Thursday, March 31, 2005

Law School Success: The Lazy Way

If you want to attend law school, but you don't want to put in the hard work required to be successful, you have one option that The Princeton Review doesn't tell you about: Attend your "safety" school.

When trying to decide where to apply, find out what the school's top quartile LSAT score is. If your score is in the top quartile, you should consider attending this school. Like it or not, the LSAT measures your intelligence. If you are in the top quartile at a particular school, you start off being smarter than at least 75% of your classmates. That goes a long way towards a high class rank, and thus, law school success.

How do I know? Because I am currently attending my safety school. I ended up here because I liked the location and they threw a 50% scholarship at me. I quickly figured out the law school game, and by the second semester of my first year, I was doing significantly less work that my classmates. Now, as a 2L, I'm ranked in the top 15% of my class, and I only spend about 2 hours per week on school stuff. While my classmates spend their afternoons trying to keep up on reading, I am eating Quiznos and watching Naughty Amateur Home Videos on the Playboy Channel.

So, take it from me: If you want to do well in law school without having to expend too much energy, attend your safety school.


Russ's Addendum: Mike's probably right. I did very well on my LSAT and got into my reach school. Now I'm filling out the meaty end of the curve. Mike has as many opportunities as I do and he seems to have more fun (he certainly does less work). So while he regales me with stories of daytime TV and high quality fast food, I look forward to eating Subway and (you don't want to know what the low-quality equivalent of Naughty Amateur Home Videos is).

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The Dancing Family

Remember the Cosby show where all the kids put on a choreographed dance to Ray Charles' "Nite Time (Is the Right Time)?" While incredibly entertaining, you must have thought that it was a little over the top and that no real family would ever do such a thing. Well back in 200o, I personally witnessed a spontaneous family dance-a-thon.

One Friday night at dusk I was having a beer on the porch and the family from across the street came outside. The dad opened up the sliding door on the minivan and turned on the minivan's radio. The family cheered and started bopping around to the music which I distinctly recall was a then popular Sammy song. Then the dad pulled out a flashlight, turned it on and held it up in the air so the light would point at the ground. Then he started twirling it around like a spot light on one little area in front of him. Then each kid would dance into the spotlight and take about 30 seconds to dance to the music and put on a little show for the rest of the family. The family would cheer as each of the 5 kids, from 5 to 15, showed their moves. It was very interesting to see a bunch of people experience a moment of joy that I couldn't relate to but I could understand...and it was really funny.

Very Special Episodes

Remember very special episodes from the 1980s?

Here's some very special episode's that never made it off the cutting room floor:

"A Very Special Who's The Boss"- Thinking he is at the park, Tony goes into Jonathans room to clean it. When he opens the door, he discovers Jonathan "experimenting" with Vinny, the next door neighbor.

"A Very Special Blossom"- After years of throwing herself at him, Six finally gets Joey in the sack. They have a wonderful time, but a few weeks later, Six misses her period. She now has a gut-wrenching decision whether or not to keep what will undoubtably be an attractive but very stupid child.

"A Very Special Growing Pains" - Feeling like a social outcast, the ungainly 16-year-old Ben meets some nice kids at the park. After hanging out with them a few times, Jason and Maggie grow concerned when they discover a pamphlet in Ben's room advocating Neo-Nazi propaganda. Ben is about to shave his head, but they stop him just in time to explain the ideas of tolerance
and understanding.

"A Very Special Silver Spoons" - Ricky's drifting through his prep school years lost and emotionally empty. After all, his mother's death/disappearance was never really dealt with. Meanwhile, his spastic father has regressed even further into emotional immaturity. A train in the living room is no longer the wonder it once was. Ricky can afford anything, and he does thanks to Alphonso's connections from the old neighborhood. Ricky drifts into a drug addled stupor as he ponders his priviliged,
pointless existence.

"A Very Special Family Ties" - Reagan is in office and soon the books are open on several political crimes from the sixties. It seems Mike and Elise spent their early twenties leaving bombs in Fortune 500 companies' lobbies, so as to bring attention to war crimes in Vietnam. A politically motivated Department of Justice is out for blood and not even Alex's morally bankrupt history as a young conservative can stop the Stalinist show trials that are to come.

"A Very Special Small Wonder" - It turns out that there is in fact no robot girl. Everyone realizes that the technology was ahead of its time and she didn't even have any seams where her parts would move . Thanks to modern diagnosis, the little girl's robotic actions and repetitive dress were identified as what they truly were, autism.

Marching Band

Do people who used to be in marching band listen to Don McLean's song, "American Pie", and get goosebumps when he sings:

"And the players tried to take the field, but the marching band refused to yield."

I bet that is every band nerd's dream. In reality, they would be pummeled by the football players. (See, eg, the famous Cal/Stanford play, when the band came onto the field early, and the Cal player who scored the winning TD absolutely drilled a trombone player in the end zone.) The link here will show you what I'm talking about.

http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cje/

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Seinfeld Legal Analysis

Do you remember that Seinfeld where the gang was at the hospital, and a mental patient jumped off the roof and landed on George's car? When George went to talk to the hospital administrator, she was appalled by him asking for the hospital to pay for the damages. Assuming his insurance wouldn't cover it, doesn't he still have a claim for negligence against the hospital?

1- The hospital owed George a duty of care, in that they owed everyone in and around the hospital a duty to protect them from harm caused by a mental patient under the hospital's care.

2- The hosptial clearly breached their duty by allowing the mental patient to escape and ultimately jump off the building.

3- The hosptial's breach of duty caused the damage to George's car. But for the hospital's negligence, George's car would not have been damaged.

4- Proximate Cause: The tricky issue in negligence. Certainly it is reasonably forseeable that an unsupervised mental patient could harm a person in or around the hospital. If I remember correctly, the exact kind of harm that occurred does not have to be forseeable, just that the victim was reasonably forseeable. George, as a visitor to the hospital, was certianly a reasonalby forseeable victim.

5- There was actual harm done.

None of the defenses apply. There was no superceding cause; the hospital may argue that the patient jumping was one, but the duty the hospital had was to supervise the patient, including suicide prevention.

There is no assumption of risk or contributory negligence. George was parked legally in the street, and did nothing wrong. Nor did he in any way consent, either expressly or impliedly, to having his car subject to damage from escaped mental patients.

George should have sued.

Ad campaign for the 2006 elections

Voiceover: "President Bush claims to be a good leader, a man who makes wise decisions. But in 1989, while he was the owner of the Texas Rangers, he traded a young slugger named Sammy Sosa for Harold Baines, an aging veteren with numerous health problems. Sammy Sosa went on to become one of the greatest home run hitters in history. Harold Baines only played half a season with the Rangers before they got rid of him. This is the same sort of rush to act that lead us to invade Iraq, only we can't trade Iraq to Oakland for a player to be named later."

Richard Simmons

I heard him on the radio and was so jarred by his manic voice even without having to see his balding perm and pink unitard that I immediately googled, "Why is Richard Simmons popular". I came back with an interesting dissertation paper

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.995/pop-cult.995

The paper proposed the idea that gay men and obese women occupy the same sexual space in our society. Popular society is passively disgusted by their sexuality and, therefore, they relate to and console eachother. While every other exercise show features beautiful women leading other beautiful women in a work out, the obviously homosexual Richard Simmons leads obese women on his program. Say what you want about the guy but he's clearly clever enough to profit from the combination of two of our society's taboos while staying true to himself.

This explains some odd friendship pairings many of us have seen where a gay man in designer jeans will be friends with an obese woman wearing a Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt (or some such combination). Oh well, you gotta find some happiness somewhere in this world.

Thoughts on Seinfeld

Mike's Theory:

I have a theory on why so many people dislike the Seinfeld finale...

While the writers and actors looked at the characters as pathetic, despicable, bad people, etc., I don't think many viewers saw it that way. Some have said that all four main characters are unlikeable, but I don't think that is the case.

At it's core, the show dealt with everyday topics...being in a bad relationship, problems at work, miscommunications, obnoxious people you meet, and so on. In real life, everybody runs into similar issues, and social mores dictate that you deal with them in a certain way. On a normal sitcom, these problems are dealt with in a contrived and saccharine manor, with everything ok in the end. However, Seinfeld dealt with these problems much differently. They dealt the problem how everybody wished they could, but in real life cannot. In essence, the characters on Seinfeld represent everybody's id.

To prove the point, look at the most controversial episode, where Susan dies, and George's response is "restrained jubilation". Take the situation in real life...Suppose a man is engaged to a women and he absolutely does not want to marry her, yet is too cowardly to break off the wedding. I wager that this is not an uncommon occurrence. If some sort of tragedy were to befall the women soon before the wedding, the internal reaction of the man is very likely to be "restrained jubilation". Yet he cannot outwardly express that feeling. George simply reacted how a man in that situation would like to react. The same goes for many of the storylines, just at a smaller scale. Elaine loses her temper, Kramer is never afriad to tell the truth, no matter how insensitive, Jerry still laughs when somebody falls...all of these are reactions that many people wish they could have in that situation, and they like the characters because of that. People see a bit of their subconscious desires in the characters.

So why do people dislike the final episode? Because when the gang gets sent to jail for essentially being themselves, people were disturbed that these characters whom they could relate to on some level would be punished for being themselves. They like the characters. They don't wish them any harm. Just because you wish you could simply not care about some stranger doesn't make you a criminal. It makes you human. And people didn't like seeing their id's sent to jail.

Russ's Response:

How does the show fit into the Zeitgeist of the 90's? Was our society moving towards existential nihilism with the explosion of alternative rock and gangster rap. We were ecstatic to have history's most practical minded president who was admittedly morally bankrupt. The cold war's moral confrontation of good (America) and evil (Russia) was over and all that was left was good and lazy (America) and good and hard working (Japan and Germany) which just got more confusing because by 1995 it was good and innovative (America) and good and backwards (Japan and Germany). When Admiral Stockdale announced in 1992 "Who am I and what am I doing here?" wasn't he speaking for all Americans during our decade without a purpose?

Which asks the question about human nature: Are we truer to ourselves when not confronted by outside moral forces and we flirt with nihilism or are we our most authentic selves when enveloped in a moral crusade.

Which all boils down to: Does anything really matter?

Mike's Response:
Short answer: Yes with an 'if'

Long answer: No with a 'but'

Great subtle law-related Simpson's quote

Paul Harvey: And that little boy that nobody like grew up to be....Roy Cohn

Grandpa and Jasper: Wow!

Paul Harvey: And now you know the rest of the story

Phone Book Surprise

Got the new phone book the other day and went through the back of it to see what coupons the local merchants have put in there. To my surprise, the local escort agency has put a $10 off coupon in it. I wonder if you have to mention it on the phone for them to honor it, like with a pizza delivery.

How the Career Services Counseler would answer a law school exam question.

Q: A lives in Ohio, and was driving his car through Kentucky when he was rear ended by a driver, B, who has domiciles in both Kentucky and Florida. A slightly injured his back, but the doctor at the hospital made a mistake and hurt it even worse than it already was. The doctor, C, put A into a faulty bed, which folded up and further injured A's back. A has reason to believe that C knew the bed was faulty. The bed was made ACME Co., which is a Delaware corporation with a principle place of business in Georgia, but sells beds all over the world. A comes to you, his lawyer, and wants to know who he has a cause of action against, and in what jurisdiction. How would you advise him?
A: I would tell A to write a letter to all of the courts in all of the potential jurisdictions to find out if there is jurisdiction over the clients and which jusge wants to hear the case. Then I would advise A to write a letter to other lawyers to find out what cause of action he might have against B, C, and ACME. Next, I would advise A to write to different process servers to see who might be interested in actually serving the potential defendants with due process. If time permitted, I would advise A to contact other accident victims to see if they have any suggestions as to jurisdiction and cause of action. Finally, I would advise A to include a writing sample in each of his letters.

Mark McGuire In Law School

People are really coming down on Mark McGwire now, but I think he's pretty smart. The next time I'm called on in class, I'm going to try his approach.

Professor: "Mike, could you please tell us about the Roberts case."

Me: "I'm not here to talk about the past."

Professor: "Did you prepare for class today?"

Me: "Again, I'm not here to talk about the past."

Professor: "Maybe someone else then"

Canseco: "I can't say whether I prepared for class or whether anyone else did without perjuring myself. But, if you buy my book, I think you'll gain a lot of insight into who prepared, how they prepared, and why. I'm not, in principle, opposed to preparing for class. Let's face it: Preparation is widespread"

Sosa: "I don't know about no class. I have never been to class. I am sorry for everyone who had to go to class."

Bonds (Absent).

Typical Post you'll see on here

Virtually all of these posts started as an email exchange between me and Mike. Here's something mike sent me after we were bitching about the career services at our law schools.

Exerpt from the script of the premiere of next season of the Sopranos...

[Scene: Upstairs at the Bada Bing; Pauly and Silvio are playing pool, Tony is at his desk, and has just gotten off the phone.]

Silvio: Who was that, Ton?

Tony: My cousin Bobby. He is back in town and wants to get back into the business.

Pauly: Bobby...Was he the one who got busted for the bank job in '89?

Tony: No, Bobby used to run with me and Silv when we were teenagers, but then he went straight and put himself through law school. He spent the last few years working as a career advisor or something. Anyway, he's a smart guy and could really help us out.

Silvio: What are you going to have him do?

Tony: You know that kid Vinny who has been doing odd jobs for us? Well, I think he's ready to get out there and start earning. I'm going to have Bobby show him the ropes.

Silvio: You think thats smart? Bobby hasn't been in the game for a while...

Tony: Hey, Bobby is a bright guy, and he knows what to do.

[Scene]

[Cut to: Bobby (played by Alec Baldwin) and Vinny sitting in Bobby's car]

Bobby: Okay kid, you are getting promoted to street soldier. No more shit jobs for you, eh...(laughs)

Vinny: I guess, so what do you want me to do?

Bobby: Well kid, you need to start earning. You got to get your name out there, offering protection to businesses and such, in exchange for a piece of their profits.

Vinny: Sounds good, tell me who to collect from.

Bobby: Whoa, not so fast...You got to get your own clients. I mean, I have a few guys who have asked us for help, but those jobs typically go to more experienced guys. You need to get your name out there.

Vinny: How?

Bobby: I suggest you get a list of local merchants and write them letters. Let them know who you are, what you want to do, what you can do for them, and how much your services cost.

Vinny: Really? Letters? How many?

Bobby: The more the better. You might send out hundreds, but it only takes one positive response to get you started earning. Be creative. Ask your parents if they have any friends who need protection. Use your connections. Remember, you aren't the only kid looking to get started with this business. You have to work at it.

Vinny: Anything else you can tell me?

Bobby: Well, I can give you the names of some former guys starting out who have since been promoted. They might have some ideas.

Vinny: Sounds great, Bobby. Thanks.

Bobby: You bet kid, now get out there and earn!

[scene]