Fun Legal Quote:

Lord Chancellor Northington said:

"Necessitous men are not, truly speaking, free men."

Vernon v. Bethell, 2 Eden 110, 113 (1762). I couldn't agree with him more.

Posted 05:28 AM | law school

Crazy Legal Fact

How many lawsuits would you guess are filed each year in the U.S.? Before starting law school, I would probably have guessed a few million, at most. I would have been wrong. According to Joseph P. Glannon's Civil Procedure: Examples & Explorations, I would have been very wrong:

In 1998 an astounding 91,000000 cases were filed in the courts of the fifty states, while some 1,700,000 were filed in the federal courts (56).

Holy litigious society, Batman! Yikes.

p.s.: Batman can't fly, but the batmobile can. Discuss.

Posted 06:01 AM | Comments (11) | law school life generally

Poor Representation

Just "finished" memo number two. The question presented was:

Will an immigration judge or the BIA grant asylum to our client on the basis of his political opinion, given that, a) he and his family were attacked numerous times after he wrote an article critical of a local political leader, and b) that political leader’s influence may extend beyond our client’s home region?

Fifteen pages, way too many of which are facts. What I really wonder is: How many people get poor legal advice because bumbling associates and junior lawyers procrastinate memos and end up submitting half-baked approximations of legal arguments rather than well-researched and well-written legal advice? Too many, I fear.

Posted 06:12 AM | Comments (5) | law school