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.

---

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