About Macs at GW and GW Generally

A reader has requested advice about using a Mac at GW (and attending GW generally). GW requires incoming students to have a laptop, and it all but orders them to buy one of two or three Dells with certain features. It explicitly states it does not support any other platform and will not provide any assistance whatsoever to anyone using anything other than a PC. If you choose to use a PC but not one of the recommended Dells, you'll still get some support, but not the full package (whatever that is). So it's basically a PC-only school, yet I've used a Mac there for the past two years, and I'm not the only one. So what's the deal? For anyone who is interested, here are the problems you will *definitely* encounter using a mac at GW: 1) You can't print to the network printers. PC users can print from anywhere in the school via the wireless network to printers located on the second floor (and maybe elsewhere; I don't pay attention since it doesn't work for me). To print anything, you'll have to email it to yourself, check your email on a school computer (there are two PC computer labs where you can always find an open computer), and print from there. I just bought a $125 laser printer and print everything at home except for emergencies when I do the above. Note: Both Lexis and Westlaw give students free printing from their services. This works fine on the mac. 2) You will feel very sad that your computer doesn't crash or freeze or just stop working every couple of weeks or months. You will not be on a first-name basis with the computer help desk -- you may not even know where it is (I don't). You will generally have far fewer things to bitch about so far as your computing goes, and law students really hate not having things to complain about. ;-) That's all I can think of, really. If you've got access to a PC laptop for taking finals, that's all you need. And if you're a relatively comfy mac user who is not phased by the above sort of printing issues or lack of access to a computer help-desk on a regular basis, etc., you'll be fine. If you're someone who maintains his/her own machine now and is going to be comfortable continuing to do so in the future even after you've become a suddenly helpless and pampered law student, you should be fine. Note also: GW tries to further scare you into buying a PC by mentioning that you'll be required to use special PC-only software for your 1L legal writing classes, but they've made this claim for two years now and so far they haven't started using that software and I've heard no further mention of it outside this computer policy rhetoric. My guess is they just throw that around as an extra threat to discourage people from ignoring their orders that you buy a Dell. Whatever. If anyone has other questions about GW, send them along and I will respond and ask any other GW people to respond as well. (That goes for the above, too—if you're a GW student, alum, or professor and have thoughts on computing at GW, please do share!) Generally, it's a fine school, lots of opportunities, some really great professors, good wireless access, sort of crap library but ok if you like old maze-like study environments (and some do), rank-focused, very intent on helping students become BigLawyers and get judicial clerkships, small but still very worthwhile clinical program, supposedly great IP and international human rights programs (I don't know, but that's what I hear), pretty sad public interest support but I'm told it's better than some other places, and....? That's all I can think of right now, so again, I open the floor to any GW peeps who might agree/disagree w/my assessments or have anything to add. I will thank you for explaining why GW is better than I think it is b/c regardless of what I think, I'm stuck here for another year so if you can help me appreciate it more, please do! (And that is not to say that I don't like the school or whatever, only that I think it leaves much to be desired...).

Posted 09:25 AM | Comments (15) | 2L law school

Springing On

Hi. Happy Easter, late. The past few days have been busily unbusy. Things have been happening, and they have not. First, congratulations to LH, the masterful planner of the GW EJF Race For Justice. She almost singlehandedly planned and pulled off a really great event that raised something like $1500 for GW's public interest law students, and she did this against a backdrop of lukewarm (at best) institutional support. In this, the race's second year, it had over 100 runners (up from around 50 last year), including a lot of community support. I talked to at least one law student from GULC who was thrilled to be supporting the EJF, even if it wasn't at her school. (That reminds me: If anyone from GULC is reading this, the GW EJF would be happy to work w/you to do a joint race or some other joint public interest fundraiser next year. Just let me know if you have any ideas or want to talk about it.) The fastest runner was a GW alum who came in at 16:56 for a long 5k (b/c of where we stopped and started, the race was longer than 5k, but I don't know how much longer). I can't even imagine such a pace. I finished in a rather sad 26:49, but I was pleased w/that since the last time I ran at all was probably last year at this time. Ok, so my time this year was a close to a minute slower than last year; that confirms what I already knew -- my level of fitness has declined in the last year. I hope to change that in the coming months. Maybe next year I can come in under 21 minutes? Or maybe not. Besides the race, the weekend was filled with family things as L's family came to town to celebrate Easter and see the sites. We attended a Capital Steps show that was absolutely hilarious. Part of it is coming soon to a radio near you, so check your local NPR station for broadcast times. (The Capital Steps would make an awesome podcast, but I bet they're worried about giving their material away in digital format that way since they also try to sell it on CD....). We also ate at Maggiano's Little Italy, which was excellent and highly recommended if you'd like a really good, really big meal and are prepared to pay somewhere around $30/person. That describes me almost never, but for special occasions, I'll certainly keep it in mind. In between the entertainment and the eating there were many games of pinochle and some rounds of Ratchet and Clank w/L's brother, all of which adds up to an Imbroglio who had a great weekend but who is woefully behind and bewildered by the fact that he actually has to be in a law school class in just over an hour. Do you ever put school so far out of your mind you can't even remember what you're supposed to be doing/learning/thinking about? I worry sometimes that I can do this so easily and so often; does it mean I don't really care about law school or becoming a lawyer? Whatever. Posting may continue to be sporadic for the coming weeks. The finals schedule is going to be three finals in two days in the first three days of the finals period, plus a 30-page paper that I haven't started at all, so I'm basically screwed for the next six weeks, not to mention the auction a week from Thursday. Yeah. Awesome. Oh, and it's raining hard outside. That just makes this Monday the best!

Posted 08:49 AM | Comments (8) | 2L life generally

Sign up Now for the EJF 5K!

If you're going to be in DC this Saturday, March 26th, please plan to participate in the GW EJF Race for Justice 5K Run/Walk to benefit the GW Loan Reimbursement Assistance Program (LRAP). All proceeds will help enable GW law grads to work in the public interest by helping them pay back their law school loans. Sign up today! (Ed. Note: This entry has been post-dated so it will remain atop this page for the week. Oh, and because it's related and because it's so damned cool, check out the 2005 EJF Auction website, too!)

Posted 10:17 AM | Comments (1) | 2L

Buzzwords in Alaska

Hear ye! Hear ye! The latest edition of Ambivalent Voices features a conversation with Monica of buzzwords in which we talk about the lawyerly art of waiting, the awesome possibilities of student practice permits, the amazing beauty of Alaska, the cost of living in Alaska, and the Northeastern cooperative education plan that allows Monica to be in Alaska while most law students are still sitting in classrooms. Click below to listen, or right-click to download the mp3.

For more about Monica's great Alaska experience, be sure to read Alaska Update and Men In Jail. It sounds like Monica is having an incredible time in Alaska, and it just keeps getting better—as we speak, she's probably in trial! While you might not be lucky enough to be working in Alaska at the moment, if you would like to be part of a future episode of Ambivalent Voices, please drop me a line. (Use the email link in the top right of this page.) As I learned yesterday, you get more bees with honey, and what could be sweeter than an ambivalent podcast? Technotes: This podcast was recorded by phone via Slapcast.com. I added bumpers via Garageband (using loops that come w/the program) and compressed the mp3 in iTunes. To subscribe to Ambivalent Voices in a podcast aggregator, add this link to your aggregator's subscription list. You can access these recordings via the Ambivalent Voices Slapcast page, or find the local posts about each recording conveniently collected in the voices category here on ai.

Posted 08:29 AM | Comments (1) | voices

And There Is So Much Goodness

• Guess who is going to be a DC Law Student In Court next year! The interview was great, the job is likely to be even better. Yeah, the imbroglio is very happy today. ;-)
• Blawg Wisdom today features a request for wisdom on 2L scheduling. Please head on over and throw your two cents into the comments to help out a fellow law student!
• Blonde Justice recently asked for stories about bad prosecutors and sparked a lively debate, which Woman of the Law joined with gusto here and here. Awesome stuff. And also, congratulations to Woman of the Law on her job offer!
• Alaskablawg has an excellent post for law students and young lawyers explaining why lawyers might consider a career in criminal defense. I've been saving this because I wanted to write a more lengthy post about it, but since I have no idea when I'll have time for that, I'll just let it speak for itself.
• Properwinston says the peeps behind Law School Can Be Different (LSCBD) are “just mildly confused and highly ignorant about jurisprudential matters.” He shows he knows everything about everything in his more detailed critique of the LSCBD problem statement. My initial thought after reading around Properwinston a bit is that one problem with the concept of false consciousness is that it encourages people to think they have true consciousness. Another is that pompous condescension does little to advance thinking or debate on any issue. And also, I think there are some points worth more attention buried in all that self-righteousness.
• On the subject of LSCBD, Legal Sanity offers some helpful links and thoughts.
• Objective Justice is a new group blawg “dedicated to the objective pursuit of justice in law, politics, economics, and culture.” I have no idea what that means, but it may have something to do w/the quote from Ayn Rand at the bottom of the page. The site also claims it wants “to create a resource for law students and the public to analyze issues that are socially devisive” and that it “is friendly to those of any ideology,” so you may want to check it out.
• Heidi has a good post and lively discussion of the Schaivo situation, including a link to this great timeline of important developments in the case.
• Um, John Edwards is podcasting. Does this mean I can't do it anymore?

Posted 08:13 AM | Comments (5) | 2L lists

Busted by the Cop

So I was all set to regale you with tales direct from the mouth of one of DC's finest after a cop visited my CrimPro class yesterday.... And it was good, let me tell you. Some of the things he said would either blow your mind or confirm some of your worst suspicions and stereotypes. And I'd love to tell you about it, but I'm going to be an ass and keep it to myself. ;-) But really, it was fascinating, but “off the record,” which I guess means I can't say anything more about it. Is this blog part of “the record?”

Posted 08:49 AM | Comments (4) | 2L

Questions for Cops

Tomorrow (March 22) a police officer will attend my crimpro class and Prof. CrimPro has promised we can ask Officer Friendly whatever we want and he will give an honest answer. So what do you want to know about cops? What have you always wanted to ask a cop but were afraid to ask? Post your questions in the comments ASAP and I'll try to ask all of them that come in before 11 a.m.

Posted 07:36 PM | Comments (3) | 2L

How Can Law School Be Different?

I linked to this a couple of weeks ago at Blawg Wisdom, but a group of 1Ls at GULC (including the Scoplaw and Swanno) have started a new site called Law School Can Be Different (LSCBD) as a way to maintain and advance a conversation they have been having about improving legal education so that it better serves both students and society. It's an awesome project and is definitely worth checking out. So far they have focused on a bit of the history of Section 3 at GULC, as well as where legal education stands today as far as they're concerned. I would like to see them expand this into a nationwide dialogue about the purposes of legal education and how more schools could learn from Section 3 and start thinking critically about their own curricula. I have suggested a nationwide conference on the subject. Let's make it in Spring '06, about this time next year, maybe during the Cherry Blossom Festival here in DC so that can be an added incentive for people to come. Invite law students and legal scholars from around the country, but especially try to get participation from those who have written extensively on the subject of reform in legal education. Next year could be the perfect time to do this since it would coincide w/the release of the first Equal Justice Works Guide to Public Interest Law Schools. Anyway, as I mentioned on the LSCBD discussion board, if you're interested in changing legal education, you might also be interested in this recent discussion at law.com in which Stephen Friedman, the new Dean of Pace U. LS, talks about how he wants to change legal education. He says:

We need a powerfully different way of looking at what we're doing as law schools. What I'm talking about is a revolutionary notion. There is a lack of alignment between legal education and the needs of law firms. The legal world has changed. Firms are bigger, they have to train associates much longer, and law is becoming more specialized. We have to train our students to hit the ground running. What's fun about being a lawyer is being a lawyer -- not a first-year associate. The faster we bring students to being productive lawyers, the happier they'll be.

Yeah, let's align legal education more closely with the needs of firms. That'll be good for society. Right. Some of the other things Friedman says sound a little better. I'm thinking Mr. Friedman should be on the list of speakers at at the upcoming “Law School Can Be Different” conference? What do you think? UPDATE 03-21-05: I've been meaning to say something about this for a while, but on the subject of what's wrong w/law school and how it could/should be different, this critique of law school exams is very helpful. An excerpt:

And, of course, the key lawyering skills -- the ones that separate highly successful practitioners from mediocrities -- are barely taught in most law schools, outside the clinic, let alone tested: tenacity, diligence, thoroughness, collaboration, consultation, fact investigation, and, crucially, the willingness to admit error and start over from scratch. Those qualities will actually put you at a disadvantage on law school exams. Far better to rely on flashes of insight and an ability to write on the fly.

The rest of the article explains why the typical law school exam is flawed and goes on to denounce the MPRE and the multistate bar exam. Great stuff.

Posted 12:23 PM | Comments (6) | 2L law school

Sad Anniversaries

One year ago today: Grrr.... Shockingly, Kerry lost. One year ago yesterday: I noted that the U.S. war in Iraq had created all kinds of negative consequences and wondered whether some “showdown with al Qaida leaders” was orchestrated to distract Americans from looking closely at the war's anniversary. * Today: Tens of thousands protested the war in Iraq, and in the U.S.? Nothing that I know of. We're too busy worrying about baseball players on steroids (gasp!) and one woman and a feeding tube. It's great to see we have our priorities straight. *The link to that “showdown” has now broken and I've forgotten what it was all about. Awesome. Blogs are basically useless when links break. Is there any news source you know of that leaves its articles online so that links won't break?

Posted 08:36 AM | Comments (3) | general politics

DJ Sui G. Spins da Podcast

Now available for your weekend listening pleasure: The latest edition of Ambivalent Voices featuring a conversation with Sui Generis, a current 0L who is not yet sure if or where he's going to go to law school this fall. Sui G. and I talk about his current reign as Master of Patience as he waits to hear about acceptance to law school, leisure reading, being a DJ, and writing a novel in 15 days or less (which Sui G. did last November). Click below to listen (or right-click to download the mp3):

Thanks for the conversation Sui G! If you would like to be part of a future episode of Ambivalent Voices, please drop me a line. (Use the email link in the top right of this page.) It'll be fun; you can tell me about your summer with your uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines! Technotes: This podcast was recorded by phone via Slapcast.com. I added bumpers via Garageband and compressed the mp3 in iTunes. To subscribe to Ambivalent Voices in a podcast aggregator, add this link to your aggregator's subscription list. In addition to being able to access these recordings via the Ambivalent Voices Slapcast page, you can also find the local posts about each recording conveniently collected in the voices category here on ai.

Posted 09:25 AM | voices

Defender Dilemmas: LSIC Interview

Ok, so here's the situation: You're a public defender and Petey is your client. He's charged with beating up his girlfriend and he comes to you and he says, “Hey man, I did it. She had it coming, man. But this is a rearrest parole violation and if I get convicted of this I'm going down for a long time so you gotta get me off, man. Ok?” What do you do? It gets better. Petey quickly changes his story. “I didn't do it, man.” But you just said you did, Petey. “Well, um, she started it.” Really? “Yeah, and my cousin was there and he saw the whole thing. Ask him, he'll tell you—she started it, she hit me first.” So will your cousin testify to that? “Sure, but here's what you do. When you go talk to him, don't ask him what happened, just tell him what I said—that he saw the whole thing and she started it. He'll agree, because he was there.” What do you do? Or here's another good one: Your client (not Petey this time, let's call him Jake) comes to you on a misdemeanor and you ask him about his record and he says he's got a rap sheet a mile long and starts listing off offense after offense for which he's been convicted and done time in the relatively recent past. It sounds pretty bad. But then you get discovery from the prosecutor and Jake's rap sheet is blank—it shows none of what Jake mentioned. What do you do? I had an interview with DC Law Students In Court (LSIC) yesterday and these were the kinds of things we talked about for half an hour. It was awesome! I don't know if I had all the “right” answers (or if there are “right” answers to questions like these), but it was great talking to two attorneys who face choices like this all the time and have experience weighing the pros and cons, advising clients, cutting through the BS when necessary, interviewing possible witnesses, gathering other evidence, etc. It was like an adrenaline injection and a breath of fresh air. These guys didn't assume I was just biding my time until I could get a firm job or looking for a credential to get me ahead somewhere else—they didn't care about any of that. What they cared about is how I would handle hostile client situations, tricky fact patterns, and tough choices. It also made me more impatient than ever to get back to work at the PD's office this summer. I can't wait until May! Is this what I want to do? Um, yeah. LSIC will announce decisions about who made it into the clinic next Wednesday. You can bet I'll be waiting by the phone.... About LSIC, see also:

• GW's description of the clinic (scroll to the bottom).
• A recent WaPo story about a $2 million award the clinic received thanks to past litigation against Comcast, including more information about what the clinic is and what it does.
• The DC Bar's coverage of the same thing.

Posted 08:09 AM | Comments (14) | 2L

Marathon Man?

Today I signed up to participate in the National AIDS Marathon Training Program. This is not the last you will hear about this once real training starts at the end of April, but for now, I'm just saying, for the record. If I do not now complete the Marine Corps Marathon on October 30, 2005, you can laugh at my folly for ever dreaming I might. Does St. Patrick's Day make people do crazy things?

Posted 09:49 PM | Comments (3) | marathon

FYI: Equal Justice Works Summer Corps

If you're a law student working a public interest job this summer, you might want to apply for an Equal Justice Works Summer Corps grant, which provides $1000 for your education expenses. If you're interested, you should apply today because it's kind of a first-come, first-served thing, so long as your job qualifies. A qualifying job would be a civil rights job, legal aid or some other direct service to indigent clients on the civil side. Last year they gave grants to people working for public defenders, but they've changed the rules this year so those jobs no longer qualify.

Posted 07:03 AM | 2L advice

Oh, But Don't Forget Rasul

In my haste to commend Scalia for his dissent in Hamdi (yesterday), I nearly forgot his typically hyperbolic and melodramatic dissent in Rasul v. Bush, 124 S. Ct. 2686 (2004). There, the majority decided that the D.C. District Court had jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions from Guantanamo prisoners, and Scalia lamented that the Court had taken the “breathtaking” step of “extend[ing] the scope of the habeas statute to the four corners of the earth,” and added that this was “judicial adventurism of the worst sort.” Um, Nino? How can you square this melodrama with your dissent in Hamdi? If “[t]he very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive,” then what happens to that core of liberty when you make it depend on citizenship and geography? If the Executive can arbitrarily detain noncitizens abroad (and especially in territory over which the U.S. exercises almost complete control if not “ultimate sovereignty”) and deprive them of even basic due process, doesn't that make a mockery of the “liberty” we enjoy here in the U.S.? Sounds pretty hollow to me. Scalia's dissent in Hamdi makes a forceful case that “the Great Writ” ought not be simply a Constitutional right or an “Anglo-Saxon” right, but a human right, a basic core element of civilized society. And while it would probably be too much for the U.S. to try to force other countries to institute a common habeas regime, it's not too much to ask that the U.S. conduct itself in the world consistent with the idea that the very core of human liberty is freedom from indefinite and arbitrary imprisonment at the will of any U.S. authority, regardless of whether you're a U.S. citizen, an Iraqi belligerent, a suspected terrorist, or what have you. If we can arbitrarily imprison whomever we want, wherever we want, for as long as we want, w/out so much as giving them notice of why they're being imprisoned or allowing them to challenge their imprisonment, we become terrorists ourselves and everything else we do to secure “liberty” in the world will ring with the hollowness of hypocrisy. Yes, I understand that “war” creates special necessities and we should make allowances for the Executive to use its judgment there to some extent, but indefinite imprisonment with no process? No. Never justified. Never ever. Not by U.S. authority, not here on U.S. soil, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, not on the moon. I also think Scalia willfully misunderstands 28 USC §2241(a) and §2242 in reading them to limit federal habeas jurisdiction to territory that falls within the geographical bounds of an existing federal district court. You can read §2242 that way, but doing so would make it inconsistent w/§2241(a), which Scalia just plain misinterprets as the basis for his Rasul ranting. And yeah, I know what a joke it is for me, a second year law student, to be scolding Scalia about his statutory interpretation, but hey, when the man is wrong, he's just wrong. ;-) On the subject of habeas, see also Three Generations where “holmes” notes that a Connecticut court actually granted a habeas petition recently.

Posted 07:30 AM | 2L

Fie on “War Powers” & Why Fed Courts, um, Sort of Rocks

Getting back in the groove of this law school thing after spring break, I just read the opinion in Padilla v. Hanft (PDF), the South Carolina District Court decision which came down about two weeks ago and held “that the Bush administration lacks statutory and constitutional authority to indefinitely imprison without criminal charges a U.S. citizen who was designated an 'enemy combatant.'” It's a great opinion because it's short, clear, well-organized, and it chooses positions on the law with which I can mostly agree.* In a great moment, it quotes this memorable bit from Ex parte Milligan, the case that held that where U.S. courts are open and their process unobstructed, a U.S. citizen cannot be tried by a military tribunal:

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence.

Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall) 2, 120-21 (1866). I love that bit. Thank you Judge Henry F. Floyd, for striking a blow for sanity in a time of mostly madness. On this note, I must confess that, despite my consistent criticism of his writing and the position he takes, even I was moved to read Scalia's dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 124 S. Ct. 2633 (2004). There, Scalia also struck many blows for sanity in habeas jurisprudence, including the following statement of the significance of “the great writ”:

 The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive. . . . The gist of the Due Process Clause, as understood at the founding and since, was to force the Government to follow those common-law procedures traditionally deemed necessary before depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. When a citizen was deprived of liberty because of alleged criminal conduct, those procedures typically required committal by a magistrate followed by indictment and trial. * * * To be sure, certain types of permissible noncriminal detention--that is, those not dependent upon the contention that the citizen had committed a criminal act--did not require the protections of criminal procedure. However, these fell into a limited number of well-recognized exceptions--civil commitment of the mentally ill, for example, and temporary detention in quarantine of the infectious. It is unthinkable that the Executive could render otherwise criminal grounds for detention noncriminal merely by disclaiming an intent to prosecute, or by asserting that it was incapacitating dangerous offenders rather than punishing wrongdoing.

Hamdi at 2661-62 (internal citations omitted). Developments in federal habeas law in the past decade (at least since the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996) should be very very troubling to all Americans, and they might be if anyone knew about or understood them. Despite the vitriol I so enjoy heaping on Federal Courts, I also love that class for teaching me about this and making me read this stuff. Don't get me wrong; I still think the material of Fed Courts is immensely frustrating because, as I commented here, “it's the human condition bashing its head against illusory ideals of truth, justice, and the American way.” Yet, I do appreciate the value and necessity of that head-bashing, and it's reassuring and gratifying to see that, at least sometimes, the result is a decision like Padilla (this most recent decision, not the one by the SCOTUS last year which was maddening!) that really does make sense.** * It would be more confident for me to declare that Padilla is “right” on the law, but that seems foolhardy since the law here is so malleable and even contradictory at times. Law school and the exigencies of practice tend to encourage lawyers to use such language—“this is right, that is wrong”—because they want to sound certain about their arguments for the benefit of their clients. This, in turn, makes the law seem more concrete and clear than it ever actually is. It also, I'm afraid, also tends to encourage categorical statements of truth from lawyers, like those I bemoaned here about some advice from an attorney about law review. The desire for certainty, for absolutes in the law, is understandable, but its effects are sometimes pernicious. ** I reserve the right to withdraw any positive statements I've ever made about Fed Courts as soon as finals arrives. Judging by the panic and newfound dedication the class has inspired in the heart of Energy Spatula, it's only a matter of time before I, too, will be denouncing this class as the bane of my existence.

Posted 07:29 AM | Comments (1) | 2L

Baby Talk with Famous P.

In a break from the recent string of amusing interviews with fellow law students, the latest edition of Ambivalent Voices features a conversation with Famous P., an old friend from graduate school who became a new father just three months ago. Famous P. and I talk about how he got his nickname and what it's like to be a father for the very first time. Click below to listen, or right-click to download the mp3.

Famous P. and I always have a lot to talk about, so stay tuned for future episodes in which he may explain why the world misunderstood Hegel for the last 150 years, why graduate school in English is both a paradise on earth and a soul-sucking self-flagellation, and the art of pouring a truly wonderful Tucher Bräu. If you would like to be part of a future episode of Ambivalent Voices, please drop me a line. (Use the email link in the top right of this page.) It's lots of fun. I promise! Technotes: This podcast was recorded by phone via Slapcast.com. I added bumpers via Garageband and compressed the mp3 in iTunes. Baby sounds are courtesy of here and the Absolute Sound Effects Archive. To subscribe to Ambivalent Voices in a podcast aggregator, add this link to your aggregator's subscription list. In addition to being able to access these recordings via the Ambivalent Voices Slapcast page, you can also find the local posts about each recording conveniently collected in the voices category here on ai.

Posted 07:37 AM | Comments (2) | voices

Hitchhiker's Guide Best Bits

I read (reread, actually) only one measly little book while on break, but it was a good one: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Because this is such a widely-read book, I'll just comment on my favorite parts. First, it struck me on this reading that Adams' characterization of the role of the President of the Galaxy was eerily accurate:

The President in particular is very much a figurehead—he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely-judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. . . . Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded.

Does that sound anything like another President/Government you know? Is it possible we all watch the actions of our figurehead and elected officials intently as if they had some meaning, when really the true power in our society is at work elsewhere? NAFTA Chapter 11 comes immediately to mind, as well as the FTAA, both of which transfer authority over all sorts of government regulatory functions into the hands of multinational conglomerates. Perhaps the President's job is to make a lot of noise somewhere (like, oh, maybe, Iraq and neighboring countries), while the real power brokers slowly work their nefarious magic. Could it be? You think? Wars are generally extremely effective in drawing attention away from other things.... Another favorite idea is that the mice have been running the show all along. While humans have been thinking we were doing experiments on mice, the mice were actually doing experiments on us. The idea almost makes Hitchhiker's Guide a forerunner of “The Matrix” (the mice have you!), which is something I'd never considered before. Finally, the little bit with Majikthise and Vroomfondel at the end. These two representatives from the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons are outraged that a computer might solve the greatest mysteries of the universe and leave them with nothing to do:

“You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” warned Majikthise, “and we'll take care of the eternal verities, thank you ver much. You want to check your legal position, you do, mate. Under law the Qeust for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thingkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job, aren't we? I mean, what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machien only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning?” “That's right,” shouted Vroomfondel, “we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”

Anyone familiar with the bureaucratic politics of Humanities departments in large American universities will have to chuckle at this. It can also be read as a fun jab at luddites and at the general revolt against “modernity” and the rise of science in the late 19th century, all of which continues to figure today in, for example, battles over whether to teach evolution in public schools. Bottom line: The Hitchhiker's Guide is a fun, fast, light read that remains entertaining, engaging, and highly relevant even 25 years after its initial publication. The movie should be fun, too. Over the next few weeks perhaps I'll take a quick bite at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. p.s.: If you're a Marvin the morose robot fan, check out his songs here.

Posted 12:16 PM | ai books

Break Over

After a week of blissfully doing just about nothing (shh! don't tell!), spring break is effectively over and I now have 1.5 days to do all the work I should have done in the past week. The past two nights I've been awakened in the early morning with a thought of something I need to do and a rush of adrenaline from the fear that I won't have time to get it done. Anxiety is lovely. Before I put my nose to the grindstone, a couple of things:

• Congratulations to my friend Jose, who is getting married!
• Congratulations to Monica of Buzzwords, who has just started a new internship at a public defender's office in Alaska. It sounds sublime.
• Best wishes to Energy Spatula, who, thanks to the beautiful quarter system, is currently in the midst of finals. I don't envy her, and yet I do; I'm ready for finals now. In my mind, this semester should be so over, but I have something like five weeks to go...
• Check out Coalition for Darfur, where “A Southern conservative and a Northern liberal have teamed up to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan and money for a worthy organization doing vital work there: Save the Children.”
• On a lighter and yet also somewhat metaphysical note, see things that happened on a recent day for second person singular. That sounds like a full, but really rather fun day. I think I need to get out more. No. I know I need to get out more.

CrimPro, here I come....

Posted 11:10 AM | Comments (2) | 2L lists

Blogroll Update

Just a note about a few tweaks around the Imbroglio: A revised about page, a search box that works better, I think (instead of returning crazy looking results from every blog on the system, it should now use a standard template and confine its searches to ambivalent areas), and a revised blog roll. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I used to use Blogrolling.com for my blogroll, and that was awesome, but to no one's surprise, it's no longer free. So I switched to trying to use del.icio.us to manage the links, and that works, except that you apparently can't get more than, like, 31 links to display in a list, and that just wasn't pleasant. Enter MT-Blogroll, a new MT plugin that helps you manage your blogrolls, allowing a different roll for each blogg, categories and minimal metadata for each link, and blogrolling via book mark (click a bookmark to add a link to your roll). So it does just about everything Blogrolling did, but it's free and it runs on your own server so the price should never go up. Cool. So now the roll includes several short lists of categorized blogs, including those that focus on criminal law (the “CrimBlawgs”), since that's what I'm trying to focus more on. This category includes blogs by public defenders, prosecutors, professors of crimlaw, and students who have noted at some point that they think they want to do crimlaw. If you see that your blog is miscategorized, please let me know and I'll change it. “The Roll” at the bottom of the links is just that—the long list of blogs I like and which I would visit daily if I had the time. Some of them I do visit daily or regularly, others less regularly, but they're all worth visiting so they're there for when I have a free moment. Also, some are missing. Some blogs I visit so often I've forgotten to blogroll them—I just always type in the URL. I'll try to notice these and add them to the list. That's more than anyone wanted to know, but I'm procrastinating, so...

Posted 10:50 AM | Comments (5) | meta-blogging

Ambivalent Images Turns One

The daily snapshot site, ambivalent images, started a year ago today with a photo of a red beetle. 365 photos later, it's still going strong. Although it's never received a great deal of traffic, I still enjoy taking and posting photos. I hope you've enjoyed a few of them, as well. When I started the project, I had no idea whether I'd be able to continue it for even a few months, let alone a year, but it has been so fun and so much less work than I anticipated that it almost seems to run itself now. A selection of favorite shots—one from each month of the last year:

• RDB Chewbacca
• Sisu
• Gargoyle View
• Cicada
• Sunflower
• Happy Dog
• Woodley Park Metro
• Indian Corn
• Veteran's Day 2004
• Super Scrabble
• Cold Hard Truth
• Looking Up

You can see from that list I have a penchant for dog and metro photos. I'll try to expand my repertoire, but I kind of expect the photos will be fairly similar for the next year since my life (school, summer job, school) will not change dramatically in the next year. In fact, that's why I thought about giving up the photo-a-day project at this point since it seems so rare that I actually get out of my daily routine and even I can tire of nothing but views of the dog, the metro, and the Connecticut Ave. corridor in DC. However, while one purpose of a site like this is to share interesting images with people, another purpose is to be a visual scrapbook of my life. If it happens that my life is routine and visually mundane (which, to a great extent recently, is true), then the scrapbook should reflect that. That's not to say I won't try to keep the photos interesting, only that I realize they often aren't/won't be and that's ok. When I get my big fancy-pants job in a fascinating new location, the photos will suddenly become like visual nirvana, I promise. ;-) But seriously, there's a lot going on in the DC area and I've hardly tapped into any of it, so I hope this year to get out and about more and to get some good pics of my adventures. p.s.: On the subject of photos, I also just registered for a Flickr account. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but it's interesting to play with. I love the slideshow feature and I was convinced to start an account after seeing this dcsnowthrowdown slideshow featuring photos from DC area shooters. Cool beans! I want to play, too! I may use the site for “overflow” for images that are worth sharing, but that don't make the cut for ambivalent images. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Posted 10:15 AM | Comments (5) | meta-blogging

Going to the Movies with E. McPan!

And now for more voyeuristic listening pleasure, check out the latest edition of Ambivalent Voices (mp3), in which E. McPan of the Neutral Zone Trap turns the tables and manages to spend the bulk of our conversation asking me questions, including whether I'm really a student or just taking out a bunch of loans to fund my blogging habit (apologies if my sarcastic response came off sounding harsh; it's only b/c I fear it's all too true!), and whether my double-dipping at the movies (which is practically nonexistent, honestly!) extends to candy and condiments. Ms. McPan explains why this mortifies her so (it has something to do with a grande frappucino and the price of Diet Dr. Pepper) and then tells us very briefly a bit about why she's in law school and how the Department of Defense might be monitoring her site. After talking with her, I can assure the DOD that they should watch her carefully or risk allowing society to become a much more fun and more just place. Oh, and if she ruled the world, no movie theater would ever be hopped, and the DOD has got to love that. (Note: What you hear is basically the unedited file except that we got cut off halfway through so I had to splice two files together in the middle of the frappucino at the movies story and there's a bit of jump there. Sorry about that.) One thing that didn't make it into the recording was E. asking whether it was strange for me to be calling and talking to people whom I've never met or spoken with before. The answer is, yes, it is . . . a little weird. (Think here about the first “Matrix” movie when Neo wakes up on the Nebuchadnezzar (the ship) and he's in the chair for the first time and just before Morpheus puts the jack in the back of his head for the first time Morpheus says, “this will feel . . . a little weird. Yeah, it's kinda like that. Damn, I love that movie!) I'm also just making this podcasting thing up as I go along. The three terrific people I've spoken with so far have been great sports, absolutely a joy to talk with, and have helped cover the awkward moments when I'm not sure what to say—and for that I thank them. John Stewart I'm not, but it's fun to talk to interesting people and I never know what I might learn. There's obviously an immediacy to speaking with someone directly, rather than just communicating via posts and comments or emails. As with any new ”activity,“ there's been a bit of learning curve to figure out how to turn these phone calls into little ”pieces“ of audio fun, but the time each one takes is getting shorter and shorter, even as each individual ”episode“ gets longer. At any rate, I hope you're all enjoying it as much as I am. As always, if you would like to join me for an edition of Ambivalent Voices, it would be great to talk with you so please drop me an email (via the ”contact ai“ link above right) and we'll set it up. Technotes: This podcast was recorded by phone via Slapcast.com. I added bumpers via Garageband and compressed the mp3 in iTunes. To subscribe to Ambivalent Voices in a podcast aggregator, add this link to your aggregator's subscription list. Or you can simply right-click here to download the file directly. (Clicking that link should open the mp3 in your browser, too.) In addition to being able to access these recordings via my Slapcast page, you can also find the local posts about each recording conveniently collected in the voices category here on ai.

Posted 08:40 AM | Comments (4) | voices

BigLaw Review, Or Why I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love LittleLaw

Now that the GW journal competition is over (it officially ended at 8 p.m. Monday night), I send my congratulations to those who competed. You probably now know more than most people about sex offender registries and you've produced a small piece of what's probably some very good legal writing. Regardless of what you learn in July about being on a journal, you should feel good about what you've done just by completing the thing. In that spirit, I also wanted to comment on the comments generated by this post from late last week. To summarize, a GW 1L had written asking for advice on the journal competition. I offered my two cents, including a few words about how someone might choose which journals to rank highest in their “preferences” list. Self-described BigLaw senior associate and GW alum David Kaufman wrote in to say:

I (and keep in mind this is one BigLaw lawyer talking) couldn't care less if you were on an irrelevant journal or not, if it's not Law Review. So if you're interested in Gvt Contracts, I'd go for that journal over “realistic” ranking, because I don't much care about journals that aren't Law Review to begin with, but being on a relevant journal to the field you're interested in getting into would help you. If that's not clear, let me know.

He later clarified a bit and Professor Yin and Energy Spatula added some helpful perspective. What I wanted to add is that this is a perfect example of why BigLaw is so not for me. My experience has been that Duncan Kennedy was absolutely correct when he described legal education as training for hierarchy (in an essay by that name), and this discussion about law review v. other journals v. no journal at all is a perfect example of how that training works. Law school is very good at teaching students to think in high stakes, either/or terms about their career choices. It begins with taking the LSAT and applying for schools, where the conventional wisdom is that you must have the highest scores you can possibly get and you must attend the highest-ranked school to which you can gain admission—otherwise, you might as well not go at all. The training continues in the first year with the myriad competitions where you either win and receive congratulations and accolades, or lose and retreat to your outlines to ponder whether you're really good enough or smart enough or whatever to make it in this racket. And, of course, the training goes on throughout school, with still more competitions, ruthless grading curves, and the constant cycle of interviews and job-seeking that sorts people into the best—and everyone else. Isn't that what the “law review or nothing” mantra means? These lessons of all or nothing hierarchy are drilled into most 0Ls to such an extent that they often make foolish choices and end up in programs that don't fit them as individuals and which do not serve their career goals. But quickly they learn that, whatever goals they may have had when they started applying to law school, the only legitimate goal of any self-respecting law student—nay, the only possible goal if they do not want to live a life of shame and poverty, or worse—is to scrap and scrape for every little “distinction” that will earn them a coveted spot w/in the miserable and too often morally questionable corridors of “BigLaw” where they can help perpetuate the dispiriting cycle for the generations to follow. As I've said before, Kennedy's essay is well worth reading in its entirety, but his comments on the firm hiring process are especially relevant to this point. He writes:

The final touch that completes the picture of law school as training for professional hierarchy is the recruitment process. As each firm, with the tacit or enthusiastically overt participation of the law schools, puts on a conspicuous display of its relative status within the profession, the profession as a whole affirms and celebrates its hierarchical values and the rewards they bring. This process is most powerful for students who go through the elaborate procedures of firms in the top half of the profession. These include, nowadays, first-year summer jobs, dozens of interviews, second-year summer jobs, more interviews etc., etc. This system allows law firms to get a social sense of applicants, a sense of how they will contribute to the nonlegal image of the firm and to the internal system of deference and affiliation. It allows firms to convey to students the extraordinary opulence of the life they offer, adding the allure of free travel, expense-account meals, fancy hotel suites and parties at country clubs to the simple message of money.   . . .   By dangling the bait, making clear the rules of the game, and then subjecting almost everyone to intense anxiety about their acceptability, firms structure entry into the profession so as to maximise acceptance of hierarchy. . . . If you feel you’ve succeeded, you're forever grateful, and you have a vested interest. If you feel you've failed, you blame yourself. When you get to be the hiring partner, you'll have a visceral understanding of what's at stake, but by then it will be hard even to imagine why someone might want to change it.   Inasmuch as these hierarchies are generational, they are easier to take than those baldly reflective of race, sex or class. You, too, will one day be a senior partner and, who knows, maybe even a judge; you will have mentees and be the object of the rage and longing of those coming up behind you. Training for subservience is learning for domination as well. Nothing could be more natural and, if you've served your time, nothing more fair than to do as you have been done to.

As Energy Spatula pointed out well, it's not only students who are poorly served by the myopic mentality of this legal hierarchy, but the profession itself suffers because BigLaw employers too often hire based merely on the “numbers” and credentials, without looking at the individual characteristics that might make a prospective associate a real asset to the firm. She writes:

My point, as always, is that if law firms hired according to other factors, such as demonstrated practical skills, experience with high-pressure work situations/past career experience, interviews that weren't just grade screening sessions, etc., perhaps there wouldn't be big firms whining on law.com about how Gen Y doesn't have any work ethic and no one wants to work hard anymore. I *always* advocate for individualistic hiring practices based on some kind of interview that is more than perfunctory and that establishes a rapport between interviewer and interviewee where interviewer gets an actual glimpse of whether interviewee might be a valuable asset to the organization. I could write a book on my terrible law firm interviews...stupid questions, interviewers that hadn't read my resume, interviewers that totally depended on me to push the interview along, firms that told me, point blank, that I was lucky to even get an interview with them because my grades aren't perfect and then just sat and stared at me for five minutes...waiting for my gushing thanks no doubt. We joke all the time in school about how law schools push for diversity in admitting students and then spend three years making us all the same...and unfortunately, “the same” that they're making us is someone no one wants to work with and who is hired based on things like law review and grades, which, while important, are not Important.

This, in turn, damages society because it produces a cadre of professionals who have never learned what it means to be a “counsellor at law” or a guardian of liberty because they've been too busy gunning for the illusory golden ring and making sure everyone who follows in their footsteps has to pay the same exorbitant price they paid for the privilege. It's sad, really, and I want as little to do with it as possible. Of course, I'm absolutely certain that there are happy, well-adjusted, kind and humane people working in BigLaw (I know a few of them); it's not satan's own playground, by any means, and I applaud those who recognize that the system is badly in need of change and are trying to do something about it. Still, evidence abounds that the BigLaw hierarchical model is still going strong at all levels of the legal profession. See, for example, the recent discussion on many blawgs about whether it's necessary to attend a top-10 law school to become a law professor. E.g. Preaching to the Perverted here and here (including links to other voices in that discussion). Again, the brutal hierarchy perpetuates itself. Is there some hope in the news that “Gen Y” lawyers are balking at the hierarchy's demands? Perhaps. At the very least, it's sparked some terrific discussion, including this giant comment thread at the Volokh Conspiracy. (See also: Thoughts from Anthony Rickey.) However, reading around that discussion only adds to my cynicism about BigLaw. First, I agree with this comment that much of this could just be normal generational squabbling; in about 1993 I wrote an article for my college magazine about those slacker Gen-Xers, and now it appears I could write the same thing about Generation Y. Another commenter puts it this way:

So to those who think they have sussed out something new: not quite. We all billed over 2000 hours back in the day, and I hit 2400 most years. We neither expected nor received loyalty from the firm (although it was rare for an associate to be shafted by a partner - why bother?). We knew even then that the big money was on the client side, but most of us lacked the social skills to thrive in a more entrepreneurial environment. And like today's associates, Generation Schmuck paid a price for our work that was measured in more than foregone vacations: plenty of marriages (my own included) did not survive our law firm tenure.

That's a great comment because it captures the bitterness and resentment of those who have spent their lives trying to rise in the hierarchy. That bitterness and resentment destroys any empathy these battered practitioners may have once had for those following in their footsteps, leaving them, again, with the pyrrhic satisfaction of being able to make sure their successors pay the same high price they paid for their misery. As Kennedy puts it, “[n]othing could be more natural and, if you've served your time, nothing more fair than to do as you have been done to.” If that's not enough, this discussion also offers little hope that anything is changing because it simply reinforces the fact that the legal “profession” has become nothing more than the pursuit of profit for a large and unfortunately influential swath of practitioners. (See, e.g., this complaint that $120k/year really isn't a very big salary.) Perhaps this is the logical endpoint of the hierarchy—like the proverbial snake it begins to eat its own tail. As Kennedy writes, “[t]raining for subservience is learning for domination as well.” Or perhaps not; perhaps what's at work with these “gen-Y” associates is not that they are becoming “rational actors” in the self-serving sense of pursuing their own profit at any cost, but that they are realizing that there's more to life than billable hours and climbing a ladder that may very well lead only to more rungs. For their sakes, and for the sake of society, I hope so.

Posted 08:05 AM | Comments (5) | 2L law general law school

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

It's been about two weeks since Half-Cocked wrote an excellent short history of Nebraska indie rock, specifically the Omaha and Lincoln scenes, since those seem to have been hotbeds of great sound in recent years. Check out his post for some great inside perspective on how little bands get big and what's cool and new and coming to a heavy rotation playlist near you. To his post I would also add a mention of Elevator Ride, a friend of mine who was also part of the Omaha/Council Bluffs music scene in years past. Excellent stuff. And speaking of little bands that become big, I recently acquired “Give Up” by Postal Service as a wonderful gift from my bestest of friends. (She makes beautiful books—yes, every one unique and crafted lovingly by hand—that would make wonderful gifts for those smart and discerning peeps in your life.) I've been listening to it nonstop for the last couple of days and am enthralled. If you want to listen, too, get yourself an Audioscrobbler account, then login and visit my user page. Once you've added me as a friend (b/c you love me, I know you do), you can click on the “Personal” radio link on the top right of my user page and you'll start hearing streamed versions of songs in my recently-played list. I tried this at work the other day and it was awesome—like having my cd/mp3 collection w/me wherever there's a networked computer w/a web browser. I have no idea how they do this (the songs clearly don't stream from my own machine, so I don't know where they're coming from), but it's so cool I don't want to ask many questions for fear of messing it up. (Note: You do not have to add me as a friend to do this; you just have to get a free account, login, then visit my page. But now that you can hear everything I hear, don't you want to share with me what you hear? Yes? I thought so. Thank you!)

Posted 12:25 PM | Comments (2) | ai music

Birthday Podcast With Denise

The latest edition of Ambivalent Voices is a conversation about birthdays with Denise of Life, Law, Gender on her 50th birthday. As part of her celebration of this milestone, Denise talks about what birthdays mean to her, great gifts, favorite and not so favorite birthdays past, her favorite birthday drink (you'll love this one!), and a bit of advice from the perspective of a woman who has lived a very full life already. Happy birthday, Denise, and may you have many more great birthdays to come! Technotes: This podcast was recorded by phone via Slapcast.com—just call an 800-number, record a message, and publish the mp3 to the web! I added bumpers via Garageband and compressed the mp3 in iTunes. Special thanks to Luciano's Piano Bar for the MIDI piano version of “Happy Birthday” playing in the background. To subscribe to Ambivalent Voices in a podcast aggregator, add this link to your aggregator's subscription list. Or you can simply right-click here to download the file directly. (Clicking that link should open the mp3 in your browser, too.) As always, if you would like to join me for an edition of Ambivalent Voices, please drop me an email (via the “contact ai” link above right) and we'll set it up.

Posted 12:07 AM | Comments (3) | voices

New Used Books

It's spring break so it's time to pretend I have time in my life for things other than school, work, and blogs. To that end, L. and I went to a big used book sale at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School yesterday because what we really really need in our lives is more books. (Note to self: Take picture of the half dozen completely overloaded and sagging bookshelves in our tiny apartment.) But you know, when good books are going for $1/each, how can you say no? Yesterday's picks for me were:

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (because it was a dollar and it's been so long since I read it that I've basically forgotten the whole thing and the movie is coming and, well, I don't want to see the movie w/out knowing where my towel is, you know?)
• The Restaurant at the End of The Universe (see above)
• Life, The Universe and Everything (and again)
• Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut (because he's great and I haven't read it)
• Galapagos (same as above)
• Jailbird (again)
• The Trial by Franz Kafka (because I sadly must admit I've never read it and I know it should b/c just about every piece of literary criticism or theory I've read and loved has relied upon The Trial in some way or another)
• The Recognitions by William Gaddis (because the Wallace List talks about it all the time so maybe I'd like it
• Science Fiction: A Historical Anthology, edited by Eric S. Rabkin (because it contains some classic sci-fi short stories that I've never read)

In all, a great haul of books that I may never read and which I will move countless times before I admit that I will never read them, at which point I will donate them to another charity book sale where they will be sold again for $1/each, only to begin the whole cycle again. Or maybe I will read them since they're mostly tiny paperbacks that won't take that long to read and which will be easy to carry w/me on the train this summer. We'll see. Any thoughts on any of these books? Faves? Dislikes?

Posted 02:08 PM | Comments (6) | ai books

Happy Birthday, Denise!

Denise of Life, Law, Gender turns 50! today and all she wants for her birthday is a comment from you. Get thee to her comments window, friends! And if you want to add some fun, send your wishes in a language other than English. I chose Finnish since I have some (minimal) connections to that language and because it's so different from English. The Danish sounds fun, too, though.

Posted 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | 2L

Podcasting w/a Superhero:

Friday Fun: Check out the latest edition of Ambivalent Voices, where Energy Spatula of Will Work for Favorable Dicta tells us all about:

• How to prevent drunk dialing.
• Drunk podcasting—the future of blogging.
• Saving parents the trouble of teaching their kids about the birds and the bees.
• Babysitting as birth control.
• Cabana Boys!

Thanks Energy Spatula! You make podcasting fun! Technotes: This podcast was recorded by phone via Slapcast.com—just call an 800-number, record a message, and publish the mp3 to the web! It doesn't get much easier than that. Like last time, I added bumpers via Garageband and compressed the mp3 in ITunes. Apologies for the sound quality in places. Trying to keep the file size down means quality suffers. Did I mention that this is all still a “wicked dorky” experiment? Is it true that dorks have the most fun? To subscribe to Ambivalent Voices in a podcast aggregator, add this link to your aggregator's subscription list. p.s.: If you would like to join me for an edition of Ambivalent Voices, please drop me an email (via the link above right) and we'll set it up. We can't all be superheroes, but we can all use a telephone, right?

Posted 08:40 AM | Comments (9) | voices

She's Back!

Hooray! Ditzy Genius has escaped her evil squirrel prison!!! Get on over and welcome her back to the wacky world of these funny little electronic blawg things! Oh, and she made the law review editorial board, as well, so: Congratulations and Welcome Back, DG!

Posted 10:10 PM | law school meta-blogging

GW Journal Competition Coming Up Again

A reader who will remain anonymous writes roughly:

Everyone and their brother is giving us advice for the upcoming Journal competition. I figured I should turn to one of my “blog-idols” as well:-) Got any advice or tips? Post something before 4pm... after that, we are in hiding!!!

Well, reader, about all I can say is: Good luck! But I can also say that I enjoyed the competition last year and it really needn't be hard or onerous. Therefore, my advice is to try to have fun with it. The bluebooking isn't all that bad. One way to do it is to look at the shortcuts in the front (or is it back? depending on the directions for the competition, I guess) cover of the bluebook and cite everything based on the examples you see there. Then go through each citation one-by-one, read the rule(s) that govern it, and make sure you've dotted every “i.” If a rule sends you to another rule for some reason, go read it—it might tell you something you've forgotten. Remember to abbreviate appropriately w/case names and other places where abbreviations are allowed/required. Don't forget subsequent history where necessary (according to the rules). What else? That's what's on the top of my head. I've found that when bluebooking, it's best to be as thorough as I can be, then put it aside for a while, then go back and start checking my work against the rules one last time. I always always always find at least some little thing I'd forgotten the first one or two times through. The fun part is summarizing the cases succinctly and constructing an argument from the materials. Make the argument you want to make, not the argument you think some judge wants to hear. If you write what you want to write, it will be better, even if your judges disagree with it. A good strategy may obviously be to summarize the cases first, then free-write your argument quickly, writing it like you would if you were writing a note to a friend or something—casual, your own language, just getting the points down that you want to make. Then go back and revise and expand that into something slightly more formal and support it all w/good citations. That's how I did it, anyway. Oh, one more thing: I'm pretty sure I made it on a journal in large part b/c of how I ranked my choices. If your grades aren't stellar (mine aren't), the best choice is AIPlA b/c it's the only journal that doesn't consider grades. Other than that, obviously make your choices based on whether the subject matter of the journal interests you (your choices are obviously severely limited at our wonderful school w/its paltry four options; not that I think the world really needs more legal journals, but...). I bet I haven't told you anything you haven't heard already, but this is the best I can do. There's really no secret that I know except what I said already: Try to make it fun. If it's not at least a little fun, you probably shouldn't even do it b/c it's not like the work will get better once you're on a journal. I'll be curious to hear from any 1Ls (after the competition, of course) who would like to share how things went for them. Best of luck everyone!

Posted 11:49 AM | Comments (10) | advice law school

Advice To Law Schools: PI-LRW Sections

I guest-posted today on Notes from the (Legal) Underground. Briefly, the piece argues that law schools could easily boost their support for public interest legal education by filling a small section of their 1L writing programs with public interest students and teachers. Thanks to Evan Schaeffer for graciously providing the forum for the piece. Please comment here or there with any thoughts you might have on the specific idea or on public interest legal education in general.

Posted 09:02 AM | Comments (1) | 2L law school

Goodbye Juvenile Death Penalty!

The SCOTUS struck down the death penalty for juveniles today in its decision in Roper v. Simmons. A good number of current death row inmates may be affected, plus, this decision may be a great step in the public conversation about the death penalty. More from DPIC. This has got to be great for the National Juvenile Defender Center, too. I haven't read the decision yet, but I can't imagine how this could be a bad thing.

Posted 04:18 PM | Comments (3) | law general