Scoplaw

Running on Fumes

But running well enough.  Sorta.  I’m going to love my sleep tonight, I tell ya. 

Recently my time has been taken up prepping for a pretty interesting trail that was dwipped.  Since then I’ve been taking care of an ill friend, jetting about the country trying to find work as a PD, and in between scrambling to do some more trial prep (which was, erm, not my very best work – but a first cut is better than no cut) and push through the last bits of reading for the semester.  My brain hurts.  My heart’s a bit sore also.  You can only worry about things for so long before you just go a bit numb and get a bit slow.  But I think that’s turning around, has already been turning around. 

The X-Men had a character (made a cameo in one of the films) called the Multiple Man – this mutant could create copies of himself.  One copy to do the dishes, while another copy dried, as a third folded the laundry.  Then, work done, they’d fold back into one another and grab some lunch. Right now, I’d take that power over flight or telepathy or anything else.  Except perhaps shooting invisible lasers from my eyes.  I could use that also.  But anyway – it seems like I have dozens of relatively routine tasks, each of which is not demanding but would take 3 hours to do.  And thus another week disappears. 

However, many of these routine tasks are occasioned by Great News – I was offered (and accepted) employment as a Public Defender in Miami-Dade county!   I’m pretty psyched.  They’re against putting chains on kids. As we all should be.

Although I had other fish in the water, Miami really seemed to want me from the start.  Quite frankly that goes a long way with me.  After a clerical error (?) resulted in my not being called for a second promised interview, I called them, they immediately set up a date (yesterday) and I flew down. 

I arrived on Sunday and spent the day driving about the city, looking at different neighborhoods and getting a feel for the layout of the place.  Like many American cities, there’s a stone’s throw’s change between affluence and abject poverty.  Well, perhaps more like a well thrown Frisbee.  I ended up staying in a hotel in South Beach for the evening – which reminded me how much I missed ocean-side living.  Or even near-ocean living. 

I got up early and made it to the PDs office on time.  It’s a large building, located near one of the major hospitals, the court and the jail.

The panel interview was intense but fair – they kept the questions moving quickly, and their comments and criticisms of both my rapid-round responses and my prepared opening statement were useful and tactfully delivered.  When I stood up and shook everyone’s hand, I was pretty sure I didn’t land the job.  I certainly didn’t expect to be made an offer before I could leave the building.  *That* was just surreal.  I didn’t expect anything for weeks, so I’m afraid I just kind of stupidly gaped for a bit.  I’d have been  more demonstratively stoked if I wasn’t so physically and emotionally exhausted.  But I kept saying how pleasantly overwhelmed I was and how I’d let them know something by the end of the week at the very latest.  Even though I was pretty wiped out, there were some exuberant shouts in the rental car as I drove off to the airport.   

I mean I’ll be moving not only to the state that elects the president, but to one that has its own embassy in DC.

In other news Gateway has made overtures about replacing my system.  When (if) it arrives, I’ll update the Gateway Saga.

Also – must arrange for my beat-up car to get fixed or scrapped. 

Mr. Ethical Bar Mustaches Just Misses a Car Fire

I seriously over studied for the MPRE.   Like to the tune of pretty much twice what I needed.  Can I trade in some of my passing margin for a bar exam point or two?

**
Due to interview/trial, my handle-bar mustaches must be shorn.  But they'll grow back.  I plan to wear them up to the trial wire.

Why don't more men grow facial hair?  Why is it so despised by the conservative?

Mine, btw, is ginger.  Actually it's got all the colors in it - red, blond, brown, black, white (in that order) but in the sun it's just fiery red.  That means I got vikings somewhere on the Celtic side, and vikings on the Slavic side.

**

Also, I don't mean to turn this blog into a litany of complaint and misfortune, but my el cheapo car, the third-hand, ex-salesman's, 200+mile beater that only had to get me through the summer (last summer), has, I think, just now really finally permanently died the final death.  Battery light on, shrieking belt, sudden loss of power steering, temp gauge red-lining, smoke billowing from the engine, radiator fluid leak from somewhere =s I think that's all she wrote.  I coasted into a parking spot by my apartment, popped the emergency brake, and turned the key off, perhaps for the last time.

I'll get her towed to a shop, but I'll be pleasantly surprised if she comes out again.

But she's surprised me by lasting this long - so why not longer?  It could be something drastic, or it could be a few hundred.  We'll see.

**
Did you guys like the thematic segues: bar exam, handlebar 'stache, firey red, near fire? 

I work hard at this shit you know.  I gots the training.

“Ding. Ding. Ding.” Or “The Job Search. . .”

ain’t goin too well.  I’m too laid back, too worked up, think too much, think to little, am too old, don’t have enough experience, will bolt to better pastures, am not good enough for any pasture, ain’t from around here, am from around here, etc.

So I’m asking for help with alternate job ideas.

Suggestions?

I have been a: law clerk, technical writer for an environmental engineering group, public librarian, immigration interviewer, census taker, teaching assistant, poetry instructor/tutor, receptionist, handy-man, mortgage processor, warehouse palate-jockey, eggplant picker, college RA, and playwright/theatre manager.

I can cook reasonably well with the exception of baking grains.  I can snowshoe.  I keep houseplants alive.  My average bike skills in the city are good enough to be a courier, and I can still do a pick-up century.  I know most of the constellations.   I can build bikes and do almost any sort of bike maintenance.  I can bind books and throw pottery.  I’m a decent but not exceptional shot.  I know how to use a compass.  I make good coffee.  I’ve written memos, newspaper articles, essays, plays, poems, and some novel fragments. My Spanish, alas, is also now fragmentary.  I can build furniture.  With inlay.  I give good footrubs.  I can sew (but not knit).  I’m good with cats and dogs and so so with kids.  I’m computer literate up to the basic web-design level.  I climb trees pretty well and have a good sense of physical space and kinetics.  I’m good at getting information.  I know a lot about poetry.  I've met lots of interesting people. 

There’s some law training somewhere in there too.

Oh, and I’ll have a thousand plus due in loan payments each month.  For 20 years or so.

Too Much, Too Young

2 points for naming the band.  Actually it should be “too much to blog,”  but I will attempt it anyway.   

Yesterday wrapped up the Equal Justice Works Fair in nearby MD.  Several hundred employers, about 8 times that number of students, speakers, chatter, and lots and lots of good conversations. 

First off, I want to thank Audacity and Woman of the Law for their advice and support.  We all know they’re awesome, given who they are and what they do, but they both took time out of busy schedules to tell me about their experiences and offer me insight into different programs.  Drop in to their blogs and give them some props.  Also, a big thanks to She Likes Lattes at the OPICS office at our school (that’s our public interest law office), and to the usual motley crew whose kind words and deeds and advice and humor and presence and example-through-presence support me in a very tangible way; Lyco, Seth, Scheule (where the hell is the new blog? edit: it's here), Tamboli, The Dapper Floridian, Handful of Dates, the Imbroglio, the Clinic Peeps, and dozens of others.  Lastly, thanks to everyone who takes the time to blog about PD hiring issues and PD life.  Woman of the Law recently pointed out the burdens of the PDs life, but it's people like her and Skelly who take that extra step and contribute something *else* to the world.  In fact, who knows how many law students, law clerks, judges, or potential jurors they've educated by simply posting about their day to day human concerns and what they find interesting? 

Of the ten resumes I sent out, I landed seven defender interviews, and talked my way into two more.

• State level PD, Appalachia
• State level PD, New England
• State level PD, New England
• State level PD, Southern
• City PD, Atlantic States
• City PD, NY
• State PD, Appellate division.
• PD Capital unit, Southern.
• A fellowship for a group that specializes in capital crime representation, trial and appellate, Southern. 

I figured I’d let things hang out, talk about the poetry a bit (which I usually keep under wraps), and be a bit more “cocktail” than I usually would be if I were seriously responding to questions.  I had the World’s Worst Headcold during the process, and took a cup of tea with me to all my interviews to keep my throat wet.  I apologized for that as a first order of business, but made it pretty clear that I wasn’t going to croak my way through an interview to keep up some interviewing convention.  Between the cover letter, the cold, the prior bad interview experience, and the sterling PI Law candidates who flew in from all over the country, I figured that it was time to roll the dice and go on a respectful offensive.  I think it worked.

All of the interviews seemed to go well.  There were some tough but good questions, and a shared feeling that we were all slogging through an exhausting process together.  I’d say there was a clear Mason-Dixon line split in interviewing styles and the type of information the various PDs solicited. 

Out of that bunch I got one “call me this week to set up a second interview, you’ll be speaking with Xperson and Yperson,” one “you’ll certainly hear from me soon, can you fly in to the second interview?” one “oh, no need to send additional documents, you can bring those with you when we interview you again; just have them ready to go,” one “I’m going to hand-walk your resume to the hiring director’s office,” one “and I’ll also willing to help your girlfriend find a job,” and 3 nice but not glowing responses. 

That has to be considered a successful 3 days I think.  I may not get a job offer out of it all (which is the ultimate goal), but I’m happy with how things have gone thusfar.

Key moments:

• One of the PDs took digital photos of their interviewees to help them remember faces later on.  I thought that was a great idea and posed “despondent mug-shot style” for the camera, holding my conference name card with both hands like an id plate.
• Responding to case load estimates with “Are you fucking kidding me? – You’re trying to do something about that, right?”
• Quoting Tolkien/Gandalf to capital defenders.  (Asked where my opposition to the death penalty came from, I said I was wrestling with a lot of religious issues when I was 8-10 and questioning the Catholic church.  I read The Lord of the Rings during this time.  Gandalf’s response to Frodo’s wish that Bilbo should have killed Gollum and thus prevented a lot of subsequent misery perfectly summed up what I was feeling: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”  That segued into a discussion about human subjectivity and how elusive and invisible objective justice is.  But I can blog about the death penalty some other time. . .)
• Talking about drinking with Vic Chestnut and Coleman Barks.
• Responding to a role-play fact pattern with, “Listen, I hear what you’re telling me, but I’m your lawyer, not your plumber.”  (Had to be there.)
• Running into my 1L summer boss and chatting with her.  She’s one of my role models for a humane and engaged public defender.