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

Copyright Infringement

Because I'm a 1L and I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is legal anymore, I feel obligated to tell you that I may have 'accidentally' plagiarized the title of my blog. You see, as soon as I started to spend way too much library study time on Facebook, I started to think that it might be more prudent for me to create some sort of non-status-update forum for my witticisms. I prefer long-form anyway and maybe if I limit the 'updates' to an hour-long blogging session, I would actually use the six hours I've allocated to the library for studying instead of friend-surfing (affectionately referred to as face-stalking but that sounds mildly illegal).

Well, in any case, I took the name of my blog from some random FB post I made about my neuroticism and our crazy professors at the College of Super Public Interest Law (herein referred to as SPIL for the sake of anonymity) Sidebar: I considered naming it Super Public Law Interest Foundation--SPLIF--but figured that might offend some sensibilities. Anyway, my thought process:

'What sounds cool and sounds like a story or odyssey, but in parts?' I asked myself. 'Tales! Indeed, tales are stories and odysseys in parts! And tales are old school, so I'll get mad hipster props from my SF peeps!' (<--ironic) (=super-hipster)(=score).

So I incorporated my neuroticism and law student stuff with the tales. Lo and behold, "Tales of a Neurotic Law Student" was created!

A few days later, I passed by my super meager recessed bookcase with the six books I was able to carry on the plane from my collection back in NY. (Oh my loves! I look forward to seeing your thousand brothers and sisters in December! Maybe they can join you and our family will become whole again!) I caught the green cover out of the corner of my eye.

'Ivy Briefs. Martha Kimes. Great book,' I thought to myself. 'She totally laid law school out in truth. And she had a great sense of humor about everything. Who knew lawyers had a sense of humor? Ha! What's that? Oh no.' I walked closer to the bookshelf and saw, in large bold type underneath the title: "True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student." Fml. Seriously.

As a neurotic, mildly narcissistic law student, my first response was to think that, one day, Martha Kimes would grace my blog with her web presence and haul my ass to jail for plagiarizing her book title. And then I would get kicked out of SPIL and I would be forever doomed to be the ignorant, plagiarizing girl from the East Coast who tried to knock off the Ivy League author. Fail!

So I compromised with myself and with the hypothetical, surreptitious, blog-surfing Martha Kimes. IF I admit that I took her title by accident--you know, one of those subconscious-entering decisions--THEN she could not sue me BECAUSE, according to MLA citation methods which I am familiar with at this point in time, not having started with The BlueBook legal citation method, so long as I credit the plagiarized material to the correct source, I cannot possible be held responsible for copyright infringement.

I hope.