pseudostoops

A friend of mine has been having some serious problems with inappropriate, harassing student behavior at his school, and he wanted some information on how the law works in this area- specifically, how he could get these kids to see the back of a cop car to wipe the smug “I can get away with anything” look off their faces.

Being a law student, I was a natural person to ask about these sorts of things. Here’s the thing, though: I didn’t have any idea. I live in Illinois! The penal code is state by state! But even if I went to law school in California, I doubt I would be able to provide a quick clear answer to the question: “what crime is this kid committing?”

What I did know was where to look. I dutifully logged on to Westlaw, searched the California Penal Code, and found some answers.* That’s when it hit me: law school is a lot like librarian school. Want to know when Brown v. Board of Education first went to court? I can find that for you, ma’am. Looking for information on Illinois property tax rates? Just give me a moment, sir. You say you have a bet with your friend and need to know if there are any cases out there featuring a party by the name “Humpty”? Sure, I can find that, just give me a moment. Fifty grand a year for what I could achieve with just a Westlaw password and an internet connection.

I know, I know, I’m also learning how to think, and craft an argument, and not crumble when an old scholar destroys me while judging moot court and yadda yadda yadda. Lawyers know that this is what law school does. They expect this. Non-lawyers, however, (and I’m happy to say that most of my friends and family are still non-lawyers- this gig hasn’t completely taken over my life,) expect that because you’re in law school, you will know something about the law. Silly non-lawyers. Did you hear me? WE DON’T KNOW THAT MUCH ABOUT THE LAW. (sorry.) We’d be happy to look it up for you, though!

Perhaps the reason this is not widely known is that people might balk at the idea of paying $300 an hour ($900 in New York) for the services of someone who is, most likely, looking up the answers on the internet (or asking their lowly associate to look up the answers on the internet.) I hope I’m not violating some unspoken code of lawyer conduct by revealing this. You know, something like “thou shalt not break the sacred trust and inform non-lawyers that we are ripping them off, and if you do you will be forced to be a tax attorney all the rest of your days, because tax lawyers really do have some valuable expertise which should make you happy since you seem weirdly concerned about our clients getting a good value for their money so hahahahahahahaha now you’re stuck in tax!” Yeah, I hope that’s not the case, because I REALLY don’t want to be in tax. I mean, would you?

The Tivo is now recording HBO. Goodbye, netflix!

John and I have taken the next big step: we have gotten Tivo.

Specifically, we have gotten Direct TV with Tivo, which means that this was a fairly simple upgrade from what we already had, so I didn’t have to set foot in a Best Buy. If any given technological advance involves a trip to that, the fourth circle of my personal hell, rest assured that John and I will never have it. Or that John will surreptitiously travel on his own to Best Buy (want to make your husband do errands? Refuse to enter entire stores and he’ll be off to the races!) to procure a PlayStation2 that I will eye with suspicion bordering on loathing.

But the nice DirectTv man with a lovely Russian accent (it felt strangely seasonally appropriate to talk to someone from a land where winters are even worse than ours) came and installed the Tivo thingy and programmed the remote and then left me with an instruction book and a giddy smile.

Two hours later, I hit a road block. Tivo, for whatever reason, seems unwilling to record HBO. I will be the first to admit that I’ve never actually watched much HBO before, but for whatever reason this little snafu has me all annoyed. I was investigating tivo discussion boards last night, trying to figure out if this was normal or some problem that I need to have fixed, because goddammit I want to watch Reese Witherspoon in Vanity Fair for zero extra dollars! And that movie is only on at noon on a Wednesday, which is not a time when normal adults are watching television! It’s amazing how quickly I went from “girl who barely notices that her tv receives HBO” to “girl who is livid that her newly-installed recording device that may or may not violate fair use copyright provisions will not record movies that are certainly copyrighted material.” Perhaps I should register for copyright law after all.

Background statement: I am not a fan of judging. (Outside of courtrooms, I mean.) I have ended friendships with people who became impossible to be around when they were unable to stop judging others. I make an effort to think criticially about my reactions when I feel myself tempted to pass quick judgment. Some of this comes from my work in San Jose, where I found too people far too willing to pass judgment on poor immigrant families. (”They’re lazy.” “They’re just here to take advantage of our country.” “Why do they have so many babies if they can’t take care of them?”) These opinions are poison. They’re easy, cheap responses to hard, complex problems. I do not, as a general matter, respond well to those who espouse these kinds of opinions in my presence. (See “knee jerk liberal”, below). But (and this is not something I’m proud to admit,) I have been forced to conclude that I, too, am a judger.

Just this week, I was studying in a burrito place which shall remain nameless (but let’s just say its one of those annoying suddenly everywhere big national chains that may or may not be owned by mcdonalds if you get my drift and I promise I had more burrito street cred when I lived in California please don’t judge my burrito habits.) A young family came in and sat down at the table across from me: mom, dad, little girl about 4 and little boy probably a year old.

As dad went to pick up the food, mom proceeded to nonchalantly lay the baby down on the seat and change his poopy diaper. RIGHT THERE AT THE TABLE. POOP! AT THE TABLE! I can’t explain why this troubles me so much except to say that I firmly believe that food and poop don’t mix (I may not have organized religion, but I pray at the altar of germ avoidance, amen.) Though the poop was a solid 4 feet from anything *I* was eating, I was unable to stop thinking about how close it was to the family’s food. And the poopy diaper just sat there, between dad and little girl, for the entire meal. It had to be smelly, right? Do poop germs float? Is there some sort of health code rule about poop? Like maybe a radius that has to be maintained between poop products and food products? (10 yards seems reasonable, right?) The poopy diaper incident distracted me so thoroughly that I was unable to learn how to impeach a witness anymore, and had to leave.

Judge-y judge-y judge-y! And I don’t have children!! I have no right to judge. It’s got to be a pain in the ass to realize that your kid, bundled in snow suit and everything, needs to be changed right. this. minute. And yet, instead of feeling sympathetic, I was looking around the restaurant to catch the eye of another patron who might be on my side of the unspoken debate in the matter of poop v. food, so that we might exchange knowing looks. Judge-y, party of one!

This ties in interestingly with a conversation I had with my friend S earlier this week. She and her boyfriend had been debating the propriety of public breastfeeding. S and I both felt strongly that public breastfeeding is not a big deal, and the strong reactions people have about it are a reflection of some seriously fucked up issues that our culture has with bodies, and sexuality, and notions of propriety. I was feeling sort of superior about my accepting, earth-mother openness to all things natural about childrearing. Then I go and judge the poopy diaper lady.

The next time someone makes a lawyer joke at my expense, I will totally deserve it.

I was planning on writing a post something along the lines of “god damn I had forgotten how miserable you feel the hour before an exam you’re not ready for.” It was going to be full of references to our favorite villain, administrative law, and an exam so hard and long that there was nothing to do but laugh and make cute little jokes about alcoholism when it was all through.

Then I read this.

TMAO is a friend of mine, and he teaches still in the school district I left when I came here to study law instead of teach. And he’s a tremendous teacher, always has been. He violates every expectation the kids who walk into his classroom have about teachers, particularly male teachers (though the superintendant hated his mohawk,) and he forces them to think and work hard and be decent people. He’s also a good basketball coach. He puts me to shame.

And I feel ashamed not only because he’s so. much. better. at the teaching thing than I was (though that’s certainly part of it,) but because I walked away from it to come do what I’m doing now. At the law school, I have a reputation for being (depending on who you ask):

- a knee-jerk liberal
- crunchy granola (HA! they should move to san francisco for ONE DAY.)
- a “do-gooder” type
- that girl who’s on the public interest law society and streetlaw who keeps showing up at events suggesting that we do things other than working for firms
- a sweet foosball player

I get to bask in the glow of feeling like I have a higher purpose, and people at the law school BELIEVE ME. I don’t begrudge anyone the right to go work for a lawfirm and make money hand over fist- it’s arguably the wise choice when you’re facing down undergrad debt, grad debt, parent expectations, friend expectations, and seriuosly high cell phone bills (20 cents per text message? are you SERIOUS, verizon wireless? and after we hemmorage all this money to you you STILL won’t let my husband buy a new phone at the promotional rate? bastards!) But I do get to feel, in my own little smug way, that I am going to find a way to use this degree to help communities like the one I left when I left teaching, and people acknowledge that that’s a hard, respectable choice (even if most of them think I’m batshit crazy to pass up an associate’s salary.)

In the end, I probably will do something different, if only because I don’t have the fortitude to work at a law firm. My stomach turned this fall every time I gritted my teeth and cheerfully told a summer job interviewer that I wanted to work at a big law firm forEVER (!) because it seemed like exciting, interesting work. (Ha! The lies we tell!) But for now? For now I just type a lot, listen to lectures, debate insanely fine points of law with fabulous friends, and read until my eyes bleed. Once a week, I go to a local high school and teach the students about the law. I make them stand up and have debates about unconstiutional searches of public hosing, I make them tell me their stories about their encounters with the police, and I make them read their cell phone contracts to see how they’re getting screwed (seriously, you think you have it bad? Try to be a teenager who has no credit history whose only option is a second-rate pre-paid company that runs out of a bodega on the corner and is happy to charge fees on top of fees for their POS service.) And then, after an hour, I go back to the law school to eat my free bagels.

THAT’s why I feel ashamed.

Personal growth comes in mysterious packages. Case in point:

Today is the first day of exams for 1Ls. It is also Wednesday. Traditionally, at the law school, Wednesdays start with a feeding frenzy called “coffee mess”- the law school fairies put out free coffee, donuts, bagels, and (oddly) low-carb yogurt, and the law students swarm around the food table like people who haven’t eaten in days.

Last year, the dean announced that on the first day of exams, coffee mess would start early so everyone could get their food before exams. “What?!” I thought. “Eat before exams? Ohmygosh I’m going to be so nervous and it seems like a bad idea to get me hopped up on caffeine and this seems like a really stupid plan and why don’t they just cancel coffee mess because can’t they see we’re STRESSED here, people?”

This year, the dean sent out a similar announcement, and my thinking went something like “Damn right, they’re having coffee mess. They’d better not cancel a coffee mess ever again if they know what’s good for them. I am ENTITLED to free bagels and coffee, and I don’t want to hear any excuses.”

See? My stomach-ache inducing stress? My panic about grades? My niggling fear that perhaps I was the one they let in by accident and I was going to fail out of law school and god, won’t *that* be embarassing when my parents have to tell people at the Christmas party?

Gone!^* Replaced by a smug belief that i somehow *deserve* to have coffee and bagels given to me at no cost! Law school HAS taught me something!

* Of course, it’s also been replaced by a general malaise and belief that this whole law school gig doesn’t really matter in the long run and maybe I should quit and go be a school librarian at a low-performing public school like I wanted to do before I started on this insane exercise. But let’s not dwell on that.

Here’s the pesky thing about legal clinics: real clients don’t take finals.

The clinic is one of my favorite parts of law school. Basically, they’re set up so a real lawyer takes clients in a legal-aid style setting, and then law students like me get to help that real lawyer prepare cases. It’s a win-win-win, in theory: the real lawyers get lots of student help so they’re able to take more cases and do a more thorough job, the law students get real-life legal experience and professional training and advice from real lawyers, and the clients get the benefit of a legal team full of enthusiastic, interested law students instead of a legal aid attorney who has too high a case load to fully address the needs of each client.

In practice, we enthusiastic law students sometimes drop the ball. This would be one of those times. I am currently supposed to be working on a subpoena for some records we need for a hearing taking place on December 22. I have a final on Thursday, another one on Saturday, and two papers to write in the interim. At the time I volunteered to write the thing, I was all cheer and optimism. “Sure!” I thought. “Writing a subpoena will be an awesome study break when I’m tired of administrative law! And I’m always tired of administrative law! Perfect!” Now that my exams are two days away and I realize that this client is going to court on the 22nd whether I get my shit together or not, my thinking goes more like: “Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit. I am totally going to screw this client’s case because I was afraid to fail administrative law.”

Journals take breaks for finals. So does moot court. Do you think a judge would be interested in hearing an argument along these lines: “your honor, we respectfully request a continuance while our eager-beaver law student assistants crawl out from under their exam-induced rocks and start fulfilling their responsibilities on this case” ?

Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Today, it is really cold. Chicago winter cold. Scenically cold, even. Scenically cold is the clear, soft light of early morning punctuated by the billows of steam rising from every single inhabited building, but without any people to mess up the scenicness because all the people are still burrowed under their covers wondering if “it was too cold to go to work” is a legitimate excuse for a sick day. Driving down Lake Shore Drive this morning, the LAKE was steaming. When Lake Michigan is steaming because it’s that much warmer than the air is, the air is cold, people! From the warmth of Penny (my car) I was able to appreciate how cool a sight that was, the steaming of the lake. As I left Penny to dart into the coffee shop to buy something warm to drink, all the prettiness vanished and I was left wondering what, exactly, possessed me to leave the house without hat and gloves this morning.

My parents have season tickets to our local football team, and for months John has whined that he’s never gone to a game in what he calls “real football weather.” We were at a game where it was clear and crisp, probably 48 degrees. In short, perfect football weather- just cold enough to justify drinking four or five beers for warmth, but not so cold that any of your appendages is uncomfortable. John, however, after noting that it was, admittedly, a nice day, launched into a monologue on how much better the game would be if it was “real” football weather. “You know, freezing cold, biting wind, maybe snow for good measure- where the players’ breath is visible on every play. THAT’s real football weather.”

So yesterday, while I toiled away learning administrative law, (side note: if you’re considering administrative law – don’t) John went to the football game against a team that is typically our team’s archrival but this year sucks so bad that they’re just another team we get to beat. He is so excited at the prospect of attending the game in the 15 degree weather with light snow, he looks like a little boy who has just discovered a marshmallow gun under the Christmas Tree.

Fastforward 4 hours. I am still studying administrative law. (side note: still considering administrative law? still don’t) when John returns from the game. He’s moving sluggishly, and I ask him (reasonably,) “are you drunk?”

“No,” he replies. “I can’t feel my feet. And the ice on my seat didn’t melt for the whole game, even though I sat on it. My butt was so cold it was incapable of melting the ice. My butt was below 32 degrees.”

“Ah,” I say knowingly, “’real’ football weather’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

“No,” he said. “It’s better!”

I have apparantly decided that the law school is an extension of my home. Kind of like an auxiliary living room.

I realized this as I took a break from study group today, walked down the hall to use the bathroom, and made it all the way back to the study room before realizing that I had just walked the length of the law school, including a journey into the icky bathroom, in my socks.

The thing is, I hate blogs. An ex-boyfriend of mine is currently travelling the world, blogging as he goes, and I actively mocked him when he describted his vision of “creating a chronicle of the grown he expexts to gain through the experience” through blogging. (In retrospect, the mocking might have to do with it being so totally in keeping with his ridiculous tendency to overinflate the importance of things, and not to do with the blog per se, but it was the blog I chose to make fun of.)

Here’s the pisser: I read the damn travelling the world blog compulsively. In fact, there’s an ever-growing list of blogs that I read compulsively. (Weirdly, many of them fall into the “mommyblog” category, because those women are fucking hillarious to me, even though I don’t have children. Should I be concerned? More pertinently, should realstoops be double-checking our contraceptive methods?)

But I love reading blogs. Or at least, well-written blogs. So this one, being not well-written, probably won’t ever see the light of day, or at least won’t for a long time. But it’s worth a shot.

I anticipate that this blog will be sort of a nice hybrid between law school antics (the place is teeming with stories dying to be told. TEEMING) and newlywed hilarity. To wit:

pseudostoops: sweet pea, let’s go see a movie tonight
realstoops: what’s playing?
p: lots of stuff. (lists stuff) what do you think?
r: well, i would see x, or y, or z
p: i think you’re forgetting harry potter.
r: and, obviously, harry potter.
p: good! you want to see it too! it’s at 8.
r: i’m getting some kind of “best husband ever” award, right?
p: only if you agree with me at the end that it was an excellent film
r: man, i have to call it a film now?

love him.