Laura Bergus

First semester is almost up, so I’m finally thinking about the prospect of eventually becoming employed in this field. It’s awfully early to say, but for now I get the impression that much of the thrust of my education is more theoretical, rather than practical. Other people, attending other law schools, with professors who were recently practicing attorneys, give me this idea. Not to say that by the time I’m done I won’t be well-equipped to get one of the few legal jobs that is left in our economy three years from now, but I think there’s a big element missing in my curriculum: the World Wide Interwebs.

The interactive site at change.gov, no matter how corny you think it is, is a great example of how people use the internet and, more importantly, how they expect to be able to use a website and interact with whoever is on the other side of their screen, so to speak. And knowing that lawyering is mostly about good, specialized customer service, attorneys should take a lesson. And some of them are, setting up elawyering websites (like www.kimbrolaw.com) and engaging clients through email, gtalk and twitter. [Note that the American Bar Association, however, isn't quite up to speed on representing this new movement...]

And I have a hard time believing that such innovative practices will trickle down into my legal education in time to be relevant for me. So I’m trying my darnedest to ignore the advice I’ve been given by the College of Law to limit my online presence (UI is not the only school guiding students in this way) and instead do what I can to make connections, meet people, and most importantly, learn more of what I will need to know to practice law in the modern world. Seeing as how I have one follower of this blog, a twitter account and about 30 friends on facebook, I’d say I’m well on my way!

In just a few hours I’ll take my first law school exam. I expect it to be hard and very anti-climactic. I have two more to go after this, spread out over the next 10 days, so there won’t be too much to celebrate this evening. Today it’s torts, a test written by an anti-trust legend and father of one of my former employees. Amazing how all my classmates wanted to know about the prof’s son, when there wasn’t much to tell beyond how talented at video he was and that he had the most subtle and hilarious sense of humor. Not sure how that will help them today, but whatever.

Right now I am nervous about not freaking out enough. So many of my peers are reporting being up all night, cramming for the last week, hanging out in the room where the test will take place. I’ve been watching Star Wars (Episode IV, of course) over and over again with Evelyn. She wants to be a stormtrooper so she can work for Darth Vader, who is mean, she tells me, but it’s only a movie. It’s not that I’ve been slacking off, as I’ve certainly done my fair share of studying, but it’s not like this is the kind of thing that memorizing fact patterns or Restatement numbers will really help with. When finals are over, I will have to wait a few weeks to get all my grades back. So it’ll be January before I know if my Star Wars way of review was on target or not.

And the bulleted list for today: what I know I’ll need to know for the exam:

• The Coase Theorum
• The Hand Formula and Carroll Towing
• Various Cardozo nuggets of wisdom
• Holmes on the development of negligence as a standard of liability
• The importance of Vosburg v. Putney
• Many, many more things, but not:
• Nuisance
• Defamation