Back home / Horse show / Diplomas

We just got back from the World Championship Horse show in Kentucky. The horse show is during the KY state fair which makes for some interesting problems but plenty to look at and do. We came home with one reserve championship (that is what people in the horse show world call second place – if you had any horse sense you would have know that – LOL I crack myself up sometimes – horse – sense – get it? – ok – not that funny)
Anyway, out of all that we showed we wound up with the one ribbon which is good because it is the world championship but bad because we expected to do better. We were gone for over a week. It is good to be at home again. It was fun, but I was tired of living out of a suitcase in a hotel. Try eating at a state fair everyday for a week and you will learn to appreciate a good old peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I am currently looking for a job in the legal community. Which is harder than it sounds for a law graduate who has not yet taken the bar exam. Most job search engines like yahoo or monster are of little help unless you have already passed the bar or live in a downtown metropolitan area. I am preparing to send out resumes by the pound and to emails by the dozens.

The school sent an email saying that our diplomas were ready. I drove down yesterday to pick them up. They are huge. We took them to get framed immediately. I chose a frame the size of a bed sheet with lots of matting. Crystal and her mom kind of frowned on it because it would have taken a whole steel reinforced wall to hold it up. I wound up with a more sensible size frame, it was only the size of pillow and will only require part of a regular wall to hold it up.
We got to pick up our diplomas early because the next graduation is not until the spring and after the bar exam results are back. I guess they wanted us to be able to hang something up on our office wall before then so that clients will actually believe that we went to law school.

Reciprocity

I learned about a nifty little thing called reciprocity yesterday. No, not the kind of reciprocity from one state bar to another, but the reciprocal relationship between two law school career services departments. It is not something that they like to talk about. But the information is readily available if you know that it is there.
Here is how it works:
You apply for reciprocity with another law school to get access to their job postings for grads. You do this if you are trying to get a job in a different area than where your law school is located. In return your law school gives access to one law student from the other school to your law school’s job bank. The access usually last for a few weeks at most.
There are two catches though.
1. Reciprocity is not available from August through December at most schools. This is because the schools are holding their on campus interviews during this time. The bad part is that this is when I am looking for a job. Oh well. I might go ahead and ask for reciprocity with a larger school here in Georgia if I still don’t have a job that I want in December.
2. The other catch is that the job postings are usually only available by going to the school. You don’t get to access them conveniently over the internet.

It is something to put on the back burner for now for me. But if you read this and know that you will be looking for a job away from your law school starting in the spring, you might can use the info to your benefit.

Working on the blog

I have not messed with the settings of the blog for a while and not even looked at my links. I had signed up for “blogroll” but didn’t much like it. I had originally signed up for it because I thought that it would improve web hits. Whatever.
Anyway, I had a terrible time deleting one of my links. It was a blog that at one time was pretty good, but apparently the site got too many hits and the guy sold out his blog to be a porn and link site or something. He had to go. Abracadabra – Alakazam – Alaka-delted.

I decided to take a look at my other links and the guys at those links were not really posting anything worth reading. I had linked the barely legal blog but once again it has stopped being interesting and funny. It turned into nothing more than the guy complaining about how hard it is to find a job with a law degree if you don’t want to practice law. At one time, barely legal was the premier law school blog and was sued by some big porn company that had the same name. At its prime the blog got more hits in one day than most blogs get in a year. They were getting a lot of attention. Not just from the “blogosphere” but from legitimate news sites as well. He could have done something really cool with that or went on writing. Instead it turned into a whine festival. I mean seriously dude, go back to school or something. The rest of us have law school loans to pay for. I can’t afford not to work in the legal field.
So, he got the deleto annoying mosquito treatment as well.
After that I just decided to delete them all and start over.

"FREE AT LAST. FREE AT LAST. GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY, WE ARE FREE AT LAST." - My First Week Out of Law School

So with the first week of no law school it seems amazingly similar to many of the weeks of law school. We are studying for the MPRE, the pre-bar exam ethics exam. The MPRE is this Friday. The test is multiple choice, 60 questions long, only 50 of which count, no one knows which 50 count, takes a little over 2 hours to take, and involves about 4 ½ hours of driving time to get there and back on Friday.

What else is going on:
We have about 2 weeks to get ready for the world Championship horse show in Louisville, KY. There is a lot of prep work that needs to be done before then. We need to be spending our evenings at the barn getting horses ready, but also need to spend plenty of time this week studying for the MPRE. So even though we are not in law school anymore, it is still haunting us. I spent most of the morning at the barn watching the farrier (the horse shoe guy) doing his job and running to the feed store for shavings to put down in the stalls. After seeing how much a barn operation takes to run, I think that most farmers would be well advised to get another job to pay for their farming hobby. The expenses are daily, and the profits are few and far between. This afternoon, I am on the internet looking for legal jobs and getting ready to start beating down doors putting out resumes. At this point it looks like I will have to take some sort of law clerky type position if I can find it or maybe just law office help for the time being. Bills don’t stop arriving just because you don’t have a job or a student loan.

Because the law school will not have another graduation until next May, we will be able to pick up our diplomas in a few weeks. The Diplomas, if they look like the ones they have used in the past, are about the size of a bed sheet and will cost an arm and a leg to frame. As much as I paid them, I hope the diploma is gold plated. Either way, that means that we have to make another 4 ½ hour trip to pick them up some time in the near future. I don’t really trust them to mail it. I am looking forward to staring at it for a while.

Final law school class

My last law school class ever was Thursday evening. The professor announced the students for whom this would be their last class and we got a round of applause from our fellow students. Then the class was over and we walked out. The end of law school seems almost anticlimactic. I thought it would feel like a huge weight would be lifted off my shoulders. It does not. I thought there would be a huge party where we all took a chance to breath and smile. No, we just packed up our books and went home. My last semester was a summer semester in which I had only an advanced legal research class and an externship. So, I didn’t have any tests this semester. It wasn’t the typical semester that I have been used to in law school. But now it is over. I have often thought about being done and even fantasized about it. But the reality of being done with school is so far away from a student (even in the last semester) that it doesn’t seem to be a reality worth considering until you are able to raise your head from the last test.

If you are reading this as a law student 1, 2, or 3L, or even a law student wanabe, I wish that I could tell you that it was a dramatic finale where I suddenly felt lifted to new heights. Actually, it was kind of a let down. Law school has been a place unlike any other. I don’t know of any other place where there are sustained levels of self induced stress that last as long as the ones at law school. Marine Corps boot camp was stressful, but at least there the stress came in spurts. Here at school the stress levels are high, last for unreasonably long times, and is the product of your own willingness to commit. And often, even when you give it everything that you have, you will feel that it wasn’t enough. Law school consumes your life. It allows for no other outside interferences or you will fail. Unlike older, more established institutions, Jones is newly accredited and because of being under the watchful eyes of the ABA, Jones adheres to strict grading and attendance policies. In core courses 5 to 15% of the class must receive a “D” or “F.” Unlike other schools, we regularly fail out 2 and 3Ls. I didn’t miss a single day until the end of my first year when I was sick.

Anyway, law school is over for me now. I am not depressed but have to admit that I am a little lost in what will lay ahead. I am currently looking for a job, but have few prospects.
My wife found a job quickly because she had been with the public defender’s office prior to going to school and was able to get a job there that will allow her to ease into a roll as a defender. Georgia allows 3rd year law students and graduates to practice under licensed attorneys in rolls such as DA or public defender. They have already given her a case. I am very proud of her.

I will return to the school for the MPRE and then not again until graduation. My school has fit to only hold one graduation a year. This is at the end of next May. By the time graduation rolls around I will hopefully be a licensed practicing attorney. It is 6 months until the next bar exam. Job prospects are not exactly jumping out at me right now. Not legal ones anyway.
The law school’s career placement office seems to be a joke to me. This is especially true if you want to practice outside the immediate area around the school, much less out of state. A bit of advice to the future law graduate is this: Don’t rely on the school to find you a job. Hit the streets early and often. Unless you have a family connection or are the very top of your class, paying legal jobs are hard to come by for a new law grad. There are a lot of us and very few positions. This is especially true if you have not yet taken the bar. The career office is a last resort if it is anything like ours, and I suspect that it is. Either way, don’t expect much from them but promises.

I don’t want to end this post on a negative note though. I am ecstatic to be done with law school. It seemed so far away up until the very end and even now seems to hold some anticipation for some reason, like I expect them to call and say, “Oh, by the way, we mis-calculated last semester’s exams. You failed.” Or there is some unpaid fee somewhere that they will find and not allow me to get my diploma. Speaking of diplomas: I have no idea if I will have to wait almost a year to get mine or if they will allow me to have it before graduation. Who knows. But for now I will keep looking for a job and try to keep you updated on what it feels like to be finally completed with law school.

A day at the public defender's office

This week I sent a man to prison.
This man was my own client.
My client was a young man who stole some things from the place that he worked. Unfortunately for him this place was a well know store. The store has excellent quality video surveillance footage of the client and another man stealing almost $900 worth of items. This means that it is a felony. The fact that it was a felony and the fact that there was such excellent footage of him stealing the items meant that it was in the client’s best interest to negotiate a plea deal because if he went to trial the DA would ask for a much stiffer sentence and the judge would likely agree.
I understand that a defendant should not be punished because he exercised his right to a jury trial. But unfortunately this is not usually the case. The DA’s office will offer pleas to most (if not all) defendants to save the court the time and expense of holding a trial of someone who admits that they did the crime. The DA’s office will offer a lowered sentence for the person in exchange for admitting the wrongdoing and saving the taxpayers the time and expense of trial. If the defendant does not accept the plea, the lowered punishment is off the table and the DA’s office will ask for a much higher punishment. In essence, this punishes the defendant for seeking a jury trial if he is found guilty. But this is the norm across the country and I can certainly see the argument for this being the preferred way to handle plea deals.
The DA offered to give my client 6 years with 2 years to serve. I negotiated back and forth for most of the day between my client and the DA’s office. Eventually we reached an agreement for 5 years with 1 year to serve, restitution of the value of the stolen items, and my client has to stay out of the store. Banishment from this particular store is not a punishment that most judges in a small town take lightly. The judge asked the prosecutor where she expected the defendant to shop and she replied “Target”. The judge turned to the defendant and said “I certainly hope for your sake that we have a Target in this town by the time you get out of jail.”
At 4:25 in the afternoon I stood with the client as he plead guilty and the judge sentenced him to “5 to do 1”. Then I watched the client walk away with the sheriff on his way to prison.

First Appearance

I stood with my first client in court today.
It was a probable cause hearing. I was nervous and not quite sure what I should ask. I just tried hard to look competent and hope that I achieved at least that much. The judge called my clients name and the sheriff went to retrieve him. At that time, for the first time in my life, I moved from the gallery, through the bar, and into the hot seat. The sheriff ushered in a young man of no more than 17. He shuffled in and sat down next to me in his jail issued stripes, flip flops and cuffs. We had chose to waive the formal reading of the warrant. The judge swore in the police officer and the DA began asking questions. Then she deferred to me. I asked the arresting officer questions and then indicated to the judge that we had no further questions. The judge asked for anything else. The DA said “No.” and I asked for a reasonable bond. The judge found probable cause existed and denied bond. It was by no means a significant event for any one in that court room but me and my client. Being in leg and wrist cuffs, he was far less concerned with how he looked. I know that he wasn’t that concerned with getting a bond set either. His mother and father were in jail also. There wasn’t anyone to bond him out of jail even if they could have afforded to do so. The sheriff took my client away and I walked back across the barrier that had once separated me from the court.

summer classes / internship

My last 2 classes are an internship and an advanced legal research class. The internship class does have a classroom participation component (sort of) that is fulfilled by answering questions and keeping a journal online. I will post some of those journal entries here because it fits both needs. The other (advanced legal research) class is one that I wish that I could have taken prior to writing my rigorous writing assignment. But oh well...

My goals for the internship are mainly to complete the required number of hours in order to get course credit and to observe as much trial tactics and skills as possible. As a secondary goal (which grows into more of a leading goal as the days pass) I need to network and market myself into a job. I want to pick up as much information as possible about the effective practice of law while I am working at the public defender office however. I want to learn how the criminal moves through the system from his arrest until his ultimate freedom if he is eventually released entirely from the “system”. I hope to see how criminal defendants think in regards to their lawyer, and how much of the information that they tell is actually truthful and forthcoming. I want the opportunity, however small it is, to stand before the court as the representative of another person who needs that representation. I want to stand beside him with the compassion that “this is my client and I owe a duty to him to speak for him in his best interest” while detaching myself enough to actually do what is in his best interest. Most of all, I would like the opportunity to taste the success of whatever victory I can achieve for my client, however fleeting that victory may be.

Mexican Bike race

When I came into work this morning one of the lawyers showed me this.
Over the weekend a bike race in Mexico was interupted by a drunk driver (killing one and injuring 10). What a time to have your camera!

Catch up

Alright,
So there has been a long time with little writing because of the extremely busy semester that I had. It was my last full term semester. I had 5 classes, 2 of which were practical skills classes, plus I was writing a rigorous paper (which the law school equivalent of a doctorial thesis). What little time I did have was usually spent traveling back and forth between Georgia and Montgomery.
But now here we are.
Lets catch you up.

1. We got married March 15th and then ran away to the Bahamas over spring break for a honeymoon. We stayed on one of the out islands (Abaco) and had a great time.

2. The semester sucked but it is now over.

3. During the semester I conducted a mock trial during my trial advocacy class against three other students. It went fairly well. I stayed on my feet despite some heavy hits and one low blow. (Their witness lied and kept out a key piece of evidence.)

4. I learned a hard lesson that you can either learn from me now or learn the hard way later. Here it is: When you take a trial ad. class, force the other party to either stipulate to every little thing that you could imagine would make the trial go awry. If they wont stipulate to it, they have a dirty trick planned. Plan to call as many witnesses as needed to get the evidence in and tell them that you plan to do so unless they relent with their little plan. Trial ad is meant to test your court room skills, not your backroom schemes.

5. Hard lesson number 2: Do not write your rigorous writing as an independent study. Take a class, get the grade and the coaching that comes with it. Writing an academic paper completely on your own with no guidance at all sucks!

6. I am now no longer have a permanent residence in the state of AL. Me moved immediately after finals were over. I turned in my apartment keys yesterday.

7. I am now interning / externing (whichever you want to call it) with the Public Defender office in GA. If I am not done with my hours by June 23rd , I will be participating in a murder trial with 3 defendants.

7. I finish with law school at the end of this summer. Currently I am taking one class (advanced legal research) and the internship. This is good because I will be done with my course requirements by July, but is not good because I now have to wait until Feb. to take the bar exam. This means that I wont get the bar results back until almost a year from now.

8. I need a job.

INCOMMUNICADO

MONDAY, MARCH 17, 2008

WEDDING WENT GREAT
STOP
NOW ON BAHAMIAN OUT ISLAND OF TREASURE CAY
STOP
NO PHONE SERVICE VIA CELL PHONES
STOP
BORROWED HOTEL COMPUTER TO SEND MESSAGES
STOP
WILL BE INCOMMUNICADO UNTIL SATURDAY
STOP

Fixed???

We got Jake neutered over Christmas break because we thought that it would help with a lot of problems such as him humping and aggressiveness, etc… After discovering that there is a wide disparity in prices for getting the dog fixed we finally settled on a traveling vet clinic that was tied in with Tractor Supply Company. It was at least half the price of most of the vets that we called and about a quarter of the price of at least one vet.
Anyway, he had stitches that we couldn’t get wet for about two weeks. Which meant that Jake didn’t have to suffer through any baths but also that the didn’t get to go swimming (a favorite Labrador pup activity). So when the next door neighbor kids wanted to hold Jake’s leash the following ensued:

Me: “You can hold his leash but don’t let him get into the pond because he has stitches.”
Kid: “What is wrong with him?”
Me: “We got him fixed.”
Kid: “Yea, but what was wrong with him.”
Me: “We got him fixed.”
Kid: “Yea, duh, I know. Because he has stitches. But what was wrong with him.”
Me: Oooohhhh. Well we got him fixed so he cant have puppies.
Kid: “But he is a boy dog. He can’t have puppies anyway.”
Me: Blank stare.
Kid: “Moooooooooommmmmmm?!?!”

blogs

Because I have not had the time to write very much lately I have decided to simply type a few words as time permits in a word document as they occur to me and then finish them up when I have time and post most of them. So you may start seeing some bulk postings as I am able to finish blogs and post them.

Busy semester

I have to appologize for the lack of updates. It has been a busy semester.

The wedding is planned for Memorial day weekend this spring. More on that later.
Jake is growing like a weed an chewing up everything he can get his mouth on.
Studying for finals now. Evidence is killing me.
Time is tight. I shouldn't even be typing this now. So look for updates after finals are over.
Peace - out.

Princpal's office

This guy is the principal at the high school where one of my class mates attended.
I guess getting sent to the principal's office at this school was ...
Well, just read the story
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1101071principal1.html

Halloween at Law School

Halloween at school
My Remedies professor passes out candy.
To keep with the law school theme it is “Smarties” and “DumDums”.
Keeping with the grading curve…
There were twice as many DumDums as Smarties.

You know a case is bad when it starts off like this...

Blachy v. Butcher 221 F.3d 896
The first paragraph of the opinion says:

Even a diabolical bar examiner would be reluctant to impose this case's complex mixture of subject matter jurisdiction, fraud, real estate, marital property, bankruptcy, tax liens, contributory negligence, equitable remedies, and civil procedure upon hapless law school graduates. Because reality often marches in where creators of hypotheticals fear to tread, however, we are the “hapless” appellate court judges obliged to struggle with this twisted tale of truelife conflict.

I'm

Engaged

Bar Passage rate

By the way.
The bar results came out the other day.
I forgot to mention that the bar passage rate for first time takers from The Thomas Goode Jones School of Law for the June Alabama Bar exam was 92.7%.
We didn't exactly smoke everyone this time. But that is a respectable number.
Congrat's to everyone that made it.

Jake update - A not so proud moment in puppy's life

Jake has picked up a new habit. A very unsightly and unwelcome habit.
Humping.
He has humped a stuffed bear animal a few times over the past week or two. And I saw him humping the neighbor boy dog’s head. I laughed it off.
Nothing to worry about right.
Or so I thought.

Today Crystal was busy putting together the new house and looked up just in time to see Jake playing a little rough with the neighbor kid.

And then he humped him.

She stopped him. She whipped him and yelled at him.
Then he humped the kid again…
And then he ate the kid’s pop tart.
How humiliating. I think the kid will probably be in some sort of therapy for some time.

So…
Jake has now committed a tort and may possibly have to register as a sex offender.
I thought that when Crystal caught him running through the house with a pair of panties that it was just because he got into the laundry that needed to be folded.
It hindsight it may have been a warning sign.
Let me get this straight. My dog has now shown propensity to be a homosexual pedophilic cross dressing rapist. And apparently a repeat offender.
Not good.
What’s next? The future looks bleak. Jake hanging out at the local fire hydrant looking for a pick up. Bailing him out of the pound when the gay dog club gets raided. Puppy Porn. Doing tricks for a bone (yes, even hick southern law students know about the use of the double entendre).

This whole humping thing has got to come to a very quick halt or Crystal’s neighbors are going to shoot the dog.

I was wondering if neutering him would stop the behavior but when I tried looking it up on the internet all I got were links to discussion board websites. Each one praised the values of spaying and neutering (mainly these were lengthy diatribes on keeping the unwanted pet population down).
Look, I don’t really care what someone’s opinion is. I want hard scientific data with percentages and graphs. Is neutering the animal going to keep this from occurring, or is it too late? If the habit is already formed why would I spend a bunch of money on getting him fixed?
What little information I did find was of little help and was reprinted again and again as if the authors of the websites had written it themselves. In actuality they had copied an article and plagiarized it. Being a law student I know that they need to at least cite where it came from. But then again nobody is checking their work for typographical errors or if it follows “Blue Book” guidelines. (Although occasionally some jerk will send an email letting me know about one of mine.)
Well, we still don’t know if getting Jake fixed will stop him from humping.

So what did we learn today?
1. Jake is a sex crime offender.
2. The internet can be a place with more useless self repeating drivel then useful information. And no one cites where they get their information.
3. If you are a kid with a dog with a propensity for humping coming at ya – Run! And at all costs…
Protect your pop tart.