Meathook Reality

…is not my problem.

In more ways then one, actually.

Contracts exam report. Very entertaining hypo. I spotted a lot of interesting issues. I ended up hand-waving my way through a lot of it. I was the first person out of the exam.

I’m pretty sure this one isn’t going to be selected as next year’s example of how to write a contracts exam.

Oh well. Next up: Civ Pro.

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…

Ok, I’m going to give in and talk about Mrs. Shiavo. She has appeared in our Con. Law class, and even in our Civil Procedure class. There’s nothing like hurrying to school and hearing a soundbite of your Constitutional Law professor on the radio. I suppose it is unlikely that we’ll discuss her in Contracts or Property.

Anyway, for those of you who’ve been hiding under a rock for the last month or so, I suggest you read Obsidian Wings’s writeup which goes into some pretty good detail. Actually, it is suggested reading in general.

I personally feel that the constitutional law issues are pretty well settled: people have a right to determine their own medical treatment, and if Terry’s choice was not to be kept alive artificially while in a persistent vegetative state, then who am I, or anyone else, to meddle. It appears that the state-level legal issues are relatively straightforward as well: the husband went to the courts seeking an order and presented evidence that this was Terry’s wish. Her parents disagreed. The court sided with her husband, and even after all the appeals and threats, that’s the way it stands.

Procedure-wise, here’s a great article. It discusses what went wrong at the end, and what possibly could’ve been done to take advantage of the ridiculous last-minute day in federal court that the family was granted. I’m not sure if would’ve helped in the end, however.

Last semester, while I was far from confident, I felt as though I had at least a little bit of a handle on things. Sure, I hated Civ Pro. and was confused about exactly where Crim. Law was going to end up, but I had some outlines, and I could at least explain what was going on.

This semester? Not so much. I feel that like my professor, I could blather for hours about the finer points of Constitutional Law – so I certainly hope that’s what we’re going to have for the exam. Contracts last semester was all about consideration: spotting it and knocking it down (even if the test turned out to be all about remedies). This semester we’ve got all kinds of interpretation, parol evidence rule, miscommunication, unilateral, and other exciting things. It doesn’t really seem to have gelled as well. Property? This is the one that currently makes a lot of sense to me, but I’ve heard that the professor writes tests guarenteed to leave you breathlessly wondering who let that LSD-crazed moose into the room and where your pants went in the meantime.

Anyway. The books call. And I’ve still got no summer job, so I’m not sure how the rent will get paid.

For various reasons, I’m actually spending a bit of time on window-dressing around here. I borrowed a little CSS-enabled index.php and it’s associated scheme, and I’m working it up a little.

I’m going to just say no.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a lawyer. I won’t even be 1/3 of a lawyer by the time summer rolls around. But I’m not going to work for free for anyone who is making money. I’ll consider doing nonprofit charity work. I can understand that some of the public interest jobs are uncompensated.

But law firms make money. Companies make money. If I’m going to be giving them some time, I’m going to need some compensation. Even the students in my class who didn’t quit $70k/year jobs in order to go to law school have at least an undergraduate degree, and can provide at least some useful function.

First, I’m not technically Generation Y. They tend to be defined by having their first game console system be a Nintendo. Mine was an Atari. I’m right between X and Y.

Anyway, it appears that BIGLAW is complaining that they are no longer getting associates willing to give up their lives for the firm:

http://biz.yahoo.com/law/050302/56638ee5cf6eae0ec228a15610e3da6a_1.html

Attorneys from Generation Y – those born in 1978 or later – are plenty smart and generally well educated, say firm leaders and industry experts. But these young attorneys also are lacking in loyalty, initiative and energy, so the criticism goes.

I especially like the closing line:

In addition, the group has a greater degree of cynicism than in generations past, she said, stemming from the dot-com failure and 9/11 terrorist attacks. The result is diminished long-term loyalty to their employers.

“They’re saying, ‘I’ve looked at the world and there’s no such thing as job security,’” she said.

Guess what, kids, there really has never been job security, and while the dotcom failure should’ve told you that, 9/11 has absolutely nothing to do with it. It was in your contract all along.

Not sure what it means, but I might as well.

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.

So, here’s the headline you don’t see every day: 5th Circuit Rules in Rappers’ Battle Over Phrase ‘Back That Ass Up’.

Positive Black Talk Inc., et al. v. Cash Money Records, et al.

Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King, who wrote the opinion, boiled the case down to a dispute between Louisiana rappers Juvenile and D.J. Jubilee over who owned the rights to a song “that included the poetic four-word phrase ‘back that ass up.’”

In its Jan. 13 opinion, the 5th Circuit sets out the following facts: In 1997, both rappers recorded songs with similar titles – D.J. Jubilee, also known as Jerome Temple, recorded “Back That Ass Up,” while Juvenile, also known as Terius Gray, recorded “Back That Azz Up.”

Juvenile’s song was a hit, sold more than 4 million CDs and grossed more than $40 million in sales. However, D.J. Jubilee’s song failed to elevate either his bank account or his profile. D.J. Jubilee continues to work as a special education teacher.

…I’m sure his students are so proud…

Our contracts final involved a hypothetical in which a state school had accidentally sent their letters of acceptance to their rejected students, and vice-versa. One of the students was Sally, who had received her (incorrect) letter of acceptance, and before even sending in her seat deposit, run out and purchased $500 of logowear.

Anyway, this would be nonforseeable reliance, and under Second Restatement of Contracts Section 90, the school would very likely not be liable.

My final exam included the following sentence: “While silly Sally’s superior school spirit is stupendous, such spending seems slightly superfluous: she’s simply seen signs she’s selected.”

…this didn’t affect my grade. Gotta love this professor…

Over at The Legal Underground there’s some great tips by a real live first-year professor on how not to write an exam. A little late for me this term.

Do not write your law school exam as if you are instant messaging your junior-high lockermate. While recognizing the time pressure you may be under, never, for the love of God, use “u” instead of “you.” Ever. Two exams this semester contained that abbreviation. This is a law school exam, not a Prince album title.

I don’t have my bluebooks back, but I dimly remember my Contracts exam including the phrase “Surely, Sally should skip shopping for sweaters, since she’s seen only signs of scholarship sufficiency” or some such, regarding foreseeable reliance on a promise.

Sitting through this week of Property class makes me want to run for the hills and live on somebody else’s property for five years so I can claim ownership.

Wow, just when you thought you were entitled to representation… Kowalski v. Tesmer

Last month, in a little-noticed decision, the United States Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to indigent defendants around the country. Kowalski v. Tesmer, though seemingly a case about standing (the majority refused to decide the merits of the case by deciding that the lawyers who brought it weren’t properly before the court), functionally allows the state of Michigan to continue the practice of denying appellate lawyers to most poor people who plead guilty.

…but it gets better. Read on to see how hard it is to actually fight it…

So, in Contracts yesterday, there was a fair bit of discussion about “The Mailbox Rule.” The case we our book chose to introduce this was Adams v. Lindsell.

On Sept 2nd, Adams sent a letter to Lindsell offering to sell some wool.
The letter, however, was misrouted and not delivered until Sept 5th, at which point Lindsell promptly returned his acceptance, once again by mail.
On Sept 8th, Adams gave up on Lindsell and then sold the wool to another person.
On Sept 9th, Adams received Lindsell’s acceptance.

Lindsell then sued Adams for breach of the contract that he had been offered and had accepted.

Anyway, the issue here is “When does the offer, acceptance, and possible revocation actually happen, given the delays in communication.”

To skip to the end, the commonlaw rule is that Acceptance is effective when it is sent, but a revocation is effective when it is received. In California, and some other states, the revocation is effective when it is sent, however.

Anyway, our book included a few cases written by judges of the belief that because there are now communications methods faster then mail, that an overtaking communication such as a phone call should be allowed to withdraw offers or revocations after the communication has been dispatched.

This, of course, leads to the fact that you really cannot call the post office and say “Hey, I didn’t want this delivered – please stop.” They simply don’t do that. Also, you cannot steal your letter out of the offeree’s mailbox after it’s been delivered. These would be criminal acts. Expensive ones.

My first thought, of course, was “What if you are using Federal Express?” With a tracking number and authorization, you can call them up, speak to the nice people, and change the destination address, or even cancel a delivery.

The class veered into the realm of Email, and whether one can recall them, which leads to the reason we are here today.

The first email was sent in 1971 and was a test message to the author of the software from himself. I think this article is referring to the first one between computers, however.

Long ago, before everyone had an incredibly powerful computer on their own desk, people shared computers, by connecting to them with dumb terminals. Some of the first messaging systems were simply shared file-folders: one would simply create a document in a folder which other people could read. Of course, this is more of a bulletin board: anyone could post, read and remove anything. So someone would write some software to enforce permissions. The software would allow the insertion of a document into another person’s folder (or spool). The spool would not be readable (or erasable) by anyone but its owner. This is a mailslot in a locked office: anyone can come by and drop something through it, but they cannot take it back once it has been sent.

All of this is fairly simple because we are talking about people sharing one computer, much like two people with their own private offices share a larger office. Things get a little more interesting when there are two or more computers connected in some form of network.

We will start with the “store-and-forward” system. The was traditionally implemented through a protocol called “UUCP” or “Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol". UUCP provides the ability for a user of one computer to direct that files be marked to be copied to another computer at some point in the future. Periodically, the system finds that files have been so marked, and then connects to the other computer (usually through a modem) and then delivers the files. At this point, the receiving computer would determine the addressee of the message, and then deliver using the mailslot method outlined above. To take the shared office metaphor a little farther, now you can deliver local mail through your neighbor’s mailslot, or address it and put it into the “outgoing” mailslot. Every night, a courier comes by, picks up the outgoing mail, runs it to the destination office, and stuffs it through the correct slot (or hands it to a secretary who handles the slotting).

As store and forward networks became larger, they would come up with various routing methods: instead of delivering the files directly, they would be passed to hubs, or they would merely be thrown “upstream” in hopes that someone will be able to determine the proper direction to pass the files. This is somewhat similar to the post-office: there is a clearinghouse entity that figures out exactly where to move the mail based on the addressing.

Jump forward a few more years, and more and more computers are directly connected to the Internet. UUCP is replaced with “Simple Mail Transport Protocol", which removes some of the store-and-forewardness and is considerably more efficient. It would be a little like replacing the courier or postman with a fax machine: much more oriented towards quick, frequent, and direct connections.

So really this is basically the evolution of copying small files from one computer to another based on addressing and ownership information.

We will now go into more detail as to what happens at the destination.
On some systems, where users each have a private directory, email is simply copied into that directory. Then they can use software to read the mail. This is useful when many people share access to a computer.

In this day and age, however, nearly everyone gets a computer on their desk. While it is possible to deliver people’s messages directly to “their” computers, not all of those computers are continuously on the Internet (dial-up users) or even powered on all the time (laptop users). This means that there is usually a central computer which stores the mail: users collect their mail from the server using their mail reader software. This also lets you put your eggs into one well-guarded basket – you hire some smart guy to run your server, make backups, and support it. If you lose your laptop, you just get another one and pull your mail off the server, which is less likely to be lost. Now, instead of a mailslot in your office, you stop by the the secretary every day and pick up a bundle of letters – and if you don’t come into the office, or if your office floods, you can just have the secretary fax you a copy of your letters.

The simple way to get your mail from the server is POP3 (Post Office Protocol). It really doesn’t let your client do much more then say “Hey, any new mail? Give it to me! Ok, this mail is read, so it isn’t new when I ask again! Bye!” IMAP4 is a little smarter: you can move mail between folders, delete things, even do searches without downloading every email you’ve ever received.

The more complex ways are “Enterprise-level” systems such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Novel Groupwise. These are engineered for organizations in which most email is sent within the organization as oppoesd to between organizations. They tend to be smarter, and guess what: they resemble our very first method of delivery, with a large database of messages, some software for coordinating who can read what, and a way for people to access the software from their desktops.

Because of this, it is fairly easy to implement things like email-recall. Because sending the message merely uploads it to a known central server who can authenticate the sender, the sender can ask that server to yank it out of the receiver’s mailbox. This is not possible with something like SMTP, where the mail is sent to a machine owned by someone else, who may not trust your request. This is the difference between asking the secretary to open up the neighboring office door and retrieve the mail you slipped through the slot, and calling up the Post Office and asking them to not deliver a letter. The secretary knows who you are, but the Post Office either cannot or will not verify your identity as the sender, so they will not act on your behalf.

At this point, we’ve shown why it is possible for an AOL user to cancel a message sent to another AOL user, or a person within a University to cancel a message to a person within that University: the message never leaves the authority of a single central entity that can verify that it has not been modified, and that the sender is indeed the one asking to cancel the message. If someone sends from the University to AOL, however, AOL will generally not be able to verify the sender’s identity.

Anyway, I failed to speak up in class because it would take a 10 minute lecture with a dry-erase board. I decided to write things down and have spent 40 minutes rambling about email protocols. Join us in the next episode when we explain how to implement email repudiation across untrusted system via cryptographic authentication!

I’m caught up on my reading? For the WEEK? On a Wednesday night?

I gotta get some hobbies.

First day of Constitutional Law, of course we start with Marbury v. Madison. And the professor takes roll and jumps right into it, rather then spend the first 40 minutes of class outlining attendance policies, participation, his resume, and our lineage.

After 45 minutes of explaining the history of the Constitution, starting with the Magna Carta, passing right through the Article of Confederation, touching on Federalism, Jefferson, and the rest, he gets to the real story, of how Adams lost the election and before Jefferson could be sworn in had his secretary of state who is also the Chief Justice make some radical changes to the federal court system and pack it full of croneys. Of course, the Chief Justice’s brother who is supposed to deliver the news to these people rode his horse all night but only managed to deliver 30 of the 47 commissions. And so I’m not going to lecture all day, let’s have someone in the class explain…Mr. Meathook can you tell us what happened?

[wait , did he just call on me?]

“Is Mr. Meathook here?”

“Uh, yeah, just a sec, well, he sued, and we have Marbury v. Madison.”

“Yes, can you tell us what happened?”

“Uh, what?”

…anyway, I drew a total blank, not even knowing what the hell he was asking for, so I punted. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m ready for this on Day #1.”

…so he called on the guy in front of me who managed to stutter his way through.

So much for sitting in the professor’s blind spot.

After a Christmas break spent primarily watching Cooking Shows and playing silly games, I’m back on campus, in the classrooms, and tearin’ it up for the second half of 1L.

Reactions to this have been mixed. Some couldn’t wait to be back (I’m really warming up to it). Some dreaded it. Some didn’t make it back at all.

My biggest dissapointment so far has been that nobody can make sense of their grades. It seems as though someone over at the registrar’s office just rolled some dice and decided that some of us were going to get good grades in some classes and some of us were not. Perhaps things will make more sense when we recieve our graded exams.

In any case, I managed to not get put into the remedial “Legal Reasoning” class. While it would’ve been nice to pull some giant scholarship, I’ll settle for not having any crazy roadblocks.

So far I’ve only had classes that continue from the previous term (Civ. Pro and Contracts). Property has entertaining cases. Con. Law has history, which is code for “this is boring and antiquated". We’ll see – the professor makes all the difference.

Oh, and I turned off the commenting system. Too much spam, and I’d only had one person actually use it anyway.

…have been posted.

I rock at Contracts, although that may be more because my essay was interesting to the professor.
I’m not so bad at Crim Law, although that professor just needed warm fuzzies.
Torts and myself seem to pass like two ships in the night, exchanging longing glances but never quite hitting. Either that or I got screwed because I didn’t write exactly the way the professor wanted to see it.

Civil Procedure. This is the class with the professor without a clue. This is where we were redirected from an essay exam final to a rather short multiple-choice test, because the instructor couldn’t get her midterms graded on time. Not so well. So not so well, in fact, that I’ll be demanding to be moved to a class not taught by her next term.

Still no grades posted.

Two finals down, and two left.

Criminal Law: I had been astounded by how much I had to learn for the first time while studying. All kinds of tests for insanity, tests for attempt, analysis for things like mistake of law and mistake of fact. And the exam consists of a hypo that closely followed an un-assigned (but read by me) case from the book and your general excuse to do an insanity defense analysis.

No real surprises. I may have bootched the insanity stuff, especially as it relates to the MPC, but i feel pretty good about the first question which involved statutory analysis, strict liability, and some public policy.

Contracts: for three days, every time I looked at my outline, there were no surprises. I’m pretty sure I knew it cold. I was one step short of memorizing the damn thing so that I could “splashdown” for the test and just write it out before I started into analysis. Our professor seems a little unorthodox. She doesn’t like the UCC, and saves this for a separate class. She also chooses to start with the topic of consideration, which is a little backwards: most people start with offer and acceptance, but such chronological thinking doesn’t really get to the meaty bits of contract formation. Her exams for the last five years have focused on finding consideration, or lack therof. There has been consideration in the past. There has been pretense of a bargain. There has been consideration in the past affirmed by a moral duty. There has been consideration of questionable legality. There was restatement 90 reliance.

Surprise: our hypo pretty much had the consideration built in. The complication? Doing the damages analysis. Expectation, Reliance, Specific Performance, Certainty, it’s all there.

Curveball city!

Now I just need to be ready for a 40 question multiple choice Civil Procedure test on Thursday and a racehorse Torts exam on Monday.

Then there’s nothing left but the grading.

Over at The Invent Blog they’ve got a link to The Chronicle’s article on several large companies possibly working together to purchase and retire some patents, in order to keep them from “falling into the wrong hands", or otherwise becoming the property of IP speculators looking to extort large settlements out of companies actually using the technology.

I’d like to say that the reason things have been so quiet around here for the last week or so is my insane study drive towards finals. Unfortunately, no.

Despite Wings&Vodka’s encouragement, I’ve spent a fair amount of time slacking, playing games, eating leftovers, and choosing new music from iTunes.

In other news:
The Solomon Amendment seems to be on the way out

Anonymous networks are cool, and supported by The EFF.

What are these people typing?

I’m sitting in a review for Torts class. It is a review. We are going over outlines provided by T.A.’s and comparing them to our own. There is no material, there are no surprises.

Yet, at least half of the class is typing like mad. Granted, I’m typing like mad at the moment, but only because there’s only so much I can learn for the third or fourth time.

Maybe everyone else is weblogging or something.

Here’s an interesting article passed along to me:

When Gov. Ernie Fletcher signed a death warrant for a convicted killer this month, he might have done more than start the clock ticking on an execution. Some say Fletcher, a doctor, might have put his medical license at risk.

American Medical Association guidelines bar doctors from taking part, directly or indirectly, in executions. Kentucky requires doctors to follow the association’s ethical guidelines.

It’s an interesting question. I’d suspect that he would enjoy a privilege, as governor, excusing him from the law requiring him to follow the AMA guidelines in this case.

Ok, we’re going to take a poll among any other 1L’s out there listening. How many of you think that this has a chance of appearing in your Crim Law final?

Police plan to file murder charges against Sao Caetano club officials for the death of defenseman Serginho, who collapsed on the field and died of heart failure last month.

Police said Friday that the club’s president and doctor knew Serginho had heart trouble, but let him play anyway.

Murder charges will be filed against president Nairo Ferreira de Souza and doctor Paulo Fortes, police said. If convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison.

Man, it’s tempting to get one of these. Although I’m not entirely certain what I would do with it. I wonder if I could sneak one with a “SCOTUS” nameplate into the library and hang it on

228 years and the federal judiciary system is still flying by the seat of its collective pants when it comes to application of law issues in diversity jurisdiction.

A wheel conspiracy involves an individual (or small group) – the hub, who transacts illegal dealings with the various other individuals – the spokes. The most common evidentiary issue in a wheel conspiracy is whether the separate transactions between the hub and individual spokes can be merged to form a single conspiracy.

In contrast, the chain conspiracy usually involves several layers of personnel dealing with a single subject matter, as opposed to a specific person. . . . A single conspiracy can be proven if each link knew or must have known of the other links in the chain, and if each defendant intended to join and aid the larger enterprise.

[ . . . ]

Perhaps a more accurate way to visualize a complex conspiracy case would be to view it as a three-dimensional organic chemistry molecule with each part interacting continuously with another thereby forming and adhering to the whole, for a common purpose.
People v. Macklowitz, 135 Misc. 2d 232, 236-237 (N.Y. Misc., 1987)

…and I thought I was done with three dimensional modeling…

It’s human nature – ever since the first great apes were able to comprehend time well enough to understand the concept of “later", they’ve been procrastinating.

Blame it on bad priorities. Blame it on laziness. Blame it on distracted ants. Blame it on the desperate assumption that somebody, or at least some force, is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

In every project there comes a time when someone looks up and says “oh shit, we’re totally boned, we need to hurry up.”

At this point, the true motivation kicks in. The difficulty now comes in overcoming panic, and focusing the frantic energy it has produced.

…this is the anti-zen of project management…

Those Creative Commons people are at it again. This time with science-oriented licenses. Too bad I’ve got a memo to write and cannot even read their press release right now.

I suppose I’m now officially a student again. I just stayed up past midnight in order to finish a memo that only one person is ever going to read. And he’s going to get 35 copies of it.

“Our political history reeks of unfair, intemperate, scurrilous and irresponsible charges against those in or seeking public office. Washington was called a murderer, Jefferson a blackguard, a knave and insane (Mad Tom), Henry Clay a pimp, Andrew Jackson a murderer and adulterer, and Andrew Johnson and Ulysses Grant drunkards. Lincoln was called a half-witted usurper, a baboon, a gorilla, a ghoul. Theodore Roosevelt was castigated as a traitor to his class, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a traitor to his country. Dwight D. Eisenhower was charged with being a conscious agent of the Communist Conspiracy.” (Desert Sun Publishing Co. v. Superior Court, 97 Cal. App. 3d 49, 51 (Cal. Ct. App., 1979))

Looks like four more years.

And with the likely 3-4 Supreme Court appointments, it’s going to be 40-60 more years.

I’m not sure if there’s anyone in particular reading this, but if they are, and they’re in California, and they’ve not yet voted, you might want to pay attention to Prop. 66, which basically says that any general class-action lawsuit has to be brought by someone personally harmed or by the attorney general. Much of the rhetoric regarding this centers on the “bounty-hunting trial lawyers” that supposedly roam the land strongarming businesspeople and reaping huge fees.

This is pretty much B.S.

Anyway, here’s a really good explanation of how things really are.

Wow. I never thought it would be this bad.

Lexmark v. Static Control was decided the other day. It makes for interesting reading if you’re into the copy and use-protection debates.

In this case, Lexmark, who makes printers and toner cartridges, was attempting to force people to continue to buy their supplies from them (the Xerox business model) by including a chip in the toner system that would report back to the printer when it was low on toner. Anyone who wanted to make compatible replacements would have to duplicate or copy their software. Of course, they claimed a copyright on the content of the software in order to prevent this.

Static Control came along and created their own replacment toner carts, selling them for less (since they didn’t have to use them to subsidize printer sales.)

Anyway, no more commentary (gotta study for Crim Law) but here’s some choice quotes:

The Toner Loading Program for the T520/522 printers comprises 33 program instructions and occupies 37 bytes of memory, while the Toner Loading Program for the T620/622 printers comprises 45 program commands and uses 55 bytes of memory. To illustrate the modest size of this computer program, the phrase “Lexmark International, Inc. vs. Static Control Components, Inc.” in ASCII format would occupy more memory than either version of the Toner Loading Program.

(incidentally, I had never been aware that there was a “de minimus” level at which an idea becomes so simple that there is effectively only one way to express it – good to know)

Neither do the cited cases support the district court’s initial frame of reference. Franklin Computer, 714 F.2d 1240, and Formula International, 725 F.2d 521, involved copies of Apple’s operating system program—a program whose size and complexity is to the Toner Loading Program what the Sears Tower is to a lamppost.

Just as a mathematician may develop an elegant proof, or an author may express ideas in a spare, simple, but creative manner, see, e.g., e.e. cummings, Selected Poems (Richard S. Kennedy ed., 1994), so a computer programmer may develop a program that is brief and eligible for protection. But unless a creative flair is shown, a very brief program is less likely to be copyrightable because it affords fewer opportunities for original expression.

Note to self: cite e.e. cummings in more cases.

Eminem’s new video is worth a look-see.

Vote.

Hey, Diebold has managed to start the ball rolling on making fair use easier to defend! And I’m too busy studying to do much more then post a snip of Fred von Lohmann’s article and run.

In granting summary judgment to OPG and the Swarthmore students, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel easily concluded that the republication of the Diebold email archives was fair use as a matter of law. Pivotal to the court’s conclusion was the fact that there was no commercial market for these e-mails, and thus the re-publication in no way diminished the (nonexistent) commercial value of the works.

According to the Court, “Diebold sought to use the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions – which were designed to protect ISPs, not copyright holders – as a sword to suppress publication of embarrassing content rather than as a shield to protect its intellectual property.” The court held that §512(f) imposes liability on any copyright owner who sends a DMCA takedown notice that “knowingly” and “materially” misrepresents that copyright infringement has occurred.

…more…

Here’s a fun little tidbit from a contracts case involving a farmer who thought he had $25,000 coming to him after a coal miner failed to fix up his land when they were done. The $25,000 would’ve improved the value of the property by a whole $300! ( Peavyhouse v. Garland Coal and Mining Corporation)

“We therefore hold that where in a coal mining lease, lessee agrees to perform certain remedial work on the premises concerned at the end of the lease period and thereafter the contract is fully performed by both parties except that the remedial work is not done, the measure of damages in an action by lessor against lessee for damages for breach of contract is ordinarily the reasonable cost of performance of the word; however where the contract provision breached was merely incidental to the main purpose in view, and where the economic benefit which would result to lessor by full performance of the work is grossly disproportionate to the cost of performance, the damages which lessor may recover are limited to the diminution in value resulting to the premises because of the non-performance.”

So, I’m putting together some business cards, because I hear that I’ll have to do some serious schmoozing in order to get me a job for next summer. However, my cards are a little boring if I just include a name, phone number, and dubiously-ranked law school. I’m thinking about a headshot, but I’ll have to make myself look presentable for the picture (or spend 9 hours with Photoshop, making myself look like George Clooney).

I’ve heard that this looks like “the beer of business cards", but also that it may not be the image I’m looking for. On the other hand, it’s kind of fun to explain Burningman to people.

If anyone has any suggestions or advice for someone who’s looking to make a solid, fairly straightlaced, and distinctive business card for a student 1L planning on doing IP and tech law, it’d be fun to hear back.

Remember to verify your vote. I’m one of those lamers who would rather vote absentee a week ahead then actually hike down to the polling place, so I voted last night, but if you’re curious as to what you would run into, Verified Voting can help.

BULLETIN
KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSEMENT; DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH “THE SYPHILLIS PRESIDENT”

For any who didn’t already know, this weblog was named for a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

We’re all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the 60’s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling consciousness expansion without ever giving a thought to the the grim meathook realities that were lying in wait for all those people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who though they could buy peace and understanding, for $3 per hit.

Anyway, I purchased this domain in the hopes of creating a website to report on the fallout of the crash of the tech industry in silicon valley, way back in 2000. It never really took off, but when I realized that I might as well ‘blog about law school, this was the place to do it.

One problem is that the Gonzo style of writing really doesn’t fit into the legal framework. Too subtle.

Well, I was told that all the cool kids have technorati cred, so I figured I would jump on the bandwagon.

I was surprised to find that I’ve already been linked to!

Here at the university, we all get the opportunity to take our tests the “proper” way, by scratching our answers onto sheets of pressed wood pulp with sticks dipped in ink (most students use the newfangled self-dipping sticks). Some would say that this is the way god intended it. If he had intended for us to do it any other way, he would not have issued us bluebooks and ballpoint pens.

Oddly enough, even though the computer is a relatively new and troublesome invention, causing great confusion to the masses, and rarely working for more then ten minutes at a time before inexplicably “crashing” and destroying all current work, previous work, and sometimes bursting into flames and immolating the hapless user, it is acceptable by the school as a medium of test submission.

Of course, as lawyers-to-be, all students are trusted not to in any way commit fraudulent acts regarding tests. We’re all adults here, and afforded every benefit of the doubt in consideration of our future duty to hold ourselves to a high moral standing.

Actually, that’s bullshit. We’re allowed to carry a couple of pens and maybe a bottle of water into the testing room, whereupon proctors keep an eye on our every move, just hoping that we’ll step out of line so that we can be brought up on charges before the school’s tribunal. We’re told that we will be reported to the ABA shortly after we clear airspace on the way to camp X-Ray. This is because they assume that your average law school student believes that smuggling their 800 page outline into a class in order to answer a 4-issue Torts program will improve their grade.

They do not, however provide computers for the students: they allow us to use our own. Aha! You say, then I’ll be able to cut and paste a prescripted answer into my essay! Nope–they’ve got that covered, too. A company called ExamSoft has created software that reboots your computer into “Secured Test Mode", so that you have no access to your desktop. Pretty slick – as long as it works. And trust me, they’ve got quite the disclaimer for you to read before the test indicating that if it doesn’t work, you’d better be ready to whip out a pen and start bluebooking, pal.

Christy Brothers Circus v. Turnage: the plaintiff who had a circus horse relieve itself on him was allowed to recover for his distress without proving the excretion’s impact caused any significant personal injury.

<M> I wonder what the Dave Matthews settlement will end up being

Great guest post on The Legal Underground by Federalist #84, breaking down how to start and build a great weblog.

Let’s see if any of his advice sinks in, or helps.

Wired actually has an article worth reading, about the way that WestLaw locked up and commercialized the cases we love so much, creating a media empire in the process.

On one hand, they’ve provided a hell of a service: headnotes, commentary, organization, distribution, subscriptions to updated reporters and indexes.

On the other hand, they’ve maintained their monopoly status through some tight copyright control over the page numbers of the citations people use on a day-to-day basis. While many jurisdictions are moving to a “public domain” citation format, most of them still require citation to a specific reporter or set of reporters. And guess what: if you have the same page numbers as West, you’re in violation. If you even provide a translation (unless you are Shephard’s, I guess. I suppose they have a license) you would be in violation.

Over at blawg wisdom they’re talking about the evils of the socratic method.

Here’s how my professors do it:

Contracts: Scheduled Grilling, Well-done, by seat order. And my contracts professor knows her cases. She knows the opinions. She knows the story. She knows precidents, tangents, and other fun things. She went off on a 20 minute explaination of horse-race handicapping, cockfights, and how they relate to the statute of frauds. The grilling has some seasoning: once you’ve been grilled on a case, you are responsible for it for the rest of the year. If you drew Schnell v. Nell, for instance, you’d better perk up every time someone mentions a pretense of a bargain.

Civil Procedure: Pepper the Audience. This is a fairly new professor, so she’s not so great at crowd control. We get a lot of waiting for volunteers, followed by calling on the usual volunteers. She’s started shifting to calling on people randomly, just to keep us on our toes. Since you can usually say anything at all, it’s not too much of a hassle.

Torts: Strictly-managed Pepper the Audience. On Friday, he looked down at his chart, said “Hmm, I think I’ve called on all of you” and then called my name and asked me about Thompson v. County of Alameda. After our midterm, he’s decided to crack down and be significantly heavier on the grilling. I think it’s a good idea, actually.

Criminal Law: Strictly Scheduled Medium-Rare (seat order again) followed by Heavy Volunteerism. The good part is that she’s looking for answers to her questions. The better part is that she releases her powerpoint slides before the class, so you know her questions and their answers. Then we shift to volunteerism for general discussion. Very abstract instructor, so we get a lot of wild tangents and eliptical arguments, usually provided by the usual gunners.

While I generally disagree with Overlawyered, his perspective may be in the right place in some cases. Here’s a great article more related to Copyright. It also helps to remember that there are extremists on both sides of the copyright issue – and that one set of them is currently in power.

Interesting reading over at The Uncivil Litigator.

For the record, while I understand that it is fairly expensive to live in a society in which an $800 insurance claim can take up a huge pile of public resources, I would prefer that to a society in which expediency is preferred over fairness, or even the written law, as Overlawyered seems to prefer.

Hey, for anyone out there reading, not only am I really no good at visual design, but I’m short of the time it takes to fumble css into shape. Contributions, suggestions, or just bitching about what sucks is appreciated.

I’m only marginally anonymous, partly because I’m a little lazy, and partly because I don’t see much reason for it. As someone who has been involved with the various levels of what passes for civilized discourse on the Internet and other electronic media for a little shy of two decades, I think it’s a little overrated.

First: being truly anonymous is hard. The first way to find out who I am is to do about 30 seconds of digging into who owns the meathookreality domain. This is something that I could theoretically hide, either by lying to the registrar (which is becoming against policies or illegal) or by using some remote identity for that purpose. But that would only make it tougher, not impossible. This is a side-effect of my insistence of running my own services. If I were to use one of the services that provide the hosting and blogging, I would be as anonymous as they are willing to make me. In this case, I would be giving up trust and adding even more uncertainty to the question of “Does anyone out there know who I am?”

Second: knowing the first, that assured anonymity is nearly impossible, does anyone really want to get into the habit of making the assumption? Does it afford any security, or merely a perception of security that can be dangerous? Knowing that I am merely pseudononymous , the onus is on me to hold myself to a civil standard. This differs from those who feel that their anonymity allows them to somehow be “more creative” or “more true.” I would prefer to hold myself to the standard of someone who does not slander professors or make personal fun of gunners then to give up that responsibility.

So, while it may take a few moments to find out who I am, where I am, and who my professors are, ya’ll are welcome to. This binds me to saying nothing that’s likely to cause problems.

Last night, I visited the EFF’s presentation of votergate, a documentary put together to explain some of the current issues with electronic voting.

With the exception of the SAM-voiced, green-screened computer that presented the inter-issue cuts and “announcements", and being a little more frenetic then your average documentary, it wasn’t half-bad. They did a decent job of explaining a lot of the issues, and the general disorganization and misunderstanding by many about the security of voting machines.

Anyway, with such a close vote, it’s important that people monitor what’s going on. This morning on the radio I was hearing about a case in Nevada where it seems that election officials were destroying democrat voter applications. I’ve not tried to track down more information, but if so, I’d like to see some serious charges going down. This shit will not stand, man.

Update: It appears to be true. And they’ve allegedly moved to Oregon.

Ok, I admit that I sit farther back then I sit forward, so I get to see a fair amount of what’s going on people’s screens.

Can’t you people get something more entertaining then Freecell?

I gotta get me some!