The Thrill of Defeat!

Today I presented my first oral argument before the GW Court of Appeals, and what do you know—I lost. Ah yes, what a rush.

Ok, so that makes it sound like it was serious, but it wasn't really. My adjunct LegResWri professor (a local practicing lawyer) just thought it would be fun to make us give 5-minute arguments on fictional cases as if we were arguing before an appeals court. And it was kind of fun, but I learned that you can only say "the bar is very high for the level of outrageousness necessary to sustain an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim" so many times before those pretend judges start to see right through the fact that you don't really have much of an argument. Oh well, the class agreed afterward that I had the harder side of the case to argue, so cest la vie.

My crash and burn was followed by a bit of a "save" in Torts when I was able to give the prof the precedent (Griffin v. Clark) for which he was searching in order to illustrate why his crackbrained hypo (which I believe involved a threat to fail anyone who left the classroom in the next five minutes) was different from his previous crackbrained hypo (involving a colorful character named "Disastro" (or something like that) with a gun in his pocket). It was thrilling, let me tell you.

Finally, I ended the day in Contracts by telling the professor that the fact pattern the court found so eminently "reasonable" also described exactly what I'd do if I planned to "screw" someone out of his property. An unfortunate choice of words maybe, but I couldn't help it; the "reasonable person" standard—and the faith the legal world places in it—is so ridiculous it just makes me want to spit. Does anyone really think the "reasonable person" standard is anything more than a scapegoat onto which the jury loads its personal impressions of the litigants' subjective claims? I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Back, ye scurvy dogs!

In tastes great, less filling news, don't miss The Law Revue Review. I hereby promise to be lampooned by the Revue Review at least three times in the next year. (But that's a gentleman's promise and I have no intention of assenting to being bound by it. So there.)

And for more perspective on this law school endeavor, don't miss the "journal of a confident 1L" at One Maven, the adventures of Miscellaureous (who seems to be lovin' the law school life and working diligently at it), Transmogriflaw's ongoing accounts of the stress bunnies, Effinchamp's law porn (take that, Bill O'Reilly), and Jeremy's little essay on the merits of thinking of law school as a "credentializing system." Damn, aren't blogs cool!?

p.s.: Who is Gregg Easterbrook?

Posted September 22, 2003 08:03 PM | law school