As the summer quickly comes to an end, a new group of 1Ls is about to embark on an interesting journey. I had the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with the 1Ls in Section 4 yesterday at orientation, and I must say that all of the students with whom I spoke seemed to be ready to tackle law school. The only piece of advice I would give to this class is to not listen to other people’s advice!

As a 1L, everyone wants to tell you their story and give you pointers that they think will help you. However most of the time, the people who are the most eager to give you advice are the ones who do not know you at all! They do not know how you think, prepare, or study, so most of the time, their wisdom ends up hurting you more than it helps you.

Keep in mind that you know yourself better than anyone else. You know if you will sleep through your 8 a.m. Civil Procedure class with Professor Stiglitz if you stay out partying all night in Pacific Beach. You know if you will actually study if you have the Red Sox game on in the “background.” And you know if you will pay attention in class if you comment on all 127 photos your BFF Jill just posted on Facebook of your awesome getaway to Baja.

You have known yourself for 22+ years, and Know-It-All Joe, the 2L has known you for 22 minutes. Who do you trust?

I do not know if any prospective students have started looking at these blogs yet, or if any admitted students who have committed to Cal Western are still looking at these blogs, but I figured I would post an entry anyway.

After spending six weeks in Europe with a CILE program, I have settled myself into life and work in New Orleans, LA. I am working for Orleans Public Defenders in downtown New Orleans, which is neither my ideal job nor my ideal location. It’s hot and humid, and I am hundreds of miles away from a nice beach, but I believe it is where I need to be right now.

Coming from San Diego, the workings of the criminal justice system in New Orleans make very little sense. Fortunately, I work in an office with about 30 attorneys and 30 law clerks who agree, and are working hard to affect change. While I love the hands-on experience I get each day, the most rewarding part of the job comes from knowing that I am doing the right thing here. I live without a car, air conditioning, a television and a microwave, but the absence of each of these luxuries reminds me that it is not always easy to do the right thing. I have the skills necessary to help the indigent in New Orleans, and I am spending two months doing just that. Although I am not working for a professional sports team, which would be my dream internship/permanent job, I am making more of a difference here than I ever would be in that line of work.

Kudos to my peers who have landed jobs in firms and for large companies. While I know I would enjoy a job with a firm, I have something else I have to do first.

We all know the answer to this “joke,” and it is disheartening to know that even today, there are still some people who would love to get their hands on 1,000 lawyers and throw them down to the bottom of the ocean.

I stumbled across this story last night when I was doing some things on Westlaw. While the story itself is somewhat monotonous, I found the 65 pages of comments very interesting. The reactions from the readers reminded me that the public perception of lawyers still is not what it should be.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/06/60minutes/main3914719.shtml

In less than 24 hours, I will be a free woman for four months. Free from the library, the books, the practice exams, the 8 a.m. classes and exams. Free from school. And what a great feeling it is! “They” say that after the first year of law school, most people wouldn’t trade the experience for a million dollars, but also wouldn’t do it again for ten million dollars. And while I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure out just who “they” are (I mean, “they” are always saying this or that, you know), I cannot agree more with that statement.

In your first year of law school, you undoubtedly learn a lot about the law, but you learn so much more about yourself. It truly is an experience unlike any other, and there is no way to describe it to someone who hasn’t done it. My friends and family often call to say hello, and I can tell that they wonder why I am always in the library, or why I can’t talk the day before an exam. I know that there has to be a part of each of them that thinks I need to study so much because I “just don’t get it.” Well let me tell you, it’s the people who aren’t studying all of the time who are the ones who “just don’t get it.”

If you expect to go to class 15 hours per week and spend the rest of the time lying on the beach sipping Piña Coladas, you should consider another career path. And if you expect to be able to breeze through the semester and cram at the last minute before your exams like you did as an undergraduate, law school is not for you. But if you have realistic expectations of the grueling hours spent briefing, outlining, memoing, etc. interspersed with fun outings every now and then to remind you that you are still alive, then you’ll be fine. And if you find a way to make it to the top of your class by sipping those Piña Coladas every day, please feel free to e-mail me your trick. I’d love to know how that can be done.

It’s been a few weeks since I last blogged, mostly because my appellate brief and oral argument competition have been consuming my life. This semester, all of the legal skills classes have the same fact pattern and the same assignment, so there are over 300 of us who talk non-stop about students’ right to free speech, promoting drug use on school grounds, etc. We were assigned a case about a girl who was disciplined at a school event for wearing what the principal thought was a pro-drug T-shirt. It’s all actually very interesting, and I wish I could’ve spent the whole semester doing just the brief. But my other four classes went full steam ahead, so I wasn’t able to do that. Fortunately Professor Barnett’s deadline is 12 p.m. tomorrow, so after that one entire class will be done.

Fellow blogger Megan gave me a shout-out on making the finals of the legal skills II appellate competition. I’ve never been much of a public speaker before I came to law school, but I secretly like it here. We’ve done a lot of in-class preparation throughout the year, and it was a blast to do. The competition, however, was very nerve-racking.

In the first round, we didn’t really know what to expect because we had never done it before. And we could only prepare so much because we didn’t know what exactly the judges were going to ask and when they were going to interrupt us. We only had seven minutes, and there was a lot of information that needed to be covered. I was pleased after I walked out of the first round, and two days later, I learned that I made the finals. I didn’t have much time to prepare, because I heard about it at noon and had to be there at 6:30, but I think I did all that I could. Unfortunately I did not win, but the other competitors all did very well. It was great to be able to have the opportunity to present my case before three San Diego lawyers and then receive feedback from them on what they liked and didn’t like. I wish there were another competition this year, but I have to wait until next year.

Well that’s all for me. I have some errands I desperately need to get done before I move into the library for the day. Ciao!

Each year around this time I become restless with school and need to find a way to get it together and stick out the last few weeks of the semester. This year it seems especially difficult because I have spent the last two months searching for jobs all across the U.S. Around this time I start thinking about and planning for the summer. But this year, doing so is a little more difficult.

After applying for summer clerk positions at about twenty different law firms and non-profit organizations and not hearing anything back, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Two weeks ago I applied to the Consortium for Innovative Legal Education, a program run by CWSL, South Texas College of Law, New England School of Law, and William Mitchell College of Law. The program offers students the opportunity to spend about five weeks taking a variety of classes in four different European cities. After mulling it over for a few days, I applied to the Prague program. The application and prep work weren’t too bad, and I received my acceptance letter a few days ago.

Now I have to plan my trip and find an employer that will allow me to work only from June-August. But I know that at least for now, I will have at least one marketable experience this summer. All of our advisers and career services staff members keep telling us to do something enjoyable this summer because next summer will be spent doing whatever it is that we want to do for the rest of our lives, so I might as well live it up.

I first seriously thought about attending Cal Western after discussing the school and the area with the father of a current 3L. At Penn State, I had a sweet little gig set up that paid me to call alumni, friends and parents of current and past students to talk with them about the university and to ultimately persuade them to give the school monetary gifts. One evening while calling a “Past Parents” group, I contacted a man who had a daughter in law school. Perfect, I thought; I have an “in” with this guy and he will certainly fork over some cash. As we got to talking, it turned out that his daughter, Lisa, was a 2L at Cal Western and loved law school and life in San Diego. We talked for about a half an hour, and he nearly sold me on the school. Before talking with him, I had done some research and Cal Western was on my list of schools to which I was applying, but I had not thought I would actually end up here. While I do not remember much of what he said that persuaded me, one thing does stick out in my mind. He told me that that his daughter lived less than five minutes away from the beach and had yet to go that semester (and we talked in December). Wow, I thought, five minutes away from the beach and she has not gone in four months! This girl must be crazy. If I end up there, you better bet I will be at the beach at least once or twice a month. Boy was I wrong.

Even though Cal Western is located in “beautiful downtown San Diego,” and is literally a ten-minute drive from Coronado, a very fine beach, making my way across the bridge to take in the sun, sand, and surf is far more difficult than I ever imagined. When faced with 30 pages of Torts I reading and the need to get down Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the rational side of me knows that I will get those things done a lot quicker if I stay in the library than if I try to read them on the beach. Sure I have free time, but most of the time I spend it at the gym or on the couch catching up on “Nip/Tuck” and feeding my “LOST” obsession. Nevertheless, I do have friends who make it a priority to see the ocean at least twice a month, and you bet I am jealous of them.

Fortunately this semester, and hopefully for the rest of my time here, I have found a way to hit the beach without feeling guilty (a dream come true for a guilt-ridden beach bum like me). I now volunteer to help clean up the beaches in south San Diego County with the San Diego Coastkeeper, a local nonprofit organization. Members of the Environmental Law Society also try to do it too, so it is a great way to meet new people and do something productive for the area. And for me, it gives me an excuse to spend one or two hours checking out a different beach each month.

California is known for its beautiful beaches and breathtaking ocean scenery, but neither of those can be experienced with my nose in a casebook. Luckily I have found an outlet that allows me to take in the sights while not taking too much time away from school work. I only hope Lisa has also found a way to get to the beach.

Each day when I log onto Facebook, the site’s stalker friendly news feed updates me on everything I need to know, including who is newly engaged, single, hating school/work, and who has joined the hottest new groups. And just about every time I log on, I notice that the number of members in the “Legally Blonde Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Law School” has increased. Though I know most people joined the group to discuss their love for one of the greatest movies of all-time with other fans, there must be a few members who have joined because the title of the group applies to them.

Unfortunately scented resumes and extensive knowledge of perm maintenance will not get you very far in law school. However, learning to deal with the Socratic Method and developing a strategy to memorize dozens of case names, sets of facts, rules, exceptions will result in success. With the exception of a few minor bumps in the road, things always seemed to go right for Elle (minus that whole real-life marriage to Ryan Phillipe thing). She excelled in school, taught others how to perfect their “bends and snaps,” and managed to hang onto her social life, which truly is commendable. While slacking off consistently will only get you a ticket out the door, it is important to have an escape from schools’ demands. And for many, that includes kicking back, relaxing, and watching “Legally Blonde” for the seventeenth time just to laugh at how unrealistically it portrays law school.

Cal Western has decided to take on one more 1L blogger, so here I am! As a first-year student, I am very excited to have this opportunity, and I hope I am able to offer a little more insight into law school and life in San Diego. This time last year I was still trying to decide where I wanted to matriculate, and Cal Western’s student blogs helped me to make my final decision. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me, and look for more posts shortly!