CivPro

For some reason, SPIL decided that 1L Section 1 should have to suffer through Civil Procedure (CivPro) at 8:30am. Anyone who has ever known me is aware of the fact that I hate the morning. I actively wait until the afternoon to get out of bed. The three hour time difference from NY to CA put me on 'normal people' time for awhile but after two weeks I came to resent the morning again. 

Naturally, I have come to hate this class, regardless of the thoroughly entertaining lectures of our extraordinarily amusing professor. Without fail, my coffee kicks in around 9am which means that I have no recollection of the first half hour of class and my notes are poorly-outlined gibberish. 

In any case, what you have to know about CivPro is that it's all about how you go through the procedure of creating and sustaining civil cases. The problem of this class is that, without any practical experience, you have to creatively imagine all of the proceedings. Learning CivPro in this fashion requires a great deal of abstract thought and hypothetical setting, which means that it's rather boring. The only way you can take it out of the abstract and root it in reality is by completing the steps yourself or by imagining someone  else carrying out the steps. Try to be stimulated by the images of someone walking a pleading to the court office. Or writing a pleading at their computer. Or assembling thousands of documents for discovery. Make that person hot and blonde, maybe it'll be okay. Make that person your 90-year old professor, good luck. One of my friends from NY drew this diagram for me to temper the studying boredom and I can't wait to share it with you:

Of course, my friend is a huge, misogynist, but hey, it works to inject some humor into the ridiculousness of Civil Procedure :) Love you, Rich <3

Truthfully though, our professor makes absolutely no sense sometimes. I highly recommend purchasing the supplement below. Very clear. Examples galore. Grounds the abstract in reality quite well.

Examples & Explanations: Civil Procedure, Sixth Edition by Joseph W. Glannon