I’m a talker. On my first day of Kindergarten at St. John’s Elementary School,  my teacher,  Mrs. Pennant asked me to stop chatting.  I did.  A few moments later I casually resumed the conversation with my new classmate.  Later that day Mrs. Pennant gave me a little white placard with a string running through it.  I was told to hang the card around my neck and follow her into the hallway.  Once there, she informed me that I was a “chatterbox” and that she would write just that on the placard.  Next I was told to introduce myself to the students in every classroom in the building as a punishment for my recalcitrant behavior.  At the time I was a slighlty built, four year old and I found the task mortifying.

Over the course of one hour on my first day of school I introduced myself to every class of students.  I started with the first grade and ended with the eighth grade students.  Long story short,  I came to terms with my gifts that day and have ever since excepted that for better or worse… I’m a talker.

FAST FORWARD TWENTY FOUR YEARS–

Ironically, I have chosen a profession that lauds and abhors the very thing I do best.  The right words spoken in the right manner,  at the right time can be the dividing line between justice and dereliction.  The wrong words or the wrong audience can end a career just as quickly as it began.  My 2L summer internship has reminded of the lesson that I learned on my first day of school. 

This summer, I have affirmed that I will keep the confidence of any and every person I work with, of the clients they represent and the interests at stake.  I’m learning the process and substance of legal issues that I hope to spend the balance of my life working on.  I’m reading,  I’m thinking and my opinion counts for something.  That said,  I can’t specifically discuss any of it because confidentiality=integrity=reputation=license.

Ironic, huh.

TDT

No, its not as pretty as Carrie’s collection of pumps, kitten heels and mary janes but its got me in a tizzy. My first legal job after two years of intense study and social disengagement is now two days old.

Natural Resources Defense Council is “the Earth’s best defense” against itself or rather the self destructive tendencies of a certain species.  This summer I have the distinct pleasure of working as a legal intern for the Urban Program at the New York Headquarters.  (Insert  images of jubilation here) I am working directly with two attorneys and with a team of other groups on issues which affect my homestate. (Feel free to high five me now)

So far I’ve received three assignments and managed to stick my nose into another.  The work is interesting. The view from my office window reminds me that the city keeps going whether I partake or not. However, I must admit that I’ve got a wee bit of longing for the sights and lack of sound of the SoRo Village. Alas, that’s the human condition. Although in this case the grass is literally greener in VT. 

In any event the brand on my New York soul was starting to wear thin in SoRo, so I’ve come home just in time for a much needed respite.  I’ve returned with a list of things to do:

• Eat late ( because I can)
• Eat out (because I can)
• Catch the subway (despite the $2.00 fare)
• Search the concrete jungle in search of a mister softee truck ( If you don’t know, don’t ask me)
• Visit a randomly assembled street fair and eat dodgy items off a questionable food cart.
• Ride the Cyclone at Coney Island.
• Avoid the 34th street Tourist trap
• Walk everywhere
• Check out the new-old neighborhood in Brooklyn (gentrification… yikes)
• Visit MOMA, Museum of Natural History, The Brooklyn Museum, Hayden Planetarium
• Hit the Beach, but stay out of the water
• Catch Shakespeare in the Park
• See a concert by no one special for free and enjoy it nonetheless

I’ll let you know  when I get it all done!

TDT

This semester, exams were tough.  Actually, upon taking them, they seemed fine, but the studying part was simply brutal.  My wife and baby both caught some horrible infectious virus which they attempted to pass to me.  I felt horrible throughout exam week and reading week… up until I completed my final in-class exam.  After that, I felt like a million bucks. Apparently I was under a great deal of stress which made me ill to the point of dry-heaves and resorting to Pepto, soup, and saltine crackers to survive.  It was incredibly weird. 

I decided that I would stick to my first choice internship this summer in order to maximize my financial well-being, which means I am here in Alaska now, instead of sunny San Diego.  It seems as if the summer will go well.  I have a ton of responsibility and trust being given to me.  Its exciting. 

This semester’s grade made me feel as though a professor or two had forgotten that the curve is now set to a B, not a B-… but thanks to that change, my GPA still went up. 

The most challenging thing about returning from law school is that no matter how much you have stayed the same, someone will assume that some problem they have with you stems from your recent stint at law school.  I got the “you’ve changed… and it must be because of law school” talk from a relative the other day.  Of course, it couldn’t possibly be because they’ve never hung out with me without my wife before,… of course not.

Anyhow, we made it.  We’re 2Ls now.  Whew. Woo. blah.

Classes have ended. Semester four of year two, marks the end of the wildest, wooliest and otherwise superlative filled year of my academic career to date. I have some sad news to impart, second year is harder than the first. It’s harder for many reasons which relate to security, capacity building, and seemingly endless tasks which fill fleeting hours.

First, your security blanket is ripped from you.  The cadre of folks you depend on for a chat, a joke and a smile have been mixed and sorted by the classes they chose. You are no longer in a section of students slated to take most classes together. Last year, you created bonds with section mates which seem further aloft as each day passes into second year because you finally get a choice of when, where, and whether you sit for one course as opposed to another.

Second, your classes are no longer foundational and are now geared to applied analysis and a practitioner’s skill sets. Fast forward from Appellate Advocacy into Estates, Evidence, Administrative Law, Intellectual Property, International Business Transactions, Family Law, and it looks like you’ve made some choices about your career path. Breathe deeply and accept that you asked for this mixed blessing and that the curve, and onslaught of upper class men and women are surely our of your control.

Finals are still an issue of torture but on the plus side you now choose the implements. The take home paper is just as likely as the sit down, sweat and forget classroom examination. Relax, you’ve done it at least three times already so it is not exactly a choice between hot oil or the rack.

In between time is the twenty or so days in between the end of second year and the start of your shiny new second summer job. You are two parts nerves and one part brass because you’ve been successful but have yet to apply it. You drink a little, sleep a lot more and generally try to figure out how you you managed to fill your days before law school created a flurry of discrete tasks and hierarchies. Its been a discipline to make time outside the library and suddenly you are confronted with it, choice. Your apartment looks like something a set designer created for a made for television movie on earthquakes, and your dishes are ruefully painted with meals you don’t even remember cooking.

In between time is an awakening from the sleep walk of neglect and selfishness. It’s time to read a paper for enjoyment or a book on a topic wholly unrelated to anything of use. It’s time for time, for reflective abandon.

I’ve gotta get back to it, work starts on 27 May 08.

TDT

7 May 2008: the quintessential Vermont spring day

It is finished.

In searching for words to mark this momentous occasion, my well runs dry. Perhaps that is appropriate. I have given so much to this process already–so much time and so very many words. I have given so much of myself that was not mine to give. To make it through three years of law school I borrowed of myself from my supremely patient wife and my beautiful children. It is to them I owe the greatest debt. The educational lenders can have my money – my time is again my family’s.

Whether it has been worth the run remains to be seen. I think it has. I have obtained an understanding of the foundations of this country’s legal system that I believe is critical to political and social advocacy. I know I’ve honed my aptitude for critical thinking. And my appetite for endless argument over inane detail has most certainly been whetted. But I don’t expect this investment to pay for itself without a little more effort on my part, so check back in a few years. I should know for sure by then.

So thank you, Sarah, for being so forgiving of your husband’s ludicrous tendency to overload his schedule, among other things. Thank you, Ingrid and Malcolm, for your unconditional love. Thanks also to you, Mom, Dad, Gladys & Chris, for all your support.

And with that, good night and good luck.

I actually think I like finals.

It’s weird, but there’s something exhilarating about seeing all the work you’ve done this semester come together. Like when you read 1000 pages or so throughout the semester, then turn it into a 99 page outline, which you then boil down to a 25 page outline, which you then somehow magically turn in to a final. It’s exciting.

And I like being in the library busting through. Everyone has a sense of seriousness about them. I guess people’s work ethic is at its peek, and there’s something in the air.

I know I’m crazy for saying this. Actually, when I was in Boston this last weekend (which was AMAZING), I told everyone that I liked law school, and they were all shocked. I guess I never really thought anything about it until now, but yeah, I’m enjoying it. Weird? I guess, but true.

In baseball, the strike zone

is defined as that area over homeplate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.

Major League Baseball, Rule 2.00.

Baseball’s strike zone illustrates the tension between objective and subjective standards of evaluation. This tension is also common to the legal concept of the “reasonable person.”

The “reasonable person” is a recurring legal concept—an important yardstick for assessing human behavior. A person is “negligent” if they exert less care than a reasonable person in the circumstances would have. The standard is not precise. Behavior is evaluated objectively. Some conduct falls below the standard of a reasonable person no matter. In baseball, a pitch off the edge of the plate as always a ball. But behavior is also evaluated subjectively. The circumstances of a person may inform whether or not they behaved reasonably. Likewise, a shoulder-high ball for one batter is a chest-high strike for another.

Complicating the situation is the presence of a third-party tasked with applying the standard. Conduct is not fed into a computer, evaluated on a range of data points, and decreed absolutely reasonable or unreasonable. The strike zone is not enforced by robots. A jury evaluates conduct in the courtroom, and the umpire evaluates pitches in the ballpark. Different umpires might call a pitch a strike in one at bat, and a ball in the next. One jury might find conduct unreasonable today, but the same conduct might be reasonable sometime in the future.

Maybe this inconsistency is a weakness in baseball, and in our legal system. Or maybe the unpredictable boundaries of the strike zone and the reasonable person provide the flexibility necessary for the system to survive. Total objectivity is unduly harsh, total subjectivity too forgiving. Tension between the two drives baseball, and the law.

]]> http://vlsjd.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/baseball-and-the-law/feed/ http://vlsjd.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/success/ http://vlsjd.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/success/#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:58:52 +0000 thegreatland http://vlsjd.wordpress.com/?p=171

The job I had right before I left for law school was the best job I have ever had.  I managed about 300 rental units at two neighboring properties for the largest owner/operator of rental properties in my home state.  They were awesome to us.  I got a $600 allowance to purchase snappy suits from JC Penney’s, they flew me to Seattle for orientation, paid for a private hotel room, meals, a rental car, and about three months into work, paid for private rooms at Alyeska Ski Resort, our meals, and tuition for for a three-day ”Successful Life Course” taught by Ed Foreman and Earlene Vining of Executive Development Systems. 

My god. 

I’ve heard inspirational speakers before… but I’d call Ed a motivational speaker, which I consider to be a little different.  What was nice was that the conference was not how to be a better manager, or employee, or sales person, but just about how to have a terrific day, every day.  It was, intuitively, simply about how to have a successful life.  I really think that, while the company got its benefits from having its employees attend the course, it was a really gracious, kind, and superb gesture for the company to tell us that they simply wanted the best for us - that they wanted us to have a good day, every day, no matter WHAT we did…

I left the company after only 7 months.  I had been applying to law schools on a whim - not even caring too much.  After all, I had a great job doing something I enjoyed.  I was moving up quickly, being trusted with a budget of over a million dollars while allowing me to be responsible for coordinating multiple properties bringing in almost $3.5 million each year in revenue.  I was saving money every month, and I had free rent, a brand new marriage, and a baby on the way.   I was having a great time!

Something, however, told me that there was more - that I could achieve more, that I could achieve whatever I could envision.  That person was Ed Foreman, g-d bless him.  He believes in everyone who comes through his course and only asks that you consider what you might do, to capture that vision, and to imagine yourself doing it.  One day, you will wake up and you will be there…

Well, here it is, that day!

I’ve finished my first years worth of classes at law school.  Not only that, but I’ve finished my first year of classes at a law school whose Environmental Law Program has been ranked either #1 or #2 since U.S. News & World Report started ranking schools in that category.  I did it.  I made it.  I’m proud of myself, even though we still have exams.  Exams?  I’m stoked about exams!  I can’t wait.  I can smoke those things too.  With my eyes closed. 

And the best part… I get to go live in Alaska and in San Diego this summer because, although I started late, I snagged two… that’s right, two… prime legal internships this summer.  I get to see what it is like to be a part of the Navy JAG Corps and I found an government agency in Alaska that is known for its environmental work that was willing to offer me, as a first year law student, a paying internship doing legal work under attorney supervision. 

I not only faced down the challenges of having my own family to worry about, but I faced the challenges of close family developing potentially life-threatening illness.  I faced multiple slides into ditches, a flipped car, living on top of a mountain, hour plus drives to Starbucks and Costco, gas stations that close at 9pm, family visits during spring break, cancelled vacations, tons of snow, financial challenges, and a host of other brutal inevitabilities of life…. and I made it - not a problem.  And everyone else here, they made it too. 

I am d-mn proud of all of us.  We did it.  And I’ll be back next year, and the year after - so long as G-d/fate be willing.

< Since I mentioned Ed’s program, I feel compelled to issue a disclaimer that ALL the opinions and views expressed herein are mine and do not represent those of Vermont Law.  Though this is a VLS Blog, the views I express are mine.  I have not the standing to express views here other than my own. >

So I’ve been up past midnight for five straight days.  Its starting to get tough, but I’m going to get some sleep tonight.  I’m excited.  I have a paper due tomorrow, but I’m sure that I won’t be pulling an all-nighter to get it to a finished state.  I might even go to my classes tomorrow.  I’m proud that this time I didn’t procrastinate… even though I am taking a small break right now. 

My wife traded her broken car for my not quite broken one so that I can keep an eye on it until it goes to the shop.  After the most recent repairs, costing another 13 C-notes, the shop failed to warn us to recheck the lugnuts for tightness after the next tank of gas.  Note to all: whenever your tire is ever removed, you should always recheck the lugnuts for tightness at your next tank of gas.  My wife heard a vibrating noise yesterday, but felt nothing in the car, so we wrote it off as a plastic piece flapping in the wind.  Today, the vibration turned into the car shaking when she drove it.  I tested it out and then looked at the front tire.  There I spotted a lug nut had snapped off along with its stud.  Of the 4 remaining lugnuts, 3 were extremely loose to the touch, and when I went to tighten the 4th one, it had siezed to the stud and it sheared off.  Almost all of the lug nuts on the car were loose, especially on the right side, where another lug nut sheared off as I tried to tighten it. 

My wife works 12 hour shifts and the friend she is staying with this summer has graciously allowed her to stay with her, so that in this last crazy week, I am not stuck watching our daughter until the end of her shift.  But that means that I will have no car while this one is at the shop.  Once again, the community at VLS comes through and a friend who just got his truck back from the shop offered to loan it to me until I get mine.  I guess its better than having me crash in his living room…

Enough procrastination… keep it real.  Law school is like Kinkos… you can do it, we can help.  At least at VLS.

I’m cracking down for a crazy month.  Finals, of course, are my primary concern right now, but that’s certainly not the end of it.

Thursday is our last day of classes!  Yay! However, I’m trying to finish all my outlines by Thursday afternoon.  Now for many people that wouldn’t be that difficult to accomplish, as they have updated their outlines consistently throughout the semester.  Since my work ethic has been broken for most of the past few months, I have a lot of work to do.  I spent 10 hours studying Saturday, 7 hours Sunday, and will be spending about 10 today.  The next 4 days will be loooooong.

Come Thursday, the urge to celebrate will kick in full force.  However, I must practice moderation because I’m leaving on Friday to go down to Boston to say goodbye to my sister.  She’s going to be working in Guatemala with the PeaceCorps for the next two years.  We haven’t exactly gotten along for the past, oh, 10 years or so, but I really hope to make things right this time.  I’m really excited because she lived in Boston for 2 years and we’re going to have an amazing time!

So then I come back on Sunday, perhaps hungover, likely broke, and definitely sad, to start studying for good.  I don’t have my first final until Thursday, but I would like to do quite a few practice exams.

Thursday is not only the day of my Constitutional Law final; it’s also my birthday.  24.  Big deal.  I’m not at all excited about this.  First of all, I will be typing about the First Amendment for 3 hours straight.  Also, none of my friends are going to want to do anything.  But I’m mostly not excited because when I was a kid, 24 always seemed like ‘real adult’ age.  I used to think 21-23 years was still young adulthood, but 24 was certainly full-fledged adulthood.  Woman.  Grown-up.  Adult.  Yuck!  I feel like I should at least have a serious boyfriend, let alone kids, a full career, and a house….. At least it’s one of my classmate’s birthday as well, and my little sister and I share the same day.  She’ll be turning 21, so I’m sure she’ll be having a great time!

Finals then continue until the 9th when my take-home is due.  But no, the craziness does not stop there.  I have to move into a new apartment here and close out my current apartment.  The only thing is that the old tenant for my new place will still be there, trying to get his stuff out.  It’s gonna be difficult to not get in his way.

Then I have to figure out how the heck I’m gonna get home.  I was originally going to drive out with a housemate who would then fly home from Montana, but that fell through.  I could just go by myself, but I’m sincerely worried about it.  I really don’t want to get a flat tire at 10 o’clock at night, looking for a hotel in the middle of Indiana.  I have a friend who’s going to Seattle, and we could caravan, be he doesn’t have to be there until May 27th.  I’m not sure that I can wait that long.

Once I get home, I start my summer job.  I am sooooooooo excited about it, but pretty nervous as well.  I’ll be working with a small firm back home.  It should be great.  I love summer back home.

Amidst all this, I am going to try to write on to Law Review.  They recommend putting in 80 hours.  The final paper would have to be in the mail by May 28th, so I’d be working on it heavily between finals and then.

Then, once I’ve finished finals, once I’ve moved, once Iv’e miraculously gotten home, once I’ve become comfortable in my new job, once I’ve sent in my law review packet…….

I can finally relax!!!