I thought I knew how to write. I excelled in English classes. I got a liberal arts education. Professionally, I cranked out press releases and honed online copy every day. I wrote scripts for TV and blog posts* for my ego. I thought I knew what I was doing.
Unfortunately, I tried to apply those make-’em-think-this-is-exciting writing skills to law school. Big mistake.
First, good academic writing is not good legal writing. Second, good writing in every other context is not good legal writing. Legal writing makes you do things like label sentences that would otherwise flow just fine from one to the next with “First,” and “Second.” Legal writing wants you to use serial commas. Legal writing puts spaces between the periods in ellipses. Legal writing forces the writer to break down every possible leap of logic or twist of mystery you might hope to leave between the lines and forces them into cold, black text. Text interrupted by citations. Text with endless footnotes. Text in short sentences. Text that is redundant. Text that never varies in form. Text that is repetitious.
My current bitterness has everything nothing to do with the fact that I’m eyeballs-deep in a paper that already has 10 pages of single-spaced 10-point endnotes, all in sparkling Bluebook format. Right about now I just want to take IRAC and CRAC by the serifs and shake them until their silly, rigid bodies fall apart.
But I guess I’ll go work on my paper.
* Now that you know how much I love legal writing, you should check out my Lawyerist post on the pros and cons of writing for a law school journal.
This semester is kicking me, hard. But in an attempt to be positive, here’s a list of what’s good, or at least what could be so much worse:
- Having worked makes it much easier to work. I’m a research assistant to a professor who I respect very much. It’s tough enough fitting the work in between classes, other work and being a mom — but at least I know how to ask for a deadline, communicate openly about what I can and can’t do, and be efficient with my time. Serious thanks to my professional career for that one.
- Imagine what I could do if I commit myself this much to something I care deeply about. Every night I get less and less sleep, every day I slog through more and more pages and crank out ever-increasingly-efficient writing, and I think, “Wow, some day I could work this hard for a cause I truly believe in.” I’m pretty driven (who in law school isn’t??), but I didn’t know I could sustain this kind of output. It’s inspiring.
- I’m not writing for a journal, and I’m not doing OCI. These are probably the two best decisions I’ve made to date to safeguard my sanity. Enough said.
- I love copyright class. Ok, I know sooooo little about it, and there are a lot of IP-minded folks at my school (and in that class), but it’s really entertaining and informative. I’m grateful for at least one place where I feel really motivated to learn and participate.
Overall, it’s tiring, taxing, stressful and pushing me to the brink. But today I’m willing to say that the view is pretty good from the edge.
Today I got the following email from a salesman at ExamSoft, the company that makes the final exam software my school uses, SoftTest.
Hello Laura,
We met at the CALI conference, where we discussed some features that could be incorporated into SofTest that would be useful to students. You suggested that we add a keyboard shortcut to display the word/character count within an exam. Well, we have! I wanted you to be the first to know that the new version of SofTest released for the new academic year on September 1st will include the option of using CTRL+W to display the word/character count. Thanks for your suggestion and no there is no licensing deal for you forthcoming. :)
Bryant Weaver
Client Support Manager
I was disappointed at first that there wasn’t a big announcement on the ExamSoft website naming the ctrl+W functionality after me, but then I saw that their website doesn’t really outline any of the software’s functionality, and I felt better.
So all of you 1Ls who ctrl+W your way to a well-edited exam answer (I had two classes last semester that required word counts on the final), saving you two whole mouse clicks that it used to take to get you that same piece of information, you may not know it, but you have me to thank.
Is your school planning anything for orientation this year about building or hiding an online identity? Are you advising professors on whether or not to friend students on Facebook? Do you know if your dean has guidelines for herself or her staff on using social media?
Over 65 people from law schools around the world (mostly US but a few Canadians and at least one Brit) have joined the new network at socialmediabestpractices.org to discuss questions like these. If you are a law student, librarian, professor, counselor, administrator or anyone affiliated with a law school or legal education in general, you’re invited to sign up.
If you haven’t already, review the information for law school students, staff/administrators and employers (of law students and law grads, that is) at smbp.laurabergus.com.
You’re also invited to take this 5-minute survey about social media at your law school, offered by CALI.
I want this project to be useful, so please tell me what you think!
CALICON09 is happening June 18-20 at Colorado’s law school in Boulder. CALI, known to every law school in the country (save a few, like mine), is a place where law students learn and professors share, using modern internet technologies. One of the sessions at the conference this year will be presented by Harvard’s Berkman Center’s Co-director John Palfrey, author of the recent book about “digital natives,” Born Digital. (Palfrey will is also the conference’s keynote speaker.) The session will focus on how law schools can get smart about social media, from giving advice to students to addressing serious privacy concerns. My law school’s assistant dean, Steve Langerud, and I were invited to join in the conversation and share our experience at the University of Iowa College of Law in creating a social media best practices plan. (See Berkman fellow Gene Koo’s blog post about the workshop.)
The hope is to leave the conference with a working model for a social media plan that can be implemented for incoming students this fall. The best case will be schools setting up students, instructors and employers with meaningful advice and tutorials for productive social media use. The worst case, short of outright rejection by nostalgic administrators, will hopefully be careful and introspective critiques of the pros and cons of social media use by students, administrators and employers.
Thanks to Austin Groothuis at CALI for noticing Iowa Law’s project and to Gene Koo for connecting us with Berkman in this process.
If you’re going to CALI, I would love to see you there! Check out the CALICON whiteboard for details about a tweetup on the Friday evening of the conference.
In case you missed my earlier posts on Social Media Law Student about this project, please check out Part 1 and Part 2 there.
The building where I attend law school (note the massive grey dome) is lovingly known as the Death Star among a few of us. I have many critiques of this building. There’re few common areas: couches and not-so-comfy-or-clean chairs are haphazardly shoved into corners and on edges of walkways. None of the classrooms have windows to the outside world (intentional, I’m sure). Worst is the fact that the main stairway and every high traffic area (around the restrooms, locker room and cantina) actually gets narrower right where all of the 600 students and 100 faculty/staff pass each other many times each day. I have had more awkward, “Oh – sorry — excuse me!” moments and near-collisions in this building than in the rest of my life combined. Which of course improves on the already not-so-smooth feelings many of us have when wielding a 40 lb. backpack while balancing laptop, hot coffee and the hummus and pita chips that will be our 10:00 am lunch.
The law school used to be beautiful, but since I probably wouldn’t have been accepted as a law student before 1986 (when the College of Law moved into the Death Star, at which time I was only five years old), I won’t lament that fact too much.
The important thing is that today there is a space where I find refuge in the midst of narrowing hallways and spiraling office corridors (pdf) [ok, that's not really my law school - but apparently there's a trend of law buildings with the name Boyd being built in a circle.]. I’m hesitant to write about it because it’s been nearly a year and there’s never been another person in this sanctuary when I seek it out.
It’s on a hill, outside the building. There are old trees and wildflowers. Early spring brings out an undergrowth of Siberian scilla and creeping charlie. The few scraggly forsythia bushes burst with sprays of golden flowers before their leaves unfurl. A few weeks later the green leaves and white flowers of honeysuckle have emerged and verdant hillside beckons with clusters of violets and foxglove. Later the cultivated prairie plants thrive on the edge of the hill: purple coneflowers, black eyed susans and sunflowers. In the fall, the aged maples and ash grudgingly release eddies of brilliant golden leaves, with the orange-brown foliage of the oaks behind them. Grey squirrels and eastern chipmunks thrive here, as do all the migrating birds. Even bald eagles fly overheard in the winter on their way to the nearby river. I view all of this from an old, worn stone bench perched on the edge of the hill, built on the top of a crumbling limestone wall, giving way to the roots of trees and separating me from the traffic of the highway 60 feet below.
I am so very, very grateful for this sanctuary of wilderness so close to the center of the source of my three years of self-imposed and artificial stress that is law school.
[And there's wireless internet out here, too! I'm writing this while watching fat, fuzzy bumble bees and snuggly, soft baby bunnies frolic in the clover. But crap - I've got a civ pro exam in a couple of hours. Better get back to relaxing before I forget all there is to know about 28 USC 1367. Later!]
I recently discovered that my school is one of only five ABA-accredited law schools that doesn’t belong to the consortium called CALI. CALI is the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction. Sounded right up my alley, so I looked a bit deeper and ended up feeling… pretty jealous. Thousands of law students – my peers across the country – have access to a steady stream of interactive lessons on many topics. Online, any time of day or night. From following CALI on Twitter I was introduced to more content– this free for anyone: webinars and online articles on seriously relevant topics like “Engaging Laptop Users” (for profs who know students spend more time on Facebook and IMing than on typing notes…) or using MediaNotes (a CALI program for tagging video for evaluation of mock trial, oral argument, etc.). Check out the Spotlights on their homepage for more.
Granted, CALI’s website looks like it was created in 1998 (oh, color scheme!…[though I should talk, since this blog's contrast is only readable on 1/2 of all LCD monitors]), and there seem to be two competing main sites? But what they’re doing and attempting is amazing: leading law schools along the path to adopting and utilizing modern technology in the classroom. Not for the sake of technology (like every PowerPoint presentation I sat through in college in the late 90s), but for the sake of more effectively delivering content and engaging participation with users who are eternally hunched behind their screens. I’m impressed and I hope my school and the other holdouts will see the value ($5,000 per year = <$9/student at my school) and give it try. We’re only about three decades behind the times, since CALI was incorporated in 1982…
