Lawyer Boy: A Case Study on Growing Up - Rick Lax (2008)

"Write what you know."

That is the advice most writing teachers give.  Or at least that was the popular wisdom back in the late 90's/early 2000's.  Later on, there was a twist: you should write what you know, but also what you can learn and confidently write about as if you've experienced it yourself.  I do not think I will ever be able to do the latter, and for that reason I may never be a successful novelist--though that does not mean I will ever give up on my dream.  I know I wouldn't be able to write a law school memoir unless I went.

And it is a good idea, at this point in history, to publish a law school memoir.  Because the landscape has changed.  Rick Lax published Lawyer Boy in 2008, probably right around the moment the markets crashed.  Did he graduate in 2008?  I have no idea.  And one of my major complaints about Lawyer Boy is that it's only about the first year.

So it's basically very easy to sum up: One L but at a TTT turned TT set immediately before people started using those acronyms.

It could have been so much better.  As it is, it's pretty good.  It's definitely a page-turner.  But I don't think anybody who didn't go to law school or is planning on going to law school will find it very intriguing.  That is the problem with the law school memoir as a genre.  Still, I think Lax made better use out of his law degree than a lot of disappointed graduates nowadays.  At least it gave him good material for a book.

Then again, there is one non-nitpick critique I can make of this book: it loses steam in its second-half.  Lax seems to rush through the story of the spring semester.  Part of this is understandable: his school was not crazy and probably enrolled 1Ls in 3 credits of Constitutional Law and Contracts both semesters, instead of 5 credits in one semester.  So there's not a lot of new stuff to mention except Torts and Property.

But now we get to the fun part: comparing experiences.  Because it really is sad, how similar every law school is to every other one, regardless of ranking.  It's one of the reasons so many people criticize the proliferation of law schools today--because they are just so easy to plan.  There are too many of them and I have been saying for a couple years now that the ABA should limit the number of new graduates entering the workforce because that is the only way to prevent a highly-indebted unemployed glut of new graduates applying for the same few entry-level jobs that get posted.  The market will fix itself, some believe, and while overall enrollment has dropped, I think it's still way too high.  If it's unfair to close schools, then each should just be forced to reduce the size of their first-year class to a quota.  It might sound like a totalitarian regime, but it would be better for those choosing to enter the profession in the long run (it is really depressing to go through such hell for 3 years, take on a load of debt, jump through dozens of hoops, only to be laughed at because you're useless) and at the very least it would make for an interesting Supreme Court case.  I digress.

Rick Lax went to DePaul Law School.  I almost went there.  Now that I have chosen to live in Chicago, I wish I had gone there.  But I did get in and I could appreciate some of the details.  The book starts out very strong, with Lax describing why he wanted to go to law school in the first place, what it was like to take the LSAT, and what it was like to choose his school:

"I realized that my full-time immaturity shtick would one day inevitably turn from cute and charming to sad and creepy.  I realized that I couldn't live with my parents forever, that I needed a place of my own, and that magic wouldn't pay the bills--the ones I'd presumably have if I had a place of my own.  I realized that I had to go to law school...because it's not like I was going to get a job or anything." (9)

Of course, plenty of people on the internet will laugh at that paragraph as a supreme exercise in irony.  But this was in 2006 (or so).  Lax wanted to go to University of Michigan, which is where he went for undergrad, where his father went, and which was closest to home.  But he couldn't get in.  I could say the same thing about myself and NYU:

"Getting into the University of Michigan's undergraduate program was tough--I'd needed to transfer in.  Getting into their law school, I recognized, would be almost impossible.  The Supreme Court made that much clear in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger.  The case's opinion begins: "The [University of Michigan] Law School ranks among the Nation's top law schools.  It receives more than 3,500 applications each year for a class of around 350 students."  In Grutter, the Supreme Court held that state universities have a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body, and that this interest justifies the use of race as a factor in admissions.  But even without affirmative action, plaintiff Barbara Grutter, who had a 3.8 GPA and 161 LSAT score, probably couldn't get into the University of Michigan Law School today.  In recent years, the average incoming University of Michigan Law School student has had a 3.7 GPA and a 168 LSAT score." (12-13)

Lax got the same score as me: 163 and we didn't get to go to our dream schools.  But this is pretty much where our stories diverge.  He also applied to UNLV, DePaul, University of Chicago, NYU and Columbia.  He got rejected everywhere except for the first two.  And it probably would have been better for him to go to UNLV in the long run since apparently he lives there now (I know this through Twitter and I will post this review @him and hope not to get trolled) and it is probably the best place to make a living as a magician--which is the "hook" of this book.

Because see--if I wanted to write a law school memoir, there wouldn't be a "hook."  It's that extra little something that makes a literary agent think that your book is going to be special or memorable or something.  And some of the magician anecdotes are funny, but sometimes it feels a bit like "padding."  First there's the appendix, which has a couple tricks that I am pretty sure you wouldn't be able to do just from reading it (I think with magic you need an in-person demonstration from someone willing to show the secrets).  Second there are the numerous jokes about how no self-respecting person chooses magic as a profession, which okay, was probably true in 2006, but in 2014 no self-respecting person chooses law as a profession, unless they are sure they're really, really smart and are going to be in the top 10% or going to one of the very best schools.  Sorry--must contain my cynicism.

But the details about DePaul are pretty priceless, and as a resident of Chicago, I can say the book is certainly true to life.  First, there is the t-shirt:

"As expected, the University of Las Vegas accepted me, and even threw in a $9,000 annual scholarship.  DePaul University College of Law in Chicago trumped that with an $18,000-a-year offer, accompanied by a 100 percent cotton XL school T-shirt."

I got the same one with a $20,000-a-year offer, four (?) years later.  So still, we're in the same boat.  However, there is a sad anecdote later on that I have trouble believing:

"On Monday, I wore my complimentary XL DePaul T-shirt to Con Law...as did Dan and two of the other serious students.  I figured we'd all run out of clean clothes at the same time.
'Lookin good, Rick,' said Dan.
'You, too.'  I turned to Nadeeka, who wasn't wearing a shirt, and said, 'It's DePaul T-shirt day.  You didn't get the memo?'
She hadn't.
'Congratulations,' Dan said.
'On what?'
'Your scholarship.  You got the shirt with the scholarship, right?'
The shirt went with the scholarship.  Ah.
'You mean they didn't make you pick between the two?'
At the start of the semester, everybody must have assumed a handful of Section 2 students just happened to buy the same ill-fitting DePaul law school T-shirt.  By the second week of class, most people had figured out what the T-shirts meant.  By that week, wearing the shirt was no longer considered just a fashion misstep; it was considered a statment about the wearer's refusal to hide or apologize for her intellectualism." (82-83)

I think it is just incredible that DePaul would be so callous as to give scholarship students T-shirts, and non-scholarship students nothing.  Perhaps the practice changed after a few years, but it just strikes me as a really cynical (maybe the wrong word?) thing to do.  I got mine, and I liked wearing it to class because it was sort of a message like "fuck you, I hate this place and wish I went to DePaul" but I don't think anybody got it (and truthfully I didn't hate my school--just my first year, and I hate myself for what happened after--I actually have ridiculously fond memories of my second and third years).

Which is why I felt like Lawyer Boy was missing something.  Of course, a lot of people say "1L is all that matters" and sure that's true for jobs--but I felt that the ending of the book was inaccurate.  Lax writes about people getting jobs at big firms as if they're working there the summer after their 1L year.  That's not the way it works!  It's misleading.  Maybe a couple of his friends got to do that, but I know basically no one that worked at firms during their 1L summer.  Then again our school gave out a (fairly generous, at the time) public service grant so maybe most people did that because it was close to a livable wage.  Basically this book ends like 1L is the end of law school and that's just not true--there's two more years of crap, and at least in my experience, the social aspect gets really interesting at that point because people stop spending 90% of their free time studying (maybe 90% is inaccurate but it felt like that for me) and start having social lives.

Still, it was funny to read about how similar our experiences were.  One notable example was this introductory exercise, a welcoming speech from the Dean:

"Head Dean Glen Weissenberger spoke last: 'You've heard a lot about us, the faculty, and you've heard a lot about DePaul, but now I'd like to talk to you about something else: you.  All two hundred and forty of you.  Some of you came here from state college; some of you came here from Harvard.  One of you has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, another of you has one in materials engineering.  One of you even designed spacecraft parts for Boeing.
'One of you is the president of a gospel choir.  One taught English in Ghana.  One survived testicular cancer.  One lost over one hundred pounds in two years.  One was attached by sharks.  One worked for NATO in Kosovo as a counterintelligence agent with the U.S. Army.
'One of you is a professional magician, and that particularly excites me because I used to be a professional magician, too.'" (52)

Any of my classmates will recognize this ritual.  It is almost as if the law schools feel obligated to perform this tradition--just like the obligation to retain the same first year courses, though some of them (*cough*property) are basically niche areas filled with arcane nonsense.

Weissenberger was later dismissed from the law school in 2009, so apparently Lax used real names.  I'm not so sure about the other professors.  While most of the professors are generally treated quite well in the book, the Legal Writing professor seems like one of the biggest jerks on the planet.  I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an accurate portrait, but I'd be surprised if Lax didn't use a pseudonym.  While Legal Writing assignments are graded anonymously, there is a fair amount of discussion of how the professor knew which assignments Lax had turned in, and so maybe it wouldn't make a difference if Lax used a pseudonym or not: the professor obviously must have known it was written about him/her.  But apparently Devenpeck is a pseudonym.  This is only interesting to me because Turow used pseudonyms for his professors, and as I toy with the idea of writing a law school memoir, I tend to wonder about the "libel" aspect.  I wouldn't write anything bad about any of my professors, but I still feel weird writing about them, period, whether using pseudonyms or not, in a memoir.  But if you don't use pseudonyms, you're pretty much obligated to only say nice things.  Whatever.

The only other aspect I want to mention is that Lax seems to exhibit what a good percentage of my law school classmates also did: complete disregard for fiscal responsibility.  This is mainly due to where he chooses to live, and how his parents are able to pay for it.  Also I don't think he mentions taking out any loans.  So a very important part of the puzzle is also missing for aspiring law students.  This is also why I wish the 2L and 3L years were also included in this book.

One other thing I like about this book is that Lax provides snapshots of some of the cases he studied, and generally he picks out interesting ones (while also including a fairly concise summary of Marbury v. Madison, though I think someone else probably did a better job).

Finally, Justice Scalia is not mentioned until page 206.  At least he gets mentioned.  But any law school memoir in the late 20th or early 21st century has to say something about Scalia.  The thing I like most about him is that most law students hate his philosophy, but still love him because he can be a very witty writer.  Justice Douglas is not mentioned at all, and I will still persist in calling him my favorite.  He may not be the wittiest (though there is usually a humorous sentence or two in each of his opinions), but I still think he's one of the few who lived his life according to his judicial philosophy, and so he is automatically interesting.  

In the end, I can only give a lukewarm recommendation for this book.  I don't want to say "not recommended" because I think it does about as good a job as can be expected, and I shouldn't judge it because I wanted to see it do something differently.  However, I would be curious to know why Lax didn't want to include the 2L and 3L years.  Maybe that is a blessing, because perhaps the law school memoir that is an exhaustive account of the entire thing has yet to be written.  Perhaps I haven't really been looking for it, or just wouldn't want to read it, but I have to believe that a law school memoir published in 2010 or later from a non-T14 student/graduate could be a contender for the Pulitzer Prize due to tragic content.  I pray for all of us--that we make something of our lives, and that they are not cut short by psychosomatic tragedy.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: Exams/Grades

This is labeled NIED #15 on my computer, but this is the second NIED column to be rejected (and it may be the shortest--but the notes I have added in this post may make it the longest).  The first was "Batman in Aurora" which became a "Special Comment" on Flying Houses rather than an Op-Ed for the BLS Advocate.  That decision I could understand.  There, I was not writing precisely about law school, but there was only a tangential issue discussing a potential expansion of tort liability (on which I am, unfortunately, not an expert).  As may be clear from this blog I am pretty much incurably obsessed with Batman due to my film project and I mainly wanted to write about Batman*. 

This column, however, is very much about law school, but was rejected because the editorial board of BLS Advocate agreed that the point I was trying to make wasn't clear.  I will let you decide for yourself and comment.  This is unedited.  

The next NIED column for BLS Advocate will be #16.  #15 will not appear on BLS Advocate unless by way of reference.  

NIED #15: Exams/Grades             

By this point probably no one who finds this article does not realize that law school grades are derived almost entirely from an anonymously-graded exam given once at the end of a semester. Perhaps there are a couple readers stumbling upon this piece that do not realize profs may boost your grade up to 1/3 of a letter based on your in-class participation.  Those are the two single-most-acknowledged elements of law school grading – at least for 1Ls. 2Ls, 3Ls (and 4Ls, now, as they have apparently become recognized as a class) have a possible third element: write a paper.  Obviously, if you want to have control over your grade, and there is a paper option for the course (“in lieu of an exam”), write the f***ing paper**. Those courses are few and far between, though, and many are 2 credits.  And Legal Writing, I think most will agree, is not exactly a walk in the park, though the past elements of control are present. 

***Grade school, high school, and college grades were comprised of a mix of quizzes, tests, exams, papers, homework assignments, and class participation. Taking out quizzes, tests, and papers seems like a relief from the student’s perspective, but there are still “homework assignments.” However, while some profs will threaten to lower your grade by 1/3 of a letter, my guess is that this is a rare occurrence that only happens to the student who completely does not give a f***(****), does not read, barely makes it to 50% of classes, gets high in the morning, and feels as if they can magically intuit the rules of the law for the course. Thus, there is a distinct possibility that the majority of students occupy some region in between super-smart-nerd and super-dumb-jock, and that no matter how strong your understanding of the course, no matter how many trenchant comments you make or questions you ask, there is always a risk that your mind will explode when the proctor yells, “BEGIN!” and you hear a hundred booklets being flipped over, and you know the professor has said no cheating, no study aids, this is a closed book exam—but maybe they say “limited open book”—just bring your Code—and they tell you “no writing in your Code” but you know, you know that students are writing in their Code. Or else they have a crib*****.

There is just as much (if not more) cheating going on at law school as there was in grade school, high school, or college. And this time—we’re expected to believe—our grades actually matter. Sometimes profs themselves are just flat-out negligent when writing their exams******. Last year I took an open book exam and I brought in one of my “practice answers” from a previous exam given by the same professor. The same question, verbatim, appeared.  I looked at my answer and thought to myself, “Well, this will be a nice way to make up some time.”

But then doubt seeped in—what if I hadn’t written a great practice answer? Sure, I had reviewed that answer with other students previously, but did I take all of their comments properly into account? Whatever, I needed the time, and it was a decent answer.  I started transcribing from my three-ring binder that held all of my study materials and I looked up at a proctor for a moment. He seemed to be looking right at me—like I was turning my head from page to screen, page to screen, page to screen, in a clear act of cheating. I didn’t want to cause any commotion, so I stopped, thought to myself, “Even if I can’t transcribe this, I know this, and I know it better now than I did then.”

But then again, I am an open book. Most students—I recall—at least those that had their practice answers with them—did just transcribe. Some people in another exam cried or else threw-up; others wrote more in their Codes than (ambiguously) permitted. Most of the time there is no great surprise and everyone seems remarkably sure of themselves and it is in those instances where I know that I just f***ed up*******.

All the mystery, stress, paranoia, cheating, and loneliness of exam-taking should be thrown out of the law school curriculum********.  Unfortunately we live in a world governed by the ABA, and though most people will agree that there could be better alternatives, we’re not permitted to consider them.  Keep teaching Property as a core first year course.  Keep grading anonymous.  Keep exams in the same basic format, even though you could get way more creative and actually test practical skills.  Keep the OCI system in place.  I must admit, it feels mighty good to be this helpless in a system purportedly teaching us to help.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L at Brooklyn Law School.  He enjoys studying bankruptcy law. 

NOTES

*See http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/batman-in-brooklyn-mission-statement.html (a very long piece on the Batman film I will make), http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-dark-knight-rises-dir-christopher.html (a review of the newest film, qualified immediately below in this note), http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/special-comment-batman-in-aurora.html (the piece referenced), http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/killing-joke-alan-moore-and-brian.html (a review of a famous Batman comic), http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2012/06/dark-knight-returns-frank-miller-with.html (a review of a famous Batman graphic novel). As a side note, I saw The Dark Knight Rises again last weekend, and after a second viewing I will fully admit that it is a flawed film, and suffers from an extremely "non-creative" script.  The first half of the film is excellent, but I might go so far as to say the second half of the film is laughable (sample line: 1: So, you came back to die with your city? 2: No, I came back to stop you.  --Should be changed to-- 1: So, you came back to die with your city?  2: No, I just wanted a rematch.).  Regardless, my rankings stand (still feel Dark Knight Rises eclipses Batman Returns) and I still believe everyone should see it.  (Though--other side note--I am very much looking forward to the forthcoming review of License to Kill for The Bond Project....)

Notes below represent edits/comments related to the "unpublishability" of "Exams/Grades."  

**Some might consider this to be an uncouth sentence and the use of the (expurgated) f-bomb to be entirely unprofessional.  However, I use this language to underscore the force of my advice.  I took one class with this option, and while the paper sounded like a huge pain in the butt to juggle with everything else, in retrospect several students told me they wished they wrote the paper.  Not only was it my highest grade, but it was as close to getting the "journal experience" (by which I mean, concentrating the utmost care upon every single word and citation, and organizing one's thoughts and research into a coherent and readable article) as possible for a non-member.  Bottom line: if you have the option, DO NOT take the exam.  You obtain a more robust educational experience, and you will be able to better control your GPA.

***Those past elements of control were present during the earlier stages of our academic upbringings.  

****Language used to underscore the degree to which a student must fail to participate to enable grade-lowering.  I do not like sitting in the back row of law school classrooms because I get distracted by all of the other students being distracted by facebook, news sites, gmail, or, most odious to the poor student, online shopping.  These students may still give a f*** despite their rank indifference to the professor speaking in front of them.  The students that stay up all night doing blow, sleep through class, and attend exactly 40% of classes (or fails to attend because attendance is not actually taken in many classes) and who manage to ace the exam--even they can slip from the professor's memory as being a "poor participant" due to their excellent exam performance.  This is one of the vaguer forms of "cheating" that occurs with surprising regularity.  However, this is an apparent contradiction of my point, and this type of student generally is not going to ace the exam--and if they do, then it is a sign that they must "give a f***" to a certain degree.  Bottom line: students inevitably brag about how little work they do to score incredibly high, and that may cause frustration in the listener if they cannot compete with them.

*****This is an "inside joke"/reference to the most difficult exam I have ever taken (and which I understand, was also considered the most difficult exam any student in that class had ever taken).  If the point here was unclear, it is understandable, but further specificity could be interpreted as slander, which I do my best to avoid in NIED columns.

******I would remove this line if published by BLS Advocate in accordance with the note directly above. I do not believe this professor is negligent--and indeed repeating a question from an earlier exam may not be considered negligence--but rather a gift to the students that made the effort to tackle every practice exam.  However, other professors are certainly negligent in the exams they give students:
They owe us a duty (to foster our understanding of an area of law)
They breach that duty (by testing a concept that they gave short shrift in class)
They cause an injury (to the student's grade because the student could not prepare to answer a question which the professor did not indicate would be tested on the exam)

They cause damages (which are extraordinarily difficult to monetize).

This could be the topic of a long rhetorical essay (and would need to proceed on a case-by-case basis, as some students are just whiners, and some professors will actually spend 5 minutes talking about something, actually put it on the exam, and actually expect students to appropriately focus their efforts on the most time-consuming topics, and quickly note the "5 minute topic") and I will stop here.

*******Language used to underscore the extraordinary sensation of failure and impending sadness caused by such an event.

********This final paragraph could be another major reason for "unpublishability."  Here I come out with guns blazing so my words may be taken poorly.  The point is that "law school reform" is a joke, and there must be real reform if we want to produce an environment where students will be encouraged by their experience and accordingly "be fair" in their practice of law and not discouraged by some of the rank inequalities (potentially causing "ruthless" and/or "morally bankrupt" legal careers) that arise in an "imperfect, though best possible" system.  Bottom line, and basic point to the article: exams are probably the #1 claim students may have against law schools for negligent infliction of emotional distress, and devising a better system where this is no longer the case is definitely possible.  But schools fear the wrath of the ABA.  They fear that "experimental" procedures will reflect poorly on the academic ability of their students.  It's perfectly understandable.  This does not mean however, that people should refrain my imagining alternatives, or writing about their feelings on the matter, even when they concede an important point.  Such passivity allows a totalitarian regime to continue to dominate its subjects and no person who claims to believe that the free exchange of ideas leads to positive societal developments can argue otherwise.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: Outlining

Welcome to Year Two (and let us hope, the final year) of Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress, the weekly column I write for the BLS Advocate.  This is last week's column, on outlining.  The language taken from a Torts Nutshell is repeated as this is the inaugural column for this year (there was one column posted over the summer, but that was an outlier).  Some people may dispute my decision to include my own content from another website on this blog, but it is my personal belief that my blog is easier to navigate (in terms of archived posts) than the BLS Advocate site.  That is a Wordpress blog.  This is a Blogspot blog, and preferable in my opinion.  

Next week's column is on Exams and Grades.  It has been submitted for editing and is currently being reviewed.  Please enjoy. 

INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS
Restatement of Torts, Second, section 46: “One who by extreme and outrageous conduct intentionally or recklessly causes severe emotional distress to another is subject to liability for such emotional distress.”
Comment d:
“Liability has been found only where the conduct has been so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”
NEGLIGENT INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS
“Almost all states have adopted the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, but only a minority of courts have been willing to recognize an independent cause of action for emotional distress alone against defendants who are no more than negligent.  (Shapo, Principles of Tort Law, 3d ed., 381).
BY READING THIS COLUMN, YOU HEREBY AGREE TO FORFEIT ALL POSSIBLE CLAIMS AGAINST THE AUTHOR


“Have you started outlining?”
After “What kind of law do you want to practice?” this is probably the most annoying question you will hear over the next few weeks. Not only is there a fair amount of disagreement over what constitutes a “good outline,” but the question leads to the Gordian Knot that is the choice to make your own, or use a previous student’s outline who “got an A.”
I tend to side with the “do it yourself” camp. I personally endorse Professor Feldman’s Academic Success Program and its manual on outlining, and I do believe that there is value in creating your own outline. However, a few points deserve commentary:
Tip #1: “Some outlines are as short as 10 or 12 pages; others are 50-60 pages. You should be able to read through your outline in its entirety at least twice in a day.”
I take this tip to mean that those shorter outlines will be used for closed-book exams, and longer ones for open-book exams. But no matter its length, the real question is: how much does your outline affect your grade? Nobody reviews your outline as painstakingly as you will, so no one can tell you definitively that you have a “good outline” or a “bad outline.” But here are my inconsistent findings:

Criminal Law
Outline: Approx 60 pages
Type of Exam: Closed
Self-Grade for Outline: B- (too long for closed book; too much ambiguity on the law)
Final Course Grade: C+
Civil Procedure
Outline: Approx 80 pages
Type of Exam:  Open
Self-Grade for Outline: B+ (too long; multiple misstatements of law)
Final Course Grade: A- 
Torts
Outline: 35 pages.
Type of Exam: Closed with 1 page double-sided cheat sheet
Self-Grade for Outline: B
Self-Grade for Cheat Sheet: A
Final Course Grade: B+ (including 20% “C” grade on Midterm)
Contracts
Outline: 100 pages+
Type of Exam: Open
Self-Grade for Outline: C+ (too long; too much ambiguity on the law)
Final Course Grade: B-
Constitutional Law
Outline: 84 pages (approx.)
Type of Exam: Closed
Self-Grade for Outline: B
Final Course Grade: B
Property
Outline: 100 pages+
Type of Exam: Open
Self-Grade for Outline: C
Final Course Grade: B+

Now, in general, you will see that each of my grades (save Property, in which I only did comparatively well because most of my classmates were just as lost as me) is only 1/3 of a grade off from what I “self-grade” my outline, which of course is a subjective process. For many courses, you will have some idea of how well you did before or after you take the exam. Grading exams is a primarily objective process—but this column is not about exams, only outlining.
However, almost none of my outlines conformed to Tip #1, and when they did, they were not useful (Torts being the exception). In fact, almost none of my outlines from my first year were useful.  Perhaps this is because of the next tip.
Tip #2: “Do not try to do any outlining when a writing assignment is due.”
For 2Ls and 3Ls, it’s not hard to follow this advice. For 1Ls, it is almost impossible. Both semesters have substantial writing assignments that do not become due until about, oh, Thanksgiving, or the end of March. While you may have a little more time to outline in the spring, after you are done with legal writing assignments, you still have to do at least one of the two Moot Court competitions! What a drag.
The key, I guess, for 1Ls, is to outline before you get those initial materials for writing assignments. While you generally don’t need to balance a job during 1L year with reading assignments, the writing assignments kind of moot that point out. It’s not easy to find the time, and I never found the time, and I suffered.
But I did much better my second year. And it wasn’t until that spring semester that I discovered “the secret” to outlining. Now, “the secret” is not applicable to closed-book exams, though you may attempt to practice using it. But, if you have an open-book exam, this method is practically guaranteed to get you at least an A-. What is the method?
You do your outline. And then you take a practice exam from the same professor. You answer each question with a paragraph—the type of paragraph you’d write for an exam answer. You leave blank the “party” (or defendant or creditor or debtor or whatever) and you have the pre-determined issue, the rule, the application, and boom, you are done, and boom, you bring this practice exam in with you, and boom, you connect the dots and you’ve got a stress-free exam.
I knew a 3L last year who swore by the process of collecting old “A” outlines, and just studying off of those from day one. He didn’t believe in making his own, and he apparently did quite well. The problem with law school is that you can work super-duper hard and not get any reward for it, and some people can do almost no work, have the answers in front of them, and essentially “cheat their way through.” Class participation should be factored into classes more heavily for this reason.
I hope to start my outlining around September 25th. Odds are that I’ll have about 5 pages for each course come November 25th, but it’s good to set goals.  It is.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L.  He enjoys studying bankruptcy law.  Please e-mail him at Christopher.knorps@brooklaw.edu if you are interested in participating in MEP or Batman in Brooklyn.  

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: No. 12: Law Review, Journals, and Blue-Booking

As we come to the close of another productive year at BLS, 1Ls once again huddle into the library at 9 AM on a Saturday morning to pick up their journal writing competition packets.  They are not supposed to have any idea of “the law” on their topic, and they are supposed to learn it based upon a limited set of materials, and get it right, or lose.  You are not allowed to do outside research (or, outside research is not required?), and I seriously question the degree to which “cheating” occurs here, but that is another column for another time. 

                2Ls this year will remember last year’s painful topic on tax apportionment of franchises that have more than one branch in a state.  I came up with a brilliant argument that it was not the mortgage underwriters’ labor that should be taxed by Ford Motor Credit Company, but rather, it should be the labor of the salesmen, who –it is true—do make a sizable part of their wages from commissions of sales (which may have different tax implications), but are responsible for the purchaser’s initial seeking of the loan.  The labor they expend over two or three days was far more “valuable” than the underwriters estimated time of twenty minutes to “put the loan together.”  Perhaps this was an incredibly stupid conclusion to reach for this case comment, but it appeared to be original, concise, assertive, and reasonably well-cited (I will avoid a deep discussion of the “?’s” I put into my endnotes to stay within my word limit).  And then the fateful day came when people began receiving their phone calls.  And I slowly realized that, after dropping beneath the 50% mark in the class, and failing to make moot court, I was not going to be on a journal.  Being a writer (and having improved from a B to an A in Legal Writing between semesters), the one thing I wanted out of law school more than anything else was denied me, and it hurt.

                So I turned away and laughed with derision at the beginning of 2L year, when all I heard for a few weeks were complaints about “pre-emption” and “not knowing what to write about.”  I said, “I wanted it as much as anyone, and you got it, so you better shut up.” 

                Of course I never said that to their face.  But law students that complain about not being able to find a topic to write about are a perfect example of the whiny types that flood law schools across the nation: let’s complain about everything that’s not perfectly suited to our needs—because, we’re not supposed to be creative.  These students need not concern us, for pre-emption is, again, a much bigger topic.  However, law students that complain about the process of becoming a member of a journal and the responsibilities that membership and/or publication entails, may have a good claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress—for few other activities may be as tedious and inconsequential as this.

                Blue-Booking is the first bane of existence.  “The central function of a legal citation is to allow the reader to efficiently locate the cited source.” (THE BLUEBOOK: A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION, “General Principles of Citation,” at 1 (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 19th ed. 2010)).  Great!  How about this?  “Because of the ever-increasing range of authorities cited in legal writing, no system of citation can be complete.  Therefore, when citing material of a type not explicitly discussed in this book, try to locate an analogous type of authority that is discussed and use that citation from as a model.  Always be sure to provide sufficient information to allow the reader to find the cited material quickly and easily. (See id.).  Even the Bluebook recognizes that its system cannot be comprehensive.  One could question why we need a whole other separate citation system apart from those already in existence, but I’d rather ask a more interesting question: what is “authority?”

                Just because I earned a J.D. from Harvard, just because I made their Law Review, just because I clerked for a Federal Judge, just because I worked at a white-shoe law firm, just because I published a few articles, and gained some kind of respect in my field, I might seek a career in academia and publish and then I will have become “an authority.”  Or, (less hoops) if I become a judge (or a law clerk), and I write an opinion, I become an authority.  However, writing about one’s own life has no place in a law review article, even though I may be considered an authority on my own existence.  “You’re not allowed to have any original thoughts,” people often say.  It’s too likely you come off sounding like an idiot who has not deeply canvassed the law if you don’t cite to authority for every proposition you introduce.  And yet, you must do a pre-emption check, and make sure that your topic has never been written about before. 

                My argument is that all journals should be abolished at every law school except for one Law Review.  I mean no disrespect to my friends on the other journals (and indeed, there is no qualitative difference in intelligence, so far as I can tell), but membership is hardly prestigious when 20-25% of the class gets on a journal.  When you’re one of the few that’s put in a good faith effort for every honor they could get, and you lose, and lose, and lose, you think you’re doing something wrong.

                Memo to disaffected law students: you’re not doing anything wrong.  It’s an imperfect system.  Once all journals are abolished, we will only produce the amount of articles that we “need.”  We won’t have a tidal wave of articles on every conceivable legal topic known to mankind, only to be revised to make an alternative conclusion acceptable when a case like Citizens United comes along.* 

                Me, bitter?  Maybe—but I proudly write on my name card, whenever I sneak into a journal event, “NOT A MEMBER OF XXX JOURNAL; FOUNDER OF MEP.”  There are other ways to make a positive contribution to this school than to be one of the hundred Bluebook Slaves in your class.  If you don’t make it onto a journal you should make fun of everyone who is.  Not only will you make yourself feel better, but you will be right that it is all-too-often nothing more than an exercise in extremely-refined masturbation.  Better yet—start, or join, a student organization that is devoted to sitting around and making fun of journal articles.  Call it the Brooklyn Law School Journal of Rejects, put out one volume per year, and write boldly original articles that are sloppily-blue-booked (because no one really cares about that anyway—see Posner's article "Goodbye to the Bluebook" for an hilarious evisceration of the stupidity of elitist citationism) and written for the Us Magazine crowd—people would dig it.    

                Maybe a lot of this is coming out wrong but here is my main point: as long as you are proud of what you produce, that is all that matters.  If you do make a journal, and you slave away for months on your note, and you find out that, unfortunately, you won’t be getting published, the satisfaction you derive from the process should be your reward.  Good luck, 1Ls.   If it doesn’t work out for you, join the BLS Journal of Rejects.  My 14,000 word, 40-page, 120-footnoted UCWR Employment Law paper gets to be in volume #1.  And I also promise to accept ONE failed competition submission from this year.  Open notes now being accepted.** (***).    

*The complaint often leveled at journals is the glut of faculty scholarship—not student scholarship.  This does not change the rationale behind my proposal to abolish all journals but one.  The only question is whether faculty members are compensated for publishing, or if retention of their job is contingent upon a steady stream of publications.  Encouraging a greater amount of original student work rather than faculty might be one possible reform.

**While this is a legitimate call for Open Notes for the BLS Journal of Rejects, 1Ls should be made clearly aware of two things: #1- My friend, who did not make into a journal, revised his competition submission a little bit, entered it into a competition, and won—so don’t trash your submission unless you are absolutely certain it is a complete failure.  #2– Open Notes are accepted by all 4 journals here—the Law Review is the most unforgiving (with the same deadline, around January 20, for Open Notes as for “member notes”) and the Journal of Law and Policy provides the generous extension of June 15^th. 

***Submissions are also being accepted for the BLS Advocate.

               Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L.  He enjoys studying bankruptcy law.  He runs the blog flyinghouses.blogspot.com.  This summer he is in Chicago.  Next year he will institute the Monthly Expense Project, serve as an upper class delegate on the SBA, and serve on its career services committee.  He will also be filming a Batman remake.  Please e-mail him at Christopher.knorps@brooklaw.edu if you have complaints or are interested in participating.  You may also start a passive-aggressive comment fight but only if you promise not to be lame or mean about it.