My New Life

Happy International Children's Day! And pardon me for being away for a while. As an excuse, I'll just say that I have had the worst week of my life with Law Review competition, and the single Worst Day of My Life last Friday.

I don't want to go into details, because it is just too painful to recount, but let's just say that I ended up turning my LR competition entry 15 minutes late, for which there is probably some sort of penalty, though they refuse to be more concrete, and that I temporarily lost my ID card and wept in full view in the middle of the reference library while a very nice reference librarian photocopied stuff for me. Which reminds me. I should send him flowers.

Don't worry, everything is okay. Just more fun stories about law school to tell my grand kids. I have by now returned to my former cheerful self, but let's get on to the next topic before the bad memories come flooding back! :)

So, my new life has begun since this Tuesday! After a long weekend of sleeping, recuperating, and packing, I am now moved into Boyfriend's condo in N-Town and have started work on Tuesday!

Work has been fascinating, and definitely a whole other world from law school. There are seven interns in total at my office, mostly 1Ls, but 1 2L and 1 3L (!). Three girls and four boys. They all seem very nice, and scarily, they all seem like they know more than I do about the workings of the law. I feel like I have learned nothing but legal theory this past year, but my comrades actually seem to know about drafting motions and doing legal research and stuff like that.

Speaking of which, my office seems very short-handed, and they really do throw you into the water feet first. I began working almost right away on Tuesday, and my first assignment was (gulp) drafting a motion. A real, bonafide, actual motion that is going to get used in an actual court proceeding! I was too ashamed to say that I didn't know how, and I tried my best to copy the format and the language of the sample motions that I found, but still, I'm sure that my product was full of mistakes.

The attorney who gave me the first assignment is this cool lady with a statuesque figure and short hair. She was extra nice with me and tried to be reassuring. Her work mostly involves forfeitures and restitution and fines. So I have been struggling to remember stuff from my Ames brief, which is kind of about that topic. Who knew that all this stuff would come full circle?

Morale seems to be very good at my office, and most of the attorneys are only a little older than me. Surprisngly, my freshman counselor from college works at the office too. When he called out my name, I was so surprised that his name escaped me for a second. And then the memories came flooding back. It's kind of embarrassing, but I actually had a huge, obvious crush on him back in freshman year. :D Not anymore, of course.

It's great to see first-hand how much of the law you learn from the books is actually useful. It's also a little dismaying to see how little of the law we learn in 1L year is actually useful. So far, everything I have done has something to do with statutes, which we didn't do at all first year (well, other than in tax, that is). Although part of my work is to look up cases that interprete the statutes, it is definitely not the straight-up common law that we have been learning all year in the classrooms. Yes. The 1L curriculum needs reform, NOW!

Okay, enough for now. I have to be discreet here and not give away any particulars because it is against the rules and against the law. I could get prosecuted for violating the attorney-client privilege, some federal statutes, AND the confidentiality agreement that I signed. So I will only talk about work in a general way, but not about any cases. I'm sure you'd understand.

:D Work, probably.
:( Getting up at 8 every day. My body is NOT built for this...