I Need To Study

Yes indeed finals are staring me right in the face now. A short 9 days from now many of us will be sitting down to hammer out Simmons' Evidence exam. Once I start studying (which may not start until Thursday) then I will get through it all but right now it seems so daunting. At least there's only three finals to juggle again unlike last semester. More on this when they come up, but the last two evidence assignments have certainly helped me see a lot of topics in review. Speaking of the evidence paper, jumped in on a group this time because we can work in groups of up to 4. Makes for a lot less work, except for Wolfson who doesn't mind the "research" for our Star Wars fact pattern.

So TV. Tonight is House night, and we watched American Idol too. Since this is the first time I've kind of followed Idol, let's rank the contestants based on country night:
1. Melinda Doolittle - no doubt about it, best singer of the season
2. Jordin Sparks - Good song this week, big drop off from Melinda
3. Phil Stacey - Very mediocre singer but did OK tonight
4. Chris Richardson - Ugh it's Mr. Nasal Voice, reminds me of a poor J. Timberlake
5. LaKisha Jones - She was forcing her voice over a loud song, it was awful even though she sings OK
6. Blake Lewis - Just like LaKisha, country is a bad genre for this guy. Picked a mediocre Tim McGraw song and delivered it like a karaoke champ
7. Sanjaya Malakar - What hasn't been said? I have to give him credit, he's a good sport for everyone knowing he's terrible and the judges are brutal (rightfully so, how this guy made the top 40 is beyond me), and "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" was a nice ironic choice.

So looking at those rankings and assuming Sanjaya will get his usual voting base (as long as there are more than 4 contestants he will make it through because his "fan" base is not divided week to week among the other 6 or more contestants)...I'd say the bottom three will definitely contain Blake and LaKisha, then either Chris or Phil. I think there's too much support for Blake still, so LaKisha goes home tomorrow. Of course I'm wrong, but I figure I might as well make a game of it.

House was incredible last week with the mental phenomenon of making yourself sick (to a ridiculous degree on an airplane). Nice dual story with Cuddy and House in the sky solving that problem and the young guns solving an old lady's poisoning on their own. This week's is on right now and seems interesting, but House is not something to spend too much time talking about. Lost, on the other hand, was absolutely awesome last week and it appears the season of "the others" will finally come to an exciting climax after spinning wheels for months. I really want to see if my favorite character John Locke turns his back on the flight survivors, as it might cost him his life. 24 this week was also pretty good, although it pains us all to watch that douche bag VP Noah run away with the presidency when Palmer was going to force him out. Of course it is kind of Palmer's fault for popping adrenaline shots like M&M's during the Fayed crisis resolution. Seems like the main story ended about 5 weeks early this year, as now I really wonder what they are going to do the rest of the season. It appears the Audrey exchange goes down next week, so I figure Jack and the Chinese guy who has it out for Jack will be the focus of the rest of the season. Brings us to the end (maybe) of a great storyline started in Season 4. We'll see, as the season has been OK thus far. Just wish for once there was a president on that show who knew how to pick an agreeable VP. Oh well.

Big news of the week: I got two out of my three JDR banquet predictions correct. Xavier will indeed be published and Larry did win staff member of the year, but Larry unfortunately will not be published.
Bigger news: I'M GETTING PUBLISHED! Woot. Makes all those long hours the week before drafts were due worth it. I'll give the note a fresh look once I'm in Cincinnati, as I only have until July 1 to make any significant changes or additions. Xavier and I will be in Issue 2 (my topic is increasing ADR in patent law, Xavier's has to do with non-traditional couples I think). Erik and Nate are the other two being published, Erik on Eminent Domain ADR and Nate on interest group mediation. So those are the three people I get to bug the crap out of for footnoting, and of course now I get to participate next year as a final backstop editor and an author. Should be an interesting year.

Shipman's class ended today, and all my 1L's have reached the height of cynicism. Most of them think they are screwed about App Ad because all the other kids have written a brief and they have not, and also in general because they got no real help or feedback on the journal competition type assignment (according to them). But many other people have made it out of Shipman's writing class and gotten onto journal and been successful, such as the other two TA's for our class Andy Johnson (main journal, executive editor next year) and Uzo (main journal, articles editor next year). They will be fine trying to get on journal and may have an advantage in that regard having done one of these assignments. Shipman is correct in telling them this is all learn by doing. My journal write-on paper was probably horrible, but I got it figured out at least decently for the note. Same with office memos and briefs. Speaking of briefs...

Is it possible for the Moot Court Governing Board of this school year to be any worse at their jobs? It doesn't seem too much to ask to do your job and do it competently, after all these people ran for the offices and were interviewed etc. I think Aaron is going to write an article series for the Hearsay jokingly telling next year's board how to do their job. Maybe the board should have given Keener a spot on the board for having the guts to tell them the truth to their faces about how terrible they are. Here's a short list of minor to major greivances I have with them.
1. The exact specifics of how Herman works and how teams are chosen for 3L year was not all that clear and the competition rules took multiple reads to figure out.
2. They faux pas'd on the selection round ranking email that told the top 5 2L's where they stood (at least Brian who was 4th and I who was 5th got emails asking for our preference of teams because the original email said we were ranked number 1). That I was pissed about but I was willing to give them a mulligan. just more angry about which team I got stuck on (topic, teammates, Kelley's birthday weekend...need I say more?).
3. They told the 5 of us on teams as 2L's this year to leave the Herman TWEN group and then did a poll on which teams they should keep next year because some had to be cut. Well they did it through TWEN and so did not ask any of the 5 of us who have PRIORITY CHOICE for next year's teams. So my voice was not heard and that among other things led to no IP team for next year.
4. They finally get everything done for this year and so all that's left is to process the team preference forms for next year. How hard can it be to plug those numbers. It's a really simple system...go to the top ranked person (Brodie), look at his sheet, slot him into the top team he wants that's still open. Continue for each person down the list. Seems simple right? Well it's taken them way too long and then finally today we get an email with moot court teams for next year. Problem is, 20 minutes later we get another email saying they double-checked the teams but still there were errors and they have to redo the teams. WTF?

GET IT TOGETHER MOOT COURT BOARD. It's not that much to ask that you do something easy and simple...and for heaven's sakes, get it right. We'll see if my team changes at all, but as it stands right now I'm on what I consider to be one of the 2 most solid moot court teams for next year. One ABA team is Aaron, Brodie, and Tiffany (all-stars) and my National team is Lee (one of the 2L's on a team this year), Tom (top 10 overall in Herman), and me. There are some other good looking teams as well, but of course it's all tenative so this discussion may be moot. Also of interest is Cheggs being on B-Smith's team, that sounds like a match made in heaven. But whatever. So maybe by the end of the semester we'll know what teams we'll be on. It does look like I'll be on a national team for sure, so that's cool. I'll be done with moot court in the fall too which is nice.

Bar fitness interview was this morning. That was about as exciting as watching women's golf on TV. I have a clean record (no speeding or traffic tickets even, but I'm lucky in that category) so we had NOTHING to talk about. They asked me if I had any questions. Hell I did not know I was supposed to come prepared, let alone what the interview was going to be like. So we chatted about the Virginia Tech slaughter and after 10 minutes of that the two attorneys signed off on my competency to be a lawyer and so that's the end of that. They let people with DUI's through this process without too much grilling (so these two said), so you have to do some bad stuff to raise eyebrows when trying to take the bar. One less thing to worry about.

Went to Cincy on Friday and looked at 8 apartments. Found some crazy landlords in the morning. First was the old lady who was half-senile and told lots of stories and had to show me her cats and the 3 baby raccoons she rescued from the city streets. Then was the lady who answered the door with a power drill in hand (working on the house). Then an uber-businessman who buys and sells and rents houses for a living, so he was a slick operator. Went to Joe's for lunch and then to WHE, my firm, to discuss final details with them. In the afternoon saw a couple more stinkers but 3 good apartments. One was like University Village in a big building, had a pool and gas grill and exercise rooms and game rooms for everyone to use...you rent one room in a 2-4 bedroom apartment and they would have matched me with another guy living there for the summer working at a different Cincy law firm. Tempting and all-inclusive with furnishings, but $549 a month is a decent price and not great. Second place was a one and a half room studio from a law student subletting, but she wanted around 500 with few furnishings. The one I chose was another law student sublet in a 3 bedroom apartment off the UC campus a ways. Nice short drive either through the ghetto (Over the ridge) or down an interstate to downtown every day, and the apartment is furnished and cheap for all-inclusive. So I have Cincinnati all worked out and I'm looking forward to getting down there in a couple weeks.

Oh one more note: we received our brief scores from Moot Court competition. We finished 12th out of 32. So the brief far from brought us down. Now Dustin and I really do not know how we got out of the top 16 after beating both of our opponents in oral argument. Probably the judges in the first round misattributing things from Brooklyn to us and vice versa. Gives me hope for next year though as it seems kind of a crapshoot in a way, but you can clearly succeed if your team cares to.

Time to get back to ignoring studies and the such. Have a good week.