A useful day! Who'd a thunk it?
Jun. 26th, 2008 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Had our first truly useful day at Lawyer's Kindergarten today. Kind of sad that it's the end of the third week and there's only one week left to go, and really only two more days of class left at this point anyway. ::sigh::
Three hours of grueling motions court simulations. Will hopefully write it up in more detail at some point, but suffice it to say our teacher was awesomeness personified and my only fear is that one or more of my classmates will complain that he was too tough on us. Because holy cow, was he tough. Interrupting us, asking us stuff that wasn't in our factums, or was totally irrelevant, often very clearly following his own agenda regardless of what we were trying to do - and often being rather condescending or impatient or sarcastic or downright rude.
Bless him. Because, as he pointed out at the end, that's the way some judges are, and if we choose to step into a courtroom we are going to have to deal with them. He also reminded us that although he'd been all of the above, he had nevertheless tried to at least be rational, and some judges aren't even that. And you still can't let them fluster you, or get angry at them, or whatever.
My partner got rather flustered, and vowed that he'd never do trial advocacy as long as he lived. Me? I found it kind of fun :)
Like I said, I really hope nobody complains. Because some of them were kind of upset and I'm getting flashbacks to my first year, when people complained about our Crim prof not being terribly kind to us. A sample conversation:
Student: In the following discussion on the topic of voluntary confessions, there appear to be conflicting approaches taken by the Supreme Court in the Lebel case, in which [blah blah blah] versus the Graham case, in which [blah blah blah] although perhaps it is possible to reconcile the two approaches by noting that they are not so much conflicting approaches, so much as-
Prof: What's the date on the Lebel decision?
Student: ::looking down:: Um, 1985.
Prof: And the Graham decision?
Student: 1994.
Prof: So which one wins?
Student: ... the Graham one?
Prof: Not much point wasting the judge's time with anything else, is it?
They felt she was too abrupt. She did not, as many profs in undergrad did, bend over backwards to ensure that Every Student Answer was a Valued Student Answer. She embarrassed them by pointing out their errors in public. Nasty woman.
Gaaaaah. I wanted to slap them. She wasn't rude, she never yelled at any of us, she wasn't mean. She just didn't take the time to flatter our egos, especially when we were making stupid mistakes. And I couldn't help feeling that that was what we needed. Far better to have a prof point out your stupid mistake in front of 15 classmates, most of whom could certainly benefit from the lesson because they were quite likely to make the same mistake themselves, than to have a judge point out the same stupid mistake - on the record, in front of your client, your senior partner, and a roomful of your colleagues.
We're supposed to be grown-ups, right? Supposedly our mommies made sure we developed our self-esteem before we reached professional school. Not that we should be expected to put up with being belittled or abused in class or at work, but we're not there to be made to feel good about ourselves. We're there to learn the law, and learn how to help our clients.
I dunno, maybe it's having worked with federal inmates for four years, maybe it's having practiced intellectual sparring with my father for a lot of my childhood. Maybe I need more compassion towards my classmates. ::shrug:: Who knows.
Three hours of grueling motions court simulations. Will hopefully write it up in more detail at some point, but suffice it to say our teacher was awesomeness personified and my only fear is that one or more of my classmates will complain that he was too tough on us. Because holy cow, was he tough. Interrupting us, asking us stuff that wasn't in our factums, or was totally irrelevant, often very clearly following his own agenda regardless of what we were trying to do - and often being rather condescending or impatient or sarcastic or downright rude.
Bless him. Because, as he pointed out at the end, that's the way some judges are, and if we choose to step into a courtroom we are going to have to deal with them. He also reminded us that although he'd been all of the above, he had nevertheless tried to at least be rational, and some judges aren't even that. And you still can't let them fluster you, or get angry at them, or whatever.
My partner got rather flustered, and vowed that he'd never do trial advocacy as long as he lived. Me? I found it kind of fun :)
Like I said, I really hope nobody complains. Because some of them were kind of upset and I'm getting flashbacks to my first year, when people complained about our Crim prof not being terribly kind to us. A sample conversation:
Student: In the following discussion on the topic of voluntary confessions, there appear to be conflicting approaches taken by the Supreme Court in the Lebel case, in which [blah blah blah] versus the Graham case, in which [blah blah blah] although perhaps it is possible to reconcile the two approaches by noting that they are not so much conflicting approaches, so much as-
Prof: What's the date on the Lebel decision?
Student: ::looking down:: Um, 1985.
Prof: And the Graham decision?
Student: 1994.
Prof: So which one wins?
Student: ... the Graham one?
Prof: Not much point wasting the judge's time with anything else, is it?
They felt she was too abrupt. She did not, as many profs in undergrad did, bend over backwards to ensure that Every Student Answer was a Valued Student Answer. She embarrassed them by pointing out their errors in public. Nasty woman.
Gaaaaah. I wanted to slap them. She wasn't rude, she never yelled at any of us, she wasn't mean. She just didn't take the time to flatter our egos, especially when we were making stupid mistakes. And I couldn't help feeling that that was what we needed. Far better to have a prof point out your stupid mistake in front of 15 classmates, most of whom could certainly benefit from the lesson because they were quite likely to make the same mistake themselves, than to have a judge point out the same stupid mistake - on the record, in front of your client, your senior partner, and a roomful of your colleagues.
We're supposed to be grown-ups, right? Supposedly our mommies made sure we developed our self-esteem before we reached professional school. Not that we should be expected to put up with being belittled or abused in class or at work, but we're not there to be made to feel good about ourselves. We're there to learn the law, and learn how to help our clients.
I dunno, maybe it's having worked with federal inmates for four years, maybe it's having practiced intellectual sparring with my father for a lot of my childhood. Maybe I need more compassion towards my classmates. ::shrug:: Who knows.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 04:57 am (UTC)totally not surprised! good for you.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 09:48 pm (UTC)Frightening. Deeply so.
And you're posting! I lost all my bookmarks, including for Hatched, and don't think I have your e-mail address.
How are you?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 07:18 am (UTC)Yeah, I don't know. Mostly I'm not exactly feeling nice about my education or my experience as a lawyer anyway, so any answer/comment I gave would be far too biased.