Strict Scrutiny

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight

2007-01-18T23:16:00.000-05:00

So if anyone ever checks this anymore, you will notice that I haven't written a damn thing in almost a month. I've been blogging for a year and a half, and this is absolutely the longest break I've taken. It's for good reason: two very important things have happened that have altered how interesting this blog can be (assuming it was interesting before):

1. I started my real job, which I love, and which forbids me from blogging about anything I want to talk about. It's a real pity because my job is fascinating (and so are some of the characters I work with) but I'm not about to risk getting fired over a blog five people read. I could maintain blogging about my personal life, but I have this little feeling it is not very interesting to anyone anymore now that...

2. I have gotten engaged. My personal life now consists of cramming in calls to caterers, wedding halls, florists, and so on during my breaks. While I am having a great time with it, and I find the wedding business to be fascinating, yet exploitative (and the family drama it brings to the surface to also be fascinating, yet horrifying), I have noticed the glazed look on people's faces when I answer their questions about how planning is going. I have realized they are asking to be polite and don't actually care what the cost of a good smorg is with and without a sushi station, or what my colors are, or whether I have a floral chuppah or a tallit on four poles. That's fine, I'm pretty sure I didn't care about most of the details when most of my friends got married in the past (not including you, Groomzilla - you know who you are - it was fun talking to you about yours and I now realize very helpful), and probably won't in the future.

Thus the lack of blogging. I'm afraid I won't be able to continue, either, since I'm not making a bridal blog - barf barf barf - and I can't talk shit about my supervisors, colleagues, or defendants. So I guess this is goodbye. Or maybe au revoir? Will I be able to stay away? Stay tuned.

Our own worst enemies

2006-12-11T23:08:00.000-05:00

I don't particularly understand girls. I know I am one, but that doesn't really give me much insight. I just don't get how smart, pretty, sane girls can turn into pathetic, sniveling, shrieking, blind shrews when guys get involved (and I include myself in that generalization).

My boyfriend and I stayed with a friend of mine in Los Angeles this past weekend. (Note that this post is not about how insane Los Angeles is, but rather how insane my friend was acting. That should give you some perspective on how bad her behavior was, since LA is pretty low-hanging fruit as far as criticism goes and would make for a decent post by itself.)

My friend, E, is a very intelligent girl. I've known her for years and I admire her greatly. She's beautiful, smart, has a great sense of humor, and can parallel park like a champ. She's got everything going for her, but when it comes to dudes she is no better than Britney. At this moment in time, she is single, having recently ended a long-term relationship with an industry type much older than she is. Things went south pretty quickly when it turned out (over a year into their relationship) that he had a child from a previous relationship, was having obsessive cybersex with fat chicks (can't make this shit up, people), and generally had more issues than could even be listed.

Time to tell him and his old balls to hit the road, right? Well, sort of. They are now "just friends," except of course they are sleeping together, and since I was in town, she wanted him to come meet up with us. He didn't. I didn't realize this was such a big deal, since I think of him as her piece of shit ex, but at 8 o'clock Sunday morning I learned just how big of a deal it was to her. She freaked out on him for "letting her down" by not calling, and when I say freaked out, I mean she kept him on the phone for close to two hours, yelling, accusing, crying, a full-on breakup except that they've broken up already. Lucky us, we got to hear the whole thing but had to pretend we were sleeping. I kept thinking, if I were that guy, I'd have hung up on her. What good are exes if you still have to listen to the tirade at eight o'clock in the morning on a Sunday??? "If you hate me so much, why not dump me? Oh wait - YOU ALREADY DID!"

Why keep talking to this guy? Why continue to ~~do it regularly~~ stay friends with an aging hipster who is obviously in it for the 24 year old chach and shouldn't be trusted any further than people walk in LA? I have no clue. None. She could date anyone she wanted, normal people, good-looking people, smart people, powerful people, anybody! Instead, she gets super bent out of shape about this guy, and there's nothing I can say to help her see how she is wasting her time. I've done the same type of shit (though not on this level) and even that doesn't help me understand why we put ourselves through it. But watching it from ten feet away sure is bizarre.

I left my spleen in San Francisco

2006-12-07T01:30:00.000-05:00

With regard to my last post - I am over it. In the short, short time span of 24 hours, I decided I actually like it here. While I would never, ever, eeeever live here, it is a place I'd like to visit again while not being aggressively tour-guided by someone else's family. It is clean, pretty, and the scenery around the city is really worth writing home about. If only I could take all the San Franciscans out of the city and allow people like me to invade it.

Another subject, however, has been interesting me of late. It is bonus season, as I'm sure all firm lawyers are painfully aware, and yet no bonus announcement has been forthcoming. I have been wondering what they would do about bonuses ever since all you overpaid biglaw people got your $20,000 raise this year - okay, okay, raise in salary, I can practically hear the chorus correcting me from here. It will be determined whether this was a raise in salary or really a raise in actual compensation when they get around to announcing the bonuses, which should have happened already.

But in their infinite wisdom, the partners who make the deals that drive our economy seem to have forgotten basic game theory. I didn't major in political science, but I did take a couple intro classes and I always found game theory particularly interesting. This situation is a classic example of it. No one wants to make the first move and announce bonuses, and who can blame them? Sullivan, Skadden, Cravath, whoever - all the traditional first movers have been deafeningly silent this season. Whoever moves first will set the tone for the rest, which is true every year, but now the stakes are higher. Will first year attorneys really be compensated $180,000 before taxes? Does anybody actually think this is a good idea? Or will total compensation remain the same as it has been the past few years despite the increase in profits per partner at many major firms?

It's hilarious to me mainly because the motivation behind all this nonsense is their mistaken belief that these firms need to fight over law students since there are supposedly fewer law students now than there were before. This belief, of course, is total and complete bullshit and has been since the beginning. There are now and always will be competent attorneys willing to work for them regardless of whether the starting salary is $125,000 or $145,000 (or, dare I say it, way less). There are still plenty of law students, plenty of smart, capable law students, and the minute these snotbag firms stop restricting themselves to the top ten percent at top-tier schools, they will open their doors to much cheaper labor who will likely be able to do the high-level adminstrative work that first-year attorneys at these firms perform.

My prediction is that the bonuses will be the same as they were last year. Why? Again, game theory. All it takes is one law firm that had a particularly good year to place bonuses at that level and then everyone else will look cheap. It doesn't matter if it's the first firm to announce or the fourth. If it's the fourth, then the three firms that announced already will likely have to match. If only one firm goes through with the raise, then that one firm really will have the edge come recruitment season. Nobody wants that. So I think it will be the same.

Mind you, I'd be happy if someone gave me a bonus of $50. I am able to keep in mind that a bonus is just that - a bonus, something you are not necessarily entitled to - and that it is the season of gratitude. I'm grateful for the fact that these idiots have to keep paying through the nose in order to attract the biggest d-bags from my school; it gives me something to laugh at. They are reliably good at that.

Are you going to San Francisco? Sure hope not

2006-12-05T02:42:00.000-05:00

Leave it to me to go on vacation and have my stress levels actually go UP. Here I am in California and I gotta tell you that I totally hate it here. Today at lunch, my boyfriend and I were sitting with some airheaded Californians to whom he is inexplicably related talking about terrorism and the Golden Gate bridge, and seriously, G-d help me, I actually thought, "They'd be doing the world a fucking favor if they bombed this awful place!"

You must know that if I am silently rooting for a catastrophe like that, a place is pretty fucking bad. Oh, and it is.

I honestly don't even know where to begin. It seems like I landed in the place that time forgot, and then when it remembered, it beat the crap out of everyone. In other words, the ghost of the sixties, which seems to be its heydey, looms large, and so do the aging hippies who seem to have deviated off their former diets of daisies and sprouts or whatever and are now fat hypocrites who whine about emissions all day but own more cars than the number of people in their houses. As someone in Zoolander once said, "Am I taking crazy pills or is this place still tripping on acid?" Well, that's not exactly what they said but it's close enough. Leave me alone I'm under a lot of stress right now. I need a vacation. GET ME OUT OF HERE.

Gobble gobble

2006-11-22T23:05:00.000-05:00

I love Thanksgiving.

As a non-Christmas observer, or shape shifter, or however you want to put it - basically, a Jew - I always felt left out of the hullaballoo surrounding Christmas. The TV ads showing adorable blonde children unwrapping gifts under a beautiful pine tree always made me jealous, they got to bring a nice-smelling tree into the house, why couldn't I? Only many years later did I grow to appreciate the many more holidays my religion has and the fun and interesting ways they are celebrated. Let's face it, Judaism's got a lot going for it but in terms of sharing in the national holiday season spirit, we are left out in the cold (but at least we're not left out in the cold singing songs about Jesus).

But Thanksgiving is another story. Thanksgiving is an American holiday, and it's one that my family has always gotten really into. We go a little nuts for it and it's the best. It's nice to have people wish me a happy Thanksgiving and I don't have to wish them something stupid like "happy holidays" or whatever. I love joining in the national celebration, it makes me feel so American to stand in line at Macys with everybody else trying to find a gravy boat that is not hideous or shaped like a turkey (weird).

And given the whole bar thing, I've got a lot to be thankful for. So happy Turkey Day everyone!

Catch a tiger by the toe

2006-11-18T21:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I got my MBE score in the mail (along with the official sheet of paper saying I passed, so now I can stop worrying about that). And, well, I did a little better than expected. Just goes to show you that they don't lie to you in nursery school: eeny, meeny, miney, mo really works.

I know I can't say that without telling, so here it is: raw score: 137. Not fucking bad, if I do say so myself. Scaled score: 147.4, meaning that the scale wasn't even as huge as I anticipated it would be. If anyone wants to post their score differential in the comments (anonymously of course), I'd be interested.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Great success! High five!

2006-11-14T09:49:00.000-05:00

I passed! I don't have to commit hara kiri under my desk!! Whew. More on that later.

UPDATE
Would I appreciate this feeling quite as much if the test hadn't been so impossible? I don't know, and at this point, I don't really care. I'm so happy that it's hard to try to impose restrictions or qualifiers on my happiness. I had truly convinced myself that I had failed (see below) and so it is really a great feeling to know that I didn't. I recommend it. I can't even wish that people I don't like failed (we-e-eelll...except maybe one or two, readers who've been with me for a long time may remember the now deleted Bride of Chuckie post).

Overall, I am thrilled that I don't have to stay in a temp job forever, and also thrilled that I don't ever have to go through that miserable, lonely, expensive, and boring hell again. I hope that all of you who took the bar, or will take the bar, get to experience the same feeling too.

Additionally I am waiting for my MBE scores anxiously...not because they really matter, although I would like to waive into DC, but more because I am truly curious about the spread between the raw score and the scaled. I imagine it will be huge.

Live blogging the last work afternoon in the dark

2006-11-13T18:40:00.000-05:00

2:30 This is insufferable, I need to go home

2:32 Cookies would probably help

2:36 Maybe sour cream and onion Ruffles would help too. Do I get the 99 cent bag or the 50 cent bag?

2:37 99 cent. Definitely

2:38 They don't have my damn cookies! May as well go for the chocolate delight chocolate chunk kind.

2:39 Maybe if I ask for my receipt, the guy will think I'm buying snacks for the whole group

2:40 He just smiled patronizingly and said, "Enjooooooooy!" Oh well

2:43 Back at my desk, hid the cookies in a drawer and about to dive into the SC & O

2:47 That was good. But I think a cookie would probably be a good idea too

2:48 These cookies are a little dry, maybe I should be dunking them in coffee

2:55 My stomach hurts. Again

2:56 Should probably work

3:09 found hilarious typo: "you have duly qualified" reads instead "you have dully qualified." Hehehehehehhe

3:14 Achoo! Great, I am making myself sick with stress

3:17 People keep emailing me asking my advice on things. Ha - good luck with that!

3:24 I kind of want to vomit

3:28 This eye twitch is really getting old

3:29 I can't believe this will really be over in less than 24 hours

3:38 Jerk friend of mine IMs to say, "THEIR OUT!!!!" I know he is lying b/c I just checked. And I corrected him on his incorrect usage of the word "they're"

3:49 Is it stupid if I look at last year's bar exam results and see people I know are dumber than me who passed?

3:55 Yes. That was stupid. Just b/c ____ passed doesn't mean I will. Now I will feel even dumber if I don't. If that is even possible.

3:56 But hey there's only an hour before I can leave! Maybe that wasn't such a bad usage of my time after all.

3:57 Same friend offers to "photocopy his junk" and mail it to me for the low, low price of $.64, the cost of a stamp and a photocopy. Who the hell am I friends with?

4:08 3 people w/my last name passed last year. Pretty good.

4:15 Is anyone going to enjoy reading this? I'm getting on my own nerves at this point.

4:39 This is the slowest fucking day EVER!!!

4:54 I AM OUTTA HERE!

Insanity ensues

2006-11-11T21:58:00.000-05:00

In furtherance of my goal of crying at work, I checked the NY bar exam website every single day last week until Thursday, when I saw the words I dreaded scrolling across the bottom: "The July 2006 bar exam results will be available here for candidate lookup on Tuesday November 14 at 9AM . . . The general passing list will be available on Thursday November 16 at 9AM . . . "

I nearly puked on my keyboard. Instead, I made an effort to compose myself and commenced the long and arduous process of waiting without indulging myself in the nervous breakdown that has bubbled not so far below the surface ever since.

I offer for your consideration an email exchange from last Thursday with W, a friend since first year:

Me: Oh help, they just posted that the bar results are coming out on Tuesday. Tell me everything will be okay??

W: yeah, I just vomited in my urine. [My boss] sent out an e-mail telling every new attorney...there goes any work for five days. I think of it as that I have failed and passing will be a pleasant surprise. Is it my fault that I don't know common law arson...hmmm! is it!

Me: On the upside, I will def lose 5 lbs like I wanted to, since the only thing my stomach is accepting lately is mint tea. I have also developed an eye twitch, is it me or did I used to handle pressure better?
I still like you even though you don't know common law arson.

W: eye twitch...i remember vividly when it first occured, end of fall semester, 1st year. Then 3rd year, then bar. My stomach has become liquid.. I think I need a diaper. This is shitty pressure because you can't do anything to change the outcome. If I fail, I'm quitting, I don't want to be a lawyer badly enough to take that test again. I will enlist, go to Iraq and chill the fuck out.

Me: Enlisting is actually the perfect solution...can they find me in Iraq to extradite me for my student loans? What if I move to a kibbutz and change my name, Malka or something, they can't get me right? I also don't want to take it again. I'd rather be named Malka than do it again and that is really saying something!!

W: by driving trucks in Iraq , all my pay would go to loans so if i do make it back I can begin anew...maybe I will become a law school psychologist

Me: Do you have the day off tomorrow? [Mutual friend] was just bragging about that to me. I should sort of just give up and go home today, I can't think, I am upset and no one understands, they keep saying, "What, there's nothing you can do! Relax!" RELAX? RELAX? RELAX???!>!>!?!?!?!?

Being a law school psychologist is a good idea, except then you have to hang out in a law school

W: yeah I have off tomorrow, but I hacve a ton of stuff to do so it doesn't mean I won't come in. You can't do anything, they are right, just put it out of your head....look at myspace or write a poem or go on a shooting spree...just do something

Me: How about binge drinking?

W: I'm not nervous...I'm very uncomfortable...and when I get uncomfortable I do stupid things like look at [ex girlfriend]'s myspace and friendster pages....I have been so good. Fucking BAr exam!

Me: I understand, shit like this sets you back. I myself want to curl up in the fetal position and cry for hours until someone picks me up and pats my back, but I'll settle for drinking some whiskey later, and then maybe vomiting.

Pumpkin

2006-11-07T20:48:00.000-05:00

This is kind of sad, but some of you may remember a post from quite awhile back where I expressed jealousy that a girl I knew from school, C, had landed herself a rich boyfriend who whisked her off, fairy tale style, offering to support her and indulge her every whim. I was jealous because I wanted someone to make my obligations disappear, to take my problems in hand and wave that wand and just dismiss them. It seemed like she was living the dream and it was a huge thorn in my side.

This morning I was on my way to the office when I spotted a familiar face from across the street. There was C, listening to her iPod, wearing business clothes in midtown Manhattan. What the fuck? I thought she was in a sunny foreign land, getting manicures and blowouts, and working part-time for an art gallery or something. But no. Turns out the dream went south and the prince dumped her for no apparent reason while she was studying for the bar exam. With no job, no place to live, and a huge bill from BarBri's home study program.

Maybe self-sufficiency is, in fact, the better route.

On stress

2006-11-06T20:32:00.000-05:00

In a German class I took in college, my professor told us a story that has stayed with me, even as 95% of the German I learned has disappeared. She attended her five-year-old niece's birthday party in Cologne, a large affair in her sister's backyard complete with clowns, cakes, gifts, a pink theme, etc., everything a little girl could want. At the end of the party, my professor asked her niece, "Did you have a good time at your party?"

"Ja," the little girl replied seriously, "aber es war so stressig!"*

I have been stressed before. I didn't handle law school very well, and I didn't handle studying for the bar terribly well either. But this has got to be a record. Never before, for example, have I had an eye twitch. It is really that bad. And it's not just waiting for the bar, although that's definitely the major thing on my list. There's a few other choice scenarios to stress me out, like:

- Thanksgiving (which I am preparing), when my mother will meet my boyfriend's parents for the first time
- Anytime I speak to my mother
- My continuing health insurance debacle, thanks to the diligent efforts of my father, who is too busy to get in touch with the appropriate people, but not too busy to buy a Lexus or go on a cruise to Aruba
- Etc., etc., etc.

The upshot is that I am enmeshed in all these situations I cannot control, and there's nothing for me to lean on anymore. In college, I would have dealt with (and did deal with) similar issues by getting shitfaced and vomiting my problems away. I'm a little too old for that now and so I have really had to try to find more efficient means of dealing with what ails me. I do very much enjoy cooking as stress relief, but I'm not sure that will cut it. The Borat movie helped (go see it), and Netflix isn't bad either, a little escapism can be a good thing. I mean honestly, whoever decided denial is unhealthy had it totally backwards. Too much talking about and analyzing turns you into an obsessive freak who loses the forest for the trees...I think that pretending like you don't have any problems when you do is far and away the best coping mechanism out there. Plus it's a lot less likely to drive your friends away, unless they are your Internet friends, in which case they are more likely to continue to read your blog. I have noticed that when I'm in a good mood and post accordingly, nobody comments. So to everyone who reads this, and please know that I love it that you do, be prepared for the next couple of weeks to be full of bitching, complaining, and the written equivalent of about three eye twitches per minute. I hope you enjoy it because I sure as hell am not! (Well, I enjoy writing about it, but I'm wound so tightly right now that I threatened to call the Better Business Bureau on no fewer than three companies last week. No joke, but I do love my new Moto Razr!)

*"Yes, but it was so stressful!"

A girl walked into a bar: ouch

2006-10-31T23:47:00.000-05:00

It's almost November and that can only mean one thing: the bar results will soon be here. The date could be as soon as two weeks from now, according to BarBri! I'm not excited. You could say that I'm nervous, but that would be something of an understatement. I'm terrified.

My mom always says it wouldn't be the end of the world, but I'm pretty confident that it would. First, there's the embarrassment. The list is so public that everyone who's ever wished me ill will be able to see that I failed, and I don't want to give anyone that satisfaction. Enemies aside, it will be impossible to talk to people for at least a year, because everyone will feel sorry for me. It would be like hanging out in the law review office, for a whoooooole year. Sure sounds like the end of the world to me!

Then, there's the job thing. My job is contingent upon passing the bar. I wouldn't get to start it until next September or something like that. That's obviously unworkable, but try finding a job once bar results have come out and you failed. I can only imagine what that might be like: third year's job search, but worse. Sounds fun!

Finally, there's the money problem. I'd need all of February to study, and thus I wouldn't be able to work. I'm pretty sure my parents are not willing to subsidize another trip down BarBri lane, plus all the incidentals of bar studying (take out, bills, shopping binges to remind myself that life still has pleasure in it, and so on). Studying is horrible for many reasons, but mainly it's just really expensive (and it made me sort of fatter). I have no idea how I'd do it again, and I'd rather not think about it.

I know that the odds are in my favor. But after the way I felt after the MBE . . . statistics just seem like meaningless numbers. I can only hope that it will be a repeat of tests like my NY CPLR final, where I walked out certain that I had bombed but did well. What can I say? There wasn't usually a link between my grades in law school and the way I felt on the way out of the exam room, and I can only continue to hope and pray that the same will hold true for this final law exam.

I say final because if I do fail, I don't really that I want to go through it again. There's got to be another career out there for me that law school prepared me for that doesn't require the bar. I mean, I can't think what it might be, but it's got to be out there somewhere.

The quarter-century blues

2006-10-24T20:55:00.000-04:00

I had a birthday recently and am now the ripe old age of 25. I felt okay about it because I was happy about what I have accomplished so far. Yeah, I mean, everyone goes to law school lately, but it still is one more grad degree than my friends from the summer camp some called college I attended freshman year have. (In fact, I may have one more bachelor's degree than some of them, but I digress.) Yeah, I graduated from a decent college, went to a piece of shit law school, and now I am kind of a lawyer. I also have my own apartment, have a wonderful boyfriend who seems to like me despite having put up with me for three years (give or take), friends who call me on occasion, and two cats who worship the ground I walk on. I've been to Europe three times and Israel once. I've seen the Eiffel Tower and attended a taping of a talk show. I have paid taxes and purchased approximately one hundred and fifty pairs of shoes over my lifetime.

I have a Life. I have Done Things. I am still young.

Or so I thought until I saw that certain commercial for one of those CDs on TV. You know, the compilations of crap, sometimes fun crap, but always old crap. "Sittin' on the Dock of a Bay," "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT," "You've Got a Friend." The one thing that unites such songs is that they came out before I was born, or at least before I was old enough to pay attention to Lite FM. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the CD in question was called Buzz Ballads. Buzz? In other words, songs that came out when I was at a sufficient age to form an opinion about them. In many cases, I was old enough that I now have crystal-clear memories about the songs and when they came out.

This CD contains such hits as "Lightning Crashes" by Live, which came out when I was in maybe ninth grade. I remember walking around my neighborhood listening to their album on my walkman, and feeling uncomfortable that one song gave Hitler a shout-out. Three guys in that band are named Chad and they are from Pennsylvania. One of my friends in ninth grade supposedly lost her virginity to the song "Glycerine" by Bush on repeat on someone's stereo at a house party, which sounds like the most annoying way to be introduced to sex that I've ever heard of, and I remain convinced that she was lying. The video for "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum was on VH1 every ten minutes the summer I was twelve. I was in the Hamptons at a family friend's house and one day fell asleep on my stomach without putting sunscreen on my back. I spent three days beached on a couch with only a remote control, an ice pack, and Lidocaine for company. I saw Toad the Wet Sprocket open for someone, can't remember who, when I was thirteen. I called Stabbing Westward poseurs. I worshipped Courtney Love.

Seeing these bands sold on TV, on a CD referencing these songs as ballads, makes me feel all wrong. In an age when black fishnet stockings are sold at Banana Republic, what has become of youth culture? And when did I start rolling my eyes at it? In sum, when did I get so . . . old?

R-E-S-P-E-C-T-!

2006-10-15T22:01:00.000-04:00

I have discovered the key to life: working in the legal department of a company.

The hours are good, the pay is decent (if you're not a temp), but the best part is the hero worship. I swear, the people at my company won't so much as go to the bathroom without asking legal to sign off on it first. And even though I'm not admitted, and I'm pretty much a paralegal there, they consider me and my opinion good enough.

And really, why not? I went to law school. I know things. I may not always know the answers to their questions, but I can usually sound confident enough to rattle off some bullshit, and then I can just look it up and correct them if I was wrong. And somehow, I have found that my instincts are usually right. This is really a huge confidence booster and makes me realize how much better it is to work than to be in law school. In law school, people are always trying to make you feel dumb and/or inadequate. In my company, I get respect. I get props, and it's absolutely wonderful. It makes me remember why I went to law school in the first place.

Okay, so I'm getting paid peanuts, and I may never earn the kind of money I anticipated earning when I signed up for all this nonsense. But the feeling of respect I get from everyone at the company is just such a refreshing change that I am almost glad these days that I decided to become a lawyer (or almost-lawyer). I never, ever felt that way at a firm.

I think that it is a sad comment on the usual practice of law that it takes working outside the usual legal paradigm to be pleased with my choice. I am happy at work and enjoy my responsibilities, and busy days are much better for me than empty ones. I like what I do well enough, but mainly I enjoy being taken seriously. It's a nice change, and I hope it stays that way.

Columbia unbecoming, again

2006-10-08T23:11:00.000-04:00

Ah, free speech. One of the things most lauded about our wonderful country. Anyone can say anything they want, as long as it's not yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or saying, "Hi, Jack!" on a plane. Yes, it's really wonderful how the Bill of Rights permits us to live freely without fear of getting lynched for our beliefs.

Unless, of course, those beliefs happen to contravene the mainstream. Funny, isn't it, how mainstream is such a relative term. Perhaps being against illegal immigration is a view commonly espoused here in the USA, but apparently those up in their ivory tower at Columbia are in favor of illegal immigration. And really, why not? When they leave, most will go work for major corporations or go to law school, and the illegals will never challenge their job at Goldman Sachs. They are safe from their own beliefs, insulated in their own privilege. Eventually, though, they will lose the liberal thing, probably once they have to pay their own bills. But before that, they get to believe in whatever they want. It's beautiful, really.

It's beautiful unless you are opposed to assault and/or battery. Because the way I was taught about free speech in my civics classes, all viewpoints were supposed to be fair game. People were supposed to listen to each other. At a minimum, people were supposed to let each other speak without fear of physical violence.

I may or may not approve of what the Minutemen do - but I think it's a huge disgrace that the people who are supposed to believe in our basic rights would behave this way when confronted with viewpoints that differ from their own. But I guess it's not news that free speech isn't really what it was cracked up to be. It's always been used as a way to keep opposing viewpoints down, and I think it's kind of funny that the liberals at Columbia are now the oppressors.

I guess those impossibly high admissions standards aren't high enough.

The money pit

2006-10-03T18:50:00.000-04:00

I knew today had gone too well. It was a beautiful morning, just chilly enough to make me appreciate my nice fluffy comforter. But I woke myself up, selected an outfit, and listened to the radio while I packed a lunch. I remembered to bring some single-serving prepackaged oatmeal for breakfast, and treated myself to a cup of coffee while walking to the train, and enjoyed my short, not-too-taxing commute. I had a productive, busy day, during which I worked reasonably hard, reduced the pile of crap on my desk down to a couple of small projects, and was even praised by my boss a couple of times for my good work. I left a half hour late, which was great because I am paid by the hour. And then I got home.

To a flood.

I love my apartment, not only because it is free but also because it is beautiful. It is also quite old, and has its, shall we say, quirks. This fine afternoon, I walked in to a chorus of angry mewing. That is pretty common, because while I have happily adjusted to my working life, my cats are still angry with me for not staying with them all day anymore. Then I saw the dirty pawprints all over the kitchen floor (which I had just mopped) and knew something was wrong. Last year, around this time, the same exact thing happened. I think I may have made some politically incorrect jokes about Hurricane Katrina visiting my living room, and payback is definitely a bitch. Cause here it is again baby! and the plumber ain't coming 'til Friday.

So now my living room smells like asbestos, my cats have wet paws, there are wet disgusting towels dripping dry in my just-cleaned bathroom, and I have to change buckets of filthy brown water everytime my inconsiderate upstairs neighbors decide to shower (because even though they know that it floods my apartment when they shower, personal cleanliness apparently overrides consideration, since they've been at it since I got home an hour ago). Awesome. I thought Europeans didn't shower.

I knew today had gone too well.

Richie, Benedict, and moi

2006-09-20T00:32:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm really tired and should go to bed but first I must comment about Michiko Kakutani's review of Richard Posner's new book "Not A Suicide Pact: the Constitution in a Time of National Emergency" that appeared today in the New York Times. (Honestly I don't know why I even read the New York Times anymore since each time I do, I come away angry and frustrated, but there it is and here I am, so.)

First, I would like to just point out the silliness of having a non-lawyer review what is, in essence, a law book. Maybe it's not a casebook or a hornbook, but the fact is that to truly understand constitutional law, you need to have attended those fun first year Con Law I lectures, and you probably need Con Law 2 as well. Some upper-level seminars would be nice, too, because let's face it: constitutional law is difficult, and even though I have taken a number of classes on the subject and find it fascinating, I don't always find it accessible. At a bare minimum, advanced coursework in political science would be nice. So to have Ms. Kakutani (who may be well-versed in liberal rhetoric and may have gone to Yale, but clearly doesn't know jack about con law) to review the book is like asking me to review a book on electrical engineering.

What amused me most about the review is that she is more than happy to call attention to Judge Posner's so-called hypocrisy but is too blinded by political correctness or some other liberal diesease to see her own. For example, she believes it to be hypocritical to call for increased surveillance of terrorists without wiretaps, but decreased interference by the media when it comes to both personal privacy and matters of national security. I have already addressed my opinion on that particular issue, and I stand firm on it. There is absolutely no hypocrisy in wanting the government to be able to protect its citizens without being sold out at every turn by a violently anti-establishment media.

There is, however, great hypocrisy in arguing that when it comes to privacy and national security, the Constitution is a firm document with no loopholes and which is not subject to interpretation, but when it comes to individual rights, it's totally negotiable. Which is it? Because Ms. Kakutani's line of reasoning places her, hilariously in my opinion, right there in bed with my personal favorite jurist, Justice Antonin Scalia, and his whole "framer's intent" hangup. Let's consider: if the Framers were to consider the issues of abortion, contraception, gay marriage, the "zone of privacy" that permits homosexual sodomy, etc., how do we think they would have felt? I'm going to go ahead and guess that they might have been just a little bit surprised that the Constitution they wrote for this country has been interpreted to allow for some of these things. I'm definitely not saying that it shouldn't have been - and shouldn't further be - I am merely saying that the Constitution is more than silent on these issues. But if the Framers were also to be asked whether they meant the Constitution to tie the hands of the government when it comes to the lives of its citizens and the government's ability to protect them, I'm pretty sure again what their answer would be. Just as Judge Posner has suggested, it is ludicrous to suggest that they anticipated that the Constitution would ever be a hindrance to saving this country from an enemy so determined, so capable, and so fucking sick in the head that it would put a liquid explosive in a baby bottle in order to smuggle it onto an aircraft -- well, I'm personally left speechless.

Politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows. Michiko Kakutani and Justice Scalia; me and the Pope (and Richard Posner). How truly bizarre.

In it for the money

2006-09-17T22:36:00.000-04:00

One thing people say that has always struck me as absurd to the point of hilarity is when they look you in the eye and say on the subject of a job: "But of course, you're not doing it for the money."

Funny - I didn't know everyone was independently wealthy. I always believed that people went to professional schools and then got jobs in order to support themselves and their families, but I guess that's not what it's about. I guess what it's really about is the intellectual glory of doing document review. I mean, nothing is more challenging, satisfying, and overall life-affirming than making sure the paralegal input your changes. Which, of course, she didn't, so you then have to make them again. And maybe again. I don't know about you, but man, does that make me feel smart. It's pretty much all I need from life, and a paycheck is obviously peripheral.

It's just so weird. I thought that now that I am done with law school, the internship charade would end. I thought that people would understand that other people have bills, loans, lifestyle goals, shoes to buy, etc. But still, I hear this nonsense. So let me be clear: I am in it for the money. I want to enjoy my job, clearly, and I want to take pride in what I do and derive some kind of intellectual satisfaction from it. Naturally. But at the end of the day, I am working because I need to, and I went to law school because I wanted to make a decent living and not have to rely upon other people for the rest of my life. So if that makes me a base, shallow person, then I guess I am. But one day, I'll be a base, shallow person who is completely self-sustaining and I think there is more pride to that than taking money from one's family forever.

She works hard for the money

2006-09-13T20:24:00.000-04:00

Well the day had to come and here it is. I have someplace to go in the morning, I have a new reason to go shopping, I am finally going to get a paycheck one day, and I'm back to being happily sleep-deprived. Obviously I'm not going to talk about where I'm working, even though it is temporary, and even though there are some serious characters I'd love to discuss, like, for example, Michael Jackson lady, Sweet-But-Dumb 1, Sweet-But-Dumb 2, Jersey Trash, and the Defensive Middle Manager. Instead, I'll just say that I quite like it and I am so much happier now that I'm no longer a porch monkey.

(Not that I have a porch, but you know.)

One thing I've noticed is that since I last had somewhere to go in business casual clothing, styles have changed a lot. The new skirts that ladies wear to work are belted in a completely different part of the body. Last time I wore a belt, it went around my hips but that is no longer done, apparently. I just found out that I have a waist, and I'm really enjoying it. Who knew?

I've also discovered the joys of bringing my own lunch to work. This is partly a function of my complete and total insolvency but either way, it's kind of nice to come in with a gourmet tomato & balsamic salad and a sandwich just the way I like it. Plus that's $50 a week, give or take, that I just don't have to charge to my mother. I'm sure she appreciates it.

On a different note, I am watching "Without A Trace" which is sort of a bad show but addictive nonetheless. This episode, however, is chock-full of both people with fake Romanian accents and alumni of "Dead Man on Campus." Remember that movie? If not, go rent it, because Zack Morris is totally hilarious in it. So both the crazy frat guy and Josh's love interest, Rachel, are in the episode, which is quite amusing. I wonder if they stayed friends.

I want my MTV

2006-09-02T16:47:00.000-04:00

This weekend, I watched the Video Music Awards on MTV for the first time in a couple years. Boredom will do that to you. What shocked me most was not how bad most of the music nominated was. I was also prepared for the fact that I had never seen a single one of these videos. Calling it the "Video" Music Awards is kind of a joke at this point, since everyone knows that MTV doesn't play videos anymore. In a sense it's kind of like the Radio Music Awards, because that's the only place these songs are actually getting played. Video killed the radio star and then somehow died itself, being replaced again, magically, by radio. How meta. But I digress.

What was really surprising to me was how old I felt watching the VMAs. When did it become obligatory for dudes in rock bands to wear black eyeliner? Why was Jordan Catalano himself wearing eyeliner?? How come I've never heard "Dani California" by the RHCP before today? People still think Jack Black is funny? When did the Killers start singing over piano? What is Jack White doing onstage being a sideshow for Jack Black's "humor?" And what on earth is the visual imagery in the video for "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" by Panic! at the Disco supposed to represent?

Obviously I am showing my age here. I can remember Kurt Cobain singing "Lithium" at the VMAs, and I can remember shows like "Headbanger's Ball," "Yo! MTV Raps," and "120 Minutes." I still have on tape the "120 Minutes 10th Anniversary" special from, oh, 1994? 1995? Does anyone besides me even remember what "120 Minutes" actually was?

Music has always been an important part of my life. Lately it has been much less so. I usually blame that on the state of modern music, but I think MTV is partly to blame for this too. Ever since they shifted formats from showcasing new music to showcasing blond idiots I lost my easy access to finding out about good new bands. I enjoy "Laguna Beach" as much as, if not more than, the next guy. But why must the "reality" shows and portrayals of guys who allow lobsters to bite their tongues for fun preempt the good work MTV used to do? I used to sneak out of bed to watch my favorite video show on MTV, which aired Sundays at midnight, and I'd learn about new bands that way. I'd write down the videos I liked and go buy the CDs the next day. Hell, this was so long ago I might have bought the tapes the night day. I learned about some of my favorite bands in this way. And now what? I may have learned a fair amount about the real Orange County, but now where am I supposed to go for music? I know there are sources out there, but where? MTV: come back!!

Cry me a river

2006-09-02T14:58:00.000-04:00

I am easily offended when it comes to certain subjects: the Middle East, my family, religion, and big law firms' desperate search for candidates. No wonder, then, that this New York Times article made me want to punch a wall. No, it wasn't the brunette in the Legally Blonde suit holding out her BlackBerry defiantly, being so important she must check her e-mail even during a photo shoot. It wasn't the mention of the firm with whom I had the single most traumatic interview of my life. It was this:

Most firms followed suit [in raising the starting salary from $125,000 to $145,000] because they compete for the same law students, and also need to stanch attrition of their current associates. Hiring has become particularly competitive because of expanding practices in corporate law, litigation and bankruptcy.

William V. Fogg, one of the partners responsible for recruiting and hiring at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, said that “law firms are getting bigger at a faster rate than law schools,” creating a growing demand for lawyers and commensurate salary increases.

Boy, what a fucking tragedy!! I feel so bad for these firms. They just can't find candidates.

Which universe are they living in? I did OCI at the beginning of my second year. Now, when I say I "did OCI," it means I had two interviews, both of which were courtesies, and I observed the law review d-bags walking around in suits with full interview schedules poking out of their leather folders. "I have Weil at 10:15 and Willkie at 10:40, am I going to have time to review my notes in between? Ugh! This is so frustrating!" I was depressed about the whole thing, knew I wasn't going to get any callbacks, which I didn't, and knew I had wasted the $5 I had just spent on stockings. And I was one of the lucky ones, because with my grades, I shouldn't have had any interviews at all.

This is clearly way too obvious a solution for people like Mr. Fogg, but if you are only willing to interview 4 people, you kind of can't complain about why there are no candidates. The problem is that you have antiquated standards, and you believe that grades and LSAT scores are the only worthwhile predictor of performance as a lawyer. I don't dispute that they are a predictor. While I firmly believe that they are unrelated to intelligence, first-year grades will show which people are willing to have no life, work around the clock, and skip relatives' funerals (this really happened). So go ahead, snap 'em up, but keep in mind that these are also the people who will be burnt out by the time they start to work, and can keep it up no longer than two or three years. Then they will jump ship and go work for a mid-size firm, or go in-house, or whatever, anything to get out of there.

Many of the people I know who didn't make law review from my school often worked harder, were smarter, and overall less excruciating to be around than the law review people. Why didn't they make law review? I don't know. Numbers, I guess, only ten percent can and we all know that going in. Does that mean the other ninety percent are worthless and couldn't hack it in a law firm? It just can't be the case.

What's the solution? What are other predictors? How can you weed out the people who are smart and who will succeed from those who won't? I don't know. I don't have all the answers. But it's kind of not my job to figure that out. William V. Fogg and counterparts, it is your job. The problem isn't that law schools aren't putting out enough lawyers to supply your departments. The problem is that you will only interview from a very limited number of schools, and only a very limited number of people from those schools. Trust me, the people are there and they are willing to work for you. It's time to pull your head out your ass and look around at the new legal landscape. Things have changed and it's just going to keep costing you more and more money to keep doing things the old way.

Panic! at the registrar

2006-08-30T15:43:00.000-04:00

Just because I've graduated from my TTT law school does not mean that I am done being screwed over by them. Au contraire.

The long and arduous quest for a reasonable temp job to put an end to my couch-sitting, laundry-doing days led me to a very nice company who provisionally offered me a job. Great! However, the job was subject to a background check. I have no idea what they want to know about my character and "mode of living," as the FCRA disclosure paperwork ominously suggested, but since I don't have any real skeletons in my closet I was not afraid. I mean, there was that time I beat the shit out of this girl in my second-grade class. My mom came to pick me up from school and apparently I had beat her into submission down on the pavement in the playground and I was mercilessly kicking her, but she totally deserved it and I'm sure any real investigator would be able to figure that out pretty quickly (as a serious ass-beating is a reasonable response to "four eyes!").

That aside, I return my library books on time, feed and brush my cats, don't steal, and am generally a law-abiding citizen. Turns out the biggest problem had nothing to do with me or anything I have ever done wrong. The investigators were having some difficulty verifying that I actually graduated from the shithouse on my resume.

Now, I have considered lying about it and saying I went to NYU or otherwise denying that I went there, but the sad fact is that I did. I'm depressed about it, but it's true - trust me, I wish it weren't. Apparently, so do they.

The investigator called them to ask for proof. They said that she had to put her request in writing and fax it in. She did. No reply. She called back. They said, oh, fax it to this number instead. She did. And? You guessed it - no reply. So she called me, and asked if I could take a photograph of my diploma and e-mail it to her.

Ooooookay. No problem. Meanwhile, time goes by, so slowly, for those who wait, as Madonna so eloquently stated. I took the bar over a month ago, am totally sick of sitting around my neighborhood waiting for someone to send me a fucking paycheck, and so I am skipping town and going to visit some friends from college for the long weekend. I am leaving tomorrow. Maybe by the time I get back, I'll have somewhere to go in the mornings besides back to sleep.

A modest proposal

2006-08-28T13:56:00.000-04:00

Last night, my boyfriend permitted me a never-before granted luxury: we went through people's Friendster profiles and photographs and mocked them. I mean, we really got into it, he let me run my nasty mouth as much as I wanted, no censorship, no "be nice," we just laughed and laughed at the appalling scene before us. It was almost as good as looking at wedding websites.

One girl in particular always cracks me up. She posts new photographs of herself every time she goes out drinking. Everytime I log into Friendster, there are new pictures of her holding a martini glass filled with a pink liquid, wearing an expensive-yet-slutty tank top and short skirt, with her arms around either a bunch of straight-haired, orange-skinned girl-clones or guys in matching button-down shirts who use lots of hair gel. Their white teeth gleam in the light of the flash, as they smile their faces off for the camera. It's enough to make me wish that digital camera technology had been reserved for NASA and kept from the stupid, stupid public.

"Ohmygawd, it's Lara, Dara, Farrah, Sara, and Mara!" I cried as a group of girls from Long Island with ugly faces, tan skin, and hard bodies hugged each other smiling desperately. "OMG. Jared is sooooo cuuuuuute!"

All this wanton JAPpery got me thinking. Why do these people all come out just like each other? What is it about Roslyn, Bellmore, Jericho, Manhasset Hills, etc. (although New Jersey, I am looking at you too) that produces people who care about shopping, sports, status, and not much else? Well, I came to a few conclusions and I would, of course, be honored to humbly present them to you:

1. Moms, don't take your small daughters to get their nails done. No five-year-old on earth needs hot pink nail polish, and if she goes to a respectable school, they will make her take it off anyway. It's a waste of money, but even worse, it plants the wrong ideas about the world in her impressionable little head. She will see others as there to serve and admire her, and she will consider being pampered an entitlement similar to breathing air or interstate travel. Last time I checked, the Constitution does not provide for the right to "square-or-round-shape" nails. Just get a babysitter - it will cost the same as her manicure, and besides, you probably have a full-time nanny even though you don't work.

2. Dads, don't only bond with your sons over football. There are other ways for men to relate to one another, and some of them actually involve thinking and/or talking. Just because you are sitting next to each other on the couch does not mean that anything meaningful is happening. Instead, the little boy will grow up unhealthily attached to statistics and the memories of certain awesome games, and he will use this to bond with his friends. Then they will mimic what you did, and they will have game night parties, in which they will yell at the TV, ignore the girls who are there solely to bring them beer, chips, and have their asses slapped - just like their mom when they were kids!

3. Don't teach your kids that their religion only means going to "temple" on High Holidays, eating Chinese food on Christmas, saying "oy vey!" and knowing how to shop. There are over 5,000 beautiful years of history and tradition that came before Long Island, and they can maybe teach you a thing or two about how to raise children. For example, that a girl going out drunk and practically naked in the hope of attracting guys is not such a good idea. Just a thought.

4. There are more than 4 acceptable professions for guys. Nowhere is it written that thou shalt become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or accountant. And ladies, don't become a teacher if you have no desire to impart knowledge to the next generation and you are just waiting to get married. Giving them a dissertation on how you blow-dry your hair on a day when you don't feel like teaching, while fascinating, is not what their parents pay tuition for (see, e.g. my 11th grade precal teacher).

5. I'd go off on sororities here, but I'm sure somewhere in the world there are one or two that might build character, friendships, and networking possibilities. Suffice it to say that none of the sororities at my school fit that description, unless you count merciless hazing, belittling, and name-calling as friendship. Just because you are standing in a row wearing matching t-shirts snapping your fingers and singing songs about how close you are doesn't make you close, or even friends.

That's enough vitriol for now, yes?

Optimism

2006-08-25T12:22:00.000-04:00

One day, this whole legal thing will come easily. One day, I'll have a real job, that I can wake up in the morning, get dressed, brush my hair, and take the subway to. I'll pick up a nice cup of coffee on the way, maybe from Dunkin' Donuts, and sip it on the way, trying not to spill it on my suit. I'll probably fail but I'll be wearing a black suit so it won't show too much. I'll swipe my ID card upon entering my office building, say "Good morning" to the security people (whom I will know by name), and I'll head upstairs to my office. I'll have my own office, or maybe one that I share, but it will be a real office, not a desk in a hallway. It will have my name printed outside on a piece of metal, not written on a piece of paper.

So far it hasn't happened. As the people from better law schools, or who had better grades, or whose parents are big clients get ready to go to start their jobs at firms, I'm still sitting on my ass doing nothing all day. This week I did my own laundry for the first time in two years and three months. This is for two reasons: I've got nothing but time, and I'm slowly running out of money. Make that quickly running out of money. You know things have reached an impasse when I am so bored I will go do my own laundry in a laundromat when it is 90 degrees out.

I've never been able to do things the conventional way. I've always gotten what I want, but it's always come in a non-traditional manner. I went to a private high school, but only after the public one wanted to throw me out. I graduated from a very highly-ranked university, but only after transferring there from an extremely unorthodox institution of "higher learning" (more like a how-late-can-you-sleep-before-you-wake-and-bake contest). And I did get my legal dream job, it just happens to not start until January - and that's assuming I passed the bar, which, as you may recall, I for one am not assuming. So I have all this free time. Which means I need a temp job.

Finding a temp job has been another exercise in banging my head against the wall. Who knew that there would be next to no market for my services? I don't have any legal experience that would get me a job as a temporary attorney, and I don't have any paralegal experience that would get me a high-paying job as a paralegal. I've never heard of most of the programs they want the paralegals to use, and although given I've known paralegals and I can't imagine they are that difficult to learn, no experience means no job. I can't even find a job as a legal secretary. I couldn't even work at Banana Republic because the last time I worked in a clothing store I was 15.

Someday, be it in January or later, I will get my job. I will have a title, I will get a paycheck, and I will not watch "Full House" during the day. After all, things will be different and better in the future. My favorite verse from my favorite psalm, which is said after eating on Shabbat, is:

הזעים בדמעה, ברנה יקצרו

which means, approximately, "those who sow tears will reap joy." Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

In the meantime, Stephanie and Michelle are babysitting a pig, and it's running loose in the Tanner home, so I'd better get back to it.

Here I go again, on my own

2006-08-21T14:59:00.000-04:00

I've complained about my father to people before, and I think sometimes those who are not quite in the know would suspect that I am somehow exaggerating. Children of divorces often retain hostility towards the parent who was "in the wrong," if they're not busy blaming themselves, that is. Such children also go around forming inappropriate relationships, having trust issues and deep emotional scarring only evident after thousands of dollars spent in therapy.

Well, somehow I have risen above much of this. And the anger I feel towards my father? Has nothing to do with the divorce. Not anymore, anyway. Here is a totally typical example of the way he operates:

During law school, I have been on my father's health insurance. About two months before graduation, I called my father to ask him whether my coverage would be affected. He said confidently, "No, you're covered until your next birthday." Okay, great! I can go about my business as usual.

On the day of graduation, my father and I rode the subway to the ceremony together. On the way, he casually mentioned, "Now that I think about it, it occurs to me that your medical coverage will be okay, but your visual and dental will probably end now that you're graduating."

"Really!" I exclaimed. "Funny you should tell me that now, since I asked you about this stuff two months ago and you said I was fine until my next birthday. Weird!"

"Yes. Well, it's just occurred to me," he said.

"So when do you think my dental will end? I have a toothache and I was actually planning on going to the dentist this week."

"Today. It'll end today. I think."

"You think," I repeated. "Well, will you find out and get back to me please?"

"Yes. Sure."

Three times that month, I called him to ask what the deal was since my tooth was really hurting. The first two times he said, "I just have to get through to the insurance rep, give me some time." The third time, in a why-me tone, he said, "I will get back to you."

Fine! Hint taken. I got back to studying for the bar and hoped he would be true to his word.

Nope.

Two weeks before the bar, I got a voicemail. "Hello, it's your father. I am going overseas for three weeks with [dumb wife] and [her spoiled child]. Best of luck on the bar!"

Wow. Not only had he not called me once in the previous month to wish me luck on the bar, he skipped the country without ever finding out what the deal with my insurance was. I was so angry I drafted a hostile email to him, but decided against sending it at the last minute.

When he got back, I spoke to him and told him how much it really hurt me that he had totally abdicated responsibility for my health. I had made it clear to him that I was in pain, and he couldn't be bothered to place a phone call. He replied that he had actually called to find out before he left, but he had forgotten to tell me that he learned that my insurance had ended the day I graduated.

"You forgot to call me? Don't you think that was information I might have liked to have? Don't you think that call was at least as important as the call to the insurance company?"

"Yes, well, my memory's not what it used to be."

"That's why people start writing themselves notes. You know, like, 'Pick up dry cleaning,' 'Call daughter about her health insurance.' People then put those notes in places they will see them, like maybe on their enormous plasma TVs."

Later that week, I had to go meet up with him for his birthday. I looked around for the meanest birthday card I could find, and regretted that Hallmark doesn't make one saying "Happy Birthday! You suck." But I did find the next best thing: a card that said, "Now that you're getting old, you may find yourself needing to write notes!" On the inside of the card were post-it notes saying things like, "Flush," and "Clothes go in the dryer, food goes in the refrigerator."

Upon receiving the card, he visibly turned pale. I knew I had got him. And I felt guilty but I also felt great.

Three days later, he called me and said, "Let me read to you from my policyholders manual." He then read me a perfectly straightforward clause which stated that I am covered until 3 months after fulfilling my graduation requirements.

He had this information the whole time. He just never got around to looking it up until I zinged him with a birthday card.

So, ladies and gentlemen who are still reading, this is why I am anti-dad. This is why I know that whatever I do, I'm doing it on my own and without his help. No exaggeration.

Freaking on a jet plane

2006-08-15T17:57:00.000-04:00

I had the dubious good fortune to fly last Thursday morning, you know, the morning they discovered the terrorist plot to blow up ten planes originating in the United Kingdom. My flight was early in the morning, meaning they had not yet determined what their policies about liquids, gels, and other newly invidious substances should be. The policy at curbside check-in forbade liquids, aerosol, gels and so on. No problem, I just threw such items in my suitcase I was checking and went in to wait in - no joke - the longest security line I had ever seen. It was pandemonium in there, no order or sense of security, but I will say that the usually sleepy TSA agents had fully woken up and were busy barking orders at anyone and everyone.

By the time those TSA agents were barking at me, they had changed policy from curbside. Any and all makeup had to go. That included not only the liquids I had relocated into my checked bags but also all powders and solids left in my carry on. That meant that my compact and two lipsticks had to go into a giant clear plastic garbage bag, roughly translating into $50 down the toilet. It was so sad. This is America, damn it, and I was not prepared for this. I'm no civil libertarian, especially when my own ass is concerned, but throwing away lipstick seemed to be un-American. It made me realize the little freedoms we take for granted and how quickly they can disappear. This feeling was really driven home when the Dunkin Donuts coffee I purchased prior to boarding also had to be sacrificed to the plastic bag graveyard of fun.

Ordinarily I am not a nervous air passenger. I carry my hot pink foam pillow proudly and I fall asleep pretty much as soon as I sit down. I've never been particularly concerned about my plane crashing or being blown up, since the odds are much better that I might die in a car accident (another reason I don't drive). But this time, it felt different. Something about giving up my possessions and my coffee made me feel how very real the threat to our way of life is, and gave it an immediacy I don't usually find. When we took off, I was really scared. Maybe I'm bitter, maybe I'm a bit of a pessimist, but let's face it, I am not ready to die and certainly not ready to die at the hands of some lunatic freaks as part of their plans to get to their seventy-something virgins and glorious martyrs' posters in Tehran. The flight was otherwise uneventful, although I will say it was jarring to watch the "TERROR IN THE SKIES" headlines on the news while I myself was airborne. But the terror, for the first time, was really there. It wasn't just me, either, because for the first time since late 2001, the entire plane exploded in applause when we landed without mishap.

Things I Wish I Had Known (The First of A Series)

2006-08-09T23:55:00.001-04:00

After some discussion with my friend Mike over at Barely Legal, I made a list of things I wish I had known before going to law school. The list began to grow and grow, and branched out into categories. Now, I know that a lot of law bloggers are putting out books on law school (see, e.g., Kick Law School in the Nuts, forthcoming), and I'm sure theirs would all be better than mine if I ever wrote one. Which I'm not going to. I don't claim to be some kind of expert any more than any other law student who lived through it. I don't have all the answers, and honestly, I don't even have all the questions.

But what I do have, unfortunately, is a big ol' dirty, steaming pile of regrets and things I wish I had known and done differently. I also have all the time in the world these days to sit on my ass and think about how things might have been. So with no further ado, here is the first in a series of Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Went to Law School.

Part I. ADMISSIONS
1. Where you go to college doesn't matter (unless you're shooting for a top 5 school). So go someplace fun for college, or wherever you get the most amount of scholarship money, or wherever your parents will pay for you to attend. Don't go someplace expensive that is known for having a low curve and boring, antisocial students (U Chicago and friends, I'm looking at you).

2. Your LSAT is the only thing that really matters (again, unless you're shooting for a top 5 school, or unless you have seriously crappy grades - below a 3.2). Study for your LSAT like you have never studied for anything before - maybe even take a couple months off and concentrate solely on it. Because as I learned the hard way, in admissions, it is the only thing that matters.

3. Some things that won't matter, despite your feelings that they should (and despite your college's law school counselor's insistence that they do):
* Your course selection does not matter. Don't think that just because you did a minor in a hard subject and got mediocre grades, they will notice that you did something that was difficult for you and persevered. Sure, it reflects an admirable character trait. You stuck it out - good for you. I hope your mom is proud, because they don't care at all. Take the easy A classes.
* Your major doesn't matter (unless you majored in hard sciences or engineering and are interested in patents). One might think that it would matter that you majored in a relatively difficult subject, say, econ as opposed to poli sci. Nope! The poli sci major with the slightly higher GPA is getting in over you.
* Your grades. They matter more than your course selection or major, because the GPA is reported in US News. But let's face it: you probably already have pretty good grades. Most people applying to law school do. Thus it really comes down, as I said, to the LSAT score. If you have very bad grades, then your LSAT is even more important for you than it is for everyone out there with a 3.6.

4. Many people will tell you to go to the school where you get the most money to minimize your debt. This can be good advice, but isn't always. If you get into a top-tier school with excellent employment data, but no scholarship, and a second-tier school with so-so employment data and a sizeable scholarship, your choice will have to depend on a couple of factors.
* You need to have a pretty good idea of what you want to do after law school. How is that possible, you ask? Well, oftentimes it isn't possible. But if you have always wanted to help the poor and you are pretty sure you can parlay your Peace Corps experience into a Legal Aid job, go with the scholarship. But if you are soulless and, like me, wanted to go to a big firm, make sure you go to that top-tier school. A scholarship is nice and all, but at second-tier schools, you're not getting a big firm job unless you are in the top 10% (see below). In fact, any firm job at all that pays more than government can be very hard to find from many second-tier schools.
* You also need to know what GPA is required to maintain your scholarship. It may be higher than you think, and it will often be easier to lose than you could ever imagine. I know a ton of people who came in with full scholarships, having gotten into better schools, and lost them after first year, sometimes by a matter of hundredths of a point. They will take it away from you and you will end up going into debt anyway - and have no good job prospects. And just because you sailed above a 3.5 at all times in college with little effort does NOT mean that you can keep a 3.2 in law school. Grades are often arbitrary. Smart people lose scholarships every year. It could happen to you.

$3 and two initials

2006-08-07T21:55:00.000-04:00

It's been some time since the bar and I am now bored. I have been sitting around, catching up on my sleep and television, playing with the cats, and cooking up a storm (three words: lemon ginger sorbet - email me if you want the recipe). It's great, but I am quickly running out of money and becoming sluggish. So last week I decided the time had come to go for it and apply for a temp job.

I sent in my resume to a legal temp firm with a good reputation that advertised hourly rates of up to $75 on their website. Not bad, right? They called me to schedule an interview, and last Friday I went in. First, I wasn't totally clear as to why a temp firm had to interview me. They have my resume, it's not like I'm going to have to work hand in hand with them, but whatever. I guess they just want to make sure that I'm not a raging sociopath, which I don't really think I am.

Last Friday was about 400 degrees, but since it was a legal job, I figured I'd better put on the legal interview outfit. That meant a wool suit, a nice shirt, stockings, and some conservative heels. I sweated the whole way to the subway, and the whole time waiting for the subway, and the whole way to the place, but these are the breaks. I'm almost a lawyer now and lawyers have to look cool in suits even if it is record-breakingly hot outside.

Of course, the lady who interviewed me was not wearing a suit. She was wearing a tank top and a denim skirt. She looked a lot more comfortable than I was, but I'm sure she appreciated the effort (ha). I laid out my situation for her, and told her that I have a job lined up for the future, and I just need to make some money in the meantime. She was fine with that, but asked questions I found disturbing, such as, "Are you willing to work weekends? Nights? And are you aware that you won't be doing legal stuff, really?"

I don't particularly want to work late or weekends, but if that's what it takes, that's what I'll do. However, I learned that as a temp, I am to be considered a "J.D. Paralegal." Now, I knew going in that this would be boring stuff - document review, sorting, filing, who knows what other horrors they can find for me to do. But to call me a paralegal? I was a paralegal before I wasted over a hundred large on law school. I also made $15 an hour, whereas she told me I could expect to make no more than $19 or $20 now.

So that's where law school got me. Instead of just being a "paralegal" I get to be a "J.D. paralegal" and make $4 an hour (taking into account inflation, let's say $3) more than I did before aging prematurely and going into massive debt.

Awesome!

A post-bar exam wrap-up

2006-07-30T18:53:00.000-04:00

It's been nice knowing that I can watch movies, go shopping, walk around, and see my friends without the guilt of the bar hanging over my head. But instead of the "I should be studying" feeling, I have the "I totally failed" feeling and it's hard to get excited about being done.

I'm such a party pooper - all I can think lately is about how unfair the MBE was, and how frequently I had to guess between three or even four choices that were virtually indistinguishable to me. I haven't been able to graciously accept a "congratulations" from anyone because I sincerely believe that none is due me. And after all the hard work I put in studying, I truly believed that it would be different.

I mean, I didn't feel quite so blindsided after the New York day. Yeah, it was a bit of a shock to see a no fault issue, and also that whole breach of the peace thing, not to mention I can never remember the damn New York rule for prior bad acts. But I knew I did my best and felt as though I had been able to convince anyone giving it a perfunctory 30-second read that I had studied and learned at least something.

But the MBE? I don't know. I've been reading in a lot of places that people blame PMBR for having infringed the so-called "copyright" belonging to the bar examiners. There's a widely rampant theory that this year's MBE was NCBEX's revenge for having figured out their usual M.O. and ripping it off to prepare us too well.

Here's what I have to say about that: fuck the NCBEX. If I go to PMBR, and learn everything they are telling me, then I am, in fact, learning the law, am I not? Which I was naive enough to believe was the point of this whole experience. I truly thought that the tricks and tips PMBR gave me were to facilitate learning an incredibly dense mass of information in a limited amount of time. On test day, I still showed up knowing what I believe I was supposed to know. So I paid some dudes who have photographic memories an additional $425 or something to help me learn it. Big deal - everyone knows that people pay money for BarBri, and even before that, people I knew in my private high school relied heavily upon Advantage Testing, which charged hundreds of dollars an hour, to prep them for both the SATs and AP exams. I couldn't afford that - yeah, I felt it was unfair, but that's life, kids. Them's the breaks.

So to penalize me for trying to learn so that I can pass, and practice, the very profession that I just spent three years of my life to learn is not only asinine but totally wrong-headed. It's mean-spirited and nasty, and I completely and totally resent it. It fucked my head up during the test, and it made me feel like I wasted both my time and money trying to get better at learning the very material I was told would be tested in the way I was told it would be tested.

And who would do this to me? Who runs the NCBEX? Lawyers. Who else? So to that guy prowling the Javits Center screaming "Face forward! Silence!" and to all the other petty douchebags who are responsible for my anger and frustration during a time when I'm supposed to be relieved to the point of exhiliration: fuck you. No, really - fuck you. As the Arabs say (a people who certainly know how to curse): may all the teeth fall out of your head, except one, and may that one tooth give you great pain.

If I saw one of you bitches drowning, good thing there is no duty to rescue, because I would not help you.

Where is the love?

2006-07-27T12:12:00.000-04:00

Last night was not the Roman orgy I had dreamed about. I thought that after the bar, I would be in a great mood, take shots of something, and end up dancing on tables. I thought I would be singing along to songs about celebrating, or "school's out for summer" or something.

Well, I did drink - a beer and a half and three sips of a strawberry margarita. After two months of near-total abstinence, that was about all I could handle. (Oh, but don't worry, I did manage to throw up.)

And the joy? Conspicuously absent. The party I went to was about as much fun as hanging out with 50 shell-shocked Gulf War veterans in 1992. Nobody was in a good mood. Some people were happy to have it over with, but most just kept repeating, "Why did I even study? I learned how to play eeny-meeny-miney-mo in kindergarten."

Not to post-mortem here, but that test was fucking impossible. Not the New York day: I was pleasantly surprised by both my ability to recall minutae and the lack of a fundamental corporate change. Yay! But the MBE? What was that???

I know I shouldn't talk about it and should just revel in the fact that I am DONE! at least until the winter. But now that the dust is settling, I notice that my apartment is a disaster, the dishes in my sink smell bad, I have doctors I have to go to, the cats are angry with me for avoiding them, and my mother is insisting I go visit her now.

And I think I failed.

Uggggggh.

My Super Sweet Bar Exam

2006-07-24T21:40:00.000-04:00

Here we go - let's hope for the best. To those of you who have accompanied me on this ride through hell, I hope we all emerge safe and sound (and admitted).

May character and fitness be our greatest hurdle.

And let us say, amen.

I don't

2006-07-19T23:04:00.000-04:00

Tonight's venting is about a subject that, given my age and locale, I probably should have addressed eons ago. That's right: weddings.

It just so happens that a ton of people I know have gotten engaged recently. Most of them aren't my good friends, so luckily I am not yet obligated to squeeze into any satin dress in a color that doesn't flatter me (another benefit of having mostly guy friends). Lately, however, I have been bombarded by Bridezillas.

I sat next to one at PMBR, who is a good friend of mine (Bridezilla 1) from law school. During the course of the two days of review, I saw photos of her dress, the bridesmaids' dresses, the flower girl dress, the menu, the floor plan of the hotel, etc., etc. I was mildly fascinated by the whole thing, since it's pretty foreign to me, but not in a "Gosh I can't wait for my day to come!" sort of way, but a train wreck, "I hope this never happens to me" kind of way.

Bridezilla 1 is pretty stressed out. I can't blame her, since her wedding is literally the week after the bar and in a foreign country. Thus she made the decision to not take the New York bar. She'll just take New Jersey and call it a day.

Wow. Just, wow. The thing is, she is really smart. She did way better than me on that PMBR test, and would probably pass the NY bar even without studying any NY subjects. Even if she just wrote, "The rule against perpetuities applies in New York when a criminal defendant attempts to introduce evidence of his own good character" on a torts essay question she'd probably still pass based on her MBE score alone. But her attention is focused 75% on the wedding and 25% on the bar. I'd say, "get your priorities straight," but as my boyfriend pointed out to me, she's clearly already got them straight.

I am awed by her decision, but in the end, I respect her choices. Here's why I can say that: I've always felt very firmly that there's no shame in being a housewife if that's what a woman wants to do and her family can afford it. If feminism was supposed to be about choices, then her choice to not take the bar is just as valid as my choice to take it. So I wish her and her fiance the best and hope for their happiness ad mea v'esrim!

I wanted to buy her a gift, though, since I can't afford to go to her destination wedding. So I went to www.weddingchannel.com to find her registry. While perusing it, I decided to see who else among the engaged couples I know are up there. Well, never missing a chance to get free stuff, they all are, and some of the more heinous couples have wedding websites.

Wedding websites? you ask. What does one put on a wedding website if the wedding has not yet happened? Well, a wedding website contains, inter alia, a photo of the affianced couple, where their wedding will be, when their wedding will be, and most notably, "our story."

The "our story" section contains the story of both how the couple met and how they got engaged. Bridezilla 2, a girl from my section who IMs me constantly as I try to study talking about her wedding (to which I am not invited), recounted her engagement story in full, gory detail. Suffice it to say I wanted to vomit before I had reached the halfway point. But then I checked out a coworker from two summers ago's page. His dear fiancee had spared no dignity in telling the story, and it involved the holy trinity of proposal cliches: (1) he got down on his knee, (2) with tears in his eyes, and (3) whispered, with his voice trembling with emotion, "Will you marry me?" Oh, YES! (But first let me see the ring and make sure it's bigger than my friends'.) Anyway, this guy's fiancee is the JAP to end all JAPs - dumb, Japanese straightened hair, lives in Murray Hill, you name it. Oh, and she hates me almost as much as I don't care about her, so no way am I invited to this one. Luckily too - she registered at places where the cheapest thing on the list is a $200 pair of tongs (Tiffany's, Michael C. Fina, etc. - Bed Bath & Beyond is just so college!).

These girls plan their weddings for a year, maybe even more. They build up to it with lavish engagement parties and constant wedding chatter. In some cases, they maybe even cut off their options for after the wedding. But I have to wonder: when it's all over, after the honeymoon to Fiji, then what?

Celebrity justice

2006-07-18T17:58:00.000-04:00

Is it me, or has the world gone totally crazy? Generally speaking, I have my head buried in a book, but whenever I look up, it seems that something else totally psycho happens. First of all, there's the Middle East, which I believe I've already expressed an opinion or two about. Then, I just read on Gawker how the 19-year-old skizzy who fucked Christie Brinkley's husband has given "exclusive" interviews to everyone who will listen. She is extremely pretty, of course, in a trashy sort of way, and her big eyes well up charmingly with tears of self-pity as she talks about how she was sort of used, and how she really regrets what happened, etc.

Now, I've never hooked up with a married guy (that being up there on my list of things I will never, ever do, along with heroin, bike riding, eating Korean food, and wearing leggings in public). But I have done stuff in my life I'm not so proud of. I've also gotten caught doing stuff I'm not proud of and I've had to apologize and make it up to people in a variety of situations.

But never once have I asked the world for sympathy. This chick is nineteen. Maybe she's of less-than-average intelligence, and maybe she is emotionally immature, etc. But why would you go on TV, with a married mother interviewing you, and beg the public at large for them to cry for you? Is this some ill-considered bid for further fame? I'd think that she'd just be embarrassed and want to retreat into obscurity as quickly as possible. But white trash (or whatever she is) seems to know no bounds. And, like I said, the world is going crazy.

All that she wants

2006-07-17T17:50:00.000-04:00

I am going to throw caution to the wind here and whine for a few minutes. Here, in no particular order, is a non-exclusive list of things I want right now:

1. To be well rested
2. To be well-dressed again - I have worn the same skirt every day for the past, oh, I don't know, four or five days, just because it is there when I look for things to put on
3. The end of angry Arabs killing anyone and everyone who could possibly be blamed for their international irrelevance except for our reliance on their one natural resource
4. A good, long nap
5. Central air conditioning
6. The ability to fall asleep when I lie in bed at night, something I've never lacked before (and which has never even required lying down in bed - civil procedure, Metro-North, Starbucks - no problem!)
7. To go lie on a beautiful, deserted beach with a delicious coconut-flavored drink
8. A tan
9. Lasagna
10. Did I mention a nap?
11. A dishwasher
12. Ambien
13. To stop having nightmares that involve frighteningly vivid courtroom scenes
14. New York to adopt the Federal Rules of Evidence
15. To lose five pounds

Is all this too much to ask???

Root, root, root

2006-07-14T19:26:00.000-04:00

Today, around 5:30, I stopped by my boyfriend's office at Big Firm X to pick something up from him. He met me in the lobby and pointed to a group of recruiters. "Check it out," he said. "They're standing there waiting for the summers to come downstairs so they can distribute their Yankees tickets."

"I want to go to a Yankee game! Can I go?" I cried out.

(Oh wait, I'm studying for the bar, right.)

Then I smiled, thinking about how if I weren't studying for the bar and it were a night I could go, I probably still wouldn't want to. Cause see, even if I got to go to fancy restaurants three times a week, or fun baseball games, or cooking classes at world-renowned culinary institutes, I'd have to do all this fun stuff with other summers. And how fun would that be?

The real prize would be if they gave gift certificates to do this stuff with people whose time you actually value. I'd rather eat a slice of pizza on my couch with my boyfriend than go to Daniel or whatever with a bunch of overeager summer asses. Enjoy that game guys!

Just wondering

2006-07-14T13:11:00.000-04:00

CNN and many other "reputable" news sources are reporting that the Lebanese government has absolutely no control over parts of Lebanon, which are apprently entirely under the control of Hezbollah. And gosh, it's just really terrible how the poor Lebanese government just can't control them, and they really have nothing whatsoever to do with all of Hezbollah's evil activities, such as sending Katyusha rockets to Israeli areas of absolutely no military significance, such as the holy (and, I might add, absolutely beautiful) city of Tzfat.

That got me wondering. If parts of the United States were "under the control" of the KKK, and the KKK started firing rockets into, say, Mexico, would the whole world just sort of feel bad for the US government and ask Mexico to stop bombing KKK buildings?

Proofreading skills a major plus

2006-07-13T23:00:00.000-04:00

An actual, honest-to-goodness e-mail received from the career office (emphasis added):

In House Council- [X Corp.]

Attention recent graduates. [X Corp.] is seeking a licensed attorney in NY and/or NJ or a bar candidate as an in house council. The applicant will be primarily responsible for contacting attorneys and governmental agents; appearing before the courts; negotiations drafting and reviewing contracts. Fluency in Korean and English is a must. To apply please email your resume and cover letter to [Illiterate Lawyer], Esq. at [email].

Apparently, I don't give the career office enough credit. I'm sure at least one person will find this opportunity enticing.

Actually, scratch that. The people who speak Korean are definitely all on Law Review.

But I'm not having a bad day or anything, really

2006-07-13T20:47:00.000-04:00

To the fat bitches on law review shouting at the top of their lungs in the office next door and impeding my bar studying:

I know that in the game of law school, you won.

I know that you are more likely to pass the bar than I am, and that you have excellent jobs lined up for this coming September. I also know that you received a summer bonus, and likely a salary advance, just for being you.

But at least I am not morbidly obese, from Long Island or New Jersey, and at least I do not end every sentence with a question mark. (To wit: "Barbri's essay grading is, like, totally wrong? I mean, I totally saw that issue? I don't know what grader 210 was thinking?") At least I don't brag publicly about how my parents' cleaning lady comes in from the suburbs twice a week because "I just can't clean my own bathroom." At least I don't publicly promote the fact that I cannot cook [Ed.: because I can] and that the sight of raw meat makes me, like, totally nauseous! At least I have never bragged about how "I will so totally make the worst wife?"

Now do us all a favor and shut the fuck up so I can study.

Love,
Me

Sometimes the world makes me totally sick

2006-07-12T14:49:00.000-04:00

This post will hopefully be an anomaly, because I tend to be a rather non-political person, but sometimes even the most apathetic among us have to speak up. I am sitting here, trying to study torts (duty, breach, causation, damages), but I am so mad about what's going on in the Middle East that it's sort of hard to concentrate. (Although there's always a good reason not to concentrate.) Nevertheless I must get this off my chest and then return to the "well-settled quartet" of indirect cause causation analysis.

I mentioned to a friend of mine from college last night that I might be going to Israel after the bar. She thought I was nuts to be going there with so much going on (and this was before Hezbollah decided to stick their dirty fingers into this mess). I replied that I didn't plan on hitting the beach in Gaza, and saying that since there are problems there, I shouldn't go to Israel at all is sort of like saying that there is crime in New Haven, so going to Connecticut is insane.

Somehow, the conversation turned to the situation in Gaza at that point, and she said that she understood why those animals are kidnapping people - it is because they "feel oppressed."

I was totally shocked. She is a friend whose opinions I have always respected - but this was really beyond the pale. I feel oppressed by the bar exam, does that mean I get to kill people? I think not.

I'm sorry but when Israel left Gaza (where they had every right to be), those fucks lost all right to complain about being "oppressed." They got their land. They told the whole world (which was stupid and/or gullible enough to believe them) that all they wanted was land. Land for peace. I thought that was retarded at the time, and I'm sad to say that I have been proven right. They don't want land. They want the entire state of Israel to be destroyed and they want complete sovereignty over the entire Middle East. They won't stop either, because the world seems to sympathize with them and will condone their asinine behavior because it's politically fashionable to do so.

Why, then, is it politically in vogue to support them when they have absolutely no legal or moral legs to stand on? Is it good old-fashioned anti-Semitism? I think, in large part, it is. Is it because Israel clearly is smarter, better-equipped, and more organized than they are? Is it because the world is scared of them, since they have shown absolutely no respect for human life, and it seems easier to appease them than to get blown up ourselves? Or maybe it is because the American media, even the most prominent papers out there, will write stories about how Israel has done x, y, and z in Gaza - without even mentioning why Israel is there in the first place: to try to find Cpl. Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas kidnapped and is holding in Gaza. Small wonder, then, that those who rely on the New York Times for their news hate Israel.

I may never understand why people make excuses for them. But it does make me totally sick to read comments from their supposedly peace-loving Prime Minister Abbas, who will blithely go on the record saying that it is bad that Israel has bombed empty buildings in Gaza to eliminate the terrorist meeting places, "But what is worse is targeting civilians, including families."

Tell that to the family of Eliyahu Asheri, a civilian who was kidnapped and killed just a couple weeks ago by Hamas (which of course got little or no American media coverage, for absolutely no good reason). I think the Asheri family might agree with him.

Service journalism - because really, I'm just that nice

2006-07-10T01:26:00.000-04:00

Two links of interest:

1. Even the NY Times knows Dell sucks. But then, it is Dell that drove me towards being a Mac user, so they can't be all bad, can they? I guess it was worth the sacrifice of my old laptop two weeks before finals, first semester second year of law school (a mere month after my warranty expired, natch). Once you go Mac, you never go back!

2. Other people hate the bar, too. But somehow, when it's on Craigslist, it's funnier.

UPDATE: The above link has been removed, for whatever reason. Here's the text:

Fuck the NY Bar

...and fuck the board of law examiners. These motherfuckers have nothing better to do in life than ruin the summer of 10,000 starving law school graduates every year.

Hey assholes... ever wonder why half of all law school exams are open book? Because, lawyers don't need to memorize every fucking thing... we go to law school to learn how to LOOK THINGS UP!!!!

Fuck your stupid model answers. Fuck you and the 37 exceptions to hearsay. Take Blackacre and shove it up your ass. Tell your intended beneficiary to blow me. Would my foot up one of your asses constitute a material breach? If NY has such an indelible right to counsel, why do we have so many friggin' convicts? Did those guys pass your little quiz, you fucks? Oh, and by the way, thanks for the fucking typing lottery... and don't worry about all the people who didn't get in... we do not feel
DIASADVANTAGED in any way by having to write out six fucking essays. Like that's really fair.

Stay out of my wingspan... I'm pissed off.

Signed,
A reasonably prudent law school graduate

* this is in or around a law library near you

Bar Exam to Me: I'm Fucking You Tonight (and for the next two-point-five weeks)

2006-07-09T14:20:00.000-04:00

Here we go, kids, two more subjects I won't really study and then it's the two-week leadup to the bar. No more BarBri to force me to wake up in the mornings (or, sometimes, the early afternoon so I can make it to the 1:30) - just me and the books.

And I know I'm not even going to have the luxury of goofing off or catching up on Friendster, TV, or even the rare nap. I got my score back from the BarBri MBE administered at the Javits Center last week, and let's just say I've got some work to do between now and July 25. I keep hearing stories about how people got in the 80s on the practice test (which thankfully I didn't) and ended up with 150-somethings on the real bar, so that's good, but not exactly something I'd like to rely upon. Especially in light of the fact that I am apparently scoring in the sixth percentile nationwide in Evidence, a subject that was supposed to be my best. Not that I trust their percentages, which make no sense whatsoever. If I got zero questions right on a topic, how did I still do better than nine percent of the country? Suspect. But still totally disturbing.

By the way, that test at the Javits Center was such a scene. I truly believe that if someone had shown me a photograph of thousands of poorly groomed, sweating, anxious law students coming in with their little plastic bags and Vitamin Water, I would have thought twice about attending law school.

Anyway, I think I will be hopping back onto the Paced Program train after the classes end this Tuesday. I think I need someone standing over me telling me what to do so I don't panic. It's going to be a long, long next couple of weeks, and my guess is that it will be at least moderately painful. But I'm ready. BRING IT.

I said, BRR! It's COLD in here!

2006-07-05T14:09:00.000-04:00

Okay, people, I know that it's summer, and everyone likes to blast their air conditioner to remind themselves of how we have mastered mother nature, and all that.

But I ask you: is it really necessary to make it so fucking cold that I am studying here at school (against my will) wearing a fleece hoodie with the hood up and I am still freezing? IT IS JULY!

Has anyone heard of the concept of "room temperature?"

WWRPD?

2006-06-29T00:32:00.000-04:00

On a hot, humid, nasty day like today, a girl's gotta get out of her apartment.

My electric bill for this month is probably going to rival Namibia's GDP and I've spent untold sums on takeout, the actual air conditioner itself, clothing, and so on. Not to mention, although I love my cats dearly, they do tend to crawl all over me as I try to study, which is of course adorable and life-affirming and all that, but also really distracting. Let's face it, I am distracted enough anyway. So I decamped for the wild blue yonder today, and by wild blue yonder I mean my local, neighborhood Starbucks.

This Starbucks has a wonderful basement. It has no windows and no wireless Internet; electric outlets and table lamps are generously distributed; and my cell phone gets no reception. It is like a beautiful, climate-controlled isolation chamber down there and I have used it to study for finals for a couple years now. The only problem with it is that it is so quiet that if someone so much as taps her nails on the table, it is extremely annoying and distracting. They need a good white noise machine or something. But it's still better than my apartment, so off I went.

At a certain time in the afternoon, the neighborhood day camps let out and the neighborhood moms who don't work go to get their little prodigies. They also like to swing said prodigies by my beautiful Starbucks. Usually the basement is kid-free, since it is totally boring down there. I practically want to tear my hair out down there unless I'm really into my studies, I can only imagine being six and not studying for the bar. I'd hate it down there. But today, as I was busy minding my own business and trying to understand property, no fewer than six dirty, sweaty, grubby, LOUD little darlings ran down to my precious basement and began chasing one another in a manner that might have been cute under other, non-bar circumstances.

Another girl who was down there studying remarked out loud, "Don't these kids have parents?"

About five minutes later, two Brooklyn Moms came downstairs with their lattes. They were charmingly dissheveled with expensive dye jobs and expensive glasses. I hoped they might be into discipline and would rein their kids in, seeing as how quite a few people were studying and enjoying what had been the silence of the basement, but no. Apparently they came from the whole-language, spare the rod and spoil the child school of parenting. Or maybe they were just idiots.

"Boy, it sure is quiet down here!" commented one of the Brooklyn Moms.

"Yeah, it's just like a library!" laughed the other, settling into the plush chair to enjoy her latte as her obnoxious children ran around screaming, "TAG! I GOT YOU! YOU'RE IT, YOU'RE IT, YOU'RE IT!"

WWRPD - What would the reasonable and prudent person do under these particular circumstances? Grin and bear it, I guess. What did I do? I gritted my teeth and tried to settle in and wait it out. I thought they wouldn't last longer than a few minutes.

I was wrong.

The children ran around unencumbered by discipline or a "Shhh, Madison, people are trying to study down here," or a "Keep it down, Drexler, and don't disturb the nice people," or a "Kyron, let's practice using our indoor voice!" Nope! Moms chatted and laughed about their charmed lives while their rotten offspring enjoyed MY BASEMENT.

I glared. I gave these two women the stinkeye from hell. I figured at least one of them was probably a lawyer for Legal Aid or the ACLU or something before she was artificially inseminated and might understand my need for quiet better if she saw the books clearly marked BARBRI on the table. Nope!

After three or four children had taken their turn as "it," I took my turn and packed my stuff up as loudly and angrily as I possibly could. Oh, I slammed those books, shut the computer with a bang, zipped up my bag angrily, and huffed and puffed and glared my way out of there. And not one of those bitches even noticed.

Yeah, I know it's not a library, but last time I checked, it wasn't a playground either.

Caution: bar studying may be hazardous to your health

2006-06-22T19:20:00.000-04:00

For the past few days, my left foot has really, really hurt. I was totally confused by this, because even though I am a total klutz, I could not remember banging it, twisting it, or otherwise causing injury to myself. I figured I'd best let it go and concentrate on studying, so I didn't go to the doctor or do anything about it. Last night, I took a (painful) walk to the bank to deposit a check, where a perfect stranger asked me, "Miss, are you okay? You're limping!"

Yeah, thanks, buddy.

So today I finally gave in and called the doctor. I described my symptoms (swollen, painful, no apparent bruising, sore to the touch, very difficult to walk on) to my doctor, who of course wanted to know how I did this to myself. I had to tell her that I had absolutely no idea. She prescribed either a heating pad or warm soaks and Motrin, and said I should keep it elevated. "You are so weird," she commented. "You always call me with the most bizarre injuries.* How do you keep doing this stuff to yourself?"

This afternoon, I was busy condensing my evidence outline when my right foot began to really hurt. What the hell is wrong with me, I asked myself. What have I done now???

And then, EUREKA! I figured it out.

See, I do this thing when I study. I sit with one foot dangling and one foot underneath me. I've always sat this way while at my desk. It's always been very comfortable. I don't even do it consciously - it just happens this way. But now that I have been sitting at my desk more than I ever have in my life, and I am not kidding, I have hurt first one foot and then the other.

So now I am tied to my apartment as it is too painful for me to walk anywhere on my bruised and aching feet. And I have an ice pack on the right foot, and a heating pad on the left.

Seriously, people, you cannot make this shit up.

*She may also be referring to the time I called her from Rome, asking if one could get rabies from a horse bite (sustained outside the Coliseum). Don't ask.

Hearsay exceptions

2006-06-22T11:55:00.000-04:00

Fanny Friend drops by Sally Student's house to visit for a mid-bar review pep talk. She finds Sally lying barely conscious on the floor. In her cold hand, Sally is clutching a contracts outline. Her two cats are standing over her mewing plaintively and pawing her motionless body. Fanny exclaims, "Sally, are you okay? What has happened to you?" Sally moans, "I'm not going to make it . . . I can't continue like this . . . I am going to die unadmitted to the New York Bar . . . I blame my father for talking me into law school." Immediately thereafter, Sally lapses into a deep coma and dies two days later.

Is Sally's comment admissible in a suit for wrongful death against her father in New York?

A. No, because Sally probably took too much Tylenol PM by accident the night before in a misguided attempt to sleep, and when she said that, she was just being dramatic.
B. No, because even though it is criminally negligent to talk a normal person into suffering though law school and the bar, this is not a criminal prosecution.
C. Yes, because it is a dying declaration.
D. Yes, becease going law school and taking the bar really was a stupid idea and her father should have known that, having failed the bar twice himself.

Pity, party of one

2006-06-21T20:59:00.000-04:00

Many things about studying for the bar suck. The material is boring. The hours are brutal. The sleeplessness, as noted, is a problem. The constant sense of panic is tough to take. The takeout is expensive.

But I must say, the worst part is definitely the loneliness.

Panic in the streets of Brooklyn

2006-06-21T13:08:00.000-04:00

Last night I realized that I am really, really nervous about the bar exam. I manifest my nervousness in a number of unconventional ways, and absolutely none of them are productive. Rather than do the normal thing and up my studying, cut the procrastination, and maybe take a yoga class, I am instead lying awake all night, falling asleep during class, and spending long, beautiful hours researching things I've never before cared about on the Internet. To wit: a transcript of Anderson Cooper's Angelina Jolie interview last night. I don't care about Angelina Jolie. Maybe the only thing I care less about than her stupid illegitimate family is the plight of African orphans with flies on their faces (sorry, orphans; sorry, Sally Struthers). But I am too nervous about the bar . . . to study for the bar.

Right.

Although yesterday I did make myself feel better by calling BarBri to complain about Erica Fine, that dumb idiot who "taught" wills and Adrienne Davis, who hemmed and hawed her way through a disorganized trusts outline, as previously bitched about. The hapless phone attendant who took down my complaints had obviously heard from several other stressed-out, borderline psychotic students that day, and breathed deeply through my rant. She summed up, "So basically you feel ripped off."

I thought about it and replied, "Well, yes, honestly, I do. I mean, that's not why I'm calling, I just serously think you should consider, well, I mean, I know it's not your decision, but your bosses should consider never letting either of these two people lecture important, or even not important, subjects again. And yes, I do feel ripped off."

"Mmm-hmm. Well, BarBri values your comments and we hope that you will put them in writing on the course evaluation form. We do take those very seriously. We regret any inconvenience we may have caused you."

"Yeah. Sure thing."

"And by the way," she whispered, "a lot of people have already called to complain about them."

Oh, now I feel better. Thanks. That's great, but they're not going to re-teach me trusts, now are they? ARE THEY?

Well, I guess it's time to hit up some celeb gossip sites.

Wills, trusts, and extortion

2006-06-19T19:58:00.000-04:00

Here's the thing. Of course I had to take BarBri. I had no other choice. Pieper isn't really a viable alternative, as far as I'm concerned, and BarBri sure beats doing nothing at all.

In most cases.

The lady they threw up on that podium for NY Wills was appallingly bad. I mean, I could have taught it better, since I've taken Trusts & Estates and did okay in it (against all expectations, I ended up getting pretty good grades this semester, minus one gaffe that tied first year torts for worst grade ever). I would be willing to bet that the lady they had teach it never took T&E, and possibly never even read over the outline before getting up there to teach it to the thousands of eager, sponge-brained young folks trying desperately to pass the NY Bar. Which tests Wills. Very, very heavily. I fail to see how having some office employee read the outline to us for two days is "teaching"; we could all have done that ourselves. I didn't appreciate her obnoxious attempts to bond with us through unfunny jokes, nor did I enjoy her horse-laugh as she, alone, laughed at them.

But even more so, the lady who taught Trusts to us today sucked. I mean she su-uuuu---uuuucked. At least the Wills chick read us the outline and let us fill in the blanks, like 4th graders doing Mad Libs. This bitch didn't even read half the shit in the outline, instead telling us, "You can read over this at home, it's straight memorization." Oh, really? Then what am I paying YOU for?

Not everybody has a fancy law firm to foot the bill for a bar prep class. Some of us have to pay for this out of our own pockets!* And to insult us by telling us how heavily tested this stuff is, then putting an idiot up there to parrot it (or not) verbatim from the outline, is really a fucking insult.

*Or out of our mothers' pockets, in the interest of full and fair disclosure.

Things I'd rather do than study for the bar

2006-06-11T18:24:00.000-04:00

(In no particular order):

1. Cook. Since beginning to study, I have made multifaceted, complex gourmet dinners, including stuffed cabbage, baked chicken with honey/soy/mustard glaze, a lemon meringue pie (from scratch, of course), tomato/avocado salad, several varieties of smoothie, and more. Cooking is just so much more satisfying than bar studying. After two hours of hard work, you actually have something to show for your efforts besides a pounding headache and the desire to throw your computer across the room.

2. Paying bills. Gotta make sure my credit doesn't go to hell while I'm studying!

3. Rearranging furniture. Sometimes, you just have to shake it up a little! Fresh start and all that. Helps me focus.

4. Calling my mother. It just brings her so much joy when I call "just to say hi," who am I to rob a sweet lady of that kind of happiness?

5. FRIENDSTER. Enough said. Update your damn profiles, people, so I have something to look at.

6. Jogging. All that eating (see #1) is making me fat, better keep the pounds off by a nice jog now that it's warm and not raining outside!

7. Trips to the new Red Hook Fairway. It really is paradise on earth! Such good prices and selection.

8. Meditation. Sometimes it helps clear the mind just to sit and stare at the space above my computer. And think really hard about nothing.

9. Brush my cats. The weather is heating up and it sure does make them feel more comfortable if I can get some of that winter fur off them!

10. Current events.

But I have actually been making some progress, despite being set back by my inability to concentrate, graduation, and a Jewish holiday. I don't love studying (obviously), but I must say that I think BarBri is really quite good. It really is uncanny how a subject that took 3 hours a week for an entire semester can be reduced down into 3 hours total. Now, if only I could commit some of it to memory.

Second bite at the apple

2006-05-30T14:50:00.000-04:00

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Law school is officially over. I took my last final, threw out all my notes, sold back my (largely unopened) textbooks, and drank unti I didn't know my last name.

Then I started studying for the bar.

Today was part deux of New York Practice, a subject you may remember from my pre-BarBri whining. We learned about such fascinating subjects as contribution, indemnification, and venue! The good times just keep on coming.

HYPO: it is hot, and it is humid. I can barely think, let alone study New York Practice in this horrible heat and humidity. I sue for tortious interference with my bar studying. I prevail. The heat and humidity are determined to be liable for $100,000 in damages stemming from my physical discomfort and $100,000 for my mental anguish, specifically the persistent fear that I will fail the bar. The jury has apportioned liability: the heat is 40% liable and the humidity is 60% liable. Can the heat benefit from CPLR Article 16 with respect to my non-economic mental anguish damages?

Answer: No. The heat and humidity are intentional joint tortfeasors, and intentional tortfeasors cannot benefit from Article 16. Thus, both are jointly and severally liable.

Yup, I've cracked!

Climb Ev'ry Mountain

2006-05-18T14:19:00.000-04:00

Well, the moment of truth has arrived. I've been waiting to post this information for a week but I can scarcely believe it's true, so I've held off. But I now truly believe it in my heart, so I can say it.

I got a job.

Someone wants to hire me.

I will not go on welfare, or to debtor's prison.

When people ask me where I'm working, I don't have to lie and say I haven't "decided" yet; I can look them in the eye and just say, "I am going to be an Assistant District Attorney."

THAT'S RIGHT, BITCHES! IT'S OVER! I DID IT!

I have been walking around with a big grin on my face for a week now. People on the street must think I'm totally insane (of course, they're not wrong). A great weight has been lifted. Of course, I got my job with one week of law school remaining. It took right up until the very bitter end . . . which I had already predicted, of course, but what the hell. I'll take it!

And there is approximately 24 hours remaining in my law school career . . . I have one more final tomorrow morning and then that's all she wrote. That assumes, of course, that I didn't fail my New York Civil Practice exam, which is perhaps not a safe assumption.

So I just have to buckle down this afternoon and study for one more. Too bad my brain is completely fried and I cannot focus on anything. Just one more hurdle to go . . . must study . . . can't study . . .

Well, I may as well go out like I went in and treat this like a college exam. Which means I've still got a few hours until I need to start!

Procedural unconscionability

2006-05-09T13:30:00.000-04:00

Today was my New York Civil Practice final exam. It's always interesting to me to learn on exam day how many people actually were registered for any given class. There are always at least 20 people I have never seen before in my life - they don't go to class, they don't hang out around the building . . . they just show up to exams and end up with the same degree that I am getting. Not that my attendance has been anything to write home about, but at least I went to a few classes!

I met some interesting characters this time around. When I came in, the proctors, in their infinite wisdom, directed me stage left to a chair on the aisle. In order for me to sit there, a guy I had never seen before had to move over because he was taking up three places instead of two. He gave me a super nasty look because he had to move, and stuck me with a broken chair. When I asked him to switch the chairs, he glowered at me and said, "I was here first." Whoa there, sorry to infringe on your space, buddy.

From my seat on the aisle, I could not see the board so I turned around and asked the guy sitting behind me which section our class was. He replied, "I don't know, I can't see either!" So we asked the next person over from him, since the next person over from me was clearly psycho. "Oh," replied the helpful Samaritan, "it says on the board which section we're in!"

Thanks.

Also, I would just like to point out a flaw in our professor's logic. When asked if he would provide us with a practice exam, he said, "No, in real life, you don't get practice exams." Okay, fine. But does that mean that in real life, you will only get three hours to handle three long fact patterns with a grillion issues each and two or three subparts per question?

Just asking.

Tell me this is a joke

2006-05-01T15:14:00.000-04:00

Just in case anyone thought I was exaggerating the ludicrousness of school policy, try this one on for size: my sister's college graduation happens to fall on the day of an exam. I wrote to the student affairs office and asked them if we could reschedule the exam for the day before so I could attend. Here's what they said:

Unfortunately the faculty determined rescheduling policy does not permit rescheduling exams for such family obligations.
Best Regards.

Call me crazy, but what better reason is there under the sun to reschedule an exam than a family obligation? What in life is more important than family? Certainly not a fucking exam! I think I'll have my mother call and yell at them, as she is the only person on earth more capable than I of conveying through her tone of voice that she believes the person on the other end of the line to be no better and no more deserving of respect than gum on the bottom of her shoe.

Also, "best regards?" What are their worst regards like?*

I have half a mind to get in touch with the dean of my school and give them a piece of my mind. I think it's pretty appalling that they market themselves as being family-friendly by having a wide selection of part-time programs, but when you ask them to make a family-friendly decision, the "faculty" has "determined" that "family obligations" are not a good enough reason to reschedule exams. Translation: they are way too cheap to hire a couple of blind and senile proctors to sit in with me and make sure I don't cheat (on an open book exam, natch). I know my friend J is right and the school is just a "favorably taxed profit center," but they could at least pretend to be something else on times like this.

*In college, I always wondered why Ramen noodles were entitled "Top Ramen." What on earth did "Bottom Ramen" taste like??

Check please

2006-04-25T22:32:00.000-04:00

Spring has sprung: I returned from my vacation to find the trees on my block in beautiful bloom. This can mean only one thing: finals are here and it's too pretty out to study. But this time, it also means that graduation is just around the corner. Unlike many fellow students, I have not experienced a single sentimental feeling or a longing to have school continue to postpone the real world. Au contraire, I anticipate the real world with joy and relief. There are finals and that pesty bar exam to contend with, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Predominantly, I am eagerly anticipating the day when I no longer have to affiliate myself with my law school. There is little love lost between me and the faculty of my school, and even less between me and the administration. I won't be sorry to walk out of those doors for the last time in June. Of course, that won't be the end of our dealings, but I can tell you this: as long as I live and breathe, that school will not see a dime from me. They will have to pry my last pennies out of my cold, dead hands if they want to see their alumni participation from the class of 2006 reach 100%. I am perfectly content to make it my lifelong mission to withhold any money I may someday make from them. In fact, I will send them the cancelled checks I may send my undergraduate institution. And my high school. And my synagogue. And the 4H Club. My law school is for sure dead last on the list of people who will ever see a charitable donation with my name on it.

I look forward to the day a hapless student caller, trying to earn a little money from the Alumni Fund for, perhaps, spring break, telephones me at my home asking for a donation. I will be polite, but firm: no, thank you for calling, I'm afraid I'm not interested. They will press me, as they are trained to do. I will remain steadfast and issue the words student callers dread: Place a no-call order in my file. I may use the phrase "cold dead hands" for effect, so the student caller will write the word "PSYCHO!" in big letters, thus dissuading future callers from bothering me.

Maybe I am psycho, and maybe my bitterness will subside at such time as I become gainfully employed. But I must say that I doubt it. I'm twelve years out of junior high school (literally half a lifetime for me) and I'm in no rush to send them a fat check either. I do believe that one day I will be a successful lawyer. I also believe that the only person or entity who will be able to take any credit for that whatsoever is myself. Thus, I totally deserved the sweet sandals I bought myself while I was on vacation.

Bar Hop

2006-04-11T01:37:00.000-04:00

Tonight I did something so terrible, so horrible, so totally against my will, something that shook me to the core. There is no turning back now, I cannot run and hide from my fate. This is the one thing that separates the men from the boys, the panic-stricken from the smug, and the unemployed slacker who lives on loans from the salaried adult. That's right. I have officially registered to take the July 2006 New York Bar Exam.

It's too late now, I can't decide that real estate would have been a better career for me, given my stunning good looks and ability to talk people into doing whatever I want. I can't just throw in the towel and work at Banana Republic (even though assistant managers at Banana make approximately the same annual salary as beginning assistant district attorneys). I am going to take The Bar, and I am going to become A Lawyer.

As if it weren't enough that I have to pay over $2,000 for BarBri, another few hundred for PMBR, and living expenses during the bar, of course I also have to pay $250 for the mere privilege of taking the exam itself. That's law for you: just when you think you're done paying, there's always another check to write to put you back in your place. The Bar Exam: $4,000. Becoming a Part of the Unhappiest Profession Out There: Priceless.

But I have made an important decision: I will NOT be taking the New Jersey Bar Exam. A number of equally unemployed friends of mine have decided to "broaden their horizons" by taking it, believing that it will make them more marketable. I say, if my horizon ever includes New Jersey, shoot me. I don't want to live there. I don't want to work there. I don't even want to see it out my window. If my career office is right and I should broaden the scope of my search to a state with fewer lawyers (like, say, Iowa - because they really did suggest that to someone I know), I'm moving to Puerto Rico or someplace with a nice climate. Tengo bail bonds!

Plus, those bastards across the river know that they are the bar of last resort, so they raise their registration fee by $75 every few weeks, just to capitalize on the rising panic of the jobless. None of those people will end up working in Jersey anyway, but it needs to exact its revenge somehow. Who better to kick than those who are already down?

This little blogger is going away for Passover, so have a great one. I shall return tanner, more optimistic, and entirely unprepared for finals. Hasta la vista!

Sometimes the snow comes down in June.

2006-04-03T23:48:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the sun goes round the moon. Sometimes the most annoying girl in your class wins $375,000 on a game show on national television.

No, seriously. Tonight, I watched with my mouth open as a girl whose mere voice used to make me run for the hills suddenly became Good Television. What is there to possibly say about that? The only other time I've felt this way was upon finding out that the biggest slacker in my section made law review, courtesy of extended time testing and someone else's outlines. It's like the proverbial slap when you expect a kiss. It should be the time for glory, the time for acknowledgment, and then not only do you not get what you want, the least deserving out there gets it.

Okay, so this isn't half as bad as that. But it was still pretty hard to watch the same girl who reputedly traded last year's valedictorian cartons of cigarettes for her first year outlines score almost $400,000 without having earned a penny of it. The same girl who sat in the front row and audiotaped our professors' lectures (I can only imagine how much fun it would be to listen to one of those tapes now and relive the glory days of first year. It must be almost as much fun as eating one's own eyeballs).

The thing is, she was sort of cute on the show, and I understood why the audience sympathized with her. She kept harping on how much debt she has from law school, and her whole big family was there with her, and all those same quirks that made me want to kill her first year actually played quite well on TV. I can only wonder how annoying, say, David Schwimmer might have been had he been in my civ pro class.

(Not) touched by an angel

2006-03-21T20:34:00.000-05:00

I have learned lately that angels come in all shapes and sizes and where you least expect them. Some people can smell vulnerability from a mile away and use it for their own purposes. Others see an opportunity to help and actually use it to help. What motivates people to do this? I don't know. But I do know that I am lucky enough to have two such career angels and that I don't really deserve either of them. But I guess that's how it works.

One of my angels works at a big firm. His firm is done hiring for the year, but he's been aggressively sending my resume out and has gotten me an interview at a place I would probably be quite happy working. They're not hiring right now but I know that if they are in the future, they will probably call me. This is partly because I had a good interview, but mostly because he is helping.

The other angel works at my DA's office. He has taken me under his wing and has become my de facto mentor. Every day I'm at the office he touches base with me, never inappropriately, but in a caring and helpful way. When I had a case that was going to go to trial, he took his lunch break on Friday and sat down with me to help me plan out my case. He took me out to lunch to discuss my career plans and wants me to talk to a woman ADA because he knows that he can't give me that perspective on the office. He is 6'5", black, intimidating as hell, and when he did a direct examination of a 14 year old girl in court today, was kind, sensitive, and spoke in such an age-appropriate way that he almost sounded like a teenager himself.

I know that I'm very lucky to have people pulling for me. Especially in light of the fact that I got an email from the career office directed at 3Ls, advertising a summer internship at a (minor) fashion house. Don't worry, it's unpaid. And don't even ask me to explain why it was sent to 3Ls when there is a little thing called the BAR EXAM happening this summer. So, yeah. I guess I have my angels for a reason!

Big brother is watching (hopefully)

2006-03-07T22:39:00.000-05:00

I am presently taking a privacy law class that for some reason comes under the "intellectual property" umbrella, but is actually much closer to a class in social and political philosophy I took as a junior in college. Except the people in my social and political philosophy class were a) smarter, b) more open-minded, and c) more intellectually honest than the people in this theoretically elite, upper-level class. I can hardly believe some of the shit that comes out of these people's mouths and I find myself somewhat speechless during the class, which I have come to dread. (I knew I should have just taken a normal, no-attendance-required class with a multiple choice final. Dammit. But that's neither here nor there.)

For example, lest you think I am exaggerating, allow me to compare and contrast two cases we have studied for you along with the class consensus as to whether "they came out right" or not. (Everyone's a critic.)

In one case, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that forbade newspapers from publishing a rape victim's full name. The First Amendment freedom of the press was balanced against society's interest in protecting the victim and/or the victim's family from further pain and public exposure. Freedom of the press won. The class was quite content with this, and with the idea that the press should be the only ones to judge what is or is not appropriate for publication.

In another, the Supreme Court held that where a man had robbed a woman's house, and then harassed her by various means including telephone stalking, the Fourth Amendment was not violated when the police attached a device to his phone line that could tell what numbers he had been dialing (no content, just the numbers). The robber's expectation of privacy in the numbers he chose to dial was balanced against the need for accurate law enforcement data. The law enforcement won. The class was absolutely beside themselves with anger.

Let me get this straight!

Somehow, liberal politics dictates a hierarchy wherein the First Amendment comes first; the individual's me-me-me right to do whatever, despite any number of negative externalities, comes second; and law enforcement comes third. This makes no sense to me at all. Nobody likes being insecure in their own homes and worrying about whether the government is "watching," but if you can't sleep in your own bed without worrying about whether someone will come in and kill you and then get away with it scot-free because his rights trump yours, then I don't see how exactly those rights help the law-abiding, generally decent human being. It's always said that rights don't mean much unless you're alive to enjoy them. I have to agree.

If I have to choose between the government "watch" me (which, unless I'm operating some kind of drug ring out of my apartment, they probably have no incentive whatsoever to do) and having criminals run around in a consequence-free vacuum because the police can never catch them, then here I am, government! Watch away.

I hate crime

2006-03-01T21:05:00.000-05:00

This semester, I've been working at a borough district attorney's office. Suffice it to say that I love it. It's easily the best internship I've ever had, which is why I've kept my mouth shut up until now. It's just that much easier to complain.

But one thing I will say is that people have come at me lately with all sorts of snide comments about how prosecutors are so judgmental, and how they just couldn't choose sides like that. I'm well aware of the usual arguments in favor of criminal defense work: you're not protecting the defendant, but rather the Constitution; you don't want the innocent to get locked up; even the most horrible person should be given the presumption of innocence; blah blah blah blah. To all those who believe any of those things, I say, go spend an afternoon in the criminal court. Better yet, leave your purse on a bench in a courtroom within the criminal court and go away for ten minutes. Come back and let me know if you feel the same way.

Someone said, "I just couldn't sit in judgment of people. Just because someone does something bad doesn't mean they deserve to go to jail - we all make mistakes."

Yes, we all do make mistakes, and I know that I couldn't judge people either. That is why it's not a prosecutor's job to judge people. It's a prosecutor's job to assess crimes. There's a difference. At a certain moment, everyone makes a choice: do I take this gun and shoot this Dunkin Donuts employee for the $50 in the cash register? Do I sell this gram of cocaine, knowing that someone may overdose on it? Do I smoke crack on a street corner? At that moment, if the answer is "yes," then that act is susceptible to being judged. And I don't care what anybody says, if you do something heinous and illegal, you deserve to go to jail. I don't care who you are. I don't care where you come from. If you fuck with society, as far as I'm concerned, you're done.

Nobody is perfect, and nobody should pretend to be G-d and judge others. That's why, luckily, no one is required to do that. (Least of all me, because obviously I'm harsher than most.) But I do believe that some acts are inherently bad, and some people are too - but that's just harder to tell. That's why I confine myself to worrying about those acts, and not feeling bad for the people who commit them.

That's my Law and Order morality for today.

Triple putz

2006-02-22T23:15:00.000-05:00

I can't help it; the Olympics are so fascinating to me. It's been a few years (um, I guess, necessarily 4) since I last watched them cause I don't much care for the summer Olympics. Now that I am a little older, and absolutely no wiser, I am struck by exactly how much older I am than everybody competing. I still recall being a little girl and making my parents videotape the ice skating that occurred past my bedtime so I could watch it the next afternoon. Anyone who told me the results prior to the viewing would be rewarded with a week-long silent treatment.

Most of all, I idolized these sprightly girls who could fly through the air in pretty clothes. Even in fifth grade, I probably towered over them, but they looked so glamorous to me. They had an interesting ageless quality: they were at once much much older than me, but also seemingly about my age because they were so small and cute.

Now, I watch the Sasha Cohens and Emily Hugheses of the world with the same eye my mom probably gave them back in 1992. They are so much younger than I am. They are younger than my younger sister. In some cases, I could have babysat them. And here they are, conquering the world, at the pinnacle of their sport, sometimes surmounting tragic circumstances (especially if they are Russian).

I always idolized them and wanted to achieve something too. I'm not sure how that logically led into law school, which maybe used to pass for an achievement 20 years ago. But maybe at least the Olympics will motivate me to go to the gym, at the very least.

But probably not. Somehow, there's something so perversely satisfying about watching Olympic athletes sweat while eating chips on the sofa and criticizing their Lutzes.

Every rose has its thorn

2006-02-05T21:22:00.000-05:00

During the trial program I completed at school, I got by far the best praise I've ever gotten in all of law school. As many of my loyal readership may know, compliments are few and far between, and often phrased in the negative (if a professor said, "That's not a bad try," I would glow for two days first year). I should, thus, have known that when I was praised to the heavens by a practitioner/instructor, that he had a little something more in mind than either getting me a job or idly attempting to restore my self-confidence.

I was told that "I have what it takes," that "I'll never lose a case," and that "juries would love me." I was excited, thinking that he was telling the truth, and that he was going to arrange for my future trial law glory to shine on his agency. He suggested I visit the office and meet everyone, and so I did. I took notes on whom I met, their job functions, and we went to court and I did the same there. I didn't like it when he closed the door to his uncomfortably small office, and I didn't like it when he insisted that I get in his uncomfortably small car so he could drive me to a subway station a block away. I didn't like it when he told me that I should dress attractively, but not too attractively, for the jury, and I didn't like it when he brought up my looks as a factor for my future success as a lawyer. I didn't like it when he touched my hand a number of times and tried to get me to agree to dinner.

But I really, really didn't like it when he emailed me six times the following week and called me three times a day leaving further laudatory messages. "Anything I can do to help you get established would absolutely thrill me," he gushed. I did not return his calls, and the messages got even more frequent and insistent. "I can assure you an interview, if you still want it. Please do call me to let me know you are still interested. I need to know. Call me."

The worst part of this story is that it's the closest I've gotten to a job interview all year, and that I actually thought about humoring him for awhile. Not doing anythign inappropriate, of course, but playing the earnest granddaughter to his overbearing, overly enthusiastic grandfather. Except after awhile I got the feeling it wasn't such an innocent desire to help a young lawyer get started. And I may be desperate, but I totally refuse to believe that pandering to an old pervert is the only way that I can get a job.

And just for the record, I didn't even get the interview. Apparently, I was only worth as much as my willingness to look the other way.

Et tu, Biatch

2006-01-19T13:47:00.000-05:00

Fresh on the heels of my new trial law kick, I have begun to resign myself to the fact that I will never make any money. I went to law school expecting that I would have a numbered bank account someplace tropical with enough money that I could be reunited with my savings someday in that tropical place, and that together we could live in luxury for at least a year. Well, fat chance. Last time I checked, people who actually practice the law (instead of proofread or hit buttons to indicate whether the CEO's email about the awesome blowjob he got from his secretary is "responsive" or "non-responsive") make less than transit workers.

Okay. This is the way it is. It doesn't make sense, but I guess I can "rough it" while I'm young. My cats like Purina as much as Science Diet, and I realize I don't like Starbucks coffee that much anyway. But I do worry about things like paying my loans back. So I went to speak to some lady in the career services office about loan repayment plans. See, real law schools have this thing they do, where if you are working in a job in the "public interest," they will forgive some debt. I wanted to find out exactly how much debt forgiveness we're talking.

I have no use for the career office under normal circumstances, as I have already noted ad nauseum, but they had another piece of information I needed. I wanted to know how much a certain public agency that might be giving me a job pays. Their website is suspiciously silent on that issue. I anticipated the worst.

I spoke to a woman in the office who had good news and bad news for me. This is an improvement over the other times I have spoken to them, which is usually bad news and worse news. The good news is that they don't pay as little as I had expected. This is not to say that they will pay me enough to sustain even half the lifestyle I want, but at least the cats and I probably won't starve. The loan forgiveness, on the other hand, was so small, so pitiful, and so totally unhelpful that I can't believe they advertise this program's usefulness to students with a straight face. I will be paying my loans off until I am 120, but I guess that's one of the modern world's wonderful new realities.

One thing this sloppy, disorganized cow told me on the way out really rubbed me the wrong way though. I asked her if she had any other suggestions, maybe some that might pay a little more, and she looked at me like I had three heads. "If you have an offer," she sneered at me, "why would you ever think about turning it down?"

"Ah, well, never accept a first offer, ha ha," I replied, not sure if she was serious.

"Are you kidding me?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah. I just want to be sure it's the right job for me. I don't want to take it because it's the only thing I've got so far," I replied.

"I don't know why you would ever think about messing around with an offer." And with that, she turned her back on me and waddled back to her office.

Is this the way they are trained to speak to us? As though one offer from a place that pays less than menial labor is the only offer I'm ever going to get, and if I don't accept it I'm an idiot? Am I really that undesirable? Luckily, I have not yet reached the point where I'm going to take advice from someone who works in the Career Office. I guess it was the only job she could get.

It's a race!

2006-01-16T12:09:00.000-05:00

So the past two weeks have been spent immersed in a trial advocacy class. It was the first and probably only crowning moment for me in law school. Sure, I've done well in a couple classes, made a couple professors think I'm smart, and worked hard in certain extracurricular activities. But nothing made me feel like I might actually be a good lawyer someday quite like this class. In fact, if I am a good lawyer someday, this is the only reason that my law school will be able to take credit for it. Otherwise, everything I may accomplish in the future will be in spite of my school, not because of it.

I was exhilirated, loved trial work, and almost even lost my customary bad attitude. My friends and family were utterly confused by my obvious happiness. I was exhausted, but I was thrilled. The program ended yesterday in a full jury trial, and I was happy with the result. After the trial, I took the most glorious nap ever and woke up still happy.

Then I checked my e-mail.

My school being what it is, they have to turn everything into a competition. This program was no different. They select for a mock trial team, based on the judges' evaluations of us and rankings. Of course there has to be a ranking; of course, 10% of us have to win and 90% have to lose. And, of course, I have to be in that 90%. It's just like first year again: you get your hopes up, think you are competing at a higher level, and then find out that you are where you'd least like to be: solidly on the curve.

I'm a third year now. I'm nearly out of here, for better or for worse. I should be immune and too mature to let this kind of shit bother me. But somehow I'm not. Just once, I want to win.

Oh what A beautiful morning, oh what A beautiful day

2006-01-10T23:31:00.000-05:00

Further proving my point that nothing in law school makes sense, I got back two awesome non-B grades this week. I truly don't understand how I can get a B in a course where I know the professor personally, thought he liked me, and had a firm grasp of the subject matter, yet I can get an A in a class where I am completely out of my element. Corporate governance? I can't even tell you what that means. I know less about it than I did at the beginning of the course, because I am five months further removed from my actual Corporations class. And Professional Responsibility? I deserve a good grade in that class? I didn't crack the book, and someone stole my rule book two days before the exam. The irony of someone stealing an ethics book is not lost on me. But I guess they needed it more than I did.

Trust me, I'm not complaining about my unexpected good fortune. Just a little bit stumped. And somewhat resentful. Where were you first year, beautiful A's? That was when I really needed you. You and I, we coulda been so great together. We coulda dressed up nice and gone out on interviews. We coulda had expensive lunches and summer associate events at trendy hotels. We coulda been somebody. But better late than never, I guess.

And I'm sorry for the lapse in posting. I'm busy to the point of total lunacy, but at least I've lost like 3 pounds. Those of you who go to school with me will understand why, and I'll explain later for those of you who don't. Suffice it to say that when I finally made it to the nail salon today, after about two months of complete and total neglect, the manicurist glanced at my ragged, nibbled-up cuticles, smiled indulgently at me and intoned, "First time?"

Glass half full, for once

2006-01-02T22:10:00.000-05:00

I got a rejection letter today! I don't know why this gives me so much pleasure, but I feel great about it. The letter said:

"Dear [me],

I write in response to your letter of December 23.

Our firm does not hire lawyers with less than three years' experience.

Thank you for your interest in the firm.

Yours truly,

[him]"

Wow! I giggled like a schoolgirl. That's the best news I've heard all year. Not only did someone actually receive my letter, but it really, truly wasn't personal. It's all on the upswing now!

From Russia with love

2006-01-01T07:22:00.000-05:00

To begin my analysis of my New Year's Eve, I'd like to start with a quote from none other than Forrest Gump. He's been coming up a lot in conversation lately, despite the fact that I haven't seen the movie in about ten years and have absolutely no plans to do so again. But in his pseudo-charmingly idiot-savant way, he said, "My mama always said life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Earlier this week, my boyfriend applied this saying to his job at a big firm, adding some fine print to the truism which states, "If you are a lawyer at a big firm, there is a 95% chance that any chocolate you happen to choose will taste like shit. Blackout dates apply to the remaining 5%." Last night, the Gumpism came up at the New Year's party I went to.

After last post, I emailed a good friend of mine from college who is always guaranteed to know about good parties. He gets out a hell of a lot more than I do, and is always gracious enough to invite me and my entourage to join. Last night was no exception: he told me about a party in a certain neighborhood in Brooklyn close enough for me to walk to, with a very reasonable entrance fee and an open bar. He stipulated that the people throwing the party were a bunch of classical musicians, so the dork quotient may be high, but that lately they've done a decent job overcoming that and getting a pretty good crowd. I was psyched, not only for myself (I'd rather spend the night with the US Marines than more law students at this point) but for my beautiful, dorky, classical musician sister. I had dinner with her the other night and told her about it, saying that it sounded right up her alley and she should join us.

"Is it thrown by the E brothers?" asked N, slowly turning red.

"Um, yes, I think it is, why?"

"I dated one of them literally last month and he never called me after the third date. But he did send me an email inviting me to the party, and I couldn't even believe the nerve."

"Oh," I replied, "come on, N! You should come. Don't let a little thing like the presence of an ex ruin your New Year's! Just show up, you'll look hot, he'll be sorry, and you'll have a great time."

"No fucking way," replied N. And she wouldn't budge.

So last night my boyfriend and I gussied ourselves up. I wore a standard going-out outfit, a ton of eye makeup, and blow-dried my hair, and overall was quite pleased with the result. M picked us up in a cab and we hightailed it off to the party, in a fairly awesome dance space in an interesting area. I was at the party for about three minutes when I noticed J, the younger brother of my ex-boyfriend D. I had not seen J in almost three years, but he still had that disaffected, unwashed, rich-kid bohemian thing going on (a Bobo, one might easily say).

I grabbed M and boyfriend. "Check it out, my ex-boyfriend's younger brother is here. What the fuck?"

"Hey, check it out," said my boyfriend. "I recognize that guy. Isn't that D?"

I turned around and promptly nearly fell on the floor. Yes, that was D, my ex who had, in theory if not in practice, moved to Russia. Our split two and a half years ago was, how to put it, totally acrimonious and he's been trying to contact me ever since for God knows what reason. I don't fuck around and in the interest of getting rid of him, had changed my cell phone number, IM name, email address, and borough (well, okay, that was incidental). I had done an absolutely outstanding job of avoiding him over the past few years, but there he was in the flesh. What the fuck was he doing here at MY New Year's party?

Sometimes, life is like a box of chocolates. You take one, thinking it'll taste just fine, and then your fucking ex-boyfriend shows up out of nowhere and you want to throw it right up onto his shoes.

I handled the situation as one might predict: I got totally and utterly shitfaced. Luckily, my boyfriend handled this situation with his customary grace under pressure and ended up semi-bonding with the ex. Things could've for sure been worse, especially since we looked hot and my boyfriend is very good at defusing these situations and calming me down. The sight of the two of them chatting outside my earshot was, to say the least, bone-chilling, but once the initial shock wore off, I did fine. Sometimes, it's important to be challenged to realize just how okay you are, and last night was no exception. We laughed the situation off and had a good time anyway, and an important lesson was learned: just because someone moves to Russia, don't count on them to not show up when you least expect it. You never know what you're gonna get.

New Year's Pukin' Eve

2005-12-29T03:07:00.000-05:00

It is December 28th - nay, December 29th - and I still have no idea what to do for New Year's Eve. My friends are split on this issue, much like the federal circuit courts as to the proper application and scope of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. (Sorry.) Some, mainly those with paying jobs, are going the tried and true route: paying upwards of $200 for parties at hotels or posh bars, where they can drink cheap vodka all night long and have a plastic champagne glass full of Korbel at midnight, while hopefully making out with other similarly situated folks.

I would do this, but I have done it before (for less than $200, mind you), and I can tell you exactly what happens when I am placed in front of an open bar for five hours: I conclude my night by throwing up. I can throw up for $10 just as well as I can for $200. Armed with this knowledge, I have decided to forego the expensive route and end my New Year's praying to the porcelain goddess happy and smug in my thriftiness.

Other friends, such as this one, are trying to throw small house parties. I am amenable to house parties, particularly the kind that involve top shelf liquor placed freely on tables with buckets of ice and party cups, but I have a little feeling that this year, things will be a little different. The idea of sitting in R's apartment with her horrific, nightmarish friends makes me want to spend the night on my couch drinking out of a bottle of whiskey while cursing at Dick Clark, or whoever does that show now.

Suggestions? Let me know, cause I know there's gotta be an in-betweenish option out there that will permit me to blow chunks in style at the end of the night.

B all that you can B

2005-12-27T22:26:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again: finals are over, I have logged some quality TV on the couch time, and my cats are slowly remembering who I am. Two things, however, are present to disrupt the relative peace: the never-ending job hunt and the agonizing wait for grades. I don't really know why I set so much store in my grades at this point, but coming from a long line of overachievers (interrupted, sadly, by a short line of total underachievers - such as my father), I can't help but check my grades six times a day until they are all present. Naturally, although I finished the required work for one class on November 9th, and my finals were both over a week ago, I have no grades posted. Law professors are likely the laziest subset of gunners out there. They work approximately two hours a day - if that - and spend the rest of their time farting around their offices, "writing articles." Oh, sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part, this must be the most highly-paid job if hours worked are divided into salary. It may represent a pay cut from Cravath, but I'd take a job that paid $95,000 a year or whatever and required me to work twelve hours a week.

This is all, of course, smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that when those lazy SOBs finally get it together and assign some grades to the drivel people handed in, I will have "the usual, please": one B after another. Bzzzzz. I'm allergic to Bs and yet they won't stop coming. I can study for three months for an exam, amending the outline after each and every class, retaining material like a sponge, engaging in intellectual discourse with my compatriots on a weekly basis, and emerge with an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject in question (See, e.g., First Year Contracts). Alternatively, I can keep the textbook's binding in its original condition, commence studying the day before the exam, and quote directly out of Emanuel's.

Bs.

And more Bs.

Bzzzz.

Lazy Thursday

2005-12-22T13:17:00.000-05:00

The semester has finally concluded. In my vacation-induced ADD, rather than trying to come up with some kind of coherent theme to unify the events of the past week or two, I will instead list them in no particular order.

- I called this attorney from my old firm (you know, the one that unceremoniously fake-fired me right before the holidays) and notified him that I would no longer be gracing the firm with my presence. I had a feeling he was not privy to management decisions, despite having a better career than any of those fuckwads who make decisions around there, and I was right. He was very nice to me while I was there, offering to send my resume around and once had even offered to take me to dinner to talk about "my career." We had had to cancel, but I hoped to reschedule and have him help me get a job. "Aww," he said, "I will miss seeing you around here." "Thank you," I said. "Would you still be interested in getting dinner sometime?" "Well," he replied, "what's this I hear about you having a boyfriend? You know, I was asking you out on a date." Oh. My bad! How stupid of me to assume that he was going to help me, in my vulnerable position, get a job without strings attached! Well, so much for that. And now I have Reason # 93849384398 not to go back to that office ever again.

- I had finals this week and one of them was for a two-credit ethics class. Predictably, the class itself was a nightmare, but less predictably, the exam was the worst one I have ever, EVER taken. Five questions in four hours, with one of them being a 4-page fact pattern with ten subquestions. All this for two credits??? But now, exams are over and I have that battered-woman syndrome, walking around dazed and somewhat bruised. (Literally. The hand I wrote those exams with may never be the same again.)

- To update on last post, not only have certain area law schools postponed the exams affected by the transit strike until the make-up day, but I just learned that others have postponed them until JANUARY. Thanks, guys - pushing the exam I had to take on Tuesday back from 8:45 until 10 really made the difference!

- Last night, I was at a bar with my boyfriend and B, a friend of his from school. She is working at one of the MEGAFIRMS, one of the only ones I had even heard of before law school. She makes a ton of money, and her hours are even better than my boyfriend's. While he was away closing his tab, she looked at me and said, "Working sucks. Really. I wish I could just marry a rich man and have babies." "Me too!" I replied. "I should dump his ass and find one of those ASAP." "He'll do fine," she replied. "No need to do that." "Yeah, he'll be fine in ten years. But I want to do this next year instead of working!" We shared a little giggle, until I think we both realized that neither of us was really kidding. So it looks like life on the other side, where B lives, replete with fat paychecks, unfettered trips to Banana Republic without worrying about whether the item you are buying is a) on sale, and b) going to mean you have to stop eating, and cars home at the end of a long day instead of the subway (if the fuckin subway is EVEN RUNNING) - just doesn't make the difference. Thanks feminism, really glad that the option of staying home at my age has been taken from me without due process.

- Watch this, please.

Impermissible accommodations

2005-12-14T19:39:00.000-05:00

Faced with a transit strike during exams, my school offered up help and accommodation in its usual measure: none at all.

The transit union has voted to authorize a transit strike if an agreement is not reach by the deadline on Thursday night. As mentioned in my email of last week, exams will have to be held at the times previously scheduled, regardless of whether or not a strike actually happens, so please do not wait to make alternate arrangments.

In order to help students make arrangments with other students for a place to stay or for carpooling, we have set up a discussion group for all students on the [school] website. If you will be driving to school and can offer another student a ride (in the past, carpools into the city have necessitated at least 3 people), or if you can offer someone a place to sleep, please post a message. If you need a ride or a place to sleep, you can also post an inquiry.

Other area law schools are cancelling Friday's exams. But why would my school do that? Why offer us a meager amount of aid in a time of great stress? Exams already stressful, and the idea of having to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge with my binder and textbook to get to a pre-9 A.M. exam makes me want to curl up in bed and cry. Rather than reschedule them for later in the day, or let us know that in the event of a strike, they will make some other type of plan, they are letting us know up front that our well-being is about as important to them as whether or not we get jobs. (In fact less, since there is no statistic for how happy we are and how much we feel like the school cares about us.) Couches and carpools . . . now THAT's a contingency plan!

The devil will make work for idle paws to do

2005-12-11T01:31:00.000-05:00

I look like the very model of studiousness, don't I? From the cute little computer to the empty Snapple container, and the empty soy milk container, and the papers...

Until you look a little closer. Sigh. Yup, I am the worst student ever.

At least he's getting some work done.

I can't quit, because you fired me

2005-12-09T00:31:00.000-05:00

Today I thought long and hard about the horrors of going to my job for a whole week and a half after having been effectively let go. It just seemed totally unfair and wrong, sort of like that quintessential Manhattan problem: a couple having to continue living together after breaking up because one of them can't find another apartment or afford to leave. I'll be damned if I am the jilted one hanging around the apartment crying about how things should have been. So I decided that, for once in my life, my academics should take precedence and I QUIT. Well, sort of, since they had already fired me. Semantics aside, today was my last day at the firm that treated me like something they had stepped in.

Now it's just a matter of wrapping my tired and bored little brain around my finals. When my entire life is in a shambles, it seems somewhat banal to have to learn the ins and outs of professional responsibility. Round 5, here I come!

Merry Christmas to some, and to some a good night

2005-12-07T02:03:00.000-05:00

Last week, I thought my firm had hit rock bottom. The sweet associate in charge of interns, always the fall guy for the, shall we say, flawed firm management, broke some news to me by accident last week. She blushed and stammered out the fact that interns are not invited to the firm's annual holiday party. It was insulting, but not entirely unexpected since I know that they are one of the cheapest firms in the industry. I thought, though, that they couldn't possibly insult me further so I laughed it off and inwardly complimented my thick skin. Fast forward to yesterday when I was delivered the final punch.

I went to the associate's office to discuss my schedule for next semester. She blushed, always a bad sign, and mentioned that the managing partner had...uh...totally restructured the intern program. Uh oh. In fact, by restructured, she meant totally eliminated the paying interns. And thus, me. Eliminated.

I made her promise me twice that it wasn't related to anything I had done. But I still have to wonder. Did I keep to myself too much? Did I screw up a memo? I do know one thing. This firm is full of fucking liars and I will never know exactly what motivated them. They cannot keep their stories straight about anything. This is the firm that tells all interns that they do not hire out of law school, yet mysteriously hired someone from a top ten school just this year. This is the firm that promised me that if I didn't screw up, they would help me get placed elsewhere, but offers no help beyond "sure, bring in a list of firms and I'll tell you what I think." Thanks. This is the firm that doesn't invite interns to their holiday party. So it shouldn't be so surprising that this firm will see nothing wrong with essentially laying me off during the holiday season when it's too late for me to find another job for next year. And if I had my guess, their budget doesn't have a damn thing to do with it.

Is there anybody out there?

2005-11-28T22:58:00.000-05:00

The semester is coming to a close and my enduring state of joblessness is beginning to irk me. I guess "irk" is a polite way of saying that it is beginning to drive me crazy, slowly but surely. Since being proactive is probably the only solution to this little problem, lately I've been hitting up anyone and everyone who's mother's cousin's uncle's friend is a partner at some firm and sending them cover letters that include phrases like, "Your second cousin twice removed So-and-So recommended that I write to you because I have always been interested in a career in X practice area and your firm has the preeminent X department."

Somehow, this never seems to work. Somehow, my bills get paid from the mailbox on my corner, but my cover letters go into the ether, into the great cover letter hole in the sky. I don't even get rejection letters from firms, it's as though the cover letters simply never reached their intended recipients. I have this theory that somewhere aliens are sitting in a parallel universe, casually slitting open my cover letters with alien letter knives, and they are laughing out loud at my resume. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" they say in their alien language, slapping their thighs with their green hands. "She thinks she can get a job with no GPA on her resume! Oh, name-dropping, that'll get you a job with MY firm! HAHAHA!"

I wonder what it would take for me to get a rejection letter. I know it's a gesture of politeness and that I shouldn't be so selfish as to expect that firms would really waste their $.37 on telling me to fuck off when silence does it just as effectively. But I need closure. I think next time some firm doesn't have the decency to let me down gently on their cheaper letterhead, I will start barraging them with more resumes, more cover letters, writing samples, phone calls, maybe a couple dead rats with cards tied around their necks reading "I write to inquire about the status of my application" delivered Federal Express. I just need to know that I'm even worth rejecting! Just say SOMETHING!!

Hello???

A New York State of Mind

2005-11-20T18:43:00.000-05:00

Last night was my good friend R's birthday dinner. I love R - we have been friends since we were small children and somehow have always managed to find common ground upon which to reunite. One thing though...I hate her friends. I have always hated her friends. It is astonishing to me how she can have such horrible taste in people and yet still like me. It almost makes me wonder if I might secretly suck. But I don't, so moving on, I asked my boyfriend if he would be so good as to join me at her birthday dinner. I have been dating him for quite awhile, and he and R barely know one another, and he'd never even met R's boyfriend. He was kind enough to join me and thus last night we set off.

Strike one: Hell's Kitchen. We had another party to go to last night which was Union Square...thus, Hell's Kitchen was completely out of the way. Not to mention that the subway can't be bothered to run predictably on weekends. But hey, it's her birthday so she is entitled to require that her friends come to her neighborhood, and she came to my birthday dinner in my neighborhood. So no big deal.

Strike two: Ethiopian food. If I lived in Ethopia, I'd starve too. Seriously, those people don't know what the hell to do with food so when they get it, they just throw it all together in a big mess, season it with spices that don't mix, and then eat it with their hands. More specifically, they eat it with a porous, disgusting "pancake" that more closely resembles a mix between styrofoam and moldy mushrooms. If this pancake didn't taste like total shit, the food might be slightly more palatable. But probably not.

And strike three: the company. Did I mention I hate her friends? Of course, we showed up late at dinner and so the only seats left at the table were on the opposite end from the birthday girl. We had to spend two and a half hours talking to her friend J. I've known J since high school, and I remembered him somewhat fondly. I remember his parents' stunning Park Avenue apartment and his cute, floppy hair. I remembered that out of the overprivileged liberals R went to school with, he was one of the least offensive. I remembered wrong.

One of J's bright ideas is to go to law school. Clearly, this is an unoriginal plan prompted by disillusionment with his current altruistic job that requires him to actually mix with the elements whose rights he supposedly wants to protect. Unaware of the Daddy's-money cushion protecting young J's descent into law school, my boyfriend counseled that law school tends to be expensive and upon graduation, the loan bills tend to be debilitating. "Yeeaaah..." said J, unable to formulate a better reply.

That out of the way, J, quickly running out of areas to discuss with me, decided to focus on the sole thing we have in common: having grown up in Manhattan. Apparently, the most evil creature known to J is the Nebraskan who moves to New York to take part in our cultural dominance. How dare they. How dare anyone not originally from Manhattan live in New York! Oh, except for immigrants from foreign lands, "because they are honest and work hard" (or perhaps because that would excuse his own entrance into New York via his grandparents).

"I don't know," I said. "In my profession, New York is a sucker's game. Either you work for some big firm that makes you carry one of those things" - gesturing to my boyfriend's Blackberry - "and makes you give up your life, or you make no money and work for some thankless government agency or small firm. I don't really feel compelled to stick around in this market for the rest of my life just to prove some point."

"When our parents decided to raise us here in the eighties, when it was dangerous, they knew what was important. They valued culture over safety and security and we paid the price for what we got. It's not fair that people move here for five years and then move back to the . . . the . . . suburbs," J sniffed contemptuously.

At this point, my poor sweet non-native New Yorker boyfriend finally permitted himself to open his mouth. "I don't know," he objected politely. "I've spoken to a lot of people who grew up in New York and they mostly just feel trapped. Maybe New Yorkers want to leave but can't. They are stuck because they're from here and can't just leave when the burdens outweigh the benefits. Maybe they just wish they could."

I smiled. This was his way of reminding J that the crime on Park Avenue in the eighties was probably no worse than it is now and calling him a pretentious homo without actually doing so. And you know what? I do feel a bit stuck. I grew up here. Great. So what? I can't find a job I like here because this market is saturated with too many damn lawyers. If I could leave and go somewhere more laid back, I think I would. I have nothing left to prove. And getting away from politically correct liberals from nice apartments with trust funds might be nice.

I hope J goes to law school. I hope he only gets into my law school. And I hope he grows to appreciate what he has been given and someday is willing to really share it.

A tale of two resumes

2005-11-19T16:33:00.000-05:00

Loafing about this weekend, after a typically stenuous week, I was reading a book called Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks, an editor of that nonpartisan beacon The Weekly Standard. I have always had some affection for The Weekly Standard, being that I am a recovering nerd and conservative sympathizer, plus I do like to laugh out loud at absurd political commentary (much the same reason I always enjoyed Nietzsche). This book sounded fantastic, especially when I learned that "bobos" are bourgeois bohemians. After a brief stint in a certain liberal arts college chock full of such creatures (who wouldn't buy jeans for less than $200 and drove Land Rovers - and crashed them regularly while driving under the influence, comfortable in the knowledge that Daddy would replace them instantaneously - yet vehemently opposed the very capitalist system that kept them in their Diesel), a book mocking such folks sounded right up my alley.

Except then it opened with a brief discussion of the New York Times' "Vows" section, or the "Mergers & Acquisitions" section as someone wittier than I once characterized it. I've been reading the wedding pages in the Times since I was but a wee misanthrope, and always envisioned my own smiling face next to that of a suitably handsome and successful groom. After all, I went to some good colleges and a high school that is certainly within the stringent requirements of that page. My own resume was never in doubt: I would grow to become a power broker, a lady, and a gracious hostess who could simultaneously put on a dinner for twelve with appropriate forks, negotiate international transactions by cell phone, and have a pedicure. I would have power suits, wear pearls and sweater sets (3-ply cashmere) and sleep soundly on monogrammed Egyptian cotton pillowcases.

Needless to say, my beautiful future was cast into some doubt when I didn't get into Columbia Law School and was forced to second-tier it. No problem, I would get good grades and transfer. But then I didn't, and I couldn't. Now, three years later, I don't even have a job and my chances of beaming with straight teeth from the "Vows" pages are dwindling.

It's funny, too, because as I have mentioned my dear boyfriend, who could not care less about "Vows" (and thinks it's narcissistic and stupid, instead of a great and triumphant tradition) is perfect for the page. His resume eats mine for lunch. In moments of despair, I have cried aloud to him that by virtue of his law firm alone, he could get on the page while I will likely be working for an Abogado's office in the Bronx providing bail bonds. Perhaps, as he argues, I need a better yardstick for measuring success and a WASPy, anachronistic monument to vanity like the "Vows" page shouldn't be it.

But now, the "Vows" page isn't just Mayflower descendents and presidential scions. Even Jews can be on it now (40%! Go us!). It's the ultimate reflection of the new meritocracy - all you need is a collision of beautiful resumes and you're golden. You don't even have to be good-looking anymore. Hell, you don't even have to be straight! All you need is The Resume. And this is why it's so damn important for me to get a good job!

Maybe I am a bit of a Bobo but all I need is a little validation. From the New York Times. Is that really too much to ask??

Sellout!

2005-11-15T20:36:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I'm even admitting this, but as I type these very words, I am doing something so horrible, so vile, so . . . disgusting that if both of you who actually read this quit after this disclosure, I won't blame you one bit. That's right, I'm watching Laguna Beach: the Real Orange County on MTV. File this under H, for one of the Horrible ways law school has changed me for the worse, but I love this show. Not so much for the plot - I couldn't summarize it if you paid me (one of the few things I won't do for money at this point, har har). I just love looking at what high school might have been like if I were blond, tan, rich, had really really white teeth, and couldn't enunciate.

Most people make the mistake of thinking that anything that is popular must be good. I grew up making the opposite mistake: anything popular must be for losers who can't think for themselves. After all, the popular kids at school liked nothing better than to make fun of me to my face, which clearly was wrong, so anything else popular must be wrong too, only suited for people with a herd mentality. As I grew up and suddenly found myself cool - or at least less dorky and thus no longer the most obvious target - I still resisted the popular. I never watched Friends and it took me until junior year of college to wear jeans. I only listened to music that could not be heard on the radio and called sorority girls "sorostitutes" and pitied them for having to buy their friends. I dyed my hair black in high school, partly for the perverse honor of being the only girl with light roots in my whole high school.

And now look at me. Disgraceful! Sitting on the couch with my trendy little iBook, admiring Kristin and LC's incoherent, disaffected ramblings and actually wishing I were blond! I chalk this up to the total absence of joy in my day. I get my jollies from three-minute IMs with my boyfriend, coffee from the corner deli that isn't stale, and not getting called on - not the stuff of a self-help book on the joys of the ordinary. When I get home, I have very limited patience for Neil Cavuto or something unpopular enough to have qualified as interesting to me in my former life. Now, it's just me, the cats, and the 9:00 showing of Uptown Girls.

Theory of the firm

2005-11-08T01:10:00.000-05:00

I have always been into prestige. I say this by means of confession because I know that for all my shit-talking about people who waste their lives toiling away at big firms, it's probably pretty clear that at least 35% of my sniping comes from jealousy. I'm not so intellectually dishonest that I can't admit that the big-name firm has always appealed to me, even if only because I have had to explain pretty much every school I've ever gone to and it would just be so convenient to drop the "Skadden" bomb. No "it's a mid-size firm" or "it's a yadda-yadda boutique"; no no, people just know what you are talking about.

I love verbal efficiency. Walking around with my boyfriend while he was renting an apartment confirmed all my suspicions: he just dropped the bomb of his place of employment and brokers immediately smiled and said, "Oh, you'll be no problem." How do they know? For all they know, he ritually burns frogs in his apartment and smears their charred carcasses all over the fresh paint job and/or has a full-fledged whorehouse running out of the apartment. Maybe he listens to house music at obscene decibels and has driven each and every neighbor he's ever had to suicide. Maybe his face is in post offices nationwide as a landlord killer! But no, "Oh, you'll be no problem." Maybe it's because the firm name assures them that whatever his freakish personal habits might be, he doesn't have time to pursue them anymore. Either way, it was amazing how quickly he was approved everywhere and it led me to contemplate what would happen if I had to rent an apartment. Let's just say that on the strength of my current resume, I'd be submitting my parents' tax returns.

So yes, I love prestige. But based on a few recent experiences, plus a re-prioritization or two, I think I want to go government. I think that firms suck. I think that I want a predictable work schedule, no billing requirements, and people who aren't under pressure. Even more than that, I don't want to make money for assholes who bill me out at about twice what they pay me and still treat me like the dirt under their fingernails: unwelcome, unappetizing, and not worth an iota of respect. I am completely sick of the egos, the bullshit, and the patronizing attitudes. Is it possible to reconcile my love of private practice perks, such as free coffee, mail rooms, and secretaries, for an easier, more predictable, and above all, more honest life?

At this point, unbelievably, I think it might be!

Besides, my boyfriend can always sign the lease for me.

It's not me, it's you

2005-10-30T22:40:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I had a conversation with C, a girl from school I know peripherally. We've never been friends - we were in the same section and have had some classes together since, but she's always struck me as slightly off and not someone I want to be around. (I try really hard to keep the crazies as far away as possible these days. I figure my profession is crazy enough.) Anyway, she is dating an international LLM who is apparently crazy about her and wants to move back to his native Mediterranean land and bring her with him. He also wants her to stay home, make his home beautiful, and enjoy herself while he goes to work. She told me that she appreciates that, but that she has loans and is uncomfortable with the idea of her boyfriend or husband or whatever paying them all back for her, despite the fact that he has offered.

I find it entirely disturbing that I found myself instantly jealous of her. I went to law school in the first place because I wanted to make sure that I never had to rely on my own husband for my financial well-being. I was always told by my divorced and bitter mother to keep a few months' living expenses in a numbered account that my future husband would never know about, and becoming a lawyer seemed like a great way to make that happen. At this point in my legal "career," however, I would happily accept an offer like C was given. If I have to be an indentured servant, better I should be able to play with children and get expensive spa treatments than get barked at by megalomaniacs every day.

One of the first signs of insanity is thinking that your world is crazy and only you are sane. But on this one, I really think I'm right. The entire legal world is so totally fucked up that I am pretty much at a loss to decide what the hell I want to do after law school. Sometimes I think I just want to drop out of it entirely and do the kind of shit I could've done out of college with my cute little BA in English Lit. But it's not because I can't hack it - I can. It's because I'm not that crazy, and honestly, I'm pretty much over the idea that I should aspire to be crazier.

So, uh, I'm accepting applications if anyone wants to bankroll my lifestyle while I get my nails done.

Eye for an eye

2005-10-23T03:34:00.000-04:00

The other day, on advice from a lawyer at my firm, I met with a professor at my school, J. J has given me the only truly awesome grades I've ever gotten in law school and always seemed to like and respect me as a human being. He showed some true kindness to me once, when I lost a journal election and was bawling in the hallway, locked out of the office. He brags nonstop about prominent people in his field being friends of his, so I thought that meeting with him might not be such a bad idea.

Wrong.

In addition to acting completely put-upon and annoyed that I was wasting his time, he informed me within the first couple minutes that he was also wasting mine because there's just nothing he can do. He has no "magic silver bullet" and is not a "clearinghouse" for jobs, matching them up with his star pupils. He made a point of mentioning that he spends 15 hours a day at school and knows fewer people in NY now than he did when he first moved here because he has just become such an antisocial workaholic. Fine. Sorry. But as if acknowledging the fact that he wouldn't help me wasn't enough to ruin my morning (considering I had woken up early to get to school to meet with him that day), he had to add a little insult to injury in typical law professor fashion.

"You need to make it clear to people that you are ready and willing to work, and that you want the job. But there is a fine line. You can't seem desperate and you have a tendency to come across as overly emotional. You do know that."

Faced with little alternative response, I swallowed and said, "Yes."

"Now, I know that you are an incredibly resilient person and that you aren't fragile. But emotional people come across as fragile, and while some people may well think, 'She is a smart person and a fun person to be around,' others may conclude that you are just too fragile to do what you want to do."

Thanks. I had thought that I had basically gotten away with the crying in the hallway incident, but some memories last longer than others, I suppose, even the memories of him calling on me in class every day for a year and always getting the question right.

I can't win: I am totally sure that some of the lawyers I worked with this summer would come to the opposite conclusion, since I had told myself at the beginning of the summer to keep everything 100% professional.

Not to be all feminist here, but this is the fucking problem that women always face: you are either a cold bitch or an emotional, overwrought, unreasonable and delicate flower who couldn't possibly hack it in the man's world of litigation. You know what? I think most people who know me would agree that I am tough as nails. If I litigated a case and lost, I would shut up and take it like a man while in public - and then cry like a baby the minute I got into a room by myself. That is what makes me a HUMAN BEING and not a robot. But I guess I should already know that the law doesn't value people at all...and the fact that I'm on the precipice of entering a profession where people who can suppress all human instincts and emotions get ahead should be a red flag, right?

Teshuva

2005-10-07T11:09:00.000-04:00

Just to follow up again, I got ANOTHER apology from the administrator mentioned below. This time, it was in the form of a handwritten note so coerced that clearly, were it a confession, it would not be admissible in a court of law. I can imagine the gun to his head as he writes:

"I regret our recent telephone conversation, and want to apologize for anything that I said that may have upset you. I understand how stressful law school is, and feel badly that I may have added to your worries.
I think we both have at least one thing in common - we want [our school] to be the best school it possibly can be!
I am happy to speak with you further about this. Just call me at [my private line]."

Well, perhaps he may understand my reluctance to ever communicate with him on the phone again, but in the spirit of the ten days of repentance, perhaps I should write to him and communicate my forgiveness. Although by Jewish law, he has to ask one more time for my forgiveness, and then he should take it up directly with the man upstairs. And I don't mean the dean of the law school.

Category 5 Shitstorm

2005-09-28T23:42:00.000-04:00

So the situation from last week got resolved. I went yesterday to a dean at my school and described the egregious behavior of last week's prince, and she was as shocked as I hoped she'd be. I had visions of administrative retribution, my word against his, and some kind of further trauma occurring in this meeting, but luckily she just let me talk and was very supportive. The first thing she said, after apologizing on his behalf, was, "What would make you feel better? What can I do to help you move past this?" I had been sure there would be way more fighting than this, so actually I wasn't sure what I wanted.

Well, that's not entirely true. What I wanted was to tie him to a chair and torture him creatively, such as by pouring Tabasco on his face, like in "Swimming With Sharks." Short of that, I just wanted some assurance that his life would be made slightly more uncomfortable on my behalf. Obviously that wasn't going to fly, so instead I proposed that he apologize in a sincere way. Simple enough, right? She promised to see what she could do.

This afternoon my cell phone rang in the middle of class, and someone left an awfully long message. I checked the message during break and listened with glee as a very uncomfortable administrator asked my forgiveness. Basically, the only thing he really apologized for was my having taken anything he said personally, but I know it's not going to get any better than that. Clearly, putting the blame back on me for having taken his very personal and insulting comments and accusations personally was not the apology I had in mind. But I will sleep just a little bit better tonight knowing that I have been a thorn in his side, and with any luck, will continue to be so for awhile. Just as long as it hurts just a little bit to be him, I feel as though I have done my job. Thanks for doing business.

Unclean hands

2005-09-20T22:52:00.000-04:00

Today I encountered what the administration at my school is really like. Stripped of their glory, their power, they are nothing but a bunch of lawyers who couldn't hack it in the legal world. Each has a flaw that prevents them from attaining their professional goals, and in the case of a certain administrator, it is his temper.

I am the president of a club at school. I've never been much of a joiner, but since the administration has proven themselves to be basically unwilling or incapable to create opportunities for their students, I decided to take it upon myself to make it happen. In that vein, I have put on a couple events, tried to get myself "out there," and tried to help other people do the same. Thus, when an administrative office asked me for a list of events the club has put on thus far for recruitment purposes, I laughed to myself and decided that no way was I going to help them brag about the fact that I have done their job for them. Thus, I wrote the following letter to them:

Dear [redacted],

I feel very strongly that [redacted] uses its [redacted] program for recruitment purposes only. I put on an event last year myself, and I faced an uphill battle, with little or no help from the administration. Moreover, even our own [student government] cuts our budget and gives us an insultingly low amount of money for events, thus limiting either the quality of the reception or the number of events we may hold. Thus, I do not think it is fair for the school to use the [redacted] program, especially the student-run groups' events, for recruitment purposes. When I chose [redacted], I did so large part because of the nationally ranked [redacted] program. While I have been very satisfied with the quality of instruction, the rest of the program has been conspicuously absent. In particular, [the career office] has provided absolutely no programs or recruitment events targeted at students interested in pursuing careers within the field. I do not wish to personally support [redacted's] misrepresentations about the program, and thus I cannot send you the materials.

This is meant to reflect my own personal viewpoint, and in no way do I claim to speak on behalf of [the club], which has tried in many ways to rectify the situation that [the school] has created for us, and with any luck, will be successful this academic year.

I hope you will understand that I am not blaming you personally for this - however, people within the administration need to understand the situation.

Yours very truly,
[me]

A perfectly polite e-mail, n'est-ce pas? I made it clear that I am not personally upset with anyone, but just don't want to get involved with their efforts. Imagine my surprise, then, when a mere 20 minutes after sending this e-mail, I received a phone call (on my CELL PHONE, mind you) from the director of that office, who proceeded to verbally abuse me. Contained within his tirade was the following:

- "People like you should not be allowed to be club presidents at this school, and I'm sorry that you are."
- calling me "entitled" and "spoiled" - because I dare to expect that my PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL should help me find a job
- asking "how are your grades?" and when I told him that I thought they were none of his business, he went right ahead and looked them up!
- "You're just bitter because you don't have a job."

Lovely! This was just what I needed - confirmation that my school doesn't care about me and may, in fact, actually hate me!

Shoot for the stars, touch the ceiling

2005-09-13T10:42:00.000-04:00

It's that time again, folks. I'm back in school for round three - Law School: 2, Me: 0 - and already I'm exhausted. I can't let them defeat me 3-0, but I'm so tired and in need of another vacation. I arranged the best schedule yet, with no classes Monday or Friday, but being the overachiever I am (ha) I am working part-time too, so the vacation time is limited. School, work, and activities together add up to no sleep and very full days.

This year, though, I'm setting low goals with the hope of finally meeting them. I just want to learn some interesting stuff, make a little bit of money, and generally enjoy my life before I sign my soul away for however many years. I want to rise above the pressures, try to remember why I was so interested in the law in the first place, and generally emerge from law school a calm, grown woman, secure in my sense of self, gainfully employed, sound of mind, and healthy of body.

Let's be honest. At this point, I'd probably settle for gainfully employed.

Stay tuned . . .

Our house is a very very very expensive house

2005-08-25T22:32:00.000-04:00

Although, as any of you who actually read this may have already noticed, this blog is officially on summer vacation, I thought I'd check in and make a totally unoriginal comment on the housing market here in this great city. Public opinion concerning my borough of choice, Brooklyn, ranges from it being dangerous, far & inaccessible to fun, young & a great place for kids to start out! Well, as usual, the truth falls somewhere in the middle, but generally I love it here and wouldn't trade my beautiful apartment in my beautiful neighborhood for anything.

One thing that is definitely 100% false, though, is the myth that here in Brooklyn, you get "more for your money." Nowhere in this damn city do you get any sort of "value" for your money. My boyfriend and I have seen the worst garbage imaginable in the past three days - apartments where you have to step up two feet to get into the bathroom ("hope you don't like to come home drunk!"), apartments straight out of a Geico commercial ("the love was real, but the house was built too small"), apartments that shook when the train rumbled by underground, apartments where the broker sheepishly suggested that the couch could be placed in the kitchen. All this, for a monthly rent that could sustain a third world family for the next, oh, I don't know, fifty years.

All this leads me to wonder how everyone I know can afford to live in New York. Not everyone I know is a fancy-shmancy lawyer or i-banker, yet they all live in fantastic apartments with laundry in the building, 24 hour doormen, and other amenities that no reasonable person should require. Does that mean that everyone's parents pay their rent? I think it does. Maybe my mother, who is always chiming in with doomsday predictions about the welfare of the "housing bubble" is right. Maybe it is about to burst, and maybe that's for the best. I just hope something happens that will permit people who actually belong here and contribute something to life to stay here (short of a terrorist attack or something like that). Because the current state of affairs is pretty unbelievable.

Summertime, and the living is boring

2005-08-18T20:54:00.000-04:00

I know that in three weeks, I'm going to be kicking myself for saying this, but I totally hate vacation time while I'm just home. My worst nightmare from the post below has come true: so far this vacation, I have just been sitting on the couch, watching Law & Order reruns (don't ask me why that's my favorite show, since crim was my least favorite class, but something about Sam Waterston keeping the mean streets safe really does it for me and I can watch ten episodes back-to-back). I'm a big list-maker, and I thought that making a list would help me set reasonable goals that I could accomplish this week. Here's the list:

1. Get iPod fixed.
2. Order new battery for iBook since old one was recalled about four months ago for safety reasons.
3. Redecorate apartment.
4. Do something good for humanity or something.
5. Get a haircut (time to stop looking like overgrown, mangy beast).
6. Go to dentist.
7. Find new general physician (since I am now perhaps too old to be going to my pediatrician).
8. Take yoga classes and run, hopefully losing 5 pounds before boyfriend gets back from his jaunt around the world (must be nice).
9. Buy a printer and write at least 50 cover letters targeted to firms I care about.
10. Find a way to stop the horribly annoying noise of water dripping from my neighbor's air conditioner onto mine.

And how many of these simple tasks have I accomplished?

Two.

Yesterday, I got a haircut (hold your applause, please). Today, my mother came over and helped me rearrange my furniture and hang a couple pictures, making a marginal difference, since my furniture all sucks and looks like it was salvaged off the street or came from yard sales (which, minus the Ikea stuff, it did).

The rest of the time, it's been me, the couch, cheesecake (perhaps the antithesis of item #8), the cats, and Law & Order. So for all the complaining I do about being in school and busy and overburdened with crap, it may be for the best, since apparently during my short breaks, I turn totally nonfunctional and can spend hours walking circles around Blockbuster in a stupor, unable to even pick a damn movie.

But one thing I will be doing tomorrow that amuses me to no end is going back to work so they can take me out. I can't believe that they were too lazy to take me last week while I was still working, and out of guilt are now making me come back in just for lunch . Even worse than that is the fact that it's my big event for tomorrow. Except, of course, for the big trip to Blockbuster!

Relax! (don't do it)

2005-08-15T20:17:00.000-04:00

Finally, after months of hoping and dreaming, it's my "summer vacation." I have a week and a half with absolutely nothing to do. I should be jumping for joy, or going to sit on a beautiful, secluded beach, but instead I bought a vacuum cleaner. What can I say, I gotta cut loose somehow!

I realize now that I have no idea how to relax anymore. This is a real shame because before law school, I was amazing at it (and during certain parts of first year, I was still pretty damn good, despite the odds). According to the birthday book, I was born on the "day of gracious repose," and that used to make total sense. Law school, or should I say its grading system specifically, has taught me that each and every impulse I have to take it easy is WRONG! Some part of my brain sends painful little shocks throughout my body every time I try to relax, and I'm immediately thrown to my feet and sent out, zombie-like, to Do Something. Problem being: what the hell do I do?

Over winter break, among other endeavors, I taught myself to knit and read Hebrew (not simultaneously). The idea of a month with nothing planned panicked me so much that I set these goals for myself and actually succeeded (since I am good at most things that are not law-related or athletic). I can't do anything so drastic this time because I only have just over a week, but I can't just do nothing! I am afraid that if I don't set some ridiculous goal for myself, this week will turn into a college vacation, which were spent watching movies, smoking pot, eating ice cream, sleeping 14 hours a day, and otherwise doing my best imitation of a beached whale. (And somehow, I weighed 10 lbs. less during this time, which I guess is one of life's cruel jokes.)

So far, the plan for improvement is to have my mother come over and help me "redecorate" my apartment, which is in quotes because the word implies that I have a preexisting, coherent decorating scheme. If anyone has any better suggestions for a project for the next week, comment away - I'll be at Blockbuster and buying ice cream in the meantime.

It takes a law school

2005-08-10T23:25:00.000-04:00

People from big law firms, to the best of my knowledge, tend to look down upon my law school. I partly understand why and I partly don't. I mean, to be sure, I look down upon my law school and most people who go there. I just get a little annoyed when I get mistakenly lumped in with the rest of them. I know it's a little silly, but I expect that people should be able to tell how much more of a quality human being I am than most people at my school. I think it's pretty damn clear, but lately it's been a bit of a challenge making others see it my way.

Tonight I went to a panel discussion at my school featuring hiring partners and other luminaries from several of the big firms here in the city. Shockingly, some of them actually went to my school! You would think that they would be more inclined to help a brother out, so to speak, and look at such amazing people as myself with a little tolerance and overlook petty little letters like grades. But no. In fact, I think that they are more critical than anyone else.

These people seem to think that since they made it out alive and gainfully employed without help from something as weak as an alumni network, why should they help us? Why should they cut any breaks to people who are smart, but maybe less good at law school?

It takes a special kind of hypocrite to look students from his own law school in the eye and say, "There are many opportunities for students like yourselves out there" on a Wednesday, and then look at a resume from one of us, check the class ranking, and then stoically send the resume to the paper shredder on a Thursday. It gives me pain to think about how completely corrupted the morals of such a person must be. This is what an inferiority complex will do to you.

Even though these people have "made it" and are partners at awesome firms, they still carry around that second-tier bitterness that corrodes their self-confidence and makes them defensive. Alumni of my school are the self-hating Jews of the law world. They walk around in their Pink shirts and custom-made suits, richer than you, you, and you, and yet they still know where they came from. None of the big firm cockiness will help. And I know that, even though I clearly also suffer from a superiority complex, it won't help me either.

Vacation's all I ever wanted

2005-08-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

So I've got exactly eight days of work left (not that I'm counting) before the job concludes and I am FREE! I've got the usual summer songs playing in my head, like "School's out for summer" and "Good vibrations" and so on. The only problem is that I am not going on a proper vacation. Although I've been working for twelve weeks or what have you, I've managed to save about $400 and that won't get me very far. Luckily, it will get me on a $30 bus to D.C., and no, it will not be the Wang Chung bus or whatever the hell it's called. I am far too classy a broad for that! But in all honesty, I greatly look forward to being a tourist in someone else's city.

Here's the thing. I grew up in Manhattan, went away for college to get some "perspective," and the whole time I was just biding my time, marking x's on my calendar to get back to civilization. Now that I'm back, and with no prospect of leaving anytime soon, I am getting that pioneer longing to get the hell out. I have a pretty sweet deal with my apartment that would be tough to pass up, but otherwise, I'm growing resentful of this city. It may be my more general bitterness towards my chosen indentured servitude, I mean profession, but on the whole, it's getting to me. I can't find a good job, I am always having to elbow my way through crowds, you have to line up hours before a movie on opening weekend, it smells like human excrement in 3/4 of the subway stations that I have to pass through every day, and all this bad air can't be good for my pores. It's enough to make a girl long for an escape to greener, less polluted, crowded, noisy, expensive, and competitive pastures.

But then I remember the last time I flew into New York, incidentally also from D.C. As my plane descended, we had a beautiful panoramic view of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The sheer scale of it all really impressed me. It was so beautiful, in its filthy, hideous way. The magnificence of industry, the randomness of the little green parks, the zillions of cars stuck in traffic . . . it was all just so impressive. It made me remember why I still live here.

At least, until I got back into Manhattan and saw a homeless person pee into a mailbox.

Oops, I did it again!

2005-07-26T19:42:00.000-04:00

The law firm where I am working this summer is not the kind of place where one usually has to watch one's step. There are some hierarchies, sure, and some egos to contend with, but for the most part, it's pretty laid back. This afternoon, however, I made a rather large faux pas.

Earlier this morning, I was informed by a conscientious demanding partner that he would not be giving my final draft of a brief any further attention before filing it. (I am pretty sure that's a non-delegable duty, but it's none of my business if he gets disbarred.) I was thus doing my very best not to fuck up and spent the entire damn day proofreading, blue booking, and otherwise attempting to make it as perfect as possible. At 6:30, I was sensing the end of the torture, flexing my facial muscles in preparation for my first smile in hours when a name partner sidled up to me, ignoring the fact that I was on the phone, and sang out, "How'd you like to do a little research for me?" I was faced with a conundrum. How ever should I reply? Do I:

A) Tell the truth - "No, you fucking cocksucker, I would not like to do a little research for you. I've been blue booking for nine hours and I am extremely dangerous right now, and moreover, I should suggest that you back away slowly and pretend this little incident never happened."
B) Totally lie, instantly hanging up the phone without so much as a goodbye - "Sure! Sounds great!"
C) Somewhere in between - ask my boyfriend to hold, and ask the name partner if I can start it tomorrow before accepting the assignment.

Well, obviously, I did not go with choice A since I'm not suicidal. Nor did I have it in me to go with B. So I went with C. I let my big, honest mouth run free and of course it got me in trouble. I asked "Can I start it tomorrow or do I need to do it tonight?" He visibly recoiled. In his entire career as a partner, he's probably never had some uppity summer look at him and hedge when he tries to give an assignment. I knew I had fucked up. I tried to cover by hanging up on my boyfriend and following him meekly to his office with my legal pad, trying to muster up some enthusiasm. The enthusiasm seemed contrived though, and after writing down the assignment, he banished me from his office with a disdainful hand wave.

Here's the thing: I just don't care. These bastards are not giving me a job next year. I have known that since I interviewed. It's not personal; it's just a smaller firm that doesn't have the capacity. It's possible that they won't even hire me part-time during next semester. So seriously - fuck it. I have two and a half weeks left there, and at that point, I think I may just spend my sweet, sweet free time volunteering at a pet shelter or a hospital holding babies and otherwise reclaiming my soul from the evil law industry. So HA!

If you're feeling sad and lonely, or, Unhappy hour

2005-07-22T00:03:00.000-04:00

The other night, I was on the verge of a meltdown at work. It had been a long day, an intern was driving me crazy with his sheer stupidity, and so when a partner stopped by and said that "we" were going for drinks, I couldn't have been happier. Not only did I get to leave (since a command from a partner to go to a bar is still a command from a partner that must be obeyed, right) but someone else was going to pay for the alcohol I would doubtless be imbibing that night. Perfect! The only problem was that the partner in question was the Partner Who Hits on Me (hereinafter "PWHM"), none of the other summers wanted to go, and the other partner whose company was requested promised with a glint in his eye that he'd meet us at the bar. (Sure enough, he did not show.) I had already committed to going, pretty much as a reflex, when I found out it was just us. It was definitely too late to suddenly remember a prior commitment, so I just steeled myself and went for it.

The first thing that PWHM decided to do was notify me that he had just been dumped by his girlfriend. "I didn't even know you had a girlfriend," I said sympathetically.

"No, I guess I don't usually talk about my personal life," he sighed. (Wrong: you do. You just never mentioned her to me. And how else would I have known, considering you are constantly putting me in potentially compromising positions?) "She's a really great person. She just has a lot of trouble getting close to people." (I'd have a lot of trouble getting close to you, too.)

At this point we ordered drinks. I've bragged about liking scotch before so I knew that I had to put my money where my mouth is and order it. I also knew that I couldn't gulp it but would have to sip it appreciatively, with the air of a connoisseur rather than a high school freshman who just found the key to the liquor cabinet. I got a little nervous at that point because I remembered that I had skipped lunch due to a time-pressured assignment.

I sincerely hoped that we could discuss subjects interesting to me (read: safe), such as: how did you decide that you wanted to practice our highly specialized area of law? What made you attend Law School X? Have you seen any good movies lately? What do you think about that whole Tom Cruise thing? But no. He wanted to talk about his love life, and since that was apparently nonexistent, he wanted to talk about mine.

One thing I have never understood is why older guys at law firms make me talk about my boyfriend in detail. If they are trying to kick it to me, capitalizing on my joblessness and obvious desperation to get my career started on a positive note, why hear about how happy I am in my relationship? But I was starting to feel the scotch, and I decided my boyfriend was a relatively safe topic because, in theory at least, it notified him that I was not going home with him. My babbling about how great my boyfriend is, however, led him to my Least Favorite Topic: why I am not married yet. The better question here was definitely why he is not married yet, considering he's got at least 20 years on me. But somehow, in the past six months, all anybody I meet wants to know about me is why I'm not married. I have to say that this is a fundamentally unfair question to be asking a girl, considering it's not really up to me, but even if it were, there are plenty of good reasons why I am not married yet and at my age, I really don't see why I have to explain them to anybody.

Then it hit me. He just wanted me to confide my probable discomfort with my unmarried status to him so that he could feel slightly better about being middle aged and unable to sustain a relationship, despite being rich, not bad looking, and very well dressed. I mean, all girls must be terrified of reaching 25 and not being married, right? Ha. I considered giving him the satisfaction and decided against it. Instead, I smiled and told him that I'm just too young and there's no reason to rush anything.

Then he said the saddest thing to me. "But if it works, and you're happy, take it from me: you should just get married and get it over with, because that doesn't happen very often."

Wow. I thought my existence was kind of miserable, but this drunken, misguided advice set me straight. Yeah, my job situation sucks. I don't have one for after law school, I have more debt than I care to discuss (or think about), no one takes me seriously as a professional ("you like law? that's so cute!"), but at least I can say that I don't feel compelled to rush into marriage just because I'm in a relationship that doesn't make me want to kill myself. I thought that was pretty standard, but I guess I'm luckier than I thought.

A pound of cure: $30. Not getting a job through OCI anyway: priceless.

2005-07-18T23:08:00.000-04:00

Our OCI bids were due today. For the laypeople among my readers, this means that I had to pick which firms who deign to interview 3Ls I would like to have interview me. The odds that any of them actually will are pretty slim, but with my usual strength and fortitude I decided to give it a shot anyway. However, highly cognizant of last year's experiences, I didn't spend much time or energy preparing the materials and effectively decided to wing it. It's like the pessimist's mantra: expect the worst, and then if anything else happens, it's just a nice surprise!

One problem: my laid-back approach somehow did not include reading the instructions. Which said, pretty specifically, that for firms who required more than just a resume, transcript, and writing sample, those materials had to be dropped off at school by 12 pm today. I realized this problem around 10:30 this morning. With just an hour on the clock before I had to jump in a cab and get to school, I had to put together a second writing sample, two cover letters, and a current reference sheet. Somehow, I got it all together, redacted party names (X Corp. and Y Corp. again saving the day) and hightailed it off to school in a cab. The documents made it to their applicable destinations (I hope) and I was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing as I stopped by my delirious studying boyfriend (bar countdown: 6 days) and tried to chat him up and make him smile. Then I ran for a cab again and made it back to work, less than 45 minutes after I had left. Not bad!

And then I checked my email. A girl I rarely speak to, A, had emailed me with the subject "Cell phone found." I smiled to myself, thinking about how maybe some friend of hers had left it at her apartment recently or something and how she must be sending a mass email to all her friends. Nope! It was addressed solely to me. Without even realizing it, my phone and I had somehow become estranged during the cab ride back to work and now some cabbie had to go through my numbers to reach someone to figure out who I am. That's great. Even better was the fact that he had just gone off shift and was down by the Williamsburg bridge (nowhere near my place of employment). And then he called back to tell me he was having car trouble and it might take him awhile to get up to my office building. And then he called back again to tell me that his car had just died and it would have to be dropped off with me tomorrow. That's just great.

In sum, I spent $11 on taxis this morning and will have to tip this guy for being so accommodating and returning my dearly departed cell phone to me.

I should have read those damn instructions.

Fruit of the poisonous bush

2005-07-16T15:34:00.000-04:00

I work within spitting distance of a prominent financial institution. Every day, I see its legions of bankers in business casual flood and then abandon the neighborhood. They represent a carefully calibrated mix of ethnicities and nationalities, yet they all dress exactly alike, to the point where you have to wonder if Brooks Brothers had that damn shirt on special and they all went shopping the same weekend. Even the women are all wearing identical dress shirts and pants, apparently skirts are not business casual enough for this fine place of business. (Although I do remember hearing that for interviews in business, skirt suits are verboten because they don't want to be accused of hiring you for your legs. In law, however, we were told to wear skirt suits to interviews because they are, I guess, totally open to hiring you for your legs - uh, so where's my job, guys? - but that's perhaps another story entirely.)

Besides the varying shades of blue and grey biz casual, the other two things these young whippersnappers have in common are a) their attitudes, and b) their Blackberries. These two are often encountered simultaneously. Yesterday as I was walking to my boyfriend's apartment from work, I saw a smug banker chick looking self-importantly at her Blackberry as she crossed the street. In her total absorption, she narrowly missed getting hit by a bus. I was awfully tempted not to yell, "Look out!" but I did anyway because I'm just nice like that.

I've been able to discern two distinct types of Blackberry users. First, there are people like my friend R. He works for another (more prominent) financial institution and regards his Blackberry with a mixture of annoyance and wariness. He does not take it out while walking down the street and smirking. Rather, when it goes off, he apologizes before taking it out and examining what his greedy bosses want and whether he can blow it off or not. Second, there are people like the bankers next door. They walk down the street in packs, all consulting the Blackberry as though it were an oracle telling them that they were about to inherit $5 million from an uncle they had never heard of. They smile at it, they finger it lovingly while it is clipped to their belts, and they probably kiss it goodnight. They don't seem to understand that, while it is a status symbol telling the public, "I am indispensable and practically saving lives here," it is also just another leash and that there are hordes of other slaves just waiting in the wings for them to fuck up so they can take their Blackberry from them at a lower salary. A second reason it's dumb to be so excited about it is that it just encourages your juvenile friends to send you inappropriate personal e-mails, since you can be reached at all times, and it's easy to forget that someone, somewhere is reading your e-mail and laughing at you, not with you.

Luckily, given my prospective unemployment, Blackberries are the last thing I need to worry about. Unless, of course, I end up becoming a migrant worker.

Help the aged

2005-07-13T22:58:00.000-04:00

I just went to the gym (yes, yes, hold the applause) and I remembered something I've been meaning to discuss for awhile.

Why, but why, are there so many naked middle-aged women just hanging out in the locker room???

What purpose does this serve? Not to be a prude, but I just don't want to see it.

Incidental nudity is one thing. Yes, you just showered, and must put your street clothes back on. Change away! But after the shower, when you are standing by the lockers - possibly even directly blocking my locker - and you are rearranging your gym bag, checking your cell phone, or even just standing there doing nothing at all, why must you remain in the nude?

We're all there to either lose weight or maintain - so perhaps you have lost lots of weight lately and are feeling proud of your new, slimmer body. Congratulations! I'd much rather admire you with your skirt on than with it off. I'm all for aging gracefully, but must it be done so . . . publicly???

Time for me to go shower. In private.

Brooklyn zoo

2005-07-12T19:21:00.000-04:00

This weekend I was showing a couple friends around my adoptive borough, Brooklyn. Whenever I have out-of-town guests, I have a certain tour I do: around Brooklyn Heights, on the Promenade, up to Old Fulton Street, where there is a beautiful dock for the water taxis, as well as Grimaldi's Pizza (yum) and the Ice Cream Factory (double yum). This is the site where wedding photos are taken, presumably of those couples who fell in love on the quintessential Brooklyn date: pizza, ice cream, and a walk over the bridge (not suitable for the lactose intolerant). Waiting in line for ice cream, my friends and I were discussing how horribly irritating it is to run into people from our less-than-beloved undergraduate institution, when - lo and behold! - just one such person walked past us.

This was someone I have seen around a few times, but was never introduced to. I hoped he would keep walking, but unfortunately one of the people I was with knew him and called out to him. Damn, I thought, here we go. Time to play Jewish geography and the name game. Sure enough, we knew a few people in common and originally hail from the same neighborhood! Huh! How could that be? "I'm with my girlfriend over there," said the Alumnus, "come say hi after you get your ice cream. If you live in Brooklyn, you can direct us around - we need some advice about where we should go shopping." Oh, goody. The only thing worse than the frat guys from my school are the girls who love them. Anyone who would date one of these overprivileged doofuses simply can't be worth talking to, especially if she's got her boyfriend trained to request a place where she can shop.

Sure enough, the Alumnus' Girlfriend confirmed my worst suspicions. She had never been to Brooklyn before, but had heard that it was cool. I guess I should give her credit for taking the train all the way out here, but while I was busy trying to make a tick mark under the credits column, she brought up shopping again and I had to start debiting immediately.

"So where do you go shopping around here?" she asked, snapping her gum.

"Um, well, there's Montague Street," I tried.

"Yeah, I saw that. Where's the real shopping?"

"Real . . . shopping? I guess you could go to Park Slope, but you'd have to take the train there."

"You mean there's no real shopping in this neighborhood?" she asked, totally horrified.

"Well, I think people usually come out here to walk around and eat dinner, since there are a ton of great restaurants in Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, and a couple in the Heights," I offered.

"So why does everyone think Brooklyn is so great if there's no shopping around?" At this, her boyfriend had the good sense to look slightly embarrassed, giving me a look that said, "I'm sorry. It's not my fault that the only girls who will date me are dumb as bricks, on top of being fattish and totally unattractive, both in terms of appearance and personality."

I just plain didn't know how to respond. What could I possibly say to that? By that time, I had totally lost interest in defending my chosen borough to her, and I just wanted her to get on a water taxi and get the hell out. Luckily, my prayers were answered and it started to rain, so they ran for the water taxi, back to Manhattan, where she can shop in peace. If this is why more people don't renounce their ties to that overcrowded, overpriced and generally overrated island, I say, you can have it!

Letting the terrorist win

2005-07-11T19:12:00.000-04:00

Today I had a run-in with a partner at my firm. I know that it was bound to happen, and that everyone has their moments, especially with this freak of nature, but nevertheless, it really upset me. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that the problem resulted from his shitty and incomplete directions. This particular guy, we'll call him Oliver Lambert for fun's sake, is famous for his inability to communicate properly. Speaking to him leads me to want to grab him by the ear and scream, like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction , "ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?" When he comes in to give my officemate assignments, I react in the same way I do when raving lunatics enter subway cars: I keep my head down, avoid eye contact, and pray that he won't notice me and start blabbering nonsense at me. Perhaps recognizing this "I'm way too busy to make small talk" approach, he has started drive-by assignment bombing me - just leaving crap on my desk while I'm not there with no directions besides a scrawled note in what looks like hieroglyphics.

One such assignment showed up on my desk last week and today, I knew I finally had to address it. The directions he gave me were not only illegible but also totally incomprehensible, especially since they asked me to do something I have never done before. I did my best, and of course it wasn't good enough. Okay, fair enough - I'm happy to redraft it. However, the manner in which I was taken to task really was unnecessarily cruel and condescending. I mean, seriously - obviously I don't know what I'm doing, so is standing over me and trying to use the Socratic method really going to help any of us? It'll just waste the client's money, my time, his time, and send me to the bathroom in tears of rage. Being asked mockingly if I've ever taken a certain class - the only class I've ever gotten an A in - was definitely a nice touch. It just reinforced my belief that law school grades have no link whatsoever to workplace performance. But we all knew that already, didn't we?

The funny thing is that I really think that deep down, he was trying to teach me. His methods were definitely questionable, but for him, just telling me what he wanted wasn't the point. He wanted me to somehow read his mind (since it sure as hell wasn't in the fucking file or the "instructions") and magically pull out exactly what should be on the piece of paper. That's what this stupid profession does to you: even when you have (or used to have) good intentions, when you're placed in a position of power, it all goes to shit. I still think that he is generally a nice person - crazy, but a nice person. But now that he's a partner at some random firm, he has been granted a golden ticket to be a dickhead and drive summer associates totally crazy. And I'm the dickhead for letting him do it.

Choose your own misadventure

2005-07-10T22:45:00.000-04:00

Course listings for next fall just came out. Given my total animosity towards school, you would think that the bulletin would be met with a mere eyeroll, or a cursory glance followed by some actual cursing. But I can't help myself: this will be my fifth semester of law school, and I should know better by now, but I am still totally excited every time I get the listings. "Trusts and Estates, wow, that sounds interesting!" I think, or "Entertainment and Media Law sounds like a class I'd really like!" Yeah, sure, I'd love it. Given that on an interestingess scale of one to ten, one being watching congressional debates on C-SPAN and ten being sex, I find law about a three, it's amazing to me that I still get so into the idea of my new classes.

Does it mean that I am really an optimist at heart? That all my grumbling is just a cover for fact that I have always been just a giant nerd? Maybe. The truth is probably that I am the biggest sucker in the world, because even though I truly am excited now, I know that come October I will be frustrated and bored in my classes, and that after grades are released and I get more B's, I'll be sniveling, eating ice cream, and playing "Stronger" by Britney Spears on repeat just to keep myself off the ledge again. As our esteemed president summed it up, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, uh, well . . . you ain't never gonna fool me again!"

Reflections on drinking alone

2005-07-08T23:57:00.000-04:00

After a long, hard day, most people enjoy meeting each other for drinks and discussing their long, hard days. I myself used to regularly partake in this ritual, deriving some small amount of comfort from the knowledge that my friends also had unfulfilling jobs, deadbeat boyfriends, and families that seemed determined to derail any measure of success they might attain. After awhile, the burden seemed to get lighter until it was almost just funny. Lately, however, all this commisseration has begun to depress me, and in the face of talking about it with my friends, I sort of just want to go home and drink scotch in my bathtub and literally wallow in my problems, drinking until I no longer remember my name, much less my day. But drinking alone is stigmatized, the "first sign of alcoholism," something only losers do. So for awhile it remained a deep, dark fantasy of mine.

Until last night.

Yesterday, my boyfriend, who is possessed by bar examiners, was fighting with me. Rather than manifesting his possession in a cool way, like having his head spin around, speaking in tongues, or vomiting pure green bile Exorcist-style, it just makes him ornery and mean. Not only was I unhappy because of the fighting, I had had a long day at work and some bullshit to do at school after work. I was too tired to go out with friends, but definitely needed to take the edge off. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I put on a hat, quickly ducked into a liquor store, and grabbed a bottle of Black Label. I truly felt like I was breaking the law, like everyone in the store was staring at me, knowing what I was going to do with it and that they thought I was a huge loser. I stashed the bag in my purse and made my way to school with shame.

I got home at about 10:30 and immediately ran myself a bubble bath. I put some ice in a glass and estimated that when I go out drinking, I usually have about four drinks, so I should only have one for it to be a socially acceptable "nightcap." Apparently, bars use quite a lot more ice than I did. As I stepped out of the bath twenty minutes later and nearly fell flat on my face, I realized that I was really quite shitfaced and that I should probably get in bed and turn the phone off. I made it to bed, but when I woke up this morning (fresh as a daisy, I might add) and checked the phone, I realized that I had not turned it off, as was evidenced by the record of a phone call at 12:51 A.M. from my boyfriend to me that lasted one minute, eleven seconds. I spent most of the day today wondering what transpired during that one minute, eleven seconds. Turns out I just whimpered, "I'm so hammered" until he told me he'd call me back the next day.

Moral of the story: I do understand why people stigmatize drinking alone, but it worked out pretty well for me last night. Sometimes, it's better not to talk about your problems, and there's nothing like a little "nightcap" to put the demons to sleep.

Sometimes truth is more vomit-inducing than fiction

2005-07-06T22:58:00.000-04:00

I talk a lot of shit about law students and how lame they are. I realize that, at times, it may sound like I am embellishing or even outright lying to prove a point. Well, here's some cold hard evidence that I am not. I received the following email this morning from some douchebag 1L wanting to know where his fucking invitation to my journal is. Why have we not hand-delivered an engraved invitation on good, heavy card stock? WHERE IS IT??? I mean, so what if no 1Ls have been notified yet? Boy, has our esteemed executive board been remiss. (I would like to point out at this juncture that I am not on the executive board, which is responsible for making membership decisions, so why he sent it to me to begin with is a mystery. Especially in light of the fact that you'd have to have been illiterate to miss the signs the board put up advertising their glorious election - which remained posted by each and every staircase and elevator for a full month.) Read it and weep:

I am not sure if you are the right people to contact, but I got your names off the masthead. I am a 1L and have not yet received notice about [your journal]. I am well within the top 15% [GPA redacted to protect the guilty]. Additionally, I received an "A" on my oral argument, an "A" in legal writing for the year, and I will be a legal writing TA starting this fall. These all were listed in the competition memo as qualifying criteria.

I must know soon so I can update my resume for OCI. If I have not made [your journal], please respond with an explanation for the misunderstanding.

Thank you very much for your help in resolving this matter.

Very truly yours,

[redacted]

Cell: [redacted]

ps- If you are not the appropriate parties to whom I should be directing my inquiry, please respond to this email with the correct contacts.

I couldn't have made it up if I tried.

I would also like to point out that this tool will have more interviews than I did, and despite his toolishness, still has a better shot at getting a good job than I do. And I went to law school because I cared about justice!

I get knocked down, but I get up again

2005-07-03T16:07:00.000-04:00

The best way for me to characterize my relationship with my law school is that it is my own personal Ike Turner. The minute I think we are getting along and doing well, and that we have begun to accept the commitments we have made to one another, it slaps me silly and I walk around dazed and reeling for a few days. This time, it got me with the one-two punch of releasing class rankings and our on-campus interview schedule and requirements within the same week. Just in time to ruin my Fourth of July weekend, too!

Unbelievably, my ranking didn't go up from first year, although my overall GPA did (by quite a serious margin, too). I felt so cheated when I saw the breakdown. All that hard work for nothing. I knew that once the fall recruitment stuff was released, I would be again left out in the cold, relying solely upon ass-kissing and attempted nepotism. Then when the materials were released, not only did I feel as though Ike had cheated on me, but had also then come home, crawled back into bed, and spit on me. I mean, really. How come the only places my school can rachet up to interview 3Ls are the firms that will only interview people in the top 10% or who have engineering backgrounds? Those people already have jobs. They don't need to be interviewed again.

But I know that as bitter as I feel about school now, something will happen to make me trust it again. Ike will buy me flowers, tell me I'm beautiful, and again I'll remember why we got into this mess in the first place and forget all about the abuse. Until the next time. For now, amuse yourselves with the actual e-mail sent out by Career Services and my interpretations thereof:

Dear []:

I hope your summer is going well. Bad news coming, better start on a positive note. It's hard to believe, but it is already time to gear up for the Fall Recruitment Program! And by gear up, I mean stock up on Xanax to numb yourself from the imminent depression associated with seeing your douchebag classmates in suits while you're wearing sweatpants cause you have no interviews. As you prepare for Fall 2005 Recruitment, there are several things that I would like you to keep in mind.

First, there are many opportunities available to you and finding the right "fit" can be a challenge. There are no opportunities available to you through Fall Recruitment.
It is a time to begin thinking of how you ultimately would like to use your law degree to contribute meaningfully to the work of the legal community. Face it, you came here to make money and now is the time to accept that it's not going to happen, so maybe you should work at Legal Aid and actually help people. It is easy to get caught up in the rush of the On-Campus Interview ("OCI") process and the often self-generated pressures of "the job search." You probably have rich parents who will pay off your loans, so who cares about "the job search" anyway? I would suggest that you keep "OCI" in perspective. It looks really bad when our students cry in public. Although the OCI phase of the Fall Recruitment program has been extremely successful for a great number of students, it is only one of a number of recruitment initiatives here at [redacted]. As an office, we exist only to help people who could just as easily help themselves. Typically, the employers who choose to interview on campus in the fall are large firms that can more readily anticipate their hiring needs for the following year. Are you in the top 10%? No? Why are you still reading this? Most of those firms have demanding hiring criteria and select from among some of the best students across the country. Shoulda studied harder for the LSATs! While we are encouraged by the fact that these firms appear willing to look more deeply into the class than they have in the past, the reality is that these are highly competitive positions that represent only a small fraction of the legal job market. Sometimes they hire the top 11%. But that's still not you, so fuck off. In fact, it is reported that more than 80% of lawyers in private practice are in small firms. Isn't acceptance one of the 12 steps?
This year, we are making a particularly concentrated effort to attract a larger and more diverse variety of potential employers to [redacted], including not only firms of all sizes, but also government agencies, public interest organizations and corporations. You will notice that the list below includes large firms only, and you also may remember that last spring's initiative contained only solo practitioners paying $10 an hour. I'm only paid to talk the talk. Although a good number of these employers may recruit during the upcoming fall season, many likely will wait until later in the school year to evaluate their hiring needs. You will not be employed until the absolute last minute, if at all. We intend to continue to build upon the Spring Recruitment Program that and other new recruitment-related programs, including our newly expanded alumni outreach program. While this sentence is not grammatically correct, basically it means that you're going to have to do this on your own. Remember, we're not paid to get you jobs!