Here's One

Events Email - 02.20.2008
. . .
Already Announced Law School Events
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The Law Weekly Needs Reviewers!

Okay: It's not very good.

Rejected Feb Club Themes

• Feb Club Eve 1894
• Three Easy Nieces
• Haitian Paradise
• Super Jewsday
• Anything But Those (in which you can wear what you want, but everyone will criticize it)
• Revenge of the Turds
• Snowpants or Low pants.
• Kegs and Dregs

Actual 2008 Feb Club themes are available from TJ.

Always Clever

"It seems late in the day to notice to Erwin Chemerinsky is a prominent liberal," said John Jeffries, University of Virginia Law School dean. "That's been true for as long as I've known him. It's rather like discovering that Wilt Chamberlain was tall. How could you not know?"

I did another interview with my fly open today.

Reminder to Young Associates

I am aware that you are looking at my Facebook profile before you interview me.

You should probably know that I am looking at yours.

Out of the Mouths of 3Ls

Comment on the method and quality of the instructor's teaching. Be specific about strengths, weaknesses, teaching techniques, congeniality of the learning environment and any suggestions for improvement.

I really didn't attend enough classes to make any sort of good comments. I was pretty bored though the first few weeks when I attended.
The guest speaker from Google was good, but had I known it was a guest speaker I would have skipped.

Also, when filling out course evaluations, why do so many people not think about how they're displayed? By this point you have to know that the responses get grouped by question, not by student. So stop putting "see above" or "like I said above" or "the aforementioned" because nobody knows what you're talking about. Just answer each question in the right box. There are certainly tougher things in law school.

Advice

Note to future 1Ls:
Most people will probably tell you that you should not completely ignore your Property reading all semester, to the point where several of the weekly reading-assignment e-mails remain unopened until the second week of exams. These people are probably correct.

Then again, doing thirteen weeks of reading in four days never killed anyone.

I do wish I had seen the one about coming to class on time a bit sooner than today, though.

Outlines in Song

Looks like this is going to be a semiannual feature (last semester's). Especially useful if you're limited to one page and you haven't bothered making anything to bring in. This semester, it's Con Law and it's a long one, with apologies to the Nails (original song can be heard here):

88 Lines about 44 Plaintiffs*

Marbury was a nominee,
judicial power did extend.
McCulloch just worked at the bank
which was a means to reach an end.
Martin claimed his rights to land,
SCOTUS proved it was supreme.
Gibbons got his ferry license,
Congress wiped out New York’s steam.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

Carter Coal just sued itself,
court disagreed with FDR.
Jones & Laughlin wanted same,
but Roberts switched, so no cigar.
Darby’s wages were too low,
government said "pay your team."
Filburn grew himself some wheat,
still it flowed in commerce stream.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

Lopez brought a gun to school,
court grew a spine and helped him out.
Then Morrison committed rape
and still no clause gave VAWA clout.
Raich just wanted to smoke dope,
CA said fine, the Feds said no.
But Flores sued City of Boerne,
and Section 5 was weakened so.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

South Dakota versus Dole,
drinking young? No highway cash.
FAIR took Rumsfeld into court,
in army/law school legal clash.
Garcia wanted overtime,
got labor rules applied to states.
New York took no toxic waste,
used Court to push it off its plate.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

Printz (not Prince) could not be forced
to do Feds’ work on background checks.
Condon sued the DMV
for handing out IDs like sex.
Beazer couldn’t get a job
in NYC for doing meth.
Then Creamery of Clover Leaf
showed "rationale" is just hot breath.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

Dred Scott thought that he was free,
but Taney told him no such luck.
Then Plessy tested railroad laws
‘twas J. Brown’s chance to be the schmuck.
Along came Gaines with goal of law school
(no one told him: not good plan).
He, then Sweatt, both got admission,
way to stick it to the Man.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)
Uh huh. You show 'em.

Brown asked twice for mixed-race schools,
the second time, it was the charm
But Bradley lost to Milliken,
now no bus runs from town to farm.
For Products made by Carolene,
be sure to look at Footnote Four.
But if your name is Korematsu,
expect no help in times of war.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

Davis tried to join the force,
but couldn’t pass the reading test.
Adarand kept losing deals,
wants AA strict; court acquiesced.
Grutter, with companion Gratz,
split Wolverines along fine line.
And Craig v. Boren brought in sex,
for crappy beer, the men did whine.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

Virginia lost on VMI,
because the diff’rences weren’t real.
While Michael M. was tried for rape
and they said no to his appeal.
Evans wanted gays protected,
Romer failed to block those rights.
Lochner’s roundly been rejected,
but now it rises to new heights.
Griswold looked for privacy
in emanations and penumb.
Roe reached to autonomy
now nominees must all play dumb.
Planned Parenthood went after Casey,
kept conservatives at bay.
Then Carhart won on D&E,
but D&X is DOA.
Hardwick lost in eighty-six,
just wanted right to sixty-nine.
Then Lawrence won for gay agenda,
Nino takes it as a sign.
Cruzan just like Terry Schiavo,
had her feeding tube removed.
Glucksberg helped with suicide,
but nine of nine disapproved.
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)
(Mmmmm...mm mm mm mm mmmm mmmm...)

Eighty-eight lines about forty-four plaintiffs.

*Some of these are criminal defendants. I know. Chill.

More Professor News

In my continuing efforts to direct readers to interesting appearances in the news by Virginia Law professors, I'd be remiss if I failed to point out this delightful little clip, in which Keith Olbermann names Prof. Turner the second-worst person in the world (of the day, of course). Keep watching until the end, when Olbermann calls him "a temp" for a State Department job he held in the mid-80s.

Things I Learned This Week

• From a series of last-name-announcing cold-calls, I learned the extent to which one of my classes this semester is a veritable UVa Law Bloggers' Summit.
• Between Thursday and Saturday, I learned that random alumni lawyers take first-year oral arguments far more seriously than judges from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals take the Lile Moot Court finals.
• Desegregation: good for schools, good for country clubs, bad for laundry.
• Thanks to my poor reading comprehension skills, I learned that it is possible—although not advised—to put on a suit, shave, drive to school, write an outline, and otherwise prepare for oral arguments in forty-four minutes.
• From minute forty-six to minute forty-nine, I learned that following the above plan will get you screwed when the judges decide not to interrupt and instead let you recite all of the facts. (I wish I were joking on these last two.)
• Finally, in an ironic twist worthy of O. Henry, I learned that dental floss is the most difficult item in the world to get unstuck from between teeth.

Communication Skills

Dear 2L Guy Who Has Comments Turned Off But Links To Me And Will Probably Read This,

If you hate to sound like a dick, don't.

Love,
Another blogger who can't keep his opinions to himself.

Update 4/12/07: Sorry, that may have been a bit uncalled for. I just hate to see serious use of the word "prestigious."

Separated At Birth

I can't be the first person to notice this:

Return

Well it's been a while. Apparently, after spring break we had some sort of brief due. Then the Libel Show was all "Fletcher, come to rehearsals," "Fletcher, learn your lines," "Fletcher, come to the show," "Fletcher, for God's sakes put some pants on." But that's mostly over, so here I am again.

I don't have a lot to say just now, but if you missed the Law Weekly's latest excuse/apology, you should definitely check it out. Personally, I didn't pick up on any racial undertones when I saw the article last week. Then again, I've been jaded to that sort of thing ever since the time my undergrad dining hall served fried chicken and collard greens to celebrate Black History Month.

I Don't Get the Point of Student Government

A response to Student Council SBA President Adam Wolk:

Some governments are useful, such as the American government, which collects taxes and keeps the Canadians from invading. In the law school arena, the administration is kind of like a government, in that it collects tuition and keeps Darden students from eating in our cafeteria (by cleverly engineering it so that our cafeteria isn't as good as theirs). The best part is that you can anonymously harass the administration, by asking them to make ridiculous announcements like "someone left their keys in the door of their car," "someone left their trunk open and I wrote down the license plate but didn't bother to close it for them," and "someone rear-ended me in the parking lot and drove away; I'm sure it was just a misunderstanding and not the unfortunate result of spending this month's insurance money on Feb Club costumes instead."

But what I don't get are the governments run by students. From what I understand, they talk about the law school and anything "important" that occurs to them. From the news I have seen, what they do isn't all that interesting. Unless you ran for office in a desperate attempt to pad your resume, and even if you did, you just don't want to hear about what color tablecloths we should have at Barrister's. Of course, if you're reading this, you're probably Adam Wolk doing your daily self-Google the type of person who cares about the SBA, so please don't take offense to this. I don't wish to judge your choice of governing bodies, since I certainly wouldn't want you judging mine. I guess I just don't get it.

Getting Involved

Tryout processes reviewed:

Summer Job Interviews
Pros: Once you've answered the same questions eleven or so times, you eventually forget that your answers are complete nonsense and start to feel pretty good about yourself.
Cons: No one wants to hire you.

Unified Journal Tryout
Pros: No matter how many journals you're interested in working for, you only have to waste one weekend of your life.
Cons: Best case scenario: now you're on a journal. See below and remember that Pass/Fail : 1Ls :: Tenure : Law Professors.

Dillard Fellow Tryout
Pros: Can be completed over any three-day period this month, so you can save your weekend and blow off class instead.
Cons: Congratulations, you've earned the opportunity to read the papers of 35 1Ls who are fully aware that in the Pass/Fail world of Legal Research & Writing, a D is as good as an A.

Libel Show Auditions
Pros: Surprisingly low standards.
Cons: If I wanted to make an ass of myself while a roomful of people ignored me in favor of staring at their laptop screens, I would have been a professor.

Someone Got The Sensitivity Training

Old article title: Katrina's Silver Lining: UVA Law Gains a Professor
New article title: Tulane's Collins Joins Virginia Law

I'd say it's a good thing they made the change before it got cached somewhere, but they can't change page 29 in my copy of the UVA Lawyer.

Tie-Dye in the Justice Department

Law school gossip is really more TJ's thing, but I wanted to alert everyone that Virginia Law's own Professor (and erstwhile write-in candidate) John Harrison was mentioned by Ann Coulter as one of her "loads and loads of friends who are right-wingers and Deadheads" in this interview she did last June with Jambands.com (scroll down to near the end).

Relevant jokes are left as an exercise for the reader.

Playing the Odds

I recently became familiar with Credit Card Roulette, in which a group goes out to eat, then everyone drops a credit card in and the server picks one at random to pay for the whole bill. Everyone else gets a free lunch/dinner/alcoholic binge. Now I'm not much of a gambling man, but I like to make things a little interesting from time to time, and UVa Law's grading system is ripe for manipulation.

For those not in the know, the only rule is that all classes must have an average grade between 3.27 and 3.33. In practice, this means that the grades tend to fall mostly at and around B+, with a few outliers on each end, like a standard bell curve. This distribution is not required, however, because the rule is based on the mean, not the median, of the grades.
This key fact allows for Exam Roulette.

Exam Roulette would be played as follows: Instead of distributing the grades evenly about the mean, professors would commit to giving the bottom 10% of each class a C. This would allow them to score the other 90% of exams at or above the mean. So in your standard 30-person single-section class, 3 people would each get a C, 15 would get a B+, and 12 would get an A-. The mean would come in at exactly 3.33. The best part? As long as every professor participates, even the people who lost once per semester would have at least a B- average, assuming four graded classes.

It's probably not too late to e-mail your professors. 90% of law students already think they're above average, so why not make it true?

Give Yourself a Hand

Apparently, when a professor finishes the last class of the semester here, we applaud. (Unless, of course, it's Professor CivPro and he keeps taking questions for 45 minutes after the end of class time until all but about 12 out of 60 people have trickled out the back.) I guess this is common practice at most law schools and has already been discussed at length by a better man than I, so I won't get into it here.

But I'm told that all students at Mr. Jefferson's University clap for their instructors, whether that instructor is "the Mark McGwire of political analysts" or a lowly TA leading an eight-person discussion section of Statistics 110. This is not considered weird.

But I've thought about it, and while it most certainly is weird, it's harmless enough. At least the professors are there to appreciate it. It's certainly better than when the teachers in elementary school showed movies because they didn't feel like teaching the day before a vacation. As soon as the credits hit, most of the kids would start clapping away, as if the late director of The Cat From Outer Space was going to crawl out of his grave, drag himself to the school, and pop out from behind the rolling TV/VCR stand to take a bow before hitting us with an encore.

Your Secret Society Has an E-Mail Address

The University of Virginia has a lot of secret societies. Some seem to take themselves very seriously, while others not so much. (Witness the guy at a party last night loudly telling strangers about his society and the position he held in it, putting air quotes around the name of the position.)

One easy way to not be taken seriously is, apparently, to be the 21 Society. Today, a beige plastic box appeared in the law school courtyard. On it are the mailbox numbers 21 and a laminated piece of paper, which states,

Friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life.

--Thomas Jefferson

The items in this box are for the free use of anyone who wishes to enjoy this space in the company of others. All items are for use in this Quad only, and each person who borrows from this box is on His or Her Honor to return the items immediately after use.

We Remain, |||| |||| |||| |||| |
The 21 Society

This box and the items inside are maintained by The 21 Society. Report any missing or damaged items to The21Society@virginia.edu.

The box contains two frisbees, a soccer ball, and a football, which you are on your capital-H Honor to return. The box itself is padlocked to a lamppost with a heavy chain.

Ma nishtana ha-lawschool ha-zeh

Why is this law school different from all other law schools?

It's not the cherry wood lockers or the 51% alumni giving rate. It's not even the top law school newspaper in the country (really?).

No, it's one thing and one thing only that makes this place feel so right: two-ply toilet paper. You won't find that in New Haven.