Meathook Reality

Last semester, our Civil Procedure professor, after having too much trouble grading a midterm, opted to give us a multiple-choice test. It was lame, as she didn’t have nearly enough questions to produce useful data about our performance in the class.

That rant aside, she has overcompensated this term: she wishes to have an open-book test. I’m generally all about the open book, really. Especially compared to a potential multiple choice test of this subject.

Anyway, I just spent an hour or two copying and pasting most of the FRCP from Cornell’s excellent site. And marking it up into something easy to read. And auto-generating a table of contents.

…now I just have to annotate what we’ve learned in class, cross-reference the exciting bits, highlight the deadlines and the difference between the judge’s required and optional actions, and possibly index it.

Oh, and if there’s anyone out there reading this, I’m looking for a summer job. If you’ve got any leads or suggestions, drop me a comment or an email to guy@meathookreality.com.

The paper is completed and turned in, which is a load off my back. It’s only a one credit class, but every point counts these days.

I spent much of the morning writing a quick program to split up a partition of picture files and generate a file which could be dumped onto a DVD for safekeeping. Not that I don’t trust the computer, but paranoia is getting to me.

Writing software is still enjoyable to me, especially when it is something simple and useful that doesn’t have to be looked at or even used by anyone else. I was either riding that fine line of caffination that sharpens my mind to it’s maximum, or law school in general is helping me to focus and actually improving my coding skills. While I’ve never been blazingly familiar with python, things clicked and hummed.

I spoke to my writing professor today about a paper that’s due tomorrow. I’m not totally sure that the guy is still going to jail, but it’s a tough argument. I suppose that if we were given the easy arguments, we wouldn’t learn anything.

Anyway, I asked about last semester’s grade. I recieved a C in writing, and while I generally don’t have much of a policy of griping about grades, I was wondering if there was anything specific I could do to improve. The first half of the answer was about what I expected: our school is pretty strict about curving grades – professors need to make strong arguments if they don’t want to fail the bottom 5% or so of the class, and bend the curve accordingly. There are 14 people in my writing class – I’ll leave doing the math as an exercise for the reader. Additionally, I’m willing to say that my section has some particularly sharp cookies. I feel pretty good about my classmates, but the my nonreaction to competition may place me at a disadvantage.

The other half of the problem is that I don’t go into enough depth. He said that the arguments are good, but the problem is with waiting for other people to read a lot more into the argument then I write.

Perhaps I’m not too smart for my own good. I’m assuming others are smart.

Does a 1979 Ford Mustang have driver-seat shoulder belts?

Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” fatally shot himself Sunday night at his home, his son said. He was 67.

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2005/02/20/hst/index.html

Writing and research this term has shifted into “Persuasive Writing.” This means that rather then just presenting facts (and crying about the Blue Book), we are now advocating one side or the other (and crying about the Blue Book).

Anyway, our professor has given us a case modeled on one that he actually defended and won. Of course, he’s made it even harder for us.

The basic premise:

Our Defendant was driving through an intersection westbound in his ‘79 Mustang. A police officer stopped at the northbound entry to the intersection observed shoulder restraints and that the defendant was not wearing them. He initiated a traffic stop based on suspicion of a seatbelt violation. While approaching the defendant’s vehicle, he observed him to buckle a lap belt. There were no shoulder belts for the front seat. He observed that the defendant appeared drunk, so he conducted field sobriety tests, which were failed. He then conducted a further search of the car and discovered a baggie of what turned out to be methamphetamine.

Also, unknown to the police officer, some guy down at the station, who’s been arrested for dealing meth, “cut a deal” by saying that our Defendant had recently purchased.

Now, to the layman, this is pretty open and shut, especially if you ignore the Constitution and let your fear/hatred/mistrust of drunk-driving meth dealers without seatbelts (and possibly drivers of ‘79 Mustangs) take hold. The only real defense is to claim that the initial traffic stop was illegal and suppressing the evidence – but even that is not particularly easy.

Anyway, I’m hoping he takes into account the severe handicap of the defense when he grades us, since half of the class is working with a “gimmie” case.

So, I had my first interview today. It was actually a mock interview, set up by the law career services group at our school. A little bit lower pressure, but damn was it a nice fit. Tech-oriented firm, large, seems to be rolling in dough, just laid back enough to be cool.

Now I have to get my grades into the “stellar” region so I have at least a little chance at their summer associate’s program.

At one point, I thought that I had a commentspam blacklist working, but it appears that I did not. I’ve just installed an AuthImage plug-in, so if anyone wants to comment, they’ll have to deal with a Captcha.

I may just disable trackbacks.