September 07, 2003

Liars!

As I'm about to be catapulted into my 3rd real week of law school, I have come to a striking realization about the nature of the study of law and all those smart asses who try to tell you what it's like and what to expect. For one, they're pretty much liars... They say that people will be mean and competitive, etc., but I haven't really run into that kind of thing, yet. Yeah, I doubt I'll make any friends, but that's because I'm too paranoid that everyone secretly hates me to actually make friends, but that's another issue.

People also say that there's a lot of reading. No way! Compared to all the reading I had to do for undergrad this is *nothing*! With the sad exception of Torts, I find that I have a very manageable, well paced reading schedule for my classes. However, the relatively short reading assignments are misleading because of all the damned briefing that must be done! Writing out the various facts of the cases, how they were decided in lower courts, applicable rules of law, etc. takes a long ass time, and the more cases I have to do, as in Torts, the more pissed off about briefing I get. So, when people told me there was a lot of reading, they were lying since they should have said, "You'll be spending a good 2/3 of the next 3 years of your life briefing cases" rather than "It's a lot of reading." I was doing the massive amount of Torts reading - 8 cases per class, as opposed to 1-3 in my other classes - the other night when I came across an interesting case about spam mail and how it relates to some weird ass sounding tort called "trespass to chattels." To give you all who are thirsting for knowledge (and can decipher my crazy abbreviations), I'll post my brief for it as an extending entry below... Although I learned about trespass to chattels by reading this case, the best new nugget i got from it was that "spam" is actually a reference to the Monty Python "Spam" sketch... wow, my tuition money at work.

People also say that the first year can be pretty confusing and that you won't know what's going on. I think I still haven't run into that problem yet since all the reading and lectures seem pretty straightforward and are strictly related, but then I just worry that maybe I feel so at ease because I'm really just totally lost and don't even know it! Anyway, this last part cannot possibly be lie because I bet I am lost, and just look at this stuff we have to read!

"Unfortunately, contract, like most of the basic terms constituting
the intellectual tools of law, is conventionally defined in a circular
fashion. By the most common definition, a contract is a promise
for the breach of which the law gives a remedy or the performance
of which the law recognizes as a duty. This amounts to saying that
a contract is a legally enforceable promise. But a promise is legally
enforceable only if it is a contract. Thus nothing less than the whole
body of applicable precedents suffices to define the term 'contract."
(Baehr v. Penn-O-Tex Oil Corp. 258 Minn. 533 (1960))

What kind of definition is that!? It's not one, I'd say.

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Comments

the claws will come out during finals. just you wait. or at the very latest when grades become available.

also, i stopped briefing in october of my first year and i never looked back. i can barely bring myself to highlight these days.

Posted by: holohan at September 8, 2003 08:18 AM

Is the case still pending? What was the final outcome?

Posted by: cody at September 8, 2003 11:31 AM

do you get upset when people make nasty jokes about liars - oops lawyers...are they worthy of the swipes?

Posted by: bongo at September 22, 2003 02:04 PM
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