Don't Argue With Judges and Other Pending Dooms

Besides marathon prep (which is really all psychological at this point), and thinking a little about NaNoWriMo starting next week, it seems a bit like there's not much going on around here, but that's not exactly true. For one thing, I totally failed in my attempt to write and argue a motion to suppress last week. Thankfully it was a class exercise so no one is going to jail because of my incompetence. Two lessons from that experience:

First, I tend to do better when I think I'm going to lose; I think this is because I am more humble and earnest and attuned to what the judge is saying and how he/she is reacting to what I'm saying. This time I thought I had a slam dunk legal argument and when the judge disagreed, I had nothin'. I was dead. It was ugly.

Second, never argue with the judge. Duh. This is so basic it's humiliating to have to admit I apparently needed to hear it yet again, but there you go. When my slamdunk legal argument fell on deaf ears and I had nothin,' I tried to support my position with argument that was, well, not sufficiently deferential to the, uh, rank and great wisdom of the judge. And, of course, I hadn't prepared very well for that argument b/c I thought the law was so much on my side that I wouldn't need much support for it. That left me just sort of repeating the same things with more and more exasperation, hoping that if I said them firmly and confidently enough, and repeated them enough times, the judge would be persuaded. It didn't work and apparently just made the judge mad. In all, a very bad performance on my part. I hope my real arguments to suppress coming up next week go a little better. I assume I'm going to lose those, so maybe I'll win. ;-)

Besides that, I'm all registered for the MPRE taking place very very soon on Nov. 4, and wow, that's exciting! I haven't lifted a finger in preparation, so I'm thinking the next couple of weeks could kind of suck.

Can anyone tell me what happens if you fail the MPRE? Are there consequences (besides wasting the $55 registration), or can you just take it again the next time?

Posted 09:51 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | 3L