Latest law school video pitches Lawlapalooza

Haven't heard of Lawlapalooza? It's the local legal community's annual battle of the bands, and a fundraiser for the Judge Ellen B. Ewing Foundation. I wrote about it last year at this link. Some students and faculty this year created a YouTube video promoting the Oct. 27 event, which made me feel good because at times I've felt a strange compulsion to create my own cheesy law school videos (or see my complete list of law school videos). It's good to have company.

A Day in the Life of a Law Student: Busy, Busy

So you want to go to law school? Better get your calendar ready. Life is about to get busy. My day started at 6:25 a.m. and is almost over as the clock ticks past 11 p.m. Between those two goalposts, here is what I did:

• 6:25 a.m. -- Check email, take a quick look at Secured Transactions reading assignment, sip cup of tea, pay a few bills. 
• 7:15 -- Shower, make breakfast for kids, pick out dress clothes for deposition later in day. 
• 8:00 -- Arrive at law school after dropping kids off at Brown School downtown. 
• 8 to 8:55 -- Study Secured Transactions like hell hath no fury. Hope I am not called on in class. 
• 9 to 10:15 -- Pound notes into my keyboard during Secured Transactions, and give thanks that I am not called on in class. 
• 10:15 to 10:25 -- Walk to post office (highlight of the morning) to ship a law school book to some guy who bought it from me on Amazon. Score $70!
• 10:30 to noon -- Put finishing touches on 6,400-word essay (excluding footnotes) for law review, and wonder why I agreed to go through the torture of writing two different law review notes. 
• Noon to 1 p.m. -- Study like mad for Negotiable Instruments; wolf down cold leftover mac and cheese from kids' dinner two nights ago. Hmmm. 
• 1 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. -- Feeling pretty good in Negotiables, actually enjoying the material in a geek-out sort of way. Professor somehow makes topic interesting. 
• 2:15 to 3:30 -- Put on tie, prepare for mock deposition exercise by frantically reviewing dozens of pages of documents and notes about a fictitious car wreck. Run into another student in the library and briefly talk about law school ping-pong tournament that we've both entered. Enter library, run into student who is opposing counsel. He asks me if I'm ready. I say yes, but only because there is no other choice. 
• 3:30 to 4:30 -- Depose another student's wife in a second-floor classroom in front of a video camera, feeling bad for her the entire time but relishing the chance to dig up information in an adversarial setting. This is why I want to become a lawyer, damnit. 
• 4:30 -- Check email from senior partner at law firm where I clerk. Find message about opposing counsel filing tons of discovery documents in mass tort case that I am managing. Ponder how that, and related deadlines and obligations, are going to dominate the rest of my week. 
• 4:30 to 5:45 -- Realize that the format of my legal citations for the law review essay is absolutely inadequate,  and spend lots of time trying to fix things. 
• 6 p.m. -- Come home, hang out with kids and wife, watch them eat dinner, and later play Chutes and Ladders with my 5-year-old. I win. 
• 7 p.m. -- Soccer game at Mockingbird with my men's indoor team. One of our key players has just returned from cancer treatment after being off for several months. He is an inspiration. I score two goals, and we win 5 to 3. Beer on me after the game.
• 9:10 -- Damn law review essay still isn't finished. Switch to red wine, think about reading for Criminal Procedure, and instead spend an hour fixing the last citations and polishing the main text of the essay. Send final draft to top editors. Major sigh of relief. 
• 10:30 -- Draft a lease for a friend who owns rental property and asks me for help. Good networking opportunity. Losing steam. Try to stay focused. 
• 11:15 -- Crap, the blog hasn't had a new post in a week. How does that happen?

Photo of the Week: Hiding Out at Ekstrom, Channeling the Wisdom of Frank Haddad, Jr.

Frank E. Haddad, Jr.(1), perhaps Louisville's most legendary criminal defense lawyer, once said that successful trial attorneys need to be concerned about matters, but not worry about them.

"When you worry about matters, you don't last long; you either start drinking, or you get nervous or break down.You've got to develop a constitution not to worry."(2)

I am learning to follow Haddad's wisdom, and I think this is one of law school's greatest gifts so far. I've always been willing to carry a heavy load of responsibilities, but I've never been able to fully master the art of being calm in the storm. This semester, there is no choice. I have five classes, two of which are crashing down on me with assignments, plus a part-time job as a law clerk, rental property to manage, a volunteer coaching gig with my 5-year-old's soccer team, weekly Cub Scouts with my 9-year-old, the Don't Forget Your Awesome Wife thing, blog posts, pay the bills, leaves to rake, etc.
So, this morning, I'm hiding out at Ekstrom, U of L's mega library (and Photo of the Week, above) right next to the law school. I'm skipping class to work on a writing assignment, which makes perfect sense. I haven't missed a class all semester, and by my third year I have enough friends to get daily notes from any class I want with a simple Facebook message. It's a temporary fix, but it'll allow me to come a bit closer to meeting my obligations. I'm concerned, but not worried. Want to share your own strategy for coping with the madness? Post it in the comments field below.

1: To read a terrific magazine profile of Haddad, click here.

2: Burton Milward, Jr., Louisville's Legendary Lawyer: Frank E. Haddad Jr. 60, available here. 

On this Date: Looking Back at 1L and 2L

A year ago, I was writing about my second-year classes, and posting an interview with Kimberly Ballard, the law school's director of academic success. Two years ago, still a very green 1L, I was writing about my first brush with mid-term exams, and a successful but somewhat unlikely campaign to buy a golf hat from my Torts professor for $1,040. Today, as I sit in the law review offices writing this post, I am increasingly finding it hard to keep my focus on law school, and away from the bar exam and job prospects (latest guilty pleasure: looking at Facebook profiles of recent graduates to see who is working and where). In addition to classes, I am also working on an interview with Jim Chen, the dean of our law school for the last five years. I sat down with him for nearly two hours last week to discuss education, law reviews, and what it is like to be one of the only individuals in the world who have worked for both Clarence Thomas and Barack Obama. Did you know that he also used to live in Iceland?

Juxtaposed: exploring the similarities, and differences, between law school and kayaking

Wild West: boating in Montana (before law school)

Wednesday is my push day in law school. Up at 6:30 to study, then it's Secured Transactions at 9, then more studying, then Negotiable Instruments at 1, followed directly by Selected Problems in Civil Procedure. So it was a welcome sign when a buddy called between classes yesterday and invited me on a quickie whitewater paddling trip that afternoon on Elkhorn Creek, just outside Frankfort. By 5:30, I was crashing through waves as I navigated the Elkhorn, surrounded by soaring sandstone cliffs and the occasional heron. Whitewater kayaking is sort of like law school, I realized later. The waves keep coming no matter what you do, and the only option is to keep paddling. In fact, surfing a nice river hydraulic is even more like law school: violent whitewater is rushing by your boat, surrounding you on all sides, and if you find just the right balance and steer upstream the right way, there is a beautiful feeling of serenity in the midst of the storm. But most of the time you're just trying to not drown.
The above comparisons notwithstanding, kayaking is actually nothing like law school. However, like many other forms of recreation, it does help to maintain sanity. It is absolutely critical that you take a break every once in awhile. I've written in previous posts about other short trips from Louisville, including the Falls of the Ohio and Red River Gorge. I also did a list of the Top Ten Things to Do on Winter Break, from bourbon tours to museums to local theater. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you remember to breathe. This morning, I'm breathing deep, feeling good, and ready to conquer the law.

Law school videos: hip hop, indy rock & comic relief

Anyone who reads this law school blog knows I am enthralled by amateur law school videos. Hey, it's a weak spot. The latest to cross my desktop is a hip-hop ode to graduating law students. So it hits home. And the production quality is surprisingly solid.



To see other law school videos, check out this one from GWU, or this from UC Berkeley. I also have my own humble offerings, including an in-class reggae interpretation of tax law, and a tour of Louisville with my Con Law book set to an indy rock soundtrack. Come to think of it, the lure of law school videos makes a lot of sense. Law school is already part theater, and the pressure and seriousness of the experience requires a little comic relief if you want to refrain from going crazy. Let the credits roll.

U of L Law by the numbers: a lesson in the past, the present, and maybe the future of legal education

I've been doing some research this fall as part of an independent study project about our law school. The project is far from over, but I've learned a bunch of interesting things about U of L Law. Here's my attempt to distill them into a short list.

0 -- number of articles that new law professors were expected to publish annually as a condition of their employment when Lawrence Knowles started teaching here in 1959.
1/2 -- amount of their time that new professors currently spend researching and writing articles
5 -- number of women in a typical U of L Law class in the late 1960s, when students smoked cigarettes in the hallways and professors addressed classes as "boys" or "gentlemen"
7 -- number of law schools in the South in 1846, when classes here cost $20 each, payable in cash to the instructor
10 -- number of female editors, out of a total of 11, on the school's flagship law review in 1984, when men still accounted for 60 percent of most classes.
14 -- number of students for every faculty member at the law school.
50 -- average number of students in most of the classes I've taken at the law school.
66 -- percentage of students at the law school who are Kentucky residents.
100 -- U of L's current rank among the nation's law schools, according to US News & World Report.
126 -- rank of the University of Louisville Law Review, compared to 315 general interest law reviews worldwide.
156 -- median LSAT score for entering students
174 -- number of total students at the law school in 1962, of whom 88 were part of the school's part-time "night division"
400 -- approximate number of current students at the law school today, of whom none are in the night division because it no longer exists (a small number of students do attend part time)
1138 -- number of friends, including me, that our law school's dean has on Facebook, compared to 23 million people who "like" his former Harvard classmate, Barack Obama, on Facebook. OK, that's not really fair, but it is interesting.
1954 -- year that first African American student graduated from the law school.
1971 -- year that the law school hired its first African American staff member.
1997 -- year that law students gained widespread access to email and the Internet
2008 -- year that Prof. Knowles last taught a law school course at U of L
8,000 -- estimated number of living graduates of our law school
16,536 -- projected cost of one year of tuition for in-state students in 2011-2012.
72,340 -- total projected cost, including transportation, tuition, books, and health insurance, for a married law student at Yale for a single year.
75,000 -- typical debt after three years of law school at Louisville, including undergraduate debt.
320,000 -- number of minutes until I graduate from law school in May.

Staring at a "lousy" job market: 3Ls at Louisville Law looking at grim employment picture

When I started law school in 2009, I figured my timing was perfect. By the time three years was over, the recession would be a distant memory and I would have my pick of places to begin a shining new career as a lawyer. Today, my prediction is not looking so hot. Popular legal blogs such as Above The Law continue to describe the job market for law graduates as lousy. Heck, even top law review editors at prestigious schools can't find jobs.
Here at U of L, I know of a handful of people with permanent jobs lined up. But there are far more of us who have been turned down by employers, or told that there just isn't room next year, despite the terrific job you did as a clerk. This is hardly surprising, considering how big law firms in town are trimming their ranks by laying off associates, hiring fewer graduates, and down-sizing their summer programs. It's not time to hit the panic button yet, of course. We're still just one month into our final year. In some respects, I think Louisville graduates are in a better position than their peers at higher-ranked schools, where student debt is often in the six figures. In this month's edition of Bar Briefs, for example, LBA president K. Gregory Haynes points out that law school tuition increased 317 percent from 1989 to 2009, making a law degree an increasingly "risky" investment. Haynes also makes good points about the  manipulation of employment numbers by law schools, quoting a recent ABA resolution that discusses the "disconnect between law students' perception of their employment prospects upon completion of their law school education and the reality of what law students will realistically achieve."
Elsewhere in the same publication, our own law school's dean, Jim Chen, makes the case for Louisville Law as a value school where the debt numbers are far more favorable. At the same time, he points out that even at a value school like U of L, many students are leaving school with roughly $75,000 in debt, compared to average starting salaries in the private sector of $69,400. That last figure is not from Chen, but from the school's 2009 employment report, which also indicates that 77 percent of students received job offers before graduation and more than 95 percent were employed within nine months of graduation. Those stats seem overly rosy to me, although I don't believe the school is cooking the numbers. It's simply following the established system. Even so, it's not hard to find critics of law school employment stats. Depending on what you read, law schools "completely misrepresent" the numbers, or there are at least "ongoing questions" about the validity of jobs stats.
One excellent resource, Law School Transparency, puts the median private sector salary for Louisville at $55,000. I actually would be quite happy to find a job at that level, especially considering the low cost of living in Louisville. And while I do not have a job locked down yet, I know that no matter where I land, my long-term prospects will be considerably brighter than they were in my former profession. In journalism, just hanging on to the job you have is a victory.

Blog bonanza arrives at U of L Law

When I started this blog a little more than two years ago at the request of the school's Office of Admissions, there wasn't too much company. In fact, there was no company. That's no longer the case. Sharon Wright, also a former journalist and now a 2L at Louisville Law, writes this terrific (and often very funny) blog about law school. More recently, a bunch of our new 1Ls have launched their own blogs with varying themes. I may be missing a few, but here are the ones I've tripped across recently.

• Tim Chartrand, Eating My Way Through Law School
• Morgan Brooke Hancock, Think Like a Lawyer
• Megan Resch, Confessions of a 1L at UofL
• Cassiopia Restrepo, Coffee and Casebooks
• Colten Biro, Life & Law... & Surviving?

Be sure to check out these blogs if you're thinking about applying to U of L Law. They'll give you a good look at a slice of life here from differing perspectives -- funny, poignant, frustrating, even hungry! If I've left someone out in the above list, please share additional links in the comments field below. Happy blogging... 

Hidden Attic at U of L Law Revealed

A view of the law school library's mysterious attic

As I plow through my third year of law school here at U of L, there are plenty of days when I just want to be finished. Today is not one of them. I had two very good classes today, in which I learned some pretty useful things from excellent professors. For example, I've always thought that it is best to sign one's complete name in legible cursive on the back of checks. Not true. You can use a stamp, a squiggly mark, a circle, even a smiley face as long as that is your customary method of signing. You can even have someone else sign for you (agency law). I also recently learned that I enjoy no Fourth Amendment protections if a police officer comes to my house dressed as a gas meter reader and convinces me to allow him inside. These are good things to know.
But nothing can top the visit I made this afternoon to the law library's dusty attic. I knew we had a basement, and even a sub-basement, in our library. But if you ask the reference librarian at the front desk to see the attic, she'll gladly wave you in to a separate little elevator behind the desk, which will take you to a tiled-floor room filled with thousands of books that look older than dirt. Some of them even are older than dirt. In the attic, you can peruse thick tomes about aviation law from the 1960s, or Supreme Court decisions from World War I. You can even find cracked and faded compendiums of Kentucky statutes from the 1860s and earlier (intent of the drafters, anyone?).  I realize that things of this nature may not be interesting to everyone. But if you agree with me that hidden attics are great and mysterious places, good for you. I also understand Professor Metzmeier has recently written a column about the same attic in the LBA's Bar Briefs publication. Check it out.

Photo of the Week: law school's new front lawn

There's a new front lawn at U of L Law, apparently paid for with a federal grant. According to the university, the lawn is part of a bunch of improvements aimed at making the oval a "beautiful front door" for the school. Unfortunately, the lawn has not helped me answer any of the problems that I must finish before today's Negotiable Instruments class with Professor Leibson. If anyone knows of a federal grant for that, please advise.

Quiz: how to face "free pizza season" in law school

Let me guess: the admissions office didn't tell you about Free Pizza Season when you applied to law school. No, it was not wedged in next to median LSAT scores and judicial externships on that glossy brochure. Nonetheless, Free Pizza Season (FPS) has officially arrived at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. FPS is the time of year when student groups and various commercial ventures attempt to capitalize on your three-year vow of poverty in order to capture a slice of your precious time. It's the law school equivalent of the free-vacation-in-Florida-to-sell-you-a-condo-time-share. This week alone, for example, there are three days in a row of lunch meetings sponsored by student groups. For the uninitiated, I offer the following true/false quiz on FPS.

1. I should go to as many FPS events as possible because I'm broke and free pizza sounds great.
Answer: FALSE. It's a good idea to become familiar with a few of the student organizations at the law school that cater to your own personal interests, but you'll be blowing valuable study time if you go to all of them.

2. I should at least go to all of the FPS events that offer something better than pizza, such as catered box lunches or Qdoba.
Answer: TRUE. Notwithstanding the above, you should always get free Qdoba and box lunches. They just don't come around very often. Furthermore, FPS typically winds down by early October.

3. I need to join a student organization if I eat their free pizza.
Answer: FALSE, although you can "join" most student groups at U of L Law by simply putting your email address on a list. And you won't be invited to do much of anything until your 2L year.

4.  It will help my resume if I join a few student groups.
Answer: FALSE. OK, maybe that's a bit harsh. But in most cases, employers will not look closely at membership in student organizations. They already know your resume is thin. They usually care about three things: grades, grades, and grades. However, joining one or (at most) two student groups is a nice way to meet other people, lay the foundation for joining a study group, or maybe do some volunteering in the community.

5. I thought this quiz was about pizza. It seems like we're getting off topic.
Answer: TRUE.

6. FPS events sponsored by groups such as Westlaw, Lexis, Barbri, and Kaplan are not as valuable, even though they typically have better free stuff.
Answer: TRUE. At least in my opinion, you should choose wisely when it comes to burning an hour of your time with one of these groups. I'm not saying that the intriguing info session on how to search state statutes using truncators isn't worthwhile. Just be careful with your time.

7. I can take the free pizza, stay for five minutes, and then go study somewhere else.
Answer: TRUE. You could, but it's tacky. Don't do it.

8. I should also be careful about the FPS events hosted by the law school to discuss job interviews, professionalism, studying abroad and other stuff.
Answer: FALSE. At least in my opinion, the events hosted by the school itself, especially those focused on OCI and job interviews, are worth attending.

9. Student groups that host an FPS event with no pizza are definite skippers.
Answer: FALSE. Some of the best student organizations at U of L Law do not offer free food because they are small, have meager budgets, or simply choose not to spend money on free food. In many cases, it will be easier to get involved with these groups because there are fewer students in their membership, and they need volunteers.

10. FPS is a good representation of how Louisville does pizza.
Answer: absolutely, positively FALSE. Most student groups, at least the ones I'm familiar with, buy the cheapest pizza for FPS events. That means Domino's, Papa John's (actually a local company), Pizza Hut and the like. If you want to try "real" local pizza in Louisville, check out Wick's, Spinelli's, Papalinos, or one of the other shops that appear on this list.

Photo of the Week: first day of law school at U of L

Some of my fellow 3Ls are posting comments on Facebook about today being their last first day of school ever. That's hard to believe, but I'll take it. A year ago, I published a photo of myself wearing a new pair of shoes, along with a post about the mixed feelings I had about the start of the 2L year. There are no mixed emotions this time around. My mantra heading into 3L: get 'er done. But not everyone is in the same boat. To the new 1Ls, I offer you a hearty welcome to U of L Law, personified by the "welcome" sign drawn in chalk in the above photo. To the 2Ls, I offer a reminder that things could be worse, i.e. you could be pushing a broom on a construction site. Actually, for all I know, this guy is probably happier than 90 percent of law students. Either way, keep working, you'll get there.

Contrarian law school tip #37: make a reading list

The start of the fall semester at U of L Law is now less than a week away. The first-year lambs are picking up their case books, browsing student organization tables at orientation, and doing other various activities that will eventually lead them to slaughter. Just kidding. Louisville Law does a great job of making sure that 1Ls and upper-class students don't lose their heads during what can be the most stressful years of one's life. I am volunteering at a panel next week to talk about balancing law school and family. The best advice I've heard from anyone about starting law school came from Kathleen Bean, the school's dean of student life. Her words to us two years ago: don't let them mess with your head. The pronoun "them" was a  general reference to students, faculty, exams, jobs, and perhaps most of all the pressure that law students put on themselves to succeed.

There are plenty of ways to not let law school mess with your head, and I'm not going to try to list them all in this post. One of my favorite is to keep a personal book list. That's right: read for pleasure. Even with all of the dense legal tomes that overwhelm our lives for hours each day, I look forward to spending the last twenty or thirty minutes of each night with a good book. Before my 1L year, I read A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr, along with Getting to Maybe, One L by Scott Turow, and quite a few John Grisham novels. Below are three of my favorite books from this summer. I am betting they will stick with me at least as well as my fall reading material on negotiable instruments and secured transactions.

• How to Start & Build a Law Practice, by Jay Foonberg. This class how-to book shows how to open your first office, where to buy your stationary, how to avoid sketchy clients, and how to minimize your chances of total and absolute failure. You can buy it for $80 in hardcover, or check it out from the law library for free. 
• The Testament, by John Grisham. I just can't make it through a summer without reading one Grisham novel. Classic literature they are not, but I love 'em just the same. 
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. An airplane stewardess saw me reading this and gave me a strange look. Why would you want to read that again, she asked, referring to the obvious fact that every American high school or college student was forced to read this classic. To me, the answer is just as obvious: because I am no longer being forced to do so, because it's a wonderful love story, and because it offers terrific insights into the practice of law and life in general in the South. It also contains amazing descriptive language, like this passage about summer heat and humidity: "Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

Top Signs that Summer of Law is Almost Over

Last spring's graduates finished their grueling two-day bar exam yesterday, and my inbox is filled with messages about volunteering at orientation for the 1Ls who are starting law school in a few weeks. These are but a few of the signs that summer is giving way to fall, and my third (and final) year at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. I am pleased to announce that the school is sponsoring this blog for another year. Accordingly, the title has changed to "3L at U of L." Please also check out my colleague Sharon Wright who writes her own blog about U of L Law at this link.
In all honesty this summer has been one of the best in recent memory. Granted, a lot of this is due to our family's decision to drop $400 at Wal-Mart on an above-ground swimming for our backyard (see video below). However, my summer clerkship at the law offices of Jones Ward PLC deserves almost as much credit as the pool. I've learned an incredible amount of stuff in a few short months, from how to litigate a garden-variety personal injury car wreck case to the intricacies of multi-district litigation for defective medical devices. I've written motions and briefs for federal court cases, visited dozens of clients all over Kentucky, and crafted multi-media demand letters to insurance companies. In fact, as I gear up for my third year of law school, I'm already starting to realize the wisdom of the aphorism that 3L is the most boring year of school. It's not that this year is going to be boring, it's that the first year after graduation is going to be exciting as we prepare to move into full-time practice. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Over the next few months, I'll be writing about how to succeed in law school, with a particular focus on upper-level courses, the law review, student loans, and working as a clerk during school. Got a question or a topic of your own that you want covered? Send me an email at acdavi07@louisville.edu.