in a row than just the one FL exam. 

However, regardless, I'm done for the moment, blogging from teh airport, just a few hours after my release.

Now - flight, UHaul (which I know will be a disaster), move (punctuated by crashing out at Riposte's), and finally, rest (on Sunday, no less).

OK - blogging will be scarce, but my best to all of you.

If anyone wants to pack/load a small apt in DC on Thursday the 26th, drop me a line or an email.

MIAMI OR BUST!

Best,

Scoplaw

The Bar Sucks

I'm in FL, doing the shit, making it happen, and generally going a bit nutzo with my list of things to accomplish.  But it's getting done, I'm on track still and not in the Suck (see below). 

Who knows what happened to Harry Potter?  I don't, and won't, and don't want to know untill Thurs.  Actually I want to know now, but will am reserving the pleasures of anticipation for myself.  Rowling's not a brilliant writer, and she hasn't created completely unique characters (see, Susan Cooper, Garth Nix, et. al.).  (BTW, there's a film release coming out of Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising," one of my favorite books ever.  The film looks ludicrously bad.)

However, Rowling's good, possibly very good, and willing to do unconventional things with her narratives (which I respect).  She's also in the right place at the right time telling the right story that's captivated the popular imagination.  Which puts her in a position few writers have ever been in.  Conan Doyle springs to mind - the public loved Holmes and went nuts when Doyle killed him.  So we'll see what Rowling does with her big stage.

Can you tell I'm curious?

Also, more in the bar mode, I refer you to the thoughts of David Millar, professional cyclist, and one of my current favs, even though he's been a dirty rider.  Sigh.  I'd love to have a perfectly known, perfectly clean rider I could cheer on.  As if my random thoughts could propel them faster or something.  In the meantime, I'll keep on insanely/irrationally rooting for Scottish cyclists, (go figure).  Anyway, this is an excerpt from Millar's blog/Bicycling.com's coverage of the tour.  It's funny and apt for the bar as well. I figure this guy can blog during the tour - I can give myself 5 min, even though we're getting close to H-hour.

I've been asked to explain The Suck.
* * *
It's a dark place where you are stuck and cannot see any exit from in the near future. You wallow in self-pity in the absolute certainty that it will never end, or if never end, then simply go on forever. It is not a good place to be and I'm sure everybody has been in it more than once, quite a lot of people even live there, which is a horrible thought.

Getting into the Suck normally takes a certain period of gestation, an accumulation of personal affronts, wrong doings, misfortunes, errors, losses, bad weather, loss of random important belongings, solar skin allergy while traversing the Alps in the Tour de France while getting a physical thrashing etcetera, etcetera. Once the gestation period is over and The Suck is initiated there is not much to be done. Staying away from people has to be top of the list of things that MUST be done as the simplest remark or question made towards you can trigger a near nuclear response.
* * *
Loved ones have to deal with it as well, and more often than not they receive the most flack, which is not fair but is the way of the world I suppose. Love is a many splendored thing and all that jazz.

Mobilis In Mobile

That's some Latin shit, yo.  But for those who want to avoid thinking of that great (though flawed) Republic which gently rotted into a mere empire, I could have also titled this post: Green, Go!  (And if you ain't a Tiptree fan, I can't help you.)

OK - I'm off to various cities in FL armed with bits of paper.  Lots of bits of paper.  Here's some of it:

If people believe what those papers say (including myself believing and remembering) then all will be well. In a mere 147 hours I may well have passed the FL bar exam, the first step to actually getting barred in FL (To be fully barred, there's a separate character and fitness exam which, due to one institution losing some paperwork, may run until Feb.  Meh.  But, regardless of either, I can still practice provisionally there, due to my clinic experience, etc.)

At the risk of offending my knees and back, I have put all this important paper inside waterproof containers, which I have put into a bag, which I have put onto my back, which I will put into various buses, trains, planes, automobiles, public libraries, private educational institutions, hotels, motels, apartment buildings, houses, restaurants, public thoroughfares, private residences,  and perhaps even a goddamn beach.   

But I think I'm in decent shape.

I have my lucky sideburns, grown out in various cities and studying locations. 

I am being totally assisted in my efforts by The Sensible Law Student.  Perhaps I should call him the Sensibly Hellish Former Law  Student.  In any event, as many of you know, he's an absolute prince and will be putting me up for part of my stay.  While I could do all this solo, it's always nice to have a thoughtful human presence with you at ground zero.

I hope to blog, but if not, let me take the moment to wish all my friends, and any degree of acquaintance, irritant, or enemy, nothing but the very best success and good fortune if they're taking the bar. I maintain that there are many potentially kick-ass lawyers and damn fine humans who just don't align well with the testing methods various states have selected - be strong, good luck!

Quick Check In

Things are things.  I've been studying with Thinks Before She Speaks a lot - which has been good, 'cause she just zones in and studies, which keeps me honest.  In 8 hrs of study time, I'll be actively reading/processing/testing for 7 of those hours.  For someone as natively non-linear as myself (trust me, what you've observed is over-compensation) this is a god send. 

Although I must confess that I miss the interactive study sessions with the CAnarchist, my old evidence study partner and MBE study-spouse (it's just that much more intense); there's a certain level of talk-it--back-and-forth that I can't really dispense with, as I have a very aural/oral memory.  There are times, even now, when I hear the actual voice of someone stating the black letter law summary in my head.  Well, many someone's actually.  But I don't visually pull up information with the same amount of accuracy or frequency.

I think I'm where I want to be.  I'm getting good raw scores for all the mock stuff that I'm doing.  The question is just which mock things are closest to the real thing.  Some people say that when comparing the actual MBE questions, either PMBR or Barbri questions are closer/further, more/less alike, harder/eaier, longer/shorter, trickier/more straight forward.

There seems to be no very strong consensus out there, and I don't have the time to research this all that much. 

Any thoughts on the matter are welcome.

Personally I've done better on the Barbri stuff.  I find the PMBR stuff a bit sneaky and haven't yet learned to spot the tricks well.  So, I get the doctrine, but miss the correct answer choice due to the one sneaky word buried in the question.  (Not that that puts me in dire straits or anything.)

So, last night, after another 8 hour block of questions and reviews (and quite stupid near-complete lack of food) I went to a party hosted by someone who is just difficult to moniker. . .I think Skaldi works well as a temporary moniker. 

Two glasses of wine (watered, no less, in my classical vein), no sleep, no food = the destruction of coherent thought or even passable articulation.  Proper grammatical construction took a hit also.  Which was unfortunate because I met a cool enviro law woman, a teacher with strong opinions on public education (whom I gently argued with, but I think we're on the same side) and a local actress.  I remember talking to them.  I remember what I said (mostly).  But the freaky thing was that when one of them mentioned anything that had anything at all to do with Bar prep stuff, I started scrolling up little paragraphs in my head about this, that, or the other legal doctrine.  I have no idea if that bar stuff was even remotely correct.  I certainly didn't verbalize it, but it totally messed with my conversation though.  I think I probably came off as completely burnt out.  Which I think I was.

After not much sleep, but some, I'm feeling much more bestly today.  I'm considering taking more breaks in the blocks, or making some concentrated effort to do some kind of mind-resetting activity in the off-hours.    
In some ways the bar prep is kind of like physical exercise - you have to grow it at a reasonable pace.

In an effort to make things easier for all my fellow bar takers, I have compiled a sophisticated system for multiple choice selection on questions that just pain stump you.

I present it here in its entirely and urge you all to make as much use of it as I will/do:

A - eanie
B - meanie
C - minie
D - mo

Using this system to strike incorrect multiple choice answer choices works well, but as The Mathematician pointed out, you can also use this system to pick a possibly correct answer on the very first go!

And here endeth the random bar prep thoughts.

Other news - the new Harry Potter film is surprisingly good.  I saw it with The Bookwench a few days ago.  Seems like years ago.  We talked about the recent scenester hipness of 20-something librarians.  Neither of us has anything against that, but it's kind of funny in some ways, given that most young librarians have been pretty him in a non-pre-packaged-way for quite some time.  The random count of our former Hard Drinking Librarian Gang to have been in the city these past 2 months now is at 6.  That's pretty impressive for a quasi-rural library in GA. 

OK.  I'm off to study/work.  Provided I can avoid viscous attacks by lesbian gangs.  I kid you not.  This is what's wrong with the country.  And it has *nothing* to do with the lesbian gang thing.  You'd think that self-styled conservatives would have more of an active sense of responsibility.  Or at least shame.

Back in Town

Well, I'm back.  I don't think it was a mistake to go, and yet I feel as though I have a lot left to do both before the bar exam and in the next month (generally).  However I think it's doable, unless I've grossly underestimated the outstanding tasks.  They're just unknown at this point, and hence, worrisome.

Sorta-prize goes to Kat - as I was in and about greater San Diego. 

My apologies to any San Diegian/Los Angelian friends that I did not see on the trip, but it was a working vacation and I did manage 6hrs of study per day.  This was much aided by Mexican Hot Chocolates, cold water (although the asthma wasn't happy) and various long hikes.

Hot MBE Tip

6 basic MBE subjects - Bar/Bri and PMBR have oodles of questions in big book form.

6 colors on a Trivial Pursuit board.

You do the math.  But buy a bottle of wine first.

More Mystery Bloggin

Saw some surfing dolphins - not that they surfed with me, alas, but they seemed to really be enjoying themselves.  Perhaps I will try to get closer tomorrow.
Becoming friends with a fat cat also. 
Local biking culture is weird, but I finally saw one of my kind - neither super roadie nor totally casual cyclist. 
Got hungry and ate some local vegetation on a long hike that saw about 3 liters of water consumed; it's pretty dry. 
Also hit some fine local restaurants - everything I eat here is heavy on avocado.  I like that.

The necessary evil - I keep hammering wills, trusts, estates, real property - all the stuff I could care less about.  Perhaps I need to keep the hand hot in Crim, Evidence, Con law, et. al.  I'm trying to do 6hrs a day, the rest reserved for day trips. 

Everyone is breaking up.  Seriously.  All my tremendously talented, attractive, and eminently date-able female friends are getting dumped.  I'm happy to introduce any prospective princes.  If they'd like to break some would-be-prince kneecaps, so much the better. 

Oh, and I'm not in Costa Rica.

I'm here:

Touched Down

Hectic 72 hrs, involving "ltrly" 12 hours of sleep, but, finally, a 16 hr solid block of sleep.  And so I feel human once again.  Everyone is going through bad breakups and/or relationship troubles.  Something in the air?

Thusfar:

One 4:30am 8 mile ride though DC with a 40lb? pack on my back.
Breakfast on the beach with very good coffee
Dolphins spotted
One small Mt. climbed (which oddly, involves Justice Kennedy)
Parrots (loud loud parrots)
Hummingbirds
Artichokes picked from garden under kitchen window
Nectarines picked from tree outside house
Mild sunburn
Much (split mind on this) Contracts and Evidence review next to Koi Pond
Financial Odds n Ends taken care of

I am not in Costa Rica.  Any other guesses?