Going To Law School

I think I'll get a ... B. B-, god help me.

Go get some sleep. Wake up tomorrow, start studying for the next one. Overprepared is NEVER a bad thing.

It was just one huge question asking us to write how a bunch of defendants in a car crash would argue for a motion to dismiss, and then an evaluation on that motion's success. Which is basically just arguing matters of law ... and so I guess you can't really go into fun stuff anyway, right?

Like, motion to dismiss due to no duty ... or no breach ... nor no causation.

Google search
No results found for "affirmative duty to party down".

this is the thread where I say that I am drunk and everyone stands up and applauds

*applauding*

Seriously...first one down, fellas. Well done.

honestly, I do believe I rocked that shit

Awesome. What kind-of stuff was on the exam? I'm going to start studying for my Civ Pro exam tomorrow ... it's on Tuesday. My brain is totally fried, I'm going to have some booze, maybe smoke a little _\|/_ and start the nightmare jourey once more.

Torts I successfully did the whole duty, breach, causation crap, but it seems way looser and up to how well the argument was crafted. Civ Pro seems more structured

i finished trial practice final and now i am a little tiny bit durrnkkkk. doing a self-scheduling take-home exam tomorrow and friday :((((

:((((((( what subjects you got?

family law
international law
education law (lol)

basically i'm taking crap classes

What kind-of stuff was on the exam?

Long ass subject matter jurisdition question, long ass personal jurisdiction question, shorter essays on preclusion, erie doctrine, hard multiple choice qs on application of the rules. There was all kinds of stuff designed to catch people off guard -- for example in personal jurisdiction we spent a ton of time in class doing minimum contacts analysis for out-of-state companies in personal jurisdiction. The fact pattern sounded like a classic minimum contacts set-up and had lots of facts in common with other business cases, but the defendants were actually individuals, so you really had to look for the traditional bases for jurisdiction.

So is there any good reason not to sell any of my textbooks? I wrote in them exclusively in pencil with the hope of resale.

You fail and take it again?

I jest. If you fail a first-year class, you should probably not continue to accrue debt.

I kept most of mine - I still look back at them from time to time, especially Constitutional and Criminal Procedure. My Civ Pro class was such a joke, we didn't even study joinder. I shit you not. SO bad. But money be tight, and books be expensive.

I'm suffering through Civ Pro now. On the exam our professor wants us to explain the the theory behind each answer we give on the exam, so I'm going through all the cases now to get the explanations the courts give for their decisions.barfo. I'm sooooooo fucking tired.

and I still need to get a grasp on the fucking Erie Doctrine. I hate you so much!

International Shoe and the Erie Doctrine are my bains right now. Joinder might be a little iffy as well. :{

bane

uh i would say yes sell back all books. i wish i had. they are totally dead weight & take up a lot of space now (3 yrs out)

johnny crunch, esq.

Fuck Erie doctrine. After reading and re-reading the case book, Glannon, my friend's notes from a bar-bri lecture and REPEATEDLY going through it with my professor, I'm convinced it's a lot of bullshit, and if I had the smarts and the pedigree I'd write a scholarly article explaining why.

Civ Pro is all about taking vague, arbitrary stuff and making it look like it fits some kind of formula that can be put into flowchart form.

Here's the shit I"ve got to get down for Tuesday's exam:

International Shoe stuff... not so bad.
Erie Doctrine - Fuck no
Joinders - I might be OK with these.
Interjurisdictional claim prelcusion - OK, I guess.

I think I rocked Int'l Shoe on the exam because it was also the subject of our memo (of course so did everyone else in my section, probably). People tell me the BarBri lecture for Erie is great. I didn't put down a BarBri deposit, but I looked at notes from it. Glannon is pretty helpful on that too - do you have a Glannon book?

Joinders was something we did less thoroughly. We did a lot of claim and issue preclusion but I don't specifically remember interjurisdictional preclusion as a topic.

I don't have the BarBri lecture ... but I do have the BarBri audio CD for Civ Pro. I've got the Erie CD in and I'm going to listen to it once I get there in my syllabus runthrough.

Barbri CD featuring that Frier dude

yeah, the audio thing is the one everyone liked. The Freer one. Didn't know it was available on CD, but I was honestly a bit broke to go buying more study aids.

yeah, it was fairly pricey for a bunch of audio CDS ... $60

get some steroids

I am so fucking tired right now, but I've got to get this shit done. Maybe now it's time to invest in some yuppie drugs.

im pretty glad i didnt know of ilx as a 1L

i did but i certainly didn't document my life here

Eh, I learned some pretty useful things bantering ideas in here. Isn't that the whole point of the internet? It's easy and quick to share ideas about this shit. What, did you guys get straight As all by yourself? If so, congrats.

Crimmin. Fuck an inchoate offense.

ps never say anything earnest on ilx

yeah. You're just lucky you didn't have to do joinders in Civ Pro. This is the only thing I have a problem with now.

Actually there were two questions involving joinder issues -- our Erie question included Rule 18 joinder of claims (which is an easy rule), and there was something in an issue or claim preclusion question about whether a claim should have been brought in an earlier lawsuit.

Hey Hurting, on your Civ Pro exam when you did stuff like International Shoe personal jurisdiciton questions, did you bring up the due process clause of the 14th amendment at all?

I did indeed. I wouldn't spend like two paragraphs on it, but probably a good idea to show you know the foundation of it all.

Crim this morning. Whew. One left to go.

Yeah, I was thinking of doing that, too. I bet a few nerds in class are going to do that

Most professors advise against "brain dumping" but it does seem like you should at least show that you know what's up.

Well, that was fun. There was an Erie question over whether or not a judge should use a state or federal rule for how a judge decides a motion for summary judgment, a big question about whether a defendant could use nonmutual offensive issue preclusion, and other good things.

That's finally over. You done Hurting? I better get at least one A with the work I put into this shit ... and As from Cardozo are a pretty good ticket to Columbia.

Nope, Torts is tomorrow. Hey, maybe you know the answer to this -- does a defense negate transfered intent? Like if I defend myself against an attacker but injur a third party in the process, can I be liable for transferred intent battery?

We spent about 1 minute on intentional torts, so I donut know. If it's a defense then it probably wouldn't be intent, but depending on the action and situation maybe you could run it through causation? Like, if you defend yourself with a bat in a crowded room, it's foreseeable you might crack an innocent person in the skull.

The sad thing is, despite learning all these fancy doctrines, my Torts exam was just ... duty. breach. causation. damages. Pretty vanilla.

Nope, Torts is tomorrow. Hey, maybe you know the answer to this -- does a defense negate transfered intent? Like if I defend myself against an attacker but injur a third party in the process, can I be liable for transferred intent battery?

As I understand transferred intent, there has to have been an intent to harm one person, and then you cause the same harm to another person by way of that act. Shoot at one person, hit another - transferred intent for the second.

In a situation where you're defending yourself, you are not intending to cause harm to the other person, but are instead seeking to prevent harm to yourself. If, during that defense, you happen to harm someone, then I would go into a negligence analysis - Did you have a duty to act reasonably while defending yourself? If so, what was that duty? Did you meet it? Was there a harm caused? Was your defensive act the cause of the harm - both actual and proximate? And what are the measure of damages?

So, yeah. Take your time. Torts is all about the analysis, as detaileda above.

Just wait until Constitutional Law. That shit is AWESOME.

Nice, my brains all thinkin lawyerlike

Nice, my brains all thinkin lawyerlike

Just wait, dude. You'll be embarassing your spouse and alienating family members soon enough.

Oh, how they hate arguing with me. HATE.

"As I understand transferred intent, there has to have been an intent to harm one person, and then you cause the same harm to another person by way of that act. Shoot at one person, hit another - transferred intent for the second.

In a situation where you're defending yourself, you are not intending to cause harm to the other person, but are instead seeking to prevent harm to yourself. If, during that defense, you happen to harm someone, then I would go into a negligence analysis - Did you have a duty to act reasonably while defending yourself? If so, what was that duty? Did you meet it? Was there a harm caused? Was your defensive act the cause of the harm - both actual and proximate? And what are the measure of damages?"

This sounds right to me from a common-sensical perspective, and ultimately I believe the purpose of this kind of analysis is to reach sensible conclusions and not merely to follow abstract conceptual rules. But from a purely conceptual POV I have a problem with it. Self-defense is technically an affirmative defense -- I committed the tort, but I was justified. The actor DOES intend the contact and does intend it to be harmful, he just has a proper reason for doing it. And a negligence theory is almost never going to work unless the guy was doing something REALLY reckless and excessive in defending himself. Of course, maybe the original offending actor, rather than the defender, should be liable for the third party's injuries.