Negligent Infliction
of Emotional Distress #24: Farewell (Ode to the Napping Room)
By Christopher J.
Knorps
“Is this thing on?
Can you hear me now?
Are we going?
Is this thing on?
Test, test, test, test, test, test...
Can you hear me now?
As we come to the close of our broadcast day
This is my farewell transmission
Signing off
Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea
Anyone within the sound of my voice
I've got 50,000 watts of power
I want to ionize the air
This microphone turns sound into electricity
Can you hear me now?
Out on route 128, the dark and lonely
I got my radio on
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
It's the end of radio
And that snare drum
That drum roll
Means we've got a winner!
If you're the fifth caller
Or any caller at all...
Welcome to my top ten
I'd like to thank our sponsor
But... we haven't got a sponsor!
Not if you were the last man on earth….
She was prepared to prove it…
This one goes up to a special girl
But... there is no special girl!
It's the end of radio
The last announcer plays the last record
The last watt leaves the transmitter
Circles the globe in search of a listener
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
Is this really broadcasting if there is no one there to receive?
It's the end of radio
As we come to the close of our broadcast day
I got my radio on
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
This is the test
If this had been a real emergency...
Hey, hey,
This is a real god damn emergency!”
-Shellac, “The End of Radio”
I.
Introduction
When I started this column back in
February of 2012, I took my cues from “Notions to Dismiss” by Michael Berman
(for the name of the column) and “Legally in Love” by Lizzie B. (for the “sexiness”
of the juicy gossip floating through our school—and yes, I think people still
want to know who Lizzie B. was), but I had no idea I would complete 24
articles. Before we go any further, I
want to thank Steven Hasty for clueing me into the Advocate, Julie Adler for
being the best editor I have ever had,
and Dwayne Thomas for allowing me to continue to express myself, as well as
keeping me on guard when I would fall off the rails.
I wrote this column because law
school is not great, but it has so much potential to be great. I wrote this column because people seemed
miserable here, and I sought to enumerate the reasons why. There may be more than 24 reasons (and I
fully admit that the topics of my columns have sometimes overlapped—See the multiple columns discussing the
“50/50 Rule,” now the “60/40 Rule”) but I have done my best to give any
prospective or current law student a road map of the pitfalls of legal
education.
I would also like to note that I
received significantly more “hate mail” when I was a 2L, but that now, as a 3L,
with my columns becoming arguably more and more esoteric, few people ever comment
on them. This is either because (a) I am
obsolete, or (b) the haters have realized the error of their ways.
I may very well be obsolete. I was not named our class commencement
speaker, but I did not compete for that position. This happened in high school too, you
know. I made an audition to be class
speaker, and the class clown ended up getting it. It was fine by me, and I just wrote my own
“commencement speech” into an article in The Log at Loomis Chaffee. I am not doing that here. I am offering the ultimate NIED. Welcome to my top 10.
II.
Top Ten Classes
#10: Contracts (Prof. Winnie Taylor)
While I
did not do well in this course (B-), and while I sat in the way back row of the
classroom (top left) and was doomed to failure by anxiety and the belief I
still hold that Contracts is one of the hardest classes in law school and
should actually be taken over both semesters for six credits (as Prof. Taylor
also believed), the reading was always a pleasure (go figure!). Perhaps it was in this course that I realized
I wanted to take a curriculum in Business Law (which may have decimated my GPA,
but which I believe was worth it—at this juncture at least), but most
importantly, this was a 9:00 AM class which met three times a week. There was a ton of reading and I didn’t put
it into a good outline, but Prof. Taylor brought so much energy into the
classroom everyday that I couldn’t help but pay attention. I may not have done well in the course, but I
will always remember her writing “POOR BLACK WIDOW” on the chalkboard, and the
way she would say, “Oh boy!”
#9: Administrative Law (Prof. Araiza)
I did
reasonably well in this course (B+) and I sat in the middle on the right side
with a couple friends that helped keep me on track—but they weren’t totally
necessary: Araiza is an excellent professor.
This course sounds boring, and sometimes it is a little boring, to be
honest, but its importance is adequately understood: the “headless” fourth
branch of government probably has more impact on our everyday lives than any of
the other “big three.” There are also
sometimes fascinating cases that branch off into many different areas of the
law. My favorite case was the Cinderella case, and I will never forget
the feeling of knowing the material so well, but knowing that I would not be at
the top of the class because there were so many other top students in it, and
because Araiza was just that good of a teacher.
#8: Trusts & Estates (Prof. Serkin)
I did
reasonably well in this course as well (B+) and I sat in the second row (which
became my de facto seat during 3L year).
Serkin lived up to the hype.
Unfortunately there appears to be a joke that can be made about the SBA
Transition Dinner: whoever wins faculty of the year also wins “faculty most
likely to leave BLS.” While many may be
sad that they will not have the opportunity to take a class with Professor
Serkin, I cannot fault him for wanting to move to Tennessee, for it is a great
state that still remarkably flies under the radar. This was a fun course to take, and the
casebook certainly made things interesting.
By far, from all the classes I took, this had the most bizarre casebook
(the footnotes alone made me feel like the writers were constantly getting
stoned and just telling the ridiculous stories behind the cases—or giving their
opinions on James Lipton—because they realized how boring the material could be
otherwise). Serkin also recommended we watch
The Art of the Steal, which is a
great documentary and served as a nice “study break” (watch for the one scene
near the beginning where an art appraiser walks through a gallery and is like, “Oh,
Barnes would never get this, this is terrible,” and later says it is impossible
to quantify how much the Barnes collection is worth—perhaps billions(!)) as we
studied charitable trusts near the end of the semester. I didn’t learn the intestacy regimes as well
as I should have, but I felt the final was one of the “fairest” I have ever
taken, and I feel that Serkin taught this course almost masterfully.
#7: Employment Law (Prof. Minda)/Debtors’ & Creditors’
Rights (Hon. Martin Glenn) (tie)
Most of
my classmates from these courses must think I am crazy for putting them in the
top ten, but Employment Law gave me the highest grade I received in a 3 credit
course (A—and though the results are not yet in from this year, I’m not
optimistic) and Elizabeth Warren wrote the casebook for Debtor/Creditor and it
was the best one I studied in law school.
Employment Law was a fascinating area to study and I am glad I read From Widgets to Digits and also glad I
wrote a paper in lieu of a final exam (the only time I got to do that). Debtor/Creditor was a tough class, and made
tougher by a Judge-Professor taking on the MF Global case around Halloween, and
though I may not have done well on the final, nobody did, and I got a B+. So I think it was the only time a really hard final worked in my favor.
#6: Constitutional Law III: First Amendment (Prof. Araiza)
Araiza
gets two mentions, but this course ranks higher because it has some of the most
fascinating jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
It was in this course that I finally realized Justice Douglas was my
favorite of them all, and that I should try to live up to the standards that he
set for himself. Araiza never talks
about his clerkship on the Court, but it hung out there in the back of my mind,
and I wanted badly to ask him about all the things that happened while he was
there, but I understand if that must be kept confidential. Regardless, hearing his eminently reasonable
and incisive interpretations of the Court’s opinions was a true highlight, and
I bemoan the fact that I will never be able to take a course with him
again. Not only was he a good
professor—he was a good person, and made himself more available to students
than any other professor I had. I will
never forget him saying, “Pardon my language, but I’m just quoting: ‘We’ll take
the fucking street later!’” or the last time a group of us sat in his office
and discussed how obscene internet videos had to get before the Court would say
they fell outside the protection of the First Amendment.
#5: Evidence (Prof. Pitler)
This is
another one that a lot of my classmates might disagree with, but Pitler did not
try to pull any tricks. He told us that
if we just did the problems, we would do well.
And I did. While I only got a B+
on the exam, he told me he boosted me to an A- because I came into every class
prepared to offer up my answers to the problems he had assigned. I appreciated that there was very little
reading. Also, Pitler delivered a stirring
lecture in our final class on the Crawford
case and the Confrontation Clause that was one of the most entertaining and
informative talks I have ever attended.
The school should have video recorded that class, because it was a
definite highlight for me.
#4: Criminal Procedure (Prof. Baer)
Professor
Baer warned me that if I took Crim Pro with her, she would “kick my butt.” She “kicked my butt” in Corporations (giving
me a B, while admitting I earned a B- on the exam, but participated well in
class and therefore got boosted) even though I appear (very briefly, and in a
friend’s beret!) on the school’s website in a video from that course. It was not a bad course, but I bemoaned her
use of Powerpoint. She did not use
Powerpoint in Crim Pro, and this was easily one of the most fascinating courses
in law school. The reading was usually
quite interesting (some people call it Con Law IV because it is all Supreme
Court opinions) and Prof. Baer always assigned a reasonable amount of reading
for each class. I never felt overwhelmed
and felt that she used her time in class very effectively. And I do not think she will kick my butt,
because I took the course pass/fail (and update: I passed).
#3: Interviewing & Counseling (Prof. Schultze)
Everybody
should take a class with Prof. Schultze.
He is a popular professor, and for good reason: there really is not much
work to do. This is a 2 credit
class. But it can be a little bit
stressful when you are on the chopping block!
Prof. Schultze could have his own reality show based on his
classes. While the class was easy, it
was also fun and useful—learning how to appropriately approach clients is a
fine art, and it is one skill that I will leave law school believing I have
learned well.
#2: Business Reorganizations (Prof. Gerber)
Also
known as “Debtor/Creditor Part 2,” this was a fun 3 credit class to take, and
Prof. Gerber is one of the best at BLS.
I will never forget his drawings of pies to represent chapter 7 and
buche-de-noels (or twinkies) to represent chapter 11 (and I am sort of sad I missed
taking the class after Hostess declared bankruptcy) and his drawings of pigs to
represent banks, nor his mentioning that his brother wrote the comic book Howard the Duck or that he went to high
school with Sheldon Toibb. While the
course can sometimes be challenging, Prof. Gerber always made it comprehensible
through his classes, which blended lecturing and calling on volunteers. He did not try to “trick us” on the final,
and I was very pleased to get an A- in that course—it is one of the grades that
I am most proud of in law school. It was
also through this course that I found my “dream area of practice” and at least
got a shot at a couple bankruptcy judge clerkships. I didn’t get them, but Prof. Gerber made time
to help me try. Also, it is perhaps
worth noting that I sat in on his Contracts class in the Spring of 2010, and
that it was the best class I attended at any of the law schools I visited, and
that his style and presence as an “interim Dean” made me feel reasonably secure (not totally secure!)
that I had made the right decision by attending BLS.
#1: Securities Regulation (Prof. Fanto)
I just
mentioned Fanto to another student a couple hours ago and she said, “Oh,
Fanto’s a god.” That about sums it
up. Securities Regulation may be one of
the most difficult classes in law school (I personally found Corporate Finance
more difficult because of all the math, and Federal Income Taxation more
difficult because of all the material), but it was always a pleasure to attend
the lectures, even when Fanto admitted that he hated teaching the material (on
Regulation S). Simply put, I was very
lucky to take a class with him. I will
never forget him shouting, “you have to be quiet!” during the first few classes
or hearing his opinions on Congress (“they don’t have any idea what’s going on
anyways…”) and our unfortunate position of needing to implement the JOBS Act
into our understanding of the securities laws.
Also now whenever I go on a road trip, I will try to pick out abandoned
bowling alleys, because he says it is usually easy to do—and that underscores
my opinions on this course: it’s incredibly important stuff, but it’s contained
in these incredibly dense and archaic statutes.
Fanto was great at making us understand just how important it was, and
while I do not know my grade yet (perhaps I did terribly), I will always
remember those classes very fondly.
III.
NIED #23
½ : Restriction on the Right to Practice
90% of us will be staying in New
York City post-graduation. That is the
figure that gets tossed around as a student begins their law school
journey. 90% of law school students stay
in the same jurisdiction (or is it state?) as their school. A problem arises when a student’s attitude
towards their “law school home” sours over the course of three years.
Sometimes it is not too big of a
deal. You don’t like New York? Well go to Connecticut, or New Jersey, or
Massachusetts. Take 2 Bars. You can do it; it’s fine. BLS “strongly recommends” taking the Bar Exam
in two states (i.e. New York and New Jersey), and updates information for these
two states but leaves the rest up to the student.
I don’t know the deadline in
California, I’ll admit. But I do know
the deadline in Illinois is February 15, and the total fee (if filing is
timely) is $850. It then jumps to $1,050
for “late” registration if done by March 31, and $1,450 for “really late”
registration if done by May 31. I never
looked into this matter until a fellow Chicagoan told me it wasn’t possible to
do Illinois and New York at the same time.
It would have been fine, for me, a
student without a job who is torn between two states, if that other state was
New Jersey, but it’s not. Perhaps it’s
the difficulty of traveling between two states on a Monday, Tuesday, and
Wednesday (or can you take the Bar in a different state in your home state? I don’t think so…), but you cannot take the
New York and Illinois Bar exams because they are both two day exams on Tuesday
and Wednesday (i.e. the MBE on Tuesday and the “state test” on Wednesday).
The deadline for New York (we all
knew) was April 30, so it is still possible for me to file “really late” in
Illinois, and forfeit the NY Registration fee of $250, but I’ll have spent
$1,700 in the process and will probably incur about $1,300 in moving expenses,
and then who even knows about residency in Illinois. Furthermore, switching at this late stage of
the game is exactly the type of distraction that seems tailor-made for Bar
Failure.
This is the last NIED column
because it goes to the last complaint about law school: when you don’t have a
job, and aren’t sure where things will be better for the long term, nobody can
give you satisfactory advice. You just
need to stick to your guns, pick one, and pray.
The state of indecisiveness is a horrible one that can make even the
most talented minds wither under pressure.
It’s not like we’re Lebron James and we can orchestrate a television
special to state which city will be so lucky as to have our legal talents. We’re the opposite. There’s too many of us, we’ve been told, so
which city is unlucky enough to have
to support one more mediocre (if grades are any indication) lawyer? After all if we were destined to be a great
lawyer, we would have a job by now, right?
I throw my hands up and say once
and for all that this is one area in which I cannot offer persuasive
advice. The best advice I’ve been given
is to take the New York Bar, stay here until December or so, see if I have a
job by then, and if not, return to Illinois and take the Bar there in February,
because the MBE score will transfer. This
is easier said than done, though, as my remaining funds will likely dwindle
down to almost nothing by that point.
And who really wants to take the Bar Exam twice?
It’s all cold comfort this time, I
suppose. You should just pick your law
school in the region where you’re sure you want to live. If you didn’t do that, then you must be sure
you want to return home, and you will already have your plan in place. Unfortunately there is no back-up
option—except if one happens to be from Washington D.C. (or Alaska, I’ve been
told), where you can “waive in” immediately.
In order to promote fairness, law
students should be able to “waive in” to every state. There are questions on the MPRE
(which—surprise, surprise—applies nationwide) which state that non-compete
clauses in partnership agreements are unenforceable because they constitute a
restriction on the right to practice.
The Bar Exam is the ultimate restriction on the right to practice,
because it forces a person to say, “This is my home, and I wouldn’t rather be
anywhere else.”
I loved going to school in New
York from 2001-2005 (the “honeymoon period” after 9/11 truly made me believe
that New York was the greatest city in America, and that there was nowhere else
I’d rather be) so it seemed to make sense for me to pick New York over Los
Angeles (and Chicago) for law school between 2010 and 2013. Now I just see it as an overcrowded bundle of
nerves, anxiety, car-lessness, high rent and claustrophobia (or maybe I only
feel this way because I lived in Brooklyn Heights for 3 years) and I wish I had
more “contacts” in other cities so that I could confidently believe that it
would not be a bad career move to leave this place.
The ABA should definitely consider
broadening the right to “waive in” because while 90% of us may be staying, it
may not be the most “voluntary” decision we make after starting. Many of us are simply not the same people we
were three years ago.
There is a quote in the library (a
gift from the class of 2010) from a movie that is not about law school, but is
thought to apply to law school. I have
one other such quote: “I believe whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you…stranger.”
IV.
Top 5
Hardest Exams
#5: Property (Prof. Macey – Spring 2011)
While I earned a B+ in this
course, and do not feel I did all that well on the exam, I was pleasantly
surprised by this grade. Property, it
has been said, is the most useless first year course in law school. That may be so, but sometimes it can touch on
interesting and/or “useful” areas of the law (I remember hating the Mark Rothko
case in Property, but then embracing it during Trusts & Estates). In any case, many students complained about
how hard this exam was, and I had no real reason to complain, but it was a very
difficult exam to finish properly in the time allotted (there were “too many
issues”).
#4: Accounting for Lawyers (Prof. Hauptman – Fall 2012)
While this exam was not
necessarily difficult, the course itself was certainly the hardest 2 credit
course I took in law school. Our
professor told us there would be no “tricks” on the exam, but this is a tricky
course, and because I did not put in the requisite amount of effort throughout
the semester, I suffered on the final.
My advice is not to underestimate this course if you plan to take
it. It is not “easy,” as a student a
year ahead of me claimed.
#3: Civil Procedure (Prof. Schneider – Fall 2010)
While this was the most “pleasant”
grade I received in my first semester of law school, question #4 was the
hardest question I have ever had to answer on an exam. It made me want to cry. I wrote two short paragraphs as an answer to
#4 (which had a lengthy and confusing fact pattern about two and half legal-sized
pages long) and apparently did as well or better on that question than any of
my other percentages. I guess it was one
of the few times that everyone else was just as flummoxed as me.
#2: Corporate Finance (Prof. Myers – Fall 2012)
While I did not do all that poorly
on the essays on this exam, I badly fouled up the multiple choice section. This was one of the most difficult classes in
all of law school because (like accounting), I did not put in the right amount
of effort in during the semester. It was
a strange exam. It was completely
“open.” We could use any and every resource
at our disposal. A lot of the other
students probably hit “Control + F” and cycled through their outlines and
cut-and –pasted their answers. I didn’t
have the presence of mind to do that, nor did I have the presence of mind to
know all of the Microsoft Excel functions like the back of my hand. A tough course and exam primarily because of
the math involved.
#1: Debtors’ and Creditors’ Rights (Hon. Martin Glenn – Fall
2011)
I will never tire of talking about
this course, nor the impossibility of this exam. This exam caused both vomiting and tears (not
from me, but other students taking it).
I was pleased with my grade on it (as noted above) but found the
experience of taking it to be excruciating.
It was like a really scary roller coaster ride but gave off no great
feeling of relief and accomplishment at its end.
V.
Areas for Reform and Conclusion
Brooklyn Law School is not a
terrible place, but there are certainly some changes that would go a long way
towards making it better. I offer my own
idiosyncratic suggestions here:
First, BLS should offer its
students $50.00 per year on their
printing account. $25.00 (or $12.50
per semester) is insufficient for a typical student’s printing needs. Further, there should be an option for
students that never use the printing stations in the library to have a zero
balance. The former President of the SBA
rebuffed this recommendation saying, “You need to raise tuition to do
that.” Well, our tuition was raised
roughly $3,000 over the course of our three years and our printing account
amount never went up, so to that I say, “No.”
Second, BLS should offer one color printer in the library. It is sad when a student asks me if we have
color printing and I sheepishly send them to 1 Boerum Place, even though I am
not 100% sure there is a color printer there that they can use. Just one
color printer would be a nice addition to the library.
Third, BLS should have a more robust academic advisement
program. We are given an academic
advisor in our first year (one of our professors, I presume) but that professor
may not necessarily want to engage the students in talking about their
long-term goals and how best to achieve them.
While I am generally satisfied with my course selection, there were two
or three classes that I wish I hadn’t taken.
The school does offer a panel every year on how to choose your
upper-class curriculum, but more student-specific counseling should be mandated
in the way that career-counseling is
only “suggested.”
Fourth and finally (and this list
is by no means exhaustive, just specific things I would have liked), the school
should offer the option of a retroactive
pass/fail. This could be used by
students to “nix” a grade that destroyed their GPA if the course had a
pass/fail option that was not elected by the student during the course of the
semester. While this may have caused
internal problems earlier, with the bright-line 80% standard the school has set
for scholarships, just as remedial statutes should be interpreted broadly, such
a standard would improve student morale and remove the problem of students
“shooting for a D” on exams they know will be graded pass/fail. If there were concerns about abuse, it could
be changed to only allow for retroactivity in the third year (and not be
available for the incoming 2-year-program).
In conclusion, it has been a long
and often boring ride, but I hope that I have played a small part in helping to
make this school a better place for students.
Some of the best moments I have enjoyed were in the “napping room” (104M
in the library), and it is my hope that one day I can return to the school and
officially have that room designated as such in my honor. Students need a place in the library where
they can relax for a few moments in an anxiety-free zone, and sleep if they
must. Everyone that knows the “napping
room” is for this purpose will agree that it is one of the best “student-made”
changes in the school. And it is my hope
that other students’ suggestions will bring about positive changes in the future
in different areas of the school.
