Strangest criminal cases: how would you decide?

In roughly ten weeks, we will be finished with our first year of law school. We will no longer be 1Ls. For now, however, I continue to push through the second semester, even though there is a sense that some of us are running out of steam. For one, there is the huge task of finding a summer job. There also is the realization that, out of the 60 or so pages of dense reading we are assigned each day, there are only a handful of rules that we must learn, and of those rules, only a fraction will appear on the final exam. It is tempting to skip a few cases, or at least to stop the onerous process of writing case briefs and creating endless notes. For the most part, I am resisting the urge. There is some inscrutable reason for the curious structure of law school, and I am placing my faith in it. Besides, there are too many amazing stories buried in our reading assignments. Consider a few from the world of Criminal Law, focusing on the topic of causation.

• Man gets in fight with wife, who stumbles out of house and into the cold night, where she lays down in the yard and is later found dead.
  
• Attackers rob man, leave him on side of road with little clothing on cold night far from shelter. Man later hit by truck and killed.
  
• Man steals car, leads police on massive chase. Law enforcement helicopters, following chase, collide in mid-air, killing several occupants.
  
• Woman, abducted by men on train, is taken to hotel where she is assaulted and prevented from escaping. She drinks poison when the abductors are not in the room, and later dies, but only several weeks after being released.
  
• Two men are racing on a highway, and the road narrows to a two-lane bridge. One driver, seeking to pass the other, veers into oncoming traffic and is it and killed by an oncoming truck. Is the other racer guilty?
  
• Gang member shoots, but does not kill, member of a non-rival gang, whose members nonetheless seek revenge by killing a member of the original shooter's gang. May the original shooter be convicted of murder?
  

These are adaptations from real cases, and I could post the "answers" provided by the law, but in truth there are no answers. This is the most fascinating and frustrating thing about the law. The more I study, the more I see ambiguity. Legal rules, in most cases, are merely tools that can be used to argue one way or the other. The same holds true for final exams this spring. Two students might have completely different answers for a problem, and still earn the same grade. Note to self: stop thinking about grades. Get back to reading.

1L interview with Brandon Hamilton tackles admissions process at Louisville Law

Law school applications are up this year at U of L, but students with scores that fall below the school's medians should not feel disparaged -- at least not completely. That's the upshot of a recent interview with Brandon Hamilton (above right), our assistant dean for admissions. I hope to conduct more interviews with faculty, staff, and students at the school in the weeks to come. If you have an idea for an interview, or want to sit in the hot seat yourself, send me an email at acdavi07@louisville.edu.

1L at U of L: We've heard that a record number of applications are expected for the Class of 2013. Is this true, and if so, what are the reasons?

Dean Hamilton: We have seen a significant increase in applications this year. The Office of Admissions expanded the areas in which we recruit in hopes of attracting a large number of qualified candidates. Of course, we believe that the economy has a role. We are excited too that there has been such a positive response to UofL Law.

1L at U of L: How should an applicant assess his or her chances of being accepted? If their grades and LSAT are below the school's medians, is that student in major trouble?

Dean Hamilton: We are a school that reviews applications holistically, although the LSAT and undergraduate GPA are important. It certainly helps if you have at least one (LSAT or Undergrad GPA) at or above the median. I wouldn’t, however, discourage someone from applying, if both are below the median. We have been known to take risks based on other characteristics of the applicant.

1L at U of L: Louisville obviously has a tremendous reach when it comes to finding a legal job in Kentucky. What about all the students who come here from out of state and plan to practice elsewhere?

Dean Hamilton: Great question. One of the benefits of being a school that has been around for a long time is that we have a strong alumni base from which we can pull. Our goal is for students to network with our alumni in the region they are interested in practicing. We would work to get you an internship or associate position in that region, so that the student could further continue to network, etc. This past year, our students gained employment in 14 states and 3 countries.

1L at U of L: Louisville was recently named one of the best "values" for a law school in the nation. What are the school's other strengths?

Dean Hamilton: We are a school that is interested in making sure that you graduate with the tools necessary to be successful. While you will receive an excellent theoretical education, we are committed to providing a skill based education and training. This is demonstrated through our expansive moot court teams, law clinics, externships, law reviews, and public service program.

In addition, we have an exceptional faculty, who are not only accomplished scholars, but have a commitment to the community and student success. To learn more: https://www.law.louisville.edu/faculty/scholarship

1L at U of L: Is it OK for an applicant to call you and ask questions about their application? Does it ever hurt to call?

Dean Hamilton: It’s perfectly acceptable to call and ask questions. It doesn’t hurt to call, but, of course, professionalism is important.

1L at U of L: What are some of the strangest things that applicants have said to you, either in their personal statements or elsewhere?

Dean Hamilton: I hear a lot of stories, but consider them to be a part of one’s life journey. I am fascinated, inspired, and often motivated by the life perspective that an applicant might bring.

Law firms plan campus visits for interviews

Some of the top law firms in Louisville will be paying a visit to the law school in the coming weeks. Their well-dressed partners and associates will be holding interviews for summer jobs. Despite all the talk about the dismal legal market, this is proof that at least some jobs still exist, if only for a summer. Of course, the pickings are slim. It appears that no more than a dozen of us 1Ls will receive offers as a result of these on-campus interviews. The rest of us will be scouring the phone books, calling long-lost lawyer cousins, and pounding the pavement of the River City in search of something more modest. In the meantime, however, it's still exciting to think that I might land even a short interview with some of these top firms. I am told that the experience alone is well worth it. A few of the prospective employers planning to hold on-campus interviews:

• Boehl Stopher & Graves
  
• Dinsmore and Shohl
  
• Goldberg Simpson
  
• Phillips Parker Orberson & Moore
  
• Ricketts Law Offices
  
• Stoll Keenon Ogden
  

Welcome TLSers

If you found this blog via top-law-schools.com, thanks for visiting! You can use this blog to send me a private Gmail message, or to check out what it's like to be a 1L at the University of Louisville. To check out our discussion thread at TLS, click here. To see Louisville's stats on LawSchoolNumbers, click here.

The personal injury lawyer: job shadow Part II.

(Author's note: this is the second part in a series about job shadows with Louisville lawyers) A few yards away from the bankruptcy lawyer’s office in downtown Louisville, Michael A. Schafer slides a stack of documents across his desk and motions for me to take a look. It’s a “settlement brochure” for a car wreck case, but the thing is thick enough to be a phone book. There are dozens of medical records, witness statements, even a personal diary written by the client. Schafer thinks the case may produce a six-figure settlement, which means a fee of at least $30,000 for his services. But this case seems to be the exception to the rule. Schafer, a former county prosecutor and a 1985 graduate of our law school, works a lot more cases that lead to fees of $3,000 to $5,000. Personal injury also is a crowded field, he tells me. Lots of lawyers, lots of advertising, and a limited client base. About 80 percent of Schafer’s case load is car wrecks. He also deals with motorcycle accidents, bicycle collisions, and dog bites. A lot of what Schafer does is not taught in law school, especially not during the first year. I’m in his office on this cold winter day to learn about the field of personal injury as part of a half-day job shadow. I’m trying to figure out what to do with my law degree when I graduate, and perhaps land a job during my first summer break. Schafer tells me he spends a lot of time counseling injured clients, listening to their personal problems, doling out sympathy. He also does a lot of negotiating. A substantial number of cases are settled before a lawsuit is even filed, and according to one of his brochures, 98 percent of cases are settled without the client stepping foot in a courtroom.

I sit in Schafer’s office for almost three hours, listening to him work the phones, and peppering him with questions. For a busy lawyer, he’s exceedingly patient. He talks about the importance of relationship building with other lawyers, physicians, insurance companies.

Personal injury seems appealing on a number of fronts. For one, it means a big paycheck if you can successfully market yourself and find the right clients. It’s also the financial bread and butter of many law firms, even if reality doesn’t play out exactly like it does in, say, a John Grisham novel like the The Rainmaker. Schafer does admit that personal injury has a bad reputation, partly due to those ubiquitous television ads. But the image of the ambulance chaser isn’t justified, he says, and most people change their tune about personal injury after they get screwed by an insurance company. Schafer still does a lot of advertising and marketing, as you can see from the above video. He says the Internet is the “great equalizer in the law business” in terms of marketing, and a key way for a solo practitioner to get the word out.

I leave Schafer’s office with even more questions swirling in my head. How would I create a Web site about myself? Would I even want one? What kinds of personal injury cases would I take if I entered the field? Whatever the answers, I’m grateful for Schafer’s generous allotment of time during this second job shadow. As we gear up for the big summer job hunt in February (see the new summer job poll in the upper right corner of this page), it’s helped me get a much better sense of how I might be spending my days in the future.

Law school grades: slicing and dicing the numbers

The second semester of law school at U of L has started, but I still have one foot stuck in the fall semester. The reason: grades are out. We received our results over the winter break, and professors are now holding individual meetings to discuss the results. In our Contracts class yesterday, Professor Grace Giesel told us not to freak out about the marks we received. In the transition from high school to college, she said the bottom half of students usually drop out. And in the transition from college to law school, the bottom 90 percent of students drop out. So she said the experience we had in those earlier schools, when we walked into a classroom, looked around and quickly decided that we could “beat these guys easy” is essentially no longer going to work. With that in mind, Giesel provided a breakdown of our grades for the first semester, and the number of people who received each score.

• A (5)
  
• A minus (7)
  
• B plus (9)
  
• B (13)
  
• B minus (8)
  
• C plus (8)
  
• C (12)
  
• C minus (3)
  
• Less than C minus (3)
  

Seeing this list was somehow comforting, at least to me. My overall grade of a B for the course put me right in the middle, which is absolutely fine. My other grades were similar – nothing lower than a B, nothing higher than an A minus. My grade point average of 3.12 is hardly spectacular, but it’s solid enough to put me somewhere in the top one third of the class, at least according to these ranking tables from previous years. An upper level student tells me we’ll receive our actual rankings in a few weeks, and then again after each subsequent semester in law school. So the task ahead is simple: repeat what I just went through another five times over the next two and a half years, and I should be able to graduate. Simple, maybe. Difficult, definitely.
(Image: Columbia Law School blog site)

The bankruptcy lawyer: job shadow Part I

Work may be scarce in some parts of the legal industry, but that’s not the case for Marc Levy. Partly due to the recession, people are streaming into Levy’s office at 440 S. Seventh St. in downtown Louisville. They’re seeking relief from credit card debts, mortgage foreclosures, and past-due medical bills. Levy, a 1980 graduate of our law school, allowed me to spend an afternoon with him as part of a series of job shadows that I hope to complete over the winter break. He also agreed to let me write about the experience.

Levy and I first met about a year ago when I was writing a feature story for The C-J about the sharp growth in personal bankruptcy filings in the metro area. His schedule was packed then, and it’s still packed now. Levy tells clients that they shouldn’t be embarrassed to file. Those “creative” home loans that got us into this economic mess are still a problem for many people, and credit card companies are slapping 20 percent APRs on loyal customers to make up for the industry’s new regulations. Levy has practiced bankruptcy law almost exclusively for the past 10 years. He takes cases that other lawyers turn down because they’re too complicated.

I sit through two initial consultations with new clients, and get a quick feel for how satisfying it can be to help people who are in serious financial trouble. For the most part, the process is fairly routine. Levy asks a series of questions: How long have you lived in Kentucky? Do you own any real estate? Have you previously filed for bankruptcy? He scribbles down answers on a yellow legal pad, then describes the two most common options: Chapter 7, usually for those with less income and fewer assets, and Chapter 13, which takes longer but allows the client to keep more property. The initial meeting takes less than an hour, and by the end of each consultation I can see the relief spreading across the faces of the people sitting at Levy’s desk. It’s not always this easy, he tells me later. Some people wait too long before they seek help. Others struggle to accept the realities of bankruptcy, such as being forced to lower donations to their church. But for the most part, Levy likes bankruptcy law. He’s settled there after also practicing in real estate, divorce, and criminal law.

I sit in Levy’s office for three hours, listening to him talk to clients, and fiddling with the buttons on the new suit coat that I bought the night before. When I picked it up the next morning, Gary, my “wardrobe consultant” at Men’s Wearhouse on Shelbyville Road, said I looked like a million-dollar bill waiting for change. It was my first new suit in nine years. I left Levy’s office with a very positive impression. I’m sure bankruptcy law isn’t for everyone, but the experience to me was fascinating. Clients open a window into their troubled finances, and the help you provide gives them a way to get back on their feet. Levy is waging a one-man sword fight against giant credit-card companies and mortgage lenders, and he seems to win most of the time. It’s also hard to argue about a job that gets nice and busy when the rest of the economy is in the toilet. Stay tuned for more job shadow reports in the next 10 days. My next assignment: the personal injury lawyer.

I know when you will get your grades

I will never forget the agony of waiting for my LSAT score (well, OK, both of my scores). Over the next few weeks, I imagine that many of us 1Ls will endure a similar experience as we wait for our first-semester grades. For some of us, these grades will play a big role in deciding whether we are able to find a summer job. They also will be the source of endless grumbling, speculation, rumors, and, for a few of us, excitement.

I happened to be in the law library today, and was thinking about when we would receive our scores. So I went straight to the source: Barbara Thompson, director of student records, who told me (much to my surprise) pretty much exactly when we would get the goods. For those of you who don't want to know, you might want to stop reading. For the rest of us, here's the deal: check ULINK in the late afternoon of Dec. 18, say around 4:30 p.m. Grades for each of our five finals, including Legal Research, will show up one by one. You also should receive an email informing you about the grades being posted. If they aren't there Friday afternoon, Thompson says check ULINK the morning of Monday, Dec. 21. There's a slight chance that the grades still won't be posted, but only if there's a problem with a particular course, a computer issue, a giant flood, etc.

One semester down, five to go

We have officially completed our first semester of law school. Not counting the bar exam and the fact that few law firms are hiring, we're one-sixth of the way to becoming attorneys. Today, I am promising myself that I won't think about the future. I just finished four gigantic final exams in twelve days, and I'm going to enjoy living in the moment. I'm going to walk my dog, Zola, get a haircut at a barbershop on Bardstown Road, and begin reading The Rainmaker by John Grisham. There will be no cases to brief, no open memos, no outlines.

When our class finished yesterday's Contracts final, members of both sections made a dash for The Granville on S. Third Street to consume large quantities of cold beer (and a few mid-day shots of tequila). It was a well-deserved session, Now we have three weeks of freedom before the spring semester begins. I'm going to worship every one of them.

Hip hop lesson in Civil Procedure

Just walked out of our final exam in Civil Procedure, and I can honestly say that it was the most grueling and difficult of our exams so far. Basically, it amounted to a three and a half hour mental beat-down. By the time I finished, my brain felt like total mush. But if there's anyone out there who wants an encore, check out this rap by a bunch of law students at UC Berkeley. Now, it's on to Contracts, our fourth and final exam. I don't know how I am going to muster the energy for another test. I guess I will start with lunch, and a lot of deep breaths.

My 7-year-old kid may be a torts genius

I had one of those golden parenting moments this morning. I'm driving my 7-year-old son to school, and we get into a conversation about car wrecks - who is responsible, what are the penalties, etc. Then, almost out of nowhere, he turns to me and says this: "Does the driver have to pay if he doesn't mean to crash into the other car, and the judge decides it's a mistake?" For the love of law school, I almost jumped through the windshield. What a terrific question, I told him. Too bad we only had five more minutes to get to school.

This is the type of issue that we've just spent the entire semester examining in our Torts class. And in another two days, it'll be one of the central issues on our 1L Torts final - the second of four final exams that will end Dec. 10. The study of torts is a maddening process, but it has great application to everyday life. Liability in the car wreck scenario, for example, may turn on whether the driver could reasonably foresee the result of his actions, whether the injured driver did something to contribute to the crash, and other factors such as the weather, local traffic statutes, and whether the driver was behind the wheel of an ambulance or police cruiser. Here are a few other torts tidbits, gathered from our casebook and various study aids.

• A driver who has a sudden heart attack behind the wheel may not be negligent in causing a wreck, as long as he doesn't know he is susceptible to a heart attack.
  
• A child under the age of 18 is treated like an adult in a negligence case, as long as the child is engaging in an activity normally reserved for adults. Otherwise, the kid is treated like a kid. But courts differ widely on what is an adult activity. Some say golf is adult-like, but deer hunting is not. What about a snowmobile? A go-kart?
  
• There is generally no duty to come to the aid of a person in peril in a public setting. But, a person who puts another in peril due to his negligent acts is also liable to anyone who tries to rescuer that person and is in turn injured. And the rescuer herself may be negligent if she acts rashly in conducting the rescue. And on and on and on...
  

Law students are like squirrels during finals

One of my primary motivations in going to law school is the meritocracy of the legal industry. In my former career, it drove me absolutely nuts that I could work like a donkey for 12 months, and receive a 3 percent raise, while the guy four desks over could come in late every day, take a two-hour lunch and collect 2.5 percent at the end of the year. But as we bear down on our first set of final exams in law school, I'm starting to learn about the reality of my new meritocracy. Most of the biggest law firms in Louisville, for example, will only take a look at the top 20 percent of students in a given class. And due to the ragged economy, very few of them are taking a look at 1Ls, no matter how good their grades are. Then you factor in the background of most students here, including me, who cruised through college at the top of their classes. That's not going to happen ten days from now when the first wave of finals hits the beach.

The median 1L grade-point average at U of L, I am told, is somewhere around 3.0. Louisville is not known for its grade inflation. Either way, it's been amazing to watch the students in our 1L class change from normal human beings into frightened animals, scurrying about the library like crazed squirrels hunting for the last few acorns before the first snow storm of winter. Many of us are in the library eight or nine hours a day. A guy told me yesterday that he had a dream about vested remainders in life estates. The good thing about Louisville, at least so far, is that our professors are incredibly accessible for questions and review sessions. Our civil procedure professor invites students to go out to lunch with him, and our property professor is in her office with the door open almost eight hours a day. The instructors in all four of my core classes have practice exams posted online, many of them with answer keys. The expectations are ridiculously high, and several professors have been candid about their reputations for tough grading. They also are quick to remind us that grades won't matter 30 years from now, and that there are plenty of great lawyers out there who got Cs in law school. That may be the case, but from where I'm sitting it doesn't make me feel any more comfortable. Back to the books.

Happy Birthday Brandeis

One of Louisville's most famous figures, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, was born today in 1856. About a zillion streets, buildings, stamps, and other things are named after Brandeis, including our law school (in 1997), which was founded 10 years before Brandeis was born. Brandeis also donated his scholarly works to the law library, and his ashes are buried outside the school. A few interesting facts about Brandeis from Professor Laura Rothstein:

• Brandeis had a special affinity for animal crackers and hot donuts.
  
• While researching cases, he filed documents in a bathtub at his home.
  
• After finishing high school in Europe, he was admitted to Harvard Law School at age 18, and finished at age 20 with the highest grade point average in school history.
  
• Brandeis was the first Jew to join the U.S. Supreme Court (appointed 1916).
  
• Famous quote: "Knowledge is essential to understanding and understanding should precede judging."
  

Each year, law students place coins at his grave in front of the school just before final exams. According to Rothstein, the assumption is that the coins bring good luck. For more details on Brandeis, click here.

I used to have a life before law school

If this guy spent as much time studying as he did on the video, he would be in fantastic shape. Either way this is a good laugh.

1L memo is a "write" of passage

We're rounding third base and heading for home in one of our core first-year classes: Basic Legal Skills. There is perhaps no other course that elicits the groans and complaints of what we call BLS. I imagine that many students would prefer to omit the "L" completely, but the class has taught me some very important lessons. Chief among them, at least for me, is that no matter how much writing I have done in the past, the process of legal writing must be learned from the ground up. Nothing in my journalism career showed me how to write in a CREAC format, for example. And in many ways, I have been forced to unlearn many of the doctrines of professional journalism. A few of my new rules: don't (I mean do not) use contractions; do repeat the same word over and over again so as not to vary the meaning of your message; and don't forget to write a conclusion over and over and over again (see CREAC link above).

Some of these principles are maddening to follow, but there is a reason for the madness. We're learning how to write like lawyers, and the technical details are no small matter. Anyway, our last BLS class for the fall finished at 2 p.m. today. Our second and final memo of the semester is due on Monday, and for many of us it's a life consuming project. But in a few more days we'll be finished, and another 1L rite of passage will be under our belts. And then, we will only have four more final exams to go before the entire first semester is over. Did I just say four more finals? Gotta go study.