Here’s an interesting list: “Classes my Top-Tier law School Should have Offered as warnings About the Profession.”
BY E. NOAKES
Cutting and Pasting Legal Lingo
Explaining Business Associations to the People Who Are Running Them
4 A.M. Word Processing and the Law
Ethics of Conspicuous Consumption
Forwarding E-mails: Theory and Practice: Seminar
Arbitrary-Deadline Negotiation Strategies
Crying Quietly: Clinic
Jeans-Friday Advocacy Workshop
Cutting and Pasting II: Plural to Singular
from: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/16E.Noakes.html
Made me laugh at least.
Read the story here. Looks like Weinstein’s crew left NBC-Bravo without their right of first refusal. From Weinstein’s lawyer: “While good for the market for lawyers, it is always unfortunate when parties try to win in court what they have lost in the marketplace.”
But speaking of marketplace: why the move to Lifetime?? Is Lifetime really a “larger network” than Bravo? Watching Runway on Bravo is one thing - if you can endure 486 commercials for Make Me a Supermodel - but watching the show on Lifetime? The network that still runs episodes of the Golden Girls?? I don’t think so.
Well, I finally have a blog. Thank you to Anthony for setting it up for me (although a theme is still pending). I never started a blog in the past because I figured I didn’t have much to say. But now that I’m writing, I realize no one ever really has anything important to say, so I will cast my line into the deep sea of chatter along with the rest of the world.
Last Saturday, my trial team competed in the National Trial Competition in Chicago. My teammate and I won our trial, but our team as a whole did not advance. It was a very similar experience to the trail competition we competed in last semester, except this time we were at the Daley Center instead of the federal Dirksen Building. The outside of the two buildings are remarkably similar, but the inside furnishings are quite different. (The feds tend to throw more money at these things than our state and local governments. ;) I’ll be back at the Dirksen Building this weekend for a moot court competition, and I have to admit I’m looking forward to those comfortable yet auspicious chairs. (Note: this is the same building where the venerable Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals hears cases, a body which currently includes a justice or two whom some believe will be tapped for the U.S. Supreme Court.)
What’s the difference between trial team and moot court, you might ask? Well, the first thing to understand is the court system in general. When someone sues you initially, you start at the lowest level of the system - the trial court. They file a complaint against you and you move to dismiss their complaint. If your motion is denied, you might conduct discovery (depositions, interrogatories), attempt to settle out of court, and make renewed motions (this time called motions for summary judgment because you want the court to conclude that you are legally entitled to judgment in your favor). If none of those options work for you, you eventually have to go to trial.
And that’s what trial team is all about. We pretend that we have conducted discovery (we base our arguments off of fake depositions) and we pretend to argue everything in front of a jury. This is the real “law and order” stuff of law school (making objections to a judge, examining witnesses on the stand, etc).
In a real case, you might not like the verdict, or outcome. You may think the judge or the jury got something wrong - so you appeal. And to appeal, you take your case to the next level of the court system, the appellate court. This court is much different from the trial court, however, because it generally has no need to hear additional testimony from witnesses. The attorney must instead give an oral argument of why he or she believes the court should find in her client’s favor. The attorney may have a lot of important things to say, but the judges (sometimes called justices at this level) are free to ask as many questions as they want throughout the attorney’s argument.
In law school, this is called moot court. We have a fictitious case that comes to us on appeal, and we must argue before a panel of judges that they should either overturn or uphold the findings of the lower court.
I hope that wasn’t too boring! In other news, I made guacamole for the first time on Sunday (with Anthony’s help of course). I never realized how easy it is. Of course, I also never realized how quickly it disappears - the last little bit I managed to tear myself away from will probably be eaten tonight.