The End of the Beginning

So that's that. Three days ago, I took my second and last final of the semester, and with no further ado, it's over. Four months of intensive reading, briefing, fretting, outlining, memo-writing, stressing, and of course, occasional blogging, and suddenly . . . nothing. I'm really not sure I've fully absorbed the idea that, for an entire month, I don't need to think about the law at all (as evidenced by a general dazed lack of focus, and by the fact that I continue to have anxious dreams about civil procedure). Just what am I supposed to do with myself for the next four weeks? OK, there's the holiday season, and there's that long list of neglected household tasks I've been compiling all semester, and there are still two kids to take care of and a wife to hang out with, somewhere around here, but still: shouldn't I be puzzling over some turn-of-the-century judge's convoluted prose, or trying to edit five pages out of a memo, or convincing myself I'm not going to flunk out of law school? Well, maybe I can still do that last one over the break, but the rest of it? All gone. The first semester of law school is over. So now what?

I'd like to offer some sort of grand, retrospective, insightful synthesis of it all, but I don't think I have the energy. Or maybe it's the desire. Or maybe on some level I know there's just not that much to be said. Yes, it was difficult, as everybody says, and no, I was not prepared for its demands, either intellectual or emotional. But I'd like to think I met those demands, however haphazardly, and that I came through all right in the end. Perhaps the greatest measure of this is that I am OK with waiting six weeks to get my final grades, and I'm not really concerned about whether or not I passed -- the hyperbole of my first paragraph notwithstanding. I doubt I've reached the level of nonchalance exhibited by the character in The Paper Chase, who felt no need even to look at his grades when they arrived in the mail, and instead cast them into the sea (nor will this likely be an option, as I don't imagine they'll be sending them by the post), but I have no doubt I'll be allowed to return in the spring. I may yet find a good sized puddle to throw my torts book into, but that would be more like an act of vengeance than of emancipation.

Anyway, here I am, on the other side. I really do think next semester will go much more smoothly, going into it as I am with some awareness of such basic things as how to take notes, how to read the cases, how to study, and how to prepare for finals. All of that really would have come in handy these past few months. But c'est la vie. It's over and done. Time to hang out with the family and enjoy four weeks of normality. Because let's face it: those advance assignments for the spring will be arriving before I know it.

One Last Dispatch Before the Siege

I thought I'd take a brief moment, while the baby is asleep and I probably should either be doing dishes or studying, to catch everyone up. As you may already know, classes have ended. I am now in the midst of "Reading Days," during which I am supposed to study virtually nonstop in preparation for my finals, which take place next week, on Tuesday and Friday. I haven't studied non-stop, but I have done at least a few hours every day, and I'm feeling pretty good about where I am at the moment. I'll certainly do a final post once it's all over, but meanwhile, here's an overview of my final weeks of class:

Torts

Having completed the causation discussion, we proceeded to damages, which is shorthand for "How many ways can you get money out of a person?" I learned that there are nominal damages (tiny, symbolic awards for when no real damage was done), compensatory damages (monetary reimbursement for medical bills, lost income, pain & suffering, etc.), and punitive damages (awards meant not to compensate the victim, but to punish the wrongdoer, in cases involving recklessness or intentional harm). Only compensatory damages are typically available in negligence claims, so that's mainly what we talked about. Unsurprisingly, there are many, many ways to get money out of someone and call it "compensation." The pain-and-suffering stuff is the most interesting, and includes things like "loss of enjoyment" damages, where the court decides just how much I was enjoying my life anyway in order to decide how much I should be paid for not being able to do so anymore; "wrongful death" actions brought by legal beneficiaries for economic losses they've suffered due to the victim's death; and my favorite, "survival actions," where, among other things, if I die in a plane crash, and was aware that I was going to die, my "estate" can sue the airline on my behalf, not only for my death, but for the emotional distress I suffered from my "foreknowledge of doom." One example we read is just too ridiculous not to recount: A plane crashed when its left wing became detached from the plane. Attorneys argued, successfully, that the people on the left side of the plane would have seen the wing becoming detached, and therefore would have had advance warning of the crash, leading to a longer period of emotional distress for them than for the people on the right side. So what happened? The families of the passengers on the left side got more money than the families of the people on the right. Unfair? Maybe even psychotic? You didn't hear it from me.

We then talked about some defenses a defendant might assert, mainly contributory negligence (i.e., sure I was negligent, but so were you, so you should share some of the responsibility) and assumption of the risk (i.e., sure I was negligent, but if you didn't want to get hurt, you shouldn't have gone skiing in the first place). And finally, we actually left the subject of negligence to cover, very briefly, the intentional torts of assault and battery (two separate things in civil claims, though they're often brought together). The most interesting things from this discussion were (1) "intent" has nothing to do with "motive." If I voluntarily do something that is "substantially certain" to cause you harm, I "intended" to harm you in the eyes of the law. (2) "Assault" just means making someone "apprehend" that you might come into "harmful or offensive contact" with them. If I approach you menacingly, you can sue me for assault, even if I never touch you. And (3), "battery" includes not only hitting someone, but also touching them "offensively" (e.g., giving them an unwanted kiss), or even hitting something they're holding, or the car they're sitting in (as these are considered "extensions of the person"). Bottom line? Be careful out there, folks. You could be assaulting someone and you don't even know it.

Civil Procedure

OK, I'm gong to seriously gloss this one over, because if I don't, no one will ever read this blog again. What we've covered since late October in this class encompasses so much mind-numbing detail and interrelated rules and procedures I can hardly believe I've come to a point where it all makes some kind of sense. But the things is, it does, which I can only attribute to the indefatigable efforts of our professor. She was truly amazing.

So here's the not-even-remotely-in-depth version: In our final four weeks, we studied pleadings and motions, how to join parties and claims together, the "Erie Doctrine" (when to apply state law in federal court), what the ethical expectations are for lawyers concerning what they present to the court, the basics of "discovery" (the process by which the parties in a suit get information from each other before the trial), summary judgment (what happens when one party asks the judge to decide the case before trial, on the basis of what's been revealed in discovery), and "preclusion" (under what circumstances a particular claim or issue is precluded from being tried, because it was -- or should have been -- tried in a previous case). I think that's it. If it sounds like a lot, believe me, it feels like even more. To illustrate: All of this takes up about half of my outline (where I try to distill everything we've learned into an organized format) for the entire course, though it was crammed into only four of the fourteen weeks in the semester. It was quite a ride.

Lawyering Process

Lest I forget that there actually was a third class demanding some of my brain power this semester: We did finish up the first half of Lawyering Process, the only course that will continue into the spring. I had to write a final legal memo, fifteen pages long, about the enforceability of a non-compete agreement in an employment contract. I won't say I enjoyed it, but I know it's invaluable experience for the future.

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So that's it. I will learn nothing new until mid-January. All that remains is for me to prove to my professors that I really know and understand this stuff (or at least most of it), so they let me come back. There have been times in the past few months when I actually worried that I might not manage that. But no more. Confidence is high, and I still have days to study. So wish me luck, and I'll report back when it's all behind me.

And We're Back

It's been more than a month since my last law-related post, for which I apologize. Most people reading this probably already know that this is largely due to the birth of my daughter, Eleanor, at the beginning of the month, followed immediately by a traumatic midterm experience, and thence, of course, by normal day-to-day parenting, studying, and general stressing out.

I know: Excuses, excuses. Suck it up, Chris.

So now, after six weeks of silence, where to begin? There was that midterm, mentioned above, which was a travesty I've already wallowed in far too long and too deeply. Let's just say, I was not prepared, and I imploded spectacularly, and spent the next few weeks completely reorienting myself to the whole law school process. The good news is, the test doesn't actually count against me, and the better news is, it served very well to show me just how inadequate my studying up to that point had been, and I'm now feeling much better about things. (At the same time, I acknowledge that the whole law school experience so far has been characterized by a constant swinging between feelings of total comprehension and utter incompetence, which has left me hesitant to count on any good feelings lasting more than a week. But we will see.)

To quickly bring everyone up to speed:

In Civil Procedure, we have moved past the (very lengthy and convoluted) question of personal jurisdiction, and through something called subject matter jurisdiction, which is, thankfully, a little bit simpler than the personal kind. It's basically just about what kinds of cases federal courts are allowed to hear. (State courts have general jurisdiction, so they can hear almost anything.) The two main categories under the subject matter heading are (1) diversity jurisdiction and (2) federal question jurisdiction.

(1) Federal courts may hear a case when the parties are "diverse," meaning none of the plaintiffs are domiciled in the same state as any of the defendants. There are a few complications involving businesses and "aliens," but that's the gist of it. Oh, and the "amount in controversy" in the case has to exceed $75,000.

(2) They may also hear cases which involve (or even better, "arise out of") a "federal question," e.g., a civil rights violation or First Amendment issue. Again, and of course, there are complications, mostly involving how you may or may not tack on state law issues to your federal claims, which then bleeds into the topic of "supplemental" jurisdiction.

After all that, we discussed under what circumstances a case may be "removed" from state court to federal court, and then proceeded to the topic of "venue" (determining which courts within a given judicial system would be "the most sensible and convenient" in which to litigate), and now, to "pleading" (how to write the original "complaint," how to answer it, that sort of thing). One interesting thing about our progress (at least to me) is that we are moving steadily along a spectrum from very Constitutional issues (personal jurisdiction) to those much more governed by statute and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This doesn't really makes things more or less complicated, but definitely requires a different approach in terms of studying and processing the information.

As for Torts, we're still talking about negligence, but whereas we had previously only looked at the rather involved issue of who owes what kind of duty of care to whom (duty and breach, the first two elements of a negligence claim), we have now moved into the realm of causation (the third element), which is much more up my alley. Causation encompasses both "actual" cause and "proximate" cause. Actual cause is usually pretty straightforward: did your negligent act bring about my injury? Or put another away: But for your negligent act, would my injury have occurred? If you negligently ran a red light, but my injured head results from my coincidentally tripping over the curb at the same time, there's no causation. On the other hand, if you hit me and break my leg, and the ambulance taking me to the hospital gets in an accident and I break my arm, and at the hospital instead of putting my arm and leg in a cast they accidentally amputate them, and two years later I am unable to escape from a fire because of my missing limbs and I die, there is, at the least, actual cause. None of it would have happened if you hadn't been talking on your damn cell phone.

Which brings us to "proximate cause." This really has almost nothing to do with causation, apart from the fact that you can't have proximate cause without actual cause. It's really all about how far a person's liability ought to extend. In the above example, you probably should be held accountable for my broken leg, but what about the rest? Are you liable to my family for the lost income and emotional distress brought about by my death two years later? As you can see, things get very interesting very quickly, and I think this has been my favorite part of torts to date. There are philosophical questions involved, which ties in nicely with my other interests, but I think what I love about it is how it's all tied to practicality. Philosophically, every event has infinite causes, and infinite consequences, but this is real life, and we have to draw a line somewhere. Seeing how different courts, at different times, have gone about drawing that line, and trying to figure out where I would draw it, is fascinating. (In case you're curious, although you'd still be liable for the broken arm I got in the ambulance, most likely the hospital staff's gross negligence in amputating my arm and leg would be considered a "superseding cause," and would therefore cut off your liability at that point. Lucky you.)

So, steady on. Shockingly, there are only four weeks of class left (followed by a little over two weeks to study for finals), so it will all be over soon, one way or another. Not so shockingly, I'm feeling very ready for that moment. Not necessarily because law school is so hard, but more because I'd like to be able to spend a bit more time with my family. It's not much fun having to decide between being a good student or being a good father and husband; even worse is feeling like I'm sort of doing a half-assed job of each. Thank goodness Amy and Dashiell (and even Eleanor, already) are so wonderful and forgiving. The best thing I can do is try to deserve them.

It's book review time!

It can't be all law, all the time, right? So I read a book. Or tried anyway. And now you get to hear about it:

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore


My rating: 1 of 5 stars
It saddens me to say this, but, though I tried and tried to like this book, I couldn't even make myself finish it. Enough people I trust have told me how brilliant Moore is that I may still try her short stories. But here, I just couldn't find anything redeeming. The whole thing felt like it was written by someone with no knowledge or experience of what she was writing about. I didn't care about or, even worse, believe in the characters. Quite frankly, they all seemed like bland caricatures, and the few attempts at depth felt like nothing more than intrusions of the author's own thoughts and words. The characters themselves couldn't support their weight. In short, the whole thing felt like a sham.

I should acknowledge here that I have yet to find a single negative professional review of this book, so maybe I'm totally off base. But I will also point out that many of these reviews do mention Moore's "clumsiness" at several major points in the novel. They just seem to think it's forgivable, because the rest of the book is so fantastic. Maybe so, but I couldn't see it. And I really did try.

View all my reviews >>

What I'm Learning, Part 2: Civil Procedure

OK, this one's going to be a toughie, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Here's what the DU Course Catalog has to say about Civil Procedure:

Students enrolled in Civil Procedure learn how Constitutional statutory and judicial rules frame the determination of court controversies. They also explore the doctrines, remedies, and other principles pertinent to judicial dispute resolution.

After three weeks in the course, here's what I have to say about it: Jurisdiction is really freaking complicated.

Jurisdiction is, of course, just one of (I'm sure) many crucial elements of civil procedure, but so far it's pretty much all we've talked about. So what is it? As my professor would say, "Jurisdiction is power." Namely, the power of a court to hear and decide cases, based on who's involved and what they're about. Jurisdiction breaks down into personal jurisdiction and subject jurisdiction, but we haven't gotten into the subject kind yet. Personal jurisdiction is power over people, or their property, and the big question is: When does a state have jurisdiction over a person (or his or her property) who doesn't want them to have that jurisdiction?

There are four ways to get jurisdiction without much of a fight: Domicile, Presence, Consent, and Adjudication of Marriage. If you live in the state, or happen to be there long enough for someone to hand you a summons, or say OK, you can have jurisdiction over me (maybe just by failing to say otherwise), then that's that. And if your spouse lives there and wants to divorce you, they can. So far, so good. The "presence" thing gets a little weird when a state gets jurisdiction over someone just because somebody handed them a summons while in an airplane flying over that state (that totally happened), but at least it's a simple concept: you're here, we gotcha, end of discussion. And really, all of it was pretty simple back when people got around in wagons and had to have a really good reason to take the time and effort to move from one state to another. But nowadays?

The big case we read, and to which we refer back over and over and over again, is about shoe salesmen in Washington State in 1945. Seriously. It's called International Shoe Co. v. State of Washington and it totally changed everything about personal jurisdiction. I won't bore you (even more) with the details, but basically the court decided that there was something called "minimum contacts" that could make one subject to jurisdiction in a particular state -- like maybe employing some shoe salesmen there for several years. Unfortunately, what constitutes minimum contacts is not remotely straightforward, because the court in Shoe threw in a bit about not "offending traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice" in granting jurisdiction. Courts have basically been trying to decide what that really means ever since.

OK, this is getting really long and dull. Maybe you noticed. To finish up, I'll just say that it's amazing how hard it is to figure out who gets to adjudicate what once you have people driving and flying all over the place and commercial goods getting sent to and from pretty much everywhere in the world. And the Internet? Don't even ask. According to the syllabus, next week we move on to subject matter jurisdiction, and truthfully, I'm a little relieved. I think my brain needs a change of gears, however small, rather than ever-increasing complications. Just a little time to let things settle is all I ask.

I'll probably try to do these little summaries every few weeks. I may or may not be able to make them more interesting to all of you, but I think they do force me to think back and put everything in context. (Even if what I've written here is a complete mess, I actually feel like it sort of makes sense to me.) In any case, that's it for now (my only other class is called "Lawyering Process," and it's all about how to write briefs and memos and stuff, so I won't bother summarizing it for the public at large). Thanks for bearing with me.

What I'm Learning, Part 1: Torts

I thought I'd try something a bit different today, and maybe attempt to give my non-law-student readers some idea of the sorts of things I'm actually learning in this fancy new school of mine. I have no reason to believe I can do this in anything like an entertaining manner, so I won't be offended if you doze off and/or skip to the end after the first couple of sentences. Plus, I'm new at this, so I'm likely to get some of it dead wrong. With that in mind, let's start with Torts.

So a tort is basically a wrong done to another, leading to civil liability. By civil, I mean non-criminal, meaning it's mostly about money, rather than jail time. So far, we've been focusing on the idea of negligence -- just one of several "theories of recovery" we will eventually cover -- and a big part of figuring out what counts as negligence is figuring out what a "reasonable person" is. If you injure someone (physically, mentally, economically) while behaving in a way other than how a reasonable person would under the circumstances, chances are, you're negligent. Of course, the whole idea of the reasonable person is a legal fiction, but lawyers and judges and such tend to think of it as an objective standard. In other words, there may not be any actual reasonable persons out there, but we all know how they would act if there were.

Anyway, whatever a reasonable person may be, not everyone gets to (or has to) be held to that standard. We've learned that children are excepted, as long as they're engaged in "childlike activities." But if they're driving a car (or a snowmobile, as in one of the cases we read), for example, they're treated as adults, 'cause that's an adult thing to do. The physically disabled have a different standard, but not the mentally disabled. (And no, you can't get off just by claiming to be really dumb, either. Trust me, somebody already tried it.) Then there are people held to a higher standard, like "common carriers" -- bus companies, subway lines, airlines, etc. -- who are expected to take the "utmost care" achievable by human means...or something like that. And there are doctors, of course, who are expected to be rather better at, say, heart transplants than just your average "reasonable person." And the list goes on.

There's all kinds of other stuff that goes into deciding what's reasonable. Statutes enacted by the legislature can make certain actions -- or the lack of certain actions -- negligence by law. But some of them can be ignored under certain circumstances, like when obeying them would actually put you in danger. And then there's custom: if a certain behavior seems reasonable to an outsider, but isn't customary in your line of work, or vice versa, you might get cut some slack. And depending on the laws and facts involved, a judge may make these determinations or may leave it to a jury. Oh, and it may just depend on what state you're in. Or what decade.

So basically, what I've been doing is reading case after case (after case after case) exploring these issues from various intricate angles. My current count shows that we've read and/or discussed seventeen cases in some kind of depth, and have encountered more than 70 others in the course of that reading and discussion. That's over the course of six class sessions. So yeah, there's a lot of reading, and a lot of information. And did I mention that all of the above concerns just one of the four factors to be considered in determining negligence? Which, again, is only one of several theories of recovery we need to learn about? We've got a long way to go. Thankfully, so far, I'm loving it.

That's probably enough for now. Stay tuned for the next post all about Civil Procedure. It's more interesting than it sounds.

Two Weeks In

I know it’s a cliché, but I’m gonna say it anyway: I can hardly believe it’s only been two weeks. Quite apart from the actual amount of material we’ve covered -- which seems, from the perspective of my tired brain, like quite a lot, but from the perspective of how far we’ve gotten in our enormous textbooks, like hardly anything -- I am quite certain that no other semester in my academic career has so quickly and thoroughly engaged my interest, mentally fatigued me, made me so anxious about my abilities, or so rewarded increased effort. To put it another way: it’s hard, but worth it.

I’ve spent the last several days dealing with mounting anxieties surrounding my note-taking and studying habits, or lack thereof. I’m not sure whether to blame myself, for being sort of lazy about both of these things all my life, or Metro State, for never really making it necessary to overcome that laziness. Regardless, something had to be done. As of today, I’m feeling much better about it. I have a study schedule for the week (though that will be altered drastically, I’m sure, when Eleanor arrives); I have settled, for now, on a method for briefing the cases I read; and I am beginning to form at least a vague picture of how I might condense my various notes throughout the semester, in order to have an outline to study come finals. (For any law students reading this, I have found the book Law School Confidential -- particularly Chapter 8 -- extremely helpful in all of these steps.) I’m starting to feel like a real student. And even better, I think I’m beginning to understand what the hell all these cases are really about.

So: stress levels down, confidence levels up. All things considered, if I really have found the right track for myself after a mere two weeks, I probably should be grateful. Of course, I’m remaining open to the possibility that this new-and-evolving plan will turn out to be useless, and I’ll have to start from square one. Not looking forward to it, but remaining open.

Beyond all that, I should mention the most important thing, which is this: so far, I absolutely love law school. My two “substantive” classes (Torts and Civil Procedure) are so, well, substantive (“having a firm basis in reality and therefore important, meaningful, or considerable,” per New Oxford American Dictionary). Every reading and every class session are filled to the brim with truly important information. Contrast this with the typical philosophy course, in which at least half of each class is wasted by the students’ incoherent rambling, and the other half, on occasion, by the professor’s only somewhat less incoherent and rambling lecture. The readings are good, and may be important for a test or final paper, but even then they’re not “important” in the sense that knowing them may mean the difference between being a good lawyer or a bad lawyer, winning or losing a case. The awareness that what I’m learning may make a difference in other people’s lives (to say nothing of my own) just adds an incredible sense of urgency and significance to everything. Maybe it’s exaggerated, but it’s there, and if nothing else it makes absorbing this enormous amount of detail a great deal easier than it might otherwise be.

So anyway, on to Week Three and the implementation of my new study plan. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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P.S. According to the professor, Civil Procedure is actually considered “trans-substantive.” But whatever. You get my meaning.

The Calm Before the Storm

Yesterday was the final and, interestingly, most helpful day of my orientation -- despite also being the only optional day. I guess the second half of the day was pretty typical of the rest of the week: Lots of general you-can-do-it encouragement sprinkled with handy facts, this time mostly on the subject of note-taking and studying. But the first part of the day was all about how to brief a case, i.e., how to read a judge’s opinion (explanation of how and why a case was decided as it was) and break it down into its significant parts. It’s been made very clear over the past week that we will be reading a lot of cases (thousands), and that much of our success in law school will depend on our ability to brief these cases in a way that helps us to understand and retain the relevant facts therein. Unfortunately, this has generally come in the form of a hearty, “Make sure you’re briefing those cases!” but without any explanation of just what in the world that actually meant, and I get the feeling that most of the class, like me, was getting steadily more anxious about it. Anyway, long story short, one 1.5 hours session sufficed to lay these anxieties to rest (at least for me), and I am already reading the cases differently, with a better eye for what I’m really trying to get from the text. It’s a good feeling.

Most of the rest of Orientation was helpful, if not particularly substantial. Probably the most important part for me was hearing over and over again, from current and former evening students, that this really is possible: I can do well in law school, and even do “extra” things like be on the Law Review, if I want, while still having at least a little time to spend with my family. At one point, we spoke with a panel of evening students, one of whom said he has a full-time job, a wife, and two kids, and is ranked very high in his class, and in his three years of law school he has almost never had to do school work on a Sunday, reserving those instead for family time. That was tremendously reassuring.

So that’s it. I am fully oriented. Now begins the real deal. Of course, as I said, I’ve been reading the books already. I have advance assignments that amount to roughly 100 pages of reading -- not much, I’m sure, compared to what’s coming -- and I’ve completed about half of it. Some of it’s a little confusing, but this is often because a certain piece of reasoning will hinge on, say, a Latin phrase I’ve never heard before. It’s been suggested that we read each case the first time without worrying about such things, or highlighting or taking notes or anything, and I haven’t done the second reading of any cases yet, so I haven’t looked up those Latin phrases (or other, presumably English, words I don’t know). Apart from such stumbling blocks, though, it’s not seeming too impenetrable. I suppose I should be thankful I’ve spent the last decade or so reading philosophy. If I can manage even an educated guess as to what the hell Kant is talking about half the time, I ought to be able to handle anything any law professor can throw at me. I just need to learn the jargon.

All in all, I’m feeling pretty good about where I am as I await my first real law class. Apart from feeling academically prepared (as much as I probably can be), I feel good about the rest of the class, too. My fellow students in the evening division seem, on the whole, engaged, intelligent, serious, and agreeable. (Yesterday’s sessions were split into mixed groups of day and evening students. At one point, I was part of a small group with three day students, clearly fresh from their undergrad, and let’s just say, they helped lay to rest any lingering misgivings about being in the evening program.)

For the weekend, we’ve got Dashiell’s birthday party at Grandma’s tonight, Amy has her baby shower tomorrow, then book club tomorrow night.

Oh, and yesterday, we ate carrots right out of the garden! (OK, we washed them off first.) And the sunflowers are finally blooming, and I just discovered a second pumpkin growing beneath the leaves, and the mystery plant appears to be producing a squash-like something, and some of the corn looks like it’s about ready to fall right off the stalk. Gardening is cool.

It Begins

Tonight is the first session of my week-long Orientation at DU, which will run Monday through Friday, roughly 5-9 each day. It’s a remarkably full docket (little legal jargon for ya there). Tonight alone we are scheduled for a box dinner; tours; a welcome from the Chancellor, the Dean, and the President of the Student Bar Association; an Introduction to Law School; an Introduction to Student Affairs; an Alumni Council presentation; a talk on something called “Denver Partnership with Community Day;” a talk on the student health center; something on “Colorado Lawyers Helping Lawyers;” a presentation on Lexis Nexis (a legal research tool); and an introduction to the various administrative departments -- all in three-and-a-half hours. The other four evenings are similarly packed. I only hope things aren’t too rushed to be especially helpful.

So, on this my final day of anticipation, what am I feeling? Hard to say, really. It’s not actually the first day of classes, which I’m sure will bring a whole new set of worries, but it is the day I’ll meet the people I’ll be spending a significant portion of my life with for at least the next year-and-a-half. (First-year law students, or 1Ls, are assigned to a “student unit,” and all the students in each unit take all the same classes together for the first year. And the first “year” for part-time evening students such as myself takes a bit longer than a real-world year.) So today, at least, I’m less concerned about my academic abilities and more about my social skills: Will there be “mingling” preceding the box dinner? Will the other students already have met each other at one of the pre-first-year get-togethers, all of which I have been unable to attend? And what the hell do first-year law students at DU wear, anyway? And is it different for something like this from what you would wear to class? (Some of you might be surprised to see me worry so much about clothing, but it’s a natural outcome of the combination of [a] knowing the undeniable impact of first impressions, and [b] being fully aware of my own lack of competence both in meeting new people and in dressing myself -- for which I like to blame my color-blindness, but let’s face it: that has nothing to do with whether to wear a button-up and slacks or a T-shirt and shorts, now does it?) But then all of this is balanced with the sneaking suspicion that it’s all ridiculous and baseless, and most of the other 80 students won’t know each other either, or know what to wear for that matter. And I remind myself that this is the evening program, which means my fellow students will all be actual grown-ups, not 23-year-olds who have been out drinking together all last week, but who have jobs and families and more important things to worry about than why Chris Curtis turned up in flip-flops and his shorts and T-shirt don’t even match. So to sum up: I’ve got some butterflies, but I know they’re ridiculous, and I doubt they’ll last the day.

For now, I have seven hours before it all begins, and I intend to spend it reading something unrelated to the law, drinking coffee, and just kind of hanging out. After checking the Advance Assignments page one more time, of course. Just in case...

Last Things

So today I had my official last day at the bookstore. I went in for my exit interview, and then there was a small going away gathering for me, which was very nice. But ever since then, I’ve had this odd weight on my chest, which I begin to suspect is all the sadness I had not felt before today about leaving the place after almost nine years -- nine years of complete devotion and commitment, of emotional investment . . . nine years of, in the very fullest sense, my life. I met Amy there, so without the bookstore I would not now have my wife, my son, my expected daughter. I immersed myself in the ideology of the place, so without the bookstore I would not now have my commitment to the First Amendment, or my much more developed sense of what that commitment really entails, what it really requires. I took on positions of authority and responsibility, and flourished in them, so without the bookstore I would not now have my sense of self, my awareness of my abilities, my confidence. I was surrounded by literature and great readers, and without the bookstore I would not have read as widely or as deeply as I have. At this bookstore, I learned the meaning of community. I learned to try to see the best in people. I learned more about what really matters in life. And I basically learned who I am. How ludicrously inadequate to call this just a bookstore, to call what I have just left a “job,” or the people who saw me off today, or sent their goodbyes via email, mere “coworkers.” Today I left a family, and a home.

Of course, those metaphors are truer than they may seem. Leaving a family or a home is different from leaving a job, not just because it’s harder, but because in a very important way it’s not really leaving. I feel unequivocally that I will remain a part of the Tattered Cover for the rest of my life. We have given each other far too much of ourselves to ever be truly separate.

It occurs to me that this all might sound faintly ridiculous to many people. Most people have only had jobs, after all. But I know some of my colleagues will understand, and maybe even some people who have only experienced the Tattered Cover as customers. Most who walk through its doors can tell it’s more than just a bookstore. What I’ve learned is just how much more. It can become a part of yourself.

Books, books, books...

I believe I now have all my books for the semester. For the curious, they are as follows:

• Black’s Law Dictionary (not required, but I wanted it)
• Tort Law and Alternatives
• Civil Procedure: A Contemporary Approach
• Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation
• Legal Research and Writing
• Just Writing: Grammar, Punctuation, and Style for the Legal Writer

Jealous? Honestly, I’m pretty jazzed about most of them, though I’m guessing that last one will have a hard time justifying its cost, despite being one of the cheaper ones at a mere $60. Grand Total for the lot: $462.98. Thank god for employee discounts.

I’ve been flipping through them all, which is both exciting and intimidating. On the one hand, it’s a whole new world of information to explore; on the other, more intimidating hand, holy crap am I really supposed to absorb all of this over the next four months? Maybe not. I probably don’t have to memorize the Bluebook or anything (do I?). But still. And to think, I’m only part time.

So anyway, now I wait, and check periodically to see when my professors will post their advance assignments. Then the fun really starts.

Thirty Days and Counting...

Thirty days till the first day of Orientation Week. I have my schedule (which will be Torts, Civil Procedure, and Lawyering Process, Monday through Thursday evenings), have been to the bookstore to see what books I need (and am attempting to order a few from the TC to get my discount before I leave), and even have an official DU ID declaring my status as a law student. I've been thumbing through Black's Law Dictionary (9th edition, just released) and feeling the excitement of exploring a whole new world with its very own language and culture. I even got excited skimming the Bluebook -- which is basically a book all about how to cite references properly in legal writing. How ridiculous is that?

So the good news is, I'm still plenty psyched about going to law school. Of course, I guess I'm supposed to follow that with the bad news, but I really can't think of any -- which I guess is more good news. The schedule I got means we only need to worry about a babysitter one night of the week (Wednesdays, in case anyone reading this is interested), and we might even manage to save a day each week for family time. And I'm going to get some time to spend both with Dashiell and with Amy, separately and together, before it all starts, and I'm feeling like everything at work is pretty much settled. And everything seems to be going well with Eleanor (due in a little under 3 months), too. I'm not really sure how things could be going any better.

Don't I have any apprehensions? I guess there's a small part of me that recognizes the possibility that I'll end up completely overwhelmed, but, valid or not, I'm not really buying it. Maybe if I'd been leading some sort of well ordered existence up till now, I'd be concerned, but our lives have been prety chaotic for the past, oh, seven years or so, so I guess I feel prepared for whatever comes our way. New schools, new schedules, new baby -- bring it on.

I guess my only real worries are for Dashiell. He's about to start a whole new school, with all new teachers and friends, immediately followed by a new baby sister. He seems pretty excited about all that right now, but let's not forget that he has no idea what any of it really means, being not quite four years old. I definitely have anxiety around how to manage all that transition for him. Fortunately, I know he's an easygoing kid, who makes friends fairly easily. Still, I wish we didn't have to take him away from the people he's been hanging out with for a significant portion of the last three-fourths of his life.

Speaking of Dashiell, I took him with me to the DU bookstore yesterday, and we made sure to go on the walkway that crosses Evans and watch the cars driving under us, and to stop in at the law school. Dash is very excited to tell all his friends that his dad's going to go to school in a castle. Leave it to him to add a little bit of magic to the whole experience.

The Castle

What's Gardening Got to Do with the Law?

Mustard Green in Our Fledgling Garden

I've been working a lot in the garden this year. By "a lot," of course, I mean something like "at all," as I've never worked in a garden before. I haven't had one in which to work since childhood, at which time I simply had better things to do, mostly involving my bike or my He-Man action figures.

Anyway, in all honesty I suppose I'm only writing about it here because I don't know what else to write about as I wait for law school to begin, and I'm not sure I have a satisfactory answer to the question of my title. I did, however, just read in a book on gardening some interesting things about water use in Colorado. Turns out it may (or may not) be against the law for me to divert rainwater from my gutters to my garden. According to one interpretation of the law, the rain that falls on my house isn't "mine," it's... the state's, I guess? Another interpretation, though, says it might be OK if I just direct the water right from the gutter to the garden, though it is not OK to collect the rain in a barrel, and then add it to the garden later. There's a little less gray area around using "gray water" (pun unintended), like dishwater, or water from the washing machine -- not that I'm quite green enough to be doing that anyway -- which should be all right. And I'm guessing running a pipeline directly from a reservoir in New Mexico to my backyard is right out.

I can't say I have any particular interest in environmental law as a course of study, but this situation does nicely illustrate what I absolutely love about the law: Every issue requires analysis and interpretation, and the human element is simply never absent. Living in a country run by common law means you can never (at least not for the most important stuff) just consult a book of laws that will tell you yes, that's right, or no, that's wrong. Every situation has its own variables and exigencies, and the solution, as often as not, will depend on two or more parties just fighting it out -- in a civilized manner in a court of law, naturally.

I'm well aware of the drawbacks to this process, but I think our adversarial system is still the best thing going, at least at heart. I don't want a book that lays out the rules and has to be followed to the letter, without regard for the particulars. I want guidelines and smart judges and lawyers with a lot of good, common sense.

Which I guess goes back to gardening after all. No book can tell me what to plant on my particular plot of land or how to care for it. It's up to me to be the smart gardener with common sense. I'm reading plenty of books, believe me, and they're plenty helpful, but I'm not going to find laws in them, just guidelines. I'll do my best to follow them, knowing what I know about the land (which admittedly is almost nil at this point), and see what happens. If the mustard greens don't make it, I'll amend the "laws" next year and hope for better results. It may be a messy system, with a lot of failure, but it's the only one likely to get better and better with each passing year.

OK, maybe this is all a bit of a reach -- or so obvious as to have been better left unsaid -- but I think there's truth in it. We tend to our laws like the flawed, human gardeners that we are, and we hope to see fruit in due time. Impose too much artificial order, and the harvest will be meager and unsatisfactory.

And I'd say the metaphor is now officially overextended.

Guess I'd Better Post Something Now

So I joined this student group for newly admitted law students at DU, and I saw that a couple of my future colleagues had set up blogs to document their first year at law school, and I thought, what the hey. Only I don't see why I should limit it to my first year. Surely years two and three (and four?) will be equally fascinating, right? Maybe even more so.

So this is my record of my law school experience, and perhaps even beyond. I imagine other parts of my life, such as they are, will bleed in from time to time -- you're bound to hear a great deal about the garden, for instance, and probably the family, especially the newest member due in September -- but I don't think it will take much effort to stay focused on the law thing, which I am led to believe will soon take over my life quite utterly.

Anyway, here goes nothing. I've tried this blogging business before, at least twice, and given it up as a waste of cyberspace. I have no reason to believe this will be any different. Consider yourself forewarned.