Classes formally ended yesterday. I applauded for 3 out of four of my professors. I still have trouble giving props to my Civ Pro instructor. Even taking into account that it is her first year, I’m not so thrilled.
Now begins the frantic reviewing (and in some cases, learning) that always comes before the exams. Personally, this has always been a problem for me: I tend to learn things the first time and then have trouble reviewing them. This can be good or bad: if I learn it wrong, I may be in the position of knowing it wrong. On the other hand, it saves a lot of time.
Contracts II
I’ve got some pressure here. I had the best grade of my section last semester. On the other hand, that was the easy stuff. This time around we’ve got the parol evidence rule, interpretation, promise vs. condition, mistake, misunderstanding, impracticability and impossibility, and myriad other things I cannot recall off the top of my head.
Civ Pro II
This will be interesting. I didn’t do so well last semester, but I blame that primarily on the aforementioned new professor and her screwball all-multiple-choice, heavy-on-Erie exam. She’s gone the other direction this time: open book. Now, instead of getting a bunch of nearly identical multiple choice exams, she’s going to get a bunch of nearly identical essays to read. For me, however, it levels the field, since I’m better at looking up and reading the FRCP then applying them from memory.
Property
Scary stuff. We’ve learned a lot. The upside is that it all makes sense. No matter how much the professor tried to catch us up with “Does that seem fair?” I always seemed to know what was going on. She’s a stickler for detail, though. I’ve got to make sure I keep my real covenants separate from my equitable servitudes.
Con Law
This all comes down to handwaving. I think nearly anyone who’s slept through the class and can crib together a quick list of fundamental rights and the organizational chart that is the Constitution should be able to get through this. I could be wrong, however.
As some of you know, my current plans are to abandon my legal education, at least for the time being. After this semester’s finals, I shall call it quits, very likely forever. I’ve already started the job search in the technology field.
Elevator summary:
While I remain interested in the law, and find it very exciting in theory, in practice I find that I dislike the industry. Between the frequently artificial air of competition and the way that the ABA, schools, and firms work the ratings system to maintain their standards, it just doesn’t work for me. I seem to have underestimated just how much the school’s rating matters and the individual student’s skills and experience do not. For what I’m currently paying, I’m more and more certain that I won’t be getting a net gain. Because of this, I’m going to quit, not while I’m ahead, but while I’m behind by only the value of a sportscar.
And so it goes on:
I’m not the best student in the world. I’ll admit that I’ve probably spent some time this year playing video games or watching TV that I could’ve spent studying. On the other hand, I’ve yet to see that spending all the time in the world studying yields any better results then spending “enough” time studying. Judging from last semester’s results, there isn’t any real correlation, as I spent a lot more time studying for Civil Procedure then I did for Contracts, and the grades certainly didn’t reflect that.
Not all teachers are alike, and that is to be expected. In the last ten months, I was blessed by some pretty darn good instructors. For Contracts, I had a professor who’s been doing this for ages, and is committed not only to the subject material but to being an excellent teacher. This is key: people who teach not only need to know what they are teaching, but how to convey this information to others in a way that they can receive. Torts professor: great lecturer, not such a good tester. Crim. Law: very organized, somewhat abstract, decent tester. Civ. Pro: terrible – disorganized lectures, non-authoritative, non-inspirational, and capped off with a terrible test.
Perhaps I’ve been spoiled – while I had some crappy teachers at Oregon State, they generally didn’t obstruct me so much. Even though I’ve had some great professors, I feel that for what I’m paying, I deserve better.
Deciding to go back to school entailed a lot of thinking about money. Being unemployed in the bay area is ridiculously expensive. Putting private school tuition on top of that is even crazier. In the last 10 months, I’ve dug a hole of debt large enough to swallow a Porsche. Ok, I’m thinking in terms of the ‘cheap’ Porsche, but still – that’s one year. By the time I graduate, I need to buy myself three sportscars plus interest before I can break even.
In theory, by investing that $100,000+ in a bright and shiny degree, I will be raising my income-earning potential. In practice, however, there’s some issues. First, as a person with a degree in computer engineering, and a few years of experience working with real companies doing real things, I should be able to make $70k plus, here in the Bay Area. In fact, when I left my job to come to school, I was making more then that. That’s a little bit short of what many lawyers make, it is true, but the average salary of graduates of my school is about $63k. This is for various reasons, ranging from the fact that many of my classmates will go into public interest law to the fact that this is a “fourth tier” school. Basically, nobody who wants to pay money is hiring from here unless you are the top 3% of the school, and even then it is dicy. From where I am at the moment, I would be gambling $70,000 (Two Porsche Boxters, for those of you following along) on graduating near the top of my class and getting a good job. The other option is probably just to get a decent job with potential, and not only work my way up to a six-figure salary, but to gain income instead of debt for those two years.
A year ago, I started digging a hole. At the bottom of the hole, there should be a bigger shovel that I can use to dig my way out. I’ve discovered not only that I started with a pretty decent-sized shovel, and that the shovel at the bottom may not be as large as I had hoped, but that I may have dug in the wrong place.
I suppose that Wings & Vodka put it best regarding writing on to law review.
I’ve been told several times that I’m pretty lucky. Even though my school is low-rated (but is getting better, honestly), we’ve got three law reviews on-campus. While they offer membership to the top 10% of the 1L class, and have a write-on competition for the rest of us, there’s apparently no limit as to how many people can be on law review: the “competition” is more of an exam.
Lucky isn’t quite the word for it. This morning, we turned in our memo of points and authorities for our legal research and writing class. Coincidentally, this is the weekend for the write-on contest. The two are substantially similar, involving search & seizure and supression of evidence. It’s actually annoying that this is closed-library (we can cite only the cases we’ve been given) – I’d love to do research on this.
Part of the exam is proofreading a short article. The worst part of that is going to be keeping my head from exploding while reading it. I really cannot stand crappy writing.
Now, if I can just get through the bluebooking exercise…