Hello and welcome to the second installment of the law school letters. I am currently in day 7 of a nine day break. I have taken two days off completely, which means unfortunately that I will be working tomorrow and Sunday to make up for my indiscretion. Although I had no assignments due, and I was "caught up" in all my classes, I have managed to get behind during this break. It is a nasty reality of Law School that you will never be fully prepared for anything.
So what has it been like so far? Busy. Although I have had a relatively minor page load (around 600) assigned so far, it increases dramatically when you factor in having to read each case at least three times to decipher what it means. (In torts, this number is usually higher.) I still spend an average of 9-10 hours each weekday b/w the library and classes. Weekends are lighter averaging 4-5 hours per day. In writing this I am not looking for pity. Rather I am explaining why these updates come out so infrequently. (Incidentally, I am supposed to be outlining my torts notes, but my brain gave out so I am taking a break.)
So what am I learning? To paraphrase one of my professors, I am unlearning everything I learned in my 11th grade government class (Dworkin, 2006). I currently have five classes. For those that may be interested, a brief summary of each of these classes can be located infra. For those that aren’t, this will be a shorter email.
What else is happening in my life? Two basic things. 1. I try to spend at least one hour with Alise each day. Usually this happens around the dinner table when I feed her dinner. I also try to give Jenny at least an hour of her own each day. 2. I try to sleep. I really don’t have time for anything else. Jenny and I just received calling in our new ward. We are team teaching the 9 and 10 year old primary kids. This is great for several reasons including minimal lesson prep time (thanks to a great wife who loves to teach), not having to attend Sunday School, and the ultimate of not having to attend Elder’s Quorum. No offense to anyone currently or recently involved in the EQ, but that is my least favorite hour of church.
What does my family do? Basically they wait around all day anxiously awaiting the time I will arrive. (insert laughter here) Actually Alise just wants to explore everything and Jenny tries to keep up with her. For having a baby that still hasn’t quite learned how to crawl, she sure knows how to get into things she should be into. One of her favorite activities is to walk around the house holding on to her parent’s fingers. Oftentimes the one who is helping her walk will “sneak up” on the other person and “surprise” them by telling Alise to say Boo. It usually doesn’t work though because she gets excited as soon as she sees the other person and starts to jabber. But, the other morning I got her out of bed and helped her walk down the hall where Jenny was waiting to feed her. As soon as we came through the door she said “Boo.” I told Alise she was just a little too early, and we snuck up a little closer to her mother’s unconscious (sleeping) form. As soon as I lifted Alise onto the bed she got a big smile and said “Boo” again. She is quickly learning how to be a tease like her dad. One other fun note on Alise before I close. We went to the Zoo yesterday for Zoo Boo. This is an event where the kids can come dressed up in costumes and trick or treat around the Zoo. As we were walking around letting people admire our pudgy little cow she started making kissing sounds with her lips. I think she enjoyed our reaction to her because she continued do this the rest of the day.
Well, that about sums up my life at this point. I will give a brief summary of each class and then I must return again to my outlining. I hope all is well with whoever is reading this, and I will probably be seeing each of you sometime in December.
Byram
Contracts – this class is taught by a professor who is currently in his tenth year of retirement. If you picture a fun grandpa in your head you will have a pretty good idea of what his temperament is like. We recently finished our discussions about what remedies are available for breaches of contract, and we are currently studying what it takes for a contract to be considered as valid.
Civil Procedure – this class deals with what you think it would – the procedure involved in civil litigation. For those who are unaware, as I was until a few short months ago, our legal system is divided into two areas – civil and criminal. If something is not criminal it is civil. Criminal law, as defined in Black’s Law Dictionary is “the body of law defining offenses against the community at large, regulating how suspects are investigated, charged, and tried, and establishing punishments for convicted offenders.” So, if someone breaches a contract, they are violating civil laws, not criminal ones. This distinction is important because different procedures are followed in civil litigation. So far we have discussed jury selection, and the basics of filing a complaint.
Legal Professions (Ethics) – by far this has been the least useful class. As a profession, lawyers are self regulating. This means they set their own standard of conduct and the punishments attached for violating the accepted conduct. The American Bar Association has compiled a list of model rules that other jurisdictions can chose to follow. Although these rules are not binding in and of themselves, most jurisdictions have either accepted them verbatim, or accepted them with minor variations. The entire focus of this class is to read the rules and discover how courts have interpreted what they mean. For those that may have an interest, however disturbing this may be, can view the entire set of rules at http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mrpc/mrpc_toc.html
Legal Research and Writing – This has been described as one of the most important but least interesting classes in law school. As the first half of the title would suggest, we are learning how to find and research cases online and in print. Both have drawbacks. Researching things in print takes time, especially when 200 other people are looking for the same book you are, but someone failed to reshelf it. Researching online is difficult when the system you are using decides it doesn’t like pro bono work and consistently gives you a completely blank screen after refining a search six to seven times. As the second half of the name would suggest, we are learning the intricacies legal writing. So far we have been learning how to do citations (we have our own 400 page rulebook), how to write a legal outline, and we are currently working on a legal memo. We will end this semester by writing a legal brief.
Torts – by far the most interesting class I have ever taken in my life. This class is teaching me how to think. The caveat of law school is that they will teach you how to “think like a lawyer.” Torts is the only class that is actually doing this. What does it mean to learn how to think? In short, it means to be actively engaged in the material yo are studying.
An example should illustrate what I mean. Take the case of Adams. Adams v, Bullock, 125 N.E. 93 (1919). In this case the plaintiff (P), Adams, was a kid who was walking across a bridge swinging an 8 foot wire. The wire came in contact with a trolley wire that ran under the bridge, causing severe burns on the P. The defendant (D) trolley company owner was sued for negligence for not doing something to protect the wire. Judge Cardozo found for the D saying that the accident P had was not foreseeable. Sounds reasonable enough doesn’t it? I thought so, until I went to class. Using foreseeability as a basis for liability has major consequences. Foreseeability is all in your head. It is the perceived likelihood that something will occur. The problem is that we decide foreseeability after the fact, not based on any evidence, but only on gut reactions. You can make something seem more or less foreseeable based on how you present the facts, and by what facts you present. Because this is arbitrary, it seems like a bad tool to use to determine liability. But then comes the golden question that is asked quite frequently – What was Cardozo really doing here? If he found for the P, he would be saying that every trolley company in America was negligent by having exposed wires. (That would mean the current TRAX system in Salt Lake would also be negligent) Take a minute to think about what Cardozo was really doing before continuing…. This is what it means to really think. To look beyond what is stated, to question the reasoning presented, to take nothing for granted. Now for the answer. Cardozo wanted to promote the trolley company, but couldn’t say this. Can you imagine New York City without a subway system? This case happened in 1919, so the subway didn’t exist, but the trolley was just as vital to the city then as a subway is now. In this case, Cardozo made a policy decision. He decided that the subway was vital to the city. From other cases we also see that he usually sided with industry to help foster industrialization. But, he did it by using language about foreseeability problems. He is throwing the unwary reader in the wrong direction by using terminology that has meaning in everyday speech, but is worthless as a legal term. Without careful thought, the reader will miss the point completely.
This concept of learning to think is infused through all of the concepts of this class. If time and interest permitted, I could go on for several more pages, but I won’t. Briefly summed up, torts deals with unreasonably dangerous conduct. The focus of the class is learning what each of those three words means.
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