One Week Done!

Opinion--"a court’s written statement explaining its decision in a given case, usually including the statement of facts, points of law, rationale, and dicta.”

-Black’s Law Dictionary



Ahh so sorry I’ve been absent for so long!  Law school really throws you right into the swing of things.  One week down and I’ve already read well over a couple hundred pages. 

I’m liking all of my classes, each for their own reasons.  Criminal law brings up a lot of interesting cases, like ones about cannibalism (ewww) but it’s one of the more traditional areas of law.  My professor is pretty chill and doesn’t really subscribe to the traditional Socratic method of teaching in law school.  He also teaches undergrads and MBA students so it just doesn’t fit with his teaching style, but it also makes it a little less intimidating, knowing there won’t be as much cold calling. 

My Torts professor makes the subject really fascinating with her enthusiasm and examples.  She’s been at the school a long time and used to be the acting dean so she’s a little intimidating (in an awesome way).  However, she really wants us to learn the material and has great ways of trying to do that.  As it’s at the heart of most civil proceedings, Civil Procedure is probably the most important of these courses.  The subject is a little daunting, just because of the sheer number of rules to know, but my professor has a great way of exploring cases using diagramming.  However, he calls on us in alphabetical order so it’s a little nerve-wracking trying to figure out where in the alphabet we are and see how many people we have to go through to get to me.

My Legal Writing and Research class is really interesting too.  I was never the best writer in high school or college but there’s something about legal writing that I really enjoy.  Maybe it’s just because I really enjoy the subject.  For my Research class, my first few assignments were about getting used to using WestLaw, Lexis Nexis, and Bloomberg Law.  One of the awesome things about using WestLaw was that as I completing my assignments, I was earning points to feed my Starbucks addiction!

Additionally, I had a lot of extra required meetings last week.  The first was a session with my TA for Legal Writing and Research about how to use our Bluebooks and tabbing (I’ll share more about that later).  The second was a writing diagnostic test to see what areas of grammar and punctuation we need to work on.  This test doesn’t do anything to my grade, it was more of a gauge to see what areas I could use a refresher on.  It was really similar to the writing section on the SATs, not really that terrible.  And lastly, I had a meeting with my TA/mentor group for Civil Procedure.  Our class was spilt up into groups of about 18 and we were paired with an older student who did well in the class.  The first week was designed to go over our briefs for one of the most difficult cases in Civ Pro, Pennoyer v. Neff (if you’ve read it, then you’ll understand).  The sessions are held every week and are optional but are designed to go over the information in a more down to earth way of explanation.

Good luck to everyone in week two and those of you just starting for the semester!