Belated blogging about law school

Mike, the person who insisted I start this blog, subtly nags: "How goes the effort to learn the majesty of the law?"

To which I reply:

It's the law, man. New classes this quarter are Criminal and Constitutional, but Constitutional focuses on the Civics-like aspect of the thing, not all the fun rights. However, since I've been a Civics nerd ever since my bizarre obsession with the Bicentennial in 1975-76, I still think it will be fun. Have I told my Bicentennial story yet? Who here read "Common Sense" when they were 8? (If J's still reading this, I expect a comment from him. He became a "miniature Alan Dershowitz" after reading the Declaration and the Constitution. Evidently he wanted to sue his parents for unreasonable search of his room.)

Criminal is so far focusing on how to accurately restate the holding from a case. Should we have learned this earlier? Probably. Our prof is billed as the school's "most Socratic." He chides students who say the opinion "quoted" an authority when it merely cited to it. Today he spent part of class talking about I.A. Richards. So far we've spent every day dragging the holding out of the case, often in excruciating detail. By the time we are done, we have stuff on the white board that looks like sentence diagramming. I'm actually pretty happy with this, being both a former English major and an anal-retentive freak.

Yesterday, I picked up my Contracts problem set from last quarter. I could not remember writing it, and furthermore, I couldn't understand what I said. Nonetheless, I did OK, gradewise (as did everyone). Typical example of my prose:

However, under Rest. 237, a court would impose a constructive condition of exchange and hold that the Broker’s promise to “use reasonable efforts to procure a ready, willing, and able Buyer of the property in accordance with the price, terms, and conditions” of the agreement is a condition of the Seller’s further performance in paying the Broker. A court would probably not hold that the Broker’s advertisement of the property, posting of “for sale” signs, and cooperating with other brokers was a constructive condition of exchange, because those requirements go to method of performance rather than the substance of performance.

WHAT??

Probably the clearest sentence in the whole 7 pages:

A credible reading of the contract would find that the clause is intended to manage the risk of the Seller finding his own buyer while the Broker is performing, not insulate the Broker against the risk of his own nonperformance.

OK, that's recognizable.

Eventually, after re-reading, it began to make sense. It's also kind of unfortunate that I dumped all that knowledge so quickly--I'll need it for the bar.

I got the summer externship of the odd interview, so that's good. However, I'm feeling kind of ambivalent about it because after my trip to New Orleans, I was thinking it would be good to do a volunteer gig down there this summer, because I could probably stay with Ms. C, and because helping people keep their homes is God's work, and because the whole Common Ground vibe took me back to my student co-op days, which were good. But nailing employers for OSHA and minimum wage violations is also God's work, and if I still feel this way next summer, there will be plenty to do then.

Still, I'm worrying that I'm making a choice that's safe and makes sense, but goes against my heart. Since I came to law school to find more meaningful and challenging work, that's not good. Grph.