A Day in the Life of a 1-L

6:00 Wake up. Feed the cat. Make coffee. Eat breakfast (mixed nuts) while reading the newspaper. Clean the kitchen.

7:00-10:30 Study.

10:30 Pack up my backpack. It’s completely full and weighs about 20 lbs. Still, it's my favorite assessory because it instantly identifies me as a student. I can dress however I want and as long as I have that backpack, nobody ever mistakes me for faculty or staff. Because it suddenly turned cooler, I have promised to bring Taylor a couple of jackets so I put those in a plastic bag.

10:45 Get dressed. Make and eat a chef salad.

11:30 Drive to school. Park on the third floor of the parking garage and walk down the stairs and over to the law school building. Drop stuff off in my locker. (Yep, good school girl that I am, I have a locker.)

12:15 Attend lunch presentation. About three times a week, some organization brings in guest speakers to the law school to talk about various social or practical issues. And if that wasn't great enough, the groups almost always FEED you.

Today the Latino Law students are sponsoring a talk by the local ACLU attorney. He discusses their current cases dealing with racial profiling by law enforcement. Last week, a classmate told me she was not allowed to try on clothes at a store in Chandler Mall because she’s Hispanic! All of this ongoing racial prejudice in Arizona makes me feel very sad.

1:15 Hand off Taylor’s jackets to him as he skateboards by outside the law building.

1:30 Torts class. We have a two hour discussion on various situations trying to determine when people have a common law duty to tell third parties confidential information. It the classic fight on where to draw the line between an individual's privacy versus the public’s right to know.

3:30 Appointment with the WestLaw rep. at the Westlaw computer lab in the law library. WestLaw is an online research tool for lawyers. While I am no stranger to Googling, I am not making much progress on my assigned legal research worksheet using WestLaw. I am secretly relieved when the WestLaw rep has a tough time with my worksheet too. After more than 90 minutes, we decided I should forget online research and just use the books in the library.

I consider this time well spent as I gets lots of one-on-one help with WestLaw. As a bonus, I get a free WestLaw highlighter. It’s orange, a color I don’t use much but I can trade it for another color with a classmate. Yes, my world is filled with lockers, free pizza, softball games, and trading highlighters. Sometimes, I feel like I'm going to the Sandra Day O'Connor Middle School of Law.

5:00 I had planned to study but I only have 15 minutes before I need to leave. I walk back to the law school rotunda and catch up on a few emails, rearranging game night because Alec and Saori have opera tickets. I also schedule lunch on Friday with my student mentor. The rotunda is full of students all dressed in business suits as there is a mock trial competition going on in the classrooms.

6:00 Normally, I would be studying at home again. But tonight I am at trendy wine bar downtown for the Women in Law School's speed mentoring event. Walking in, I notice that almost all of the women over 40 in my class have signed up for this. After an hour of general chatting, I am assigned to a group consisting of four law students and four attorneys. We talk to each attorney in our group one-on-one for ten minutes and then fill out sheets with our preferences for mentors. I try not to notice that almost all of the mentors are decades younger than me.

8:30 Arrive home. Change into comfy clothes. Spend quality time with the cat. Eat some sushi and a bowl of sugar-free ice cream.

9:30 Unpack my backpack. Print out assignments I’ll need for school tomorrow. Make schedule for the next day.

10:00 Bedtime.

The Murky Path Through Midterms

I had my first midterm last week, an open book test in Civil Procedures. Everyone prepared a class outline and some of these were works of art. Mine was not so pretty, but it did include a handy-dandy index for various Rules of Civil Procedure. You had 90 minutes to complete 12-question-test, which gave you, at most, time for three or four quick peaks at your outline, if you wanted to finish.

I have to admit I spent more time with the old tests and model answers than I did perfecting my outline. From the model answers I saw that you were expected to do more than just answer the question. You had to answer the follow-up questions too. But, here’s the deal: There are no follow-up questions! You have to make them up yourself.

For example, if the question is about if you can depose (interview under oath) a non-testifying expert witness, you should answer that and then throw in information about any obscure exceptions. Even though you were asked about deposing them, you also should mention the rules about getting the expert’s notes and factual evidence they may have collected. Then, you might talk about what rules to use if they refuse or if they simply don’t show up. Then, if you have time which at this point is highly doubtful, you could throw in whatever you know about rules on testifying expert witnesses.

It felt to me like writing around the answer. Like a target, you first answer the bulls eye question and move out from there in progressively wider circles until you've spent as much time as you've dared.

My first major paper was also due last week. I took full advantage of my writing professor’s limited review of our outline and topic sentences. My professor made one change to my paper. She marked out the word “clearly” in my conclusion. This word is verboten. Law school students are expected to wipe words like “clearly,” “undoubtedly,” “definitely” from our spoken and written legal vocabularies. There are no right answers and nothing is ever clear.

After my midterm and the paper, I am feeling that way myself.

I Need a Montage

It was 10 p.m., my usual time to stop studying and totter off to bed. But I wasn’t sleepy. Law school has left me seriously television deprived so I decided to allow myself 30 minutes just to lounge in front of my big screen. Besides, I seriously needed a break from ALL LAW SCHOOL, ALL THE TIME. I flipped on the TV to find “Legally Blonde,” a movie about law school, already in progress.

“Legally Blonde” is a film about a woman who upon being dumped unexpectedly, up and decides to go to law school. She studies really hard for the LSAT and does well. Although she is very unlike her fellow students, she gets admitted to the law school of her choice. (Gee, somehow this sounds familiar.)

When I tuned in, Reece Witherspoon, who plays the main character, had decided to become serious about her law studies. The movie showed her reading at the salon, reading at the gym, reading in her room. But the whole thing took maybe three minutes. It suddenly hit me: I need a montage! Instead of spending almost every waking hour of my day studying, I wished I could do really well in law school just by hauling one heavy book to various places and reading it for a minute or two.

But unlike Reece, I don’t get a montage. So, I will be in my library tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. with yet another heavy law book on my lap and my sadly neglected cat at my feet, back in my world of ALL LAW SCHOOL, ALL THE TIME. While it isn’t exactly real life either, for the time being it’s my life.