To Be a Law Student. Sigh.

A recent conversation:

Calculating: Get this, I was fooling around on Westlaw the other day (instead of doing brief research) and there is a Schmuck v. US. Guess what Mr. Schmuck does?

John: LOL

Calculating: He's a used car distributor.

John: Ha!

Calculating: I thought that was pretty good

John: Yes. But I think what is quite sad about law students is that "fooling around on Westlaw" is considered normal procrastination/entertainment time.

Calculating: Well, I had been looking for something for my brief, then Scalito said something about a schmuck so I was quick to see if I could find a case where it was used.

John: Sure, blame Scalito. We all know you are the Westlaw queen

Calculating: Of course

John: Ah

Calculating: Well then he did start laughing at me for my willingness to so easily distracted... Alright, alright. I lead a sad, sad life

John: Don't we all? I can't wait to be done with law school. Although then I will have to be a lawyer, so maybe rushing through isn’t such a good idea.

Among Good Company

Is it a bad thing that it warms my heart when I see that several people now have found our blog by means of Googling "Law school fucking sucks"?

And we're among good company. The other two blogs that contain that exact term are:

• Tucker Max (well actually it's on his message board but that doesn't keep him from being still being one of Lance's heros)
• Naked Drinking Coffee (he's great - a favorite of several of ours)

Who Needs BarBri?

In an effort to get a jump on things, I've decided to start practicing for the Bar Exam.

My first practice question:

Frances and Georgette were friends who on January 7 formed a general partnership at will to operate a coffee shop. Each contributed $10,000 in cash.

Due to Frances' and Georgette's negligence, Customer was injured on the partnership premises while doing business with the partnership on January 21.

On March 31, Frances and Georgette admitted another friend, Harry, to the partnership upon his contribution of $10,000 cash to the partnership.

On June 1, Customer filed a lawsuit naming the partnership and each of the partners as defendants. Fully analyze and discuss the legal issues presented here.

My answer:

I'm spent.

I Never Cried Before Law School

I'm 26 years old and for the first time in my life I just really want to run away from home:

Period of 14-OCT-06 to 22-OCT-06

Time Sheet for Calculating Bitch

Working on upperlevel paper...............61.25 hrs
Researching for appellate brief...........8.50 hrs
Doing stuff for student government........4.25 hrs
Authority Checks for law review...........5.50 hrs
Catching up on reading missed in the last 6 weeks.... 5.75 hrs
Starting outlines/study tools for classes............ 7.75 hrs
Working Job #1............................9.25 hrs
Working Job #2........................... 8.50 hrs
Cleaning my house for the 1st time this semester..... 6.25 hrs
Going to class............................0.00 hrs
Drinking.................................15.50 hrs
Prepping for class my 3 classes on Monday...... ...... 4.25 hrs

Total Hours Worked......................136.75 hours
Total Billable..........................17.75 hours

What this really means:

• Only 218 hours has passed since my last class ended, and an average of 8 hours of sleep a night would put me at 138 available working hours.
  
• No wonder my husband complains that I'm never around.
• At least having a week off from class has allowed me to get 8 hours of sleep a night.
• In all fairness, most of the drinking was done while writing and researching, so I'm guilty of double-billing on that account.
  
• My billables versus hours worked amount to a productivity rate of about 13%.
  
• I should have drank A LOT more than I did this last week.
• Instead of returning to school after a week off feeling refreshed I feel even more burnt out.
• 2L year they really do work you to death.
• Running away from home at this point wouldn't even help...
• How many more weeks until this semester year is over?
  

An Open Letter to our Legal Writing Profs

To Whom It May Concern (which is probably no one, but I haven't bitched for at least a week now, so I'm due):

One of the main reasons that I decided to come to this particular law school is because we get a week off halfway through Fall Semester. As far as I know, no other law school does that. (No other law school gives midterms, either, but that is another story.)

As a 1L, my fall break was spent trying to recover from midterms by sitting in the library slaving over my memo every day. My spring break was spent much the same, although it was a summary judgment motion that semester.

In my naiveté, I some how thought that 2L year would be different. My fall break would be spent vacationing in some exotic locale as the weather in law school state turned colder. Um, no. I should have know that once again I'd be a slave to an effing legal writing assignment.

To my legal writing prof -- thanks a lot for throwing that appellate brief at us last week! To the prof supervising my upperlevel paper, I know I'm the only one to blame for this not being done six weeks ago, and I promise I'll have it to you by the end of the week...

To the other lawbitches that are not currently taking legal writing or working on their upperlevel requirement, enjoy your spring break. Since I'll be done with all of my writing requirements by the end of this semester, I will be thinking of you as I sit on a beach somewhere, downing shots of tequila as you are bent over your computer in one of the cold corners of the library. Don't worry, I'll drink one for you.

To everyone else that doesn't go to our law school and get a week off halfway through fall semester, I know I should have sympathy for you. But I don't. (And admitting otherwise would only detract from my bitch status.) Sucks to be you!

Larceny's itinerary so far for Fall Break...

Okay, so as you all know, we get one week off for Fall Break. It freaking rocks. Also, tax class was cancelled last Friday, and since that is my only class of the day, I was done and ready for break Thursday night. My itinerary was as follows:

Thursday at 5: Break begins.

Thursday at 7: I have had my second mojito. And the significant other wasn't even home yet. Yup, drinking alone. Hey, the cat was there. That counts.

Thursday at 9: 4th mojito, and 1 beer. The beer was given to me by the hubby. So he is an enabler.

Thursday at 10: Passed out.

Friday at noon: Woke up.

Friday at 6: Started drinking 'Vodka Stillworks.' Yummy.

Friday at 9: Started wondering if I should get more booze for tomorrow, since i was almost out. The weekend is young.

Friday at midnight: Passed out.

Saturday: Two Jack and Cokes at a wedding. Then had to stop since I was sober cab(sigh). Luckily, I had 3 hours to sober up. Weddings are long when there is no alcohol.

Sunday at 11am: Went to the in-laws, where mother-in-law gave me lots of wine. She's an enabler too.

Sunday at 5pm: Went home. Made 'Big Gingers.'

Sunday at 7pm: At this point, I went to Vodka Tonics. Nothing is on TV, really a problem for my drunken need to criticize people on tv. Oh, some soap opera thing at night with bad acting. Is that Bo Derek? And Morgan Fairchild? Man, she looks good. Can't criticize her looks.

Sunday at 10pm. Stopped drinking. Hey, I had to work Monday.

I know I sound like an alcoholic, but hey I know lots of cocktail recipes if anyone wants them. Also, it's my Fall Break. I'll be writing an appellate brief the rest of the week, and sadly can't drink during that. Well, maybe........................

If This Ain't the Truth...

Someone recently found our blog via means of this:


If that is not justice against our two swear-by-Mac bloggers, Roberts and Scalito, then I don't know what is...

Oh, wait. The email I received from John Roberts after sending him the above image is:

From: John Roberts
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2006 9:39 AM
To: Calculating Bitch
Subject: Re: This Proves It All

Well it appears karma is a bitch then, because this snooty mac owner
is heading to the Apple Store today to turn my fucking laptop in for
service. In fact, I tried to respond to this email last night, when
my MacBook randomly shutdown again.

You may all now point and laugh.

Who's the snooty computer owner now? IBM all the way, baby!

Ah, the Callback...

What kind of questions are you supposed to ask at a callback interview?

1. How much do you pay?
2. Can I surf for porn at work?
3. What criteria will I be evaluated against?
4. What processes are in place to help me manage the workload as a busy law student?
5. Do I get a free "Booze of the Month" club membership?
6. Sex on my desk. Kosher?
7. What is something you wish you would have known about the firm before you accepted your position?
8. What is your favorite thing about working for the firm? Your least favorite?
9. I have a slight drinking problem and huge gambling problem. I might miss work occassionally because I'll be on 15 hour benders at the casino. However, I'll always spend the following 24 hours in the office making up my lost time. Do you forsee this as being a problem?

10. Can you tell me how your firm governance is set up? How are officers chosen?
11. If you died and were re-incarnated as a character on "The Loveboat," who would you be?

As long as you use at least 5 of the above 11 you'll definitely get an offer.

This is why I work here, Part II

The LawBitches get a week off for fall break next week. We cannot be held accountable for our actions if we decide to sleep all day, or drink all day and therefore “drunk-blog.”

Okay, so as some of you may remember, the lawyers I work for are known for being pretty tough in the personal injury world, which also makes them hilarious. Today I was running around at work trying to get a motion filed. At the same time, there was a huge deposition going on that involved several defendants, I think it was about a fight at a party or something where a kid got hurt, I don’t know, not my case = I don’t care. So I was walking by the meeting room on the second floor where our files are when I walked past the following conversation between two (presumably anyway) defendants sitting in the waiting area outside the meeting room who were talking extremely loudly and surrounded by several other people waiting for various things and paralegals running past them (so you can see they were really smart):

Defendant 1: Where the f--- is the bathroom?

Defendant 2: (shrugs)

(Please note, they were standing about 4 feet across from a door that said “Men” in bold letters)

Defendant 1: Why does that bitch keep asking me questions?

Defendant 2: Well, I think that’s her job.

Defendant 1: Well, her job should be as a secretary or something. (Name of defendant’s lawyer, who is male), now he’s a freaking lawyer.

Defendant 2: I’m pretty sure she’s a lawyer.

Defendant 1: Yeah, but she’s not really one. She’s just one to make lawyers look good, like “we’re not sexist” or some shit.

Defendant 2: Well, if she’s just there to look good, how come you whined as soon as she asked you to explain why you told the cops you punched him and then changed your story.

Defendant 1: ………….

Defendant 2: Well, that “secretary” just kicked your ass then huh?

At this point, Lawyer1 (yes, this Lawyer 1), who is not involved in this case walks by and said, “You’re not too smart there are ya buddy?” And kept walking.

Winding Down?

So there has been some talk here amongst the LawBitches about taking the blog down. Anonymity is practically nonexistant as more people at our school are figuring out that we go here (which is not hard) and then narrowing it down to the usual suspects.

Are we scared of being outed? Not entirely, but the fact that some certain people know about us is making us a bit squeamish. The real question is, then, if we shut down now are shutting down only because we're scared? And what kind of backlash could we possibly expect from being outed?

While our actions have not always entirely been above the line, we made it a rule early on that no personal shots were allowed regarding our school or the students here (with the exception of shots at fellow bloggers, of course). Some people may find us offensive in one manner or another, but we have never really intentionally tried to alienate any one type of person or demographic (well, with the exception of those employed by the IRS -- but really, the IRC is terribly written so that attack is justified). Given this, would us winding up just be seen as a panic response?

We're law students. We study the Constitution. We, out of all people, should understand First Amendment rights.

This Is Why I'm in Law School...

..."Educated women have more orgasms, says survey."

The LawBitches: By the Numbers

• Two members participated in the intramural moot court competition.
• Two members are co-directors of the same student organization.
• Two are involved in clinical programs. (The externship type, not the mental kind).
• Two members are on law review.
• Two are on student government/SBA.
• Eight of the nine are working during their 2L year.
• Two studied abroad this summer.
• Two took summer classes on campus.
• Five worked as research assistants at school some point over the summer.
• Four worked in firms over the summer.
• One worked for the DA over the summer.
• Six are married.
• Five own houses.
• One has a kid.
• Two have dogs.
• Four have cats.
• Nine are drunks.
• Three are smokers.
  
• Zero are prude. (Prude is a relative term, mind you).
• Five are in the same fantasy football league.
• Two play on the hockey team.
• Five went to undergrad in the same state as law school.
• Of the five, two went to the same school during the same time but did not know each other, and two went to the same school but during different times.
• The oldest is 35, the youngest is 23.
• The average Lawbitch age: 27.
• Nine have fairly twisted senses of humor.
• Three live in urban areas.
• Six live in the suburbs.
• Between the 9, they grew up in 4 different states.
• One has a doctorate.
• Two graduated from undergrad the semester before they started law school.
• One has put an arm up a cow's ass.
• Eight hate tax.
• One had perfect attendance first semester of 1L year, but now maxes out the absences in all classes. (Dissent from the aforementioned LawBitch: Two of my classes do not even have a maximum number of absences, so by definition I cannot max out my absences)
• One has slept with half of a soccer team (And claims to be a prude, contrary to the earlier fact).
• Two were computer network/programming geeks prior to law school.
• One absolutely loves cheese. Like, as in, she'd marry it if that wasn't illegal in at least three states.
• Eight are truly bitches in one way or another.
• Five participated in OCI. (Well, one only went to the reception and drank the free booze).
• Two were on Dean's list first semester only to fall off second semester. (It should be noted, however, these two are still extremely intelligent and overall remain in the top of the class.)
• Three have gym memberships....... and contrary to popular belief all three actually use them. Or so they claim.

Moot Court: Law school's way of making you choose your death

So, John Roberts and myself were involved in moot court competition this past weekend here at our school. It was awful. Basically, John Roberts and I agreed that the problem was fairly boring, and that way too many of our classmates had spent weeks on this thing, and seeing as how I'm sure our fair readers are aware of the fact that we would not have done so, we questioned why we even entered in the first place. Especially since the competition went until 8pm on a Friday and through to the following Saturday. With long periods of us all sitting around and waiting in between. At one point, I stated that if I made it through to the next round, I would either cry uncontrollably, or kill myself. And then I thought, well there are probably several ways of dying that are much better than going through moot court competition. I'm not kidding. For example:

1) Stoning
2) Guillotine (at least it would have been quicker than the slow death of sitting through moot court)
3) I can't remember what it's called, but I heard during the Salem witch trials that they would take "witches" and attach their legs and arms to things that would pull them apart. Quartering maybe? That.
4) Alcohol poisoning.
5) I'm pretty sure that there are many more.

Needless to say, as they came into the room to announce who made it through the next round, I started praying, "please don't let it be me, please not me." I didn't even hear who did make it, just that my name was not involved. To which I stood up, looked at those sitting around me and stated, "Awesome. Time for a beer. Who's with me." Let it be known that I had to avoid alcohol for the previous two nights so as to not smell like a liquor store when I was arguing. But at that point, my goal WAS to smell like a liquor store. And in the quickest amount of time possible. So you see, moot court is fun. Why John Roberts and I insist on involving ourselves in school activities still, I do not know.

Seriously. Us?

This search has arguably got to be the funniest way that anyone has ever gotten to our blog.