RawLaw

With this, my 200th post, I announce a major overhaul of my blog. Mostly, it means I won't be posting regularly. You may have already figured that out. Truth be told, this blog has never acquired the readership I hoped it would, but I still enjoyed posting. I'm still going to enjoy posting, but I'm not going to force myself to do it.

I will continue to update you on major events in my life and majorly funny things.

For example--and this is SUCH a good example of the stuff I like to see on this blog--Anna Nicole Smith's T&E case over who gets her late husband's fortune is going to the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court is going to do a full-out evaluation of Ms. Smith's fortunes.

I had my second 3L callback interview today. The process has a dramatically different feel as a 3L. I don't know what firms want. As a 2L, if you get a callback you have to make pleasant conversation and listen attentively while the associates and partners sell you the firm. That gets you an offer. As a 3L, I can't tell if I should be selling them or if they are selling me. It's a crapshoot, and I'm rolling 12s. First you have to convince them that you aren't a river-jumping, whizzing-on-a-partner maniac who managed to lose an offer at your 2L firm. Then you have to prove that you aren't a grass-is-greener type who is going to change firms and promptly spread rumors about the hours, the cheapness, and screamers. So you have to explain why the old firm was good. But then they start to doubt your commitment to change firms and think you are re-interviewing for the pleasurable ego stroke. So then you have to trash your old firm in an optimistic way.

Unsurprising that I haven't gotten any offers yet.

Cut me some blorking slack. I just started school and I had a callback interview today, so I don't have a lot of free time to blog around with. [So I'm reinterviewing. More on that later.] You'd think that given that I had a big callback, 2 classes for which I did no homework or book purchasing, and about 80 billion chores to do today, I'd wake up worried about one of those items. But No. Instead, I woke up at the ungodly hour of 7:30 because I was replaying in my mind every poker game I lost this summer. Which, by the way, is an obscene amount. I've concluded that I have the worst luck in the world. Never mind the nagging suspicion that I'm actually a lousy card player. Urgh.

**Please donate money or time to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. I know your gas prices just spiked, but they need your cash more than you need to top off the tank.**

Let's recap the top three stories of summer associates doing really, really stupid shit:

3. One summer misunderstood her importance in the world and blew off a fun summer event one day to do work. That summer was me. I am ashamed. Offer status: positive, but I think I pushed the boundaries of propriety by the end of the semester. Yesssssss.

3. Some guy went boozing a little too hard one night, woke up late, and drove a firm-rented car to his department's event. He crashed the car into a wall. Then he tried to get the firm to pay for a cab ride to his friend's house that night. Offer status: unknown.

1. Some girl got blotto at a charity event her firm gave her tickets to. She jumped into the Hudson River without the burden of clothing. Let's remember that the Hudson River is full of disgustingly dirty things: severed body parts, sewage, exhaust fluid, and the hair Donald Trump sheds. Offer status: negatory.

Yall have a great loooong weekend. Happy drinking and hot-dogging.

I'm a woman of my word. That's right. I'm back.

"school" (lowercase to show its insignificance) hasn't really gotten started. For me at least. I'd like to attribute this to 3L syndrome, but really I'm just so fucking lazy.

You see, this summer, working at the Firm, I recognized this "laziness" quality in myself. I always thought I was a hard worker. But firm lawyers work, like, a lot. More than 9 to 7, and I thought I could put them to shame with my 9 to 7 work ethic. Well, 9:30. 10 if I'm out doing sake bombs the night before.

My first day of work I got an assignment at 5:30. The partner said it would take a couple of hours. "Couple" means "2", right? Wrong. I learned Lesson #1 of the Summer of the Firm: Double the amount of time a partner says the assignment will take. Give or take a few more hours, and then don't plan to sleep that night. Now you're ready.

At midnight that first nubile day, I felt a gritty feeling in my rapidly expanding stomach. (Summer lunches are like butter. Yes, butter. The restaurants placed a stick of butter on my plate and I ate the entire thing with a tiny fork and knife. Then I ate the second stick with the big fork and the third stick with the pastry spoon. I couldn't be rude to the associates taking me out to dinner, folks.) So that gritty feeling got bigger as the night wore on. A few more nights like that and that infant irritation blossomed into an ugly bitterness consuming my soul. And that bitterness told me clearly that (a)I don't like working, and (b)I should vomit the butter sticks up in the bathroom pronto.

I didn't vomit the butter sticks up. Even if I didn't harden my work ethic, I'd be damned if I left the Firm Summer with a weak stomach.

Wow. I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted. I guess I should officially admit that I am on hiatus. Apologies to all those who kept checking back for a new post. That was pretty shitty. I hate it when blogs do that.

Anyway, I am officially on hiatus until, let's say, September the First. I will return with lots of incisive and witty law school and law firm gossip.

And just so you all know, cuz I know you thought about it--that summer associate who got boozified and jumped in the Hudson River, the one the Coast Guard had to fish out--that wasn't me.

Um, I'm freaking out a little. No lie. My first Firm assignment involves a kind of law I know nothing about. I just Googled the kind of law and now I memorized the definition, but I don't understand what it means. I need to Control+F my old class notes now for any information whatsoever on this kind of law. Why is law school so useless?

On another front, it's time for me to consider what classes to register for next year. I'm fighting myself on this one. Do I take the useful classes or the easy ones? I'll be a 3L, but I've never been one to shirk my academic duties before. But I think I haven't shirked my academic duties because I've always set my standards so low. I don't want to set myself up for failure in what better be my last year of academic life! I'm leaning toward the easy classes.