Today I had reason to Google Macaulay Culkin, so as to know how to spell his name. I had no idea because I've maybe referred to him maybe a dozen times in my life. Don't even ask why I had to know now. It did make me consider some remarkable gaps in my knowledge. For example, I have no idea what the football team from Phoenix is. Is there even a football team from Phoenix? I don't know or particularly care, but some it just shows some things we take for granted. I'm sure I know things other people don't. Things like where Paul Morphy was born.
Well, I'm now done with another project, my presentation at the Spit Tobacco Summit. The Summit is a national conference on spit tobacco issues (duh), but it ended up being international in character with a lot of attendees from other countries (as well as all across this one). It is probably my most prestigious speaking engagement yet. It seemed to go fairly well, and I was able to take my mind off some recent personal troubles, the non-bloggable variety. I managed to drive to and from Casper, WY with a minimum of mammalian casualties, as well. That road is about as desolate as any in the country, and the furry natives have an unfortunate tendency to venture forth. I don't think I created any new ones, but there was definitely no lack of obvious impact sites. It was rather disturbing.
Today I also finished the publication draft of my case note. This is the copy upon which a publication decision will be based. There is some pretty stiff competition because my classmates are smart and skilled, so we'll see if the note goes any further until next semester (where I will have another chance to edit and submit my Note). I'll be sending this copy to a few acquaintances, just because they're interested.
Of course, the job search continues. It looks like I don't have any bites on the lines I cast in Portland so far, so I may end up here for the summer. At the moment I'm seeking some work at the local city attorney's office, but that is concurrent with school. Apparently I don't have enough to do.
This week is Law Week at the school, which is fun. Last night, Wyoming Law Students for Equal Justice, of which I am the treasurer, hosted a great speaker. Kathleen Lord is the head of the Appellate Division of the Colorado Public Defender's Office. She recently won two big cases. One was a death penalty case which was reduced to life because the jurors brought in all kinds of bible passages to decide the sentence. In the other case, the defendant was in the car of a guy she knew when he decided to engage in a chase. She surrendered and was in custody. The man subsequently killed a police officer and the defendent was convicted of felony murder.
It was a really great talk and, sadly, the only one I've been able to go to all week. Unfortunately, we got our last case note drafts back on Monday, and the next submission is the publication decision. I also have been working to catch up with my classwork (and barely making it). Of course, our Administrative Law paper is due today, as well. This reminds me, special props out to Travis for taking on a bulk of the work in our group of putting our respective sections together. We will do well, I think.
Anyway, today is one of the more fun days of Law Week because the Wyoming Supreme Court is coming to the law school to hear arguments on two cases. I don't know if any students who are arguing today, but I'll mention it if there is one. There was last year.
One of the great benefits of this particular law school is that Wyoming has no intermediate appellate court system. This means that in the clinical programs, students frequently have the opportunity to argue cases before the Supreme Court. I wouldn't call it routine, but it certainly is not rare. Last year, I tried to do some live-blogging, but that didn't really go well. I won't even try this year. I will report at some point after, though probably not today; we have our formal dinner tonight, so I'll be pretty busy.
Well, I've successfully upgraded the blog to Movable Type version 3.2. It seems likely that most people won't notice (unless I change the stylesheet, but we'll see). The biggest thing that people should notice is that the new software should allow a little better management of comment spam. Ideally, the comment spam will be automatically handled in a way that is better than before. Previously, I had to basically add the spammer's site to a blacklist. Now, I hopefully will be able to train my blogging software to recognize this scourge and dispense with it.
As I get comments, I can also approve commenters for instant publication. After your first post, this should eliminate the delay of me having to approve every comment. It was a necessary evil at the time, but it was still evil.
Finally, I've installed a few new plugins that I may play around with, but only when I have time. Which may be a while. I bought two books recently: I haven't read either of them. Maybe by the end of November, I'll be able to at least do that.
To my considerable surprise, I really enjoy my Trusts & Estates class. It is intellectually challenging, and everything seems to be a puzzle to solve. I certainly approach some things differently.
For example, I think about death a bit more, and the messes that seem to sometimes result from all these estates issues. I know that the percent of probate cases which are litigated is almost certainly a tiny percentage, but it still has an impact.
For everyone: make a will. It really is better that way. Unless, of course, you are perfectly aware of the intestate (without a will) succession statutes and that is actually what you want. For most people, your life will be more complicated than that, though.
The trial court competition is over. It's actually been over since Thursday for us. We made it to the Semi-Finals, as reported, but lost that round.
I have to say, I learned a ton. There isn't a lot I can easily put into words, but my brain was full. Plus it was quite gratifying to see the surprise in a judge's face upon learning that we were a solely 2L team. I don't think he was expecting that.
Next semester, we taxe Evidence. Then I will be truly ready. I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime, there are several more competitions to do. One is an appellate competition I will not be participating in. It involves actually writing the brief, and I'll be getting my case note back on Monday, so I just don't have the time. The other two, however, are different. The next is the client counseling competition, and another appellate competition. I plan on winning at least the appellate competition, considering how well my team did last year as 1Ls.
On another note, I finally figured out what was wrong with my Now Playing installation, so the music feature is back!
Last night we had the second evening of the qualifying round. It felt like a bit tougher challenge (though neither have been easy). I think this was because both teams had one night under our belts and we all knew what we were doing a bit more. It was really fun, again, even though we're all pretty wiped from working so hard on the preparation.
We won last night, though I think it was a closer contest. Most importantly, I definitely feel like I'm learning a huge amount over the course of this competition. This means a ton of information within about a week. It's a little overwhelming, but I love being "in the courtroom." As artificial as it is, I think it is quite exciting.
I'll keep the blog updated. It looks like we'll have another round (semifinals) tomorrow, and if we do well enough, the Finals will be Saturday morning.
Last night my trial advocacy team and I had our first round of the local competition. I haven't blogged about it coming up because I've been too busy actually preparing! We were up against a 3L team our first round, which was a little intimidating, initially. You see, we don't take Evidence until the second semester of our 2L year, and we're all 2Ls, so we haven't had it yet. Everyone on the other team had.
Still, we did reasonably well. We are none of us Johnny Cochran, but we did manage to win the round, carrying all three judges. This is nice, and I think the feedback we got will be very helpful.
We go again tonight, as the second qualifying round. If we make the cut, semi-finals are on Thursday. If we make the cut again, Saturday morning will see us competing once more. Then, with any luck, it will be off to regionals. Obviously there is still a lot of work to do, but we're ready to go.
So, I'll spend the rest of today preparing, then competing tonight, then tomorrow catching up on my classwork and my job searching.
Busy.
Winter stretches forth its fingers and begins to squeeze this little hamlet in its icy grip.
Or maybe it's just the first snow of the year. That's probably a more accurate characterization. It's a bit snowy and slushy. The temperature is just at freezing, but it may warm up a little as the day goes on. This is not early. If anything, this is one of the later snows in my recent memory. Last year, the first snow came on the official last day of summer.
I seem to be adept at filling my time. Just when the latest draft of my case note was turned in, the preparations for the trial court competition began. Between that and classwork, I've been rather busy, again.
On the up side, I took Saturday off to go see Death Cab for Cutie. Myself and my group were planning on eating Ethiopian food in Ft. Collins, but the restaurant was illogically only open for dinner. We ended up going to an Irish pub. This was cool. We also went to dinner at an Irish pub once we got into Denver, so it was quite a British day.
The show was excellent and fun. We had a pretty good view. Pursuant to my concert policy, I came away with a t-shirt. I also picked up a new knitting bag, seeing as how I was outgrowing my prior one.
I highly recommend catching the show.