AnonymousLawStudent

Summer Associate Event

2005-08-17T23:05:00.000-04:00

After a 6 PM day, we have a cocktail reception. A bunch of us are gathered around a table with some booze and a little light food. There will be a show and some kind of afterparty with the "cool" associates there and I will stumble home at 3 AM completely drunk and happy, at least until the morning.

Right now, however, I am at a cocktail reception and talking to some Counsel [translation: tried to climb the hill and fell just short] type from a department I have never heard of. I think he does airplane leases or something. Ugh. So while he is carrying on about asset-backed securitization, I tune into the converation behind me. A cute [7 to 7.5, depending on clothes and makup] summer is talking to a youngish M&A partner. He just asked her if she was seeing anyone and invited to her "hang out" at his place in the Hamptons. I did some work for the guy earlier in the summer. I wonder if his wife will mind.

Explaining my absence

2005-08-14T22:17:00.000-04:00

I did not want to stop writing this thing while working because, well, you can only imagine how much fodder for discussion a summer associate gig at a top New York firm can provide. But throughout the surreal absurdity of it all, I decided to stop for a number of reasons. Among them:
-Time. I certainly was not doing much work but between events, after-parties and after-after-parties, it's tough to be sober enough at home to be writing this thing. And I was not stupid enough to be writing at work.
-The overwhlemed factor. When ten absolutely insane things happen every day, how do you pick one or two to analyze?
-Most importantly, maintaining my Anonymous status. Put quite simply, if I retold the summer as it was happening in real time it would be very easy for one of my co-workers to figure out who I was. And we would not want that.

So stay tuned.

Time to start up again

2005-08-10T22:21:00.000-04:00

Guess who's back
Back again
ALS's back
Tell a friend
Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back
guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back...

2005-05-20T18:59:00.000-04:00

The most surprising thing about being a wanna-be lawyer is how useless law school is. I mean none of the shit I have "learned," aka crammed into my brain the week before an exam only to be vomited into the screen come exam-time and be forgotten the next day, has come in even remotely handy.

The second most surprising is how hard it is to get used to the higher resoltuion and smaller display of my laptop than my giant flat screen and it's old-man mode that I stare at all day. Come to think of it, I should probably go drink so this doesn't give me a headache.

2005-05-17T00:13:00.000-04:00

I am sitting down at my first lunch as a summer associate of the AnonymousNewYorkFirm to whom I am giving my services this summer. Myself, two other summers, two associates, and a high-wattage partner are at a table of a fine dining establishment. One of the associates interviewed me and was really friendly but very obviously deluding himself and everyone else involved with talk of of the "fantastic work" and "collegial culture." I haven't seen him in months and frankly he looks like shit, bloated and pale and beaten up by the work and the culture. He is also wearing a suit when no one else is wearing a suit, which is an unwise move since it is obvious that he was interviewing elsewhere this morning. Even I know better and I spent the better part of my weekend trying to get two 19 year old freshmen without fakes into bars on the lower east side. When we were unsuccessful one of them took me back to her dorm to do some body shots.

Instead of those good times, however, our lunch is getting tense as the associates are not showing nearly enough firm morale for the high-wattage partner and I am finding the tuna a bit flaky and tasteless even though it will set the firm back $26. I kind of feel bad for the guy, I mean he can threaten those who want to stay to become like him with stuff but for people who just want to get a paycheck for a few years, a line on the resume and leave it must be tough to exert authority. Then I think about all of the 19 year olds I won't be meeting and I feel bad for myself. Plus my cappucino tastes a tad too cold and flat. That's all I remember from today.

Answering E-Mail

2005-05-10T22:49:00.000-04:00

Some interesting stuff to come across anon_law_studnent at the y and the a-hooo account. No identities will be revealed, only the operative language will be quoted:

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Quite a bit but sending anonymous anger to an anonymous law student is not exactly a sign of a well-balanced individual either.

"[I]t appears that you attend a "good" law school...and i was wondering exactly what you did to get to this point. ie what undergrad or type of undergrad, just basically anything beyond the obvious i had a high lsat and high GPA."

Well I do indeed attend a law school that U.S. News & World Report has annoited as a top 5 institution in these United States. And since they are a crappy weekly news magazine that absolutely no one reads except for their ranking of everything in sight, I guess that's good enough. I wonder why more magazines don't just start ranking shit, those always seem to sell well. What is also curious is why institutions with a lot more legitimacy to write about higher education [Newsweek, Time, NY Times, any-fucking-one] have given this abortion of a magazine a free pass monopoly on determining who is "in" or "out" in higher education. Don't we believe in competition in this fucking country? But I am digressing.

To answer your query more fully, this is what it takes to go to a top 5 law school [following advise is for non-"underpresented" applicants only]:
1) Get good GPA.
2) Get VERY good LSAT.

That's it! I myself attended an instutution that in the undegrad U.S. News & World Report has placed very well in the past 10 years. Whether that made a difference at all, I couldn't tell you but from the experience of people around me I can tell you that having a shitty LSAT would not save you even if you had a 4.0 in astrophysics from M.I.T. The problem is that law schools have to report their numbers in order to be ranked by U.S. News & World Report and therefore will do anything to make those numbers appear higher. While this might sound lamentable, it actually worked out great for me. I have no work experience, graduate degrees, academic research, or frankly interests of any kind. But I did have a high GPA from a top school and one kick-ass LSAT and here I am, ready to lawyer and weasel my way through life. The point of all of this is that law school admissions are simply about having a high enough index [GPA+multiplier(LSAT)] and that's it. And if anyone tells you otherwise they are either lying or are an idiot.

"Please remember to never restrict anyone's
opportunities for ascertaining uninterrupted
existence for their quintessence."

Ok this one is from the comments and not e-mail but it deserves its own mention. Are you a Scientologist or something? Because I am not joining unless Jenna Elfman blows me.

2005-05-09T21:52:00.000-04:00

All done. That means it is time for a bender. More to follow...

2005-05-04T01:03:00.000-04:00

I am at the gym after the exam. Had to run out before some fat girl crying into her Juicy velour tracksuit brought me down after the adrenaline rush of non-stop 4 hours of typing. I am drinking some water, waiting for a stationary bike and some girl keeps turning around to look at me. She looks vaguely familiar but who the hell knows, I see the same people here every week and they are all just passing strangers. She is on the short side and not particularly attractive, especially not in her way too tight gym outfit. Finally she walks over to where I am standing.

"Hi...I'm AnonymousGymGirl...have we met?"

I don't think so. I mean probably but. Wait...oh, no I couldn't have.

"Um...I am not sure."

In that split second I try to reimagine her in a loose slinky top showing sufficient cleavage and $300 jeans and it all comes back. Oh, what was I thinking?

"Yeah...we met at [insert name of pretty shitty bar I never go to anymore]."

Of course we met. In fact we did more than meet. You blew me. Twice. We [or I] got really wasted and ended up going home to your apartment near Murray Hill. As I recall you were into some weird shit and were kind of loud in an odd and I may or may not have stolen a bottle of expensive tequila on my way out.

"Oh...yeah."

At this point I don't know what to say. All I know was about 8 hours after our unfortunate get-together I woke up completely drunk to find that I had re-arranged my furniture at some point in the night. I deliberately ran off without any way of being contacted and now this has come back to haunt me. In Manhattan of all fucking places. Shouldn't you be able to at least not have to see these ghosts of hookups gone wrong in a place with 9 million people?

I made up some lame excuse about just remembering that I really need to run to a study group and meander off.

Exam morning

2005-05-04T00:46:00.000-04:00

The alarm rings but it doesn't matter because I have been awake for almost an hour already, staring at the crack in the ceiling that might or might not be there. Pleading standards, policy points, presumptions and assertions that's all I can think about. Well not quite, there is also the paralyzing fear of fucking this up somehow. I know I shouldn't care and that I have already run the gauntlet and did what I had to do when it mattered and now, well I don't know why I am wrapped up in stress; habit perhaps?

I run to the bathroom as I realize that my fear of shitting the bed figuratively might become realized literally. Then I am in the shower trying to wake up and feel clean and sleek and ready. I pace around like a caged animal trying to compose myself. I look at my outline. It might not be much to look at but it has everything I need to know and more importantly organized in a way where everything is accessible within seconds. Law, cases, rules, policy, connections, dissents, history, developments, all cross-referenced, indexed, in 10 point font.

I walk into the room and sit down. The 3Ls are busy assuring each other that they like totally didn't study at all. The foreign kids are nervously thumping through voluminous notes that won't help them much in a few minutes. The weird old woman is organizing her outline collection next to her and a strange calm falls over me. I think of all of the missed nights, the ignored friends, the lost connections, the forgotten crises, the missed ups and downs of being young and in New York and I am pissed off. I am mad about the late nights, the stress, the piles of commercial guides, the sheer inhuman fucking effort it took to make the outline I am holding in my hand from bits and pieces of other lesser works. And as the proctor gets through the instructions I have now heard almost a dozen times I am so full of energy and stress and pain and rage that there is no doubt. I am ready to do what I came here to do and climb the moutain faster than anyone else in here. There is no fucking doubt now.

It's that time of year...

2005-05-02T00:56:00.000-04:00

Actual VERBATIM e-mail to cross my in box this morning. Only the names have been taken out for obvious purposes.

"Hey ALS,

Are you gonna be in newyork this summer? If so we should defanitely hang out! I am working at [real shitty firm] and yeah I haven't seen ya in a wahile.

So we got the exam on Wed....would you mind sending me your outline for [pick a class, it matters not which]? I am a little behind and you know with me breaking up with Anonymous now Ex-Boyfriend and all...I kinda stopped going... Since I was not in class, the notes that I got are a little unclear.

I can repay you with *favors*

xoxo,
-Anonymous Mooching Slut"

Review Session: A New Off-Off-Broadway Play.

2005-04-28T21:34:00.000-04:00

[Classroom of a respectable New York City law school. Professor enters to find about 10-12 students scattered around the back row.]

Professor: Hello! Sorry I am a little late. [checks watch] So since we are all busy and you have an exam to study for, let's just get started. I don't have anything prepared so this is going to be strictly Q and....yes...you in the back.

Girl Who Speaks No English Whatsoever: Professor, wah wah wah exam wah wah wah section wah wah wah understand wah wah responsible?

Professor: If I understood you correctly you are asking...did everyone hear that in the back? Should I repeat the questions? Yes. The question, I believe was whether there would be an emphasis on the one section of the Act that I never talked about but assigned hundreds of pages of reading for. I can't answer that because frankly I have not written the exam yet. So you won't be the only ones winging it [*winks*].

Creepy Old Woman [does not raise hand just starts talking]: In discussing Natural Resources Defense Council v. Any Semblance of Common Fucking Sense, you had mentioned that the standard of review was leaning towards moderate deference. The hornbooks that I have dutifully purchased and transcribed into this spirally-bound outline [waves outline around, adjusts falling glasses on nose] seem to indicate that the standard is more of "relaxed" deference. Please explain this..."inconsistency" [emits nasal laugh] if you will.

Professor: I believe that was a note case....

Creepy Old Woman: Yes, it followed in the notes after...[starts flipping furiously through sprial-bound outline which is about 100 pages too long to be useful in a 4 hour exam]...[getting flustered]

Professor: I wouldn't worry about trying to you know, pin down any note cases. Unless I mentioned them in class. If I mentioned them in class, but more in a non-passing manner, that is to say if I made any gestures indicating their importance it probably means that I am trying to communicate to you that in fact wrote them when I was clerking for Justice Kennedy. Have I mentioned that I clerked for Justice Kennedy by the way? Because if I haven't let me assure you that after getting my A.B. from Harvard and Juris Doctor from Yale Law, I did not just putz around a big firm like most of you will. No, I clerked for a fantastic Second Circuit judge and then right onto the K-train.

Foreign Guy Who Hasn't Slept in Days: What eez thees "Kennedy" you speak of? I do not see it on zee zylla-boos. I am tres con-fused.

Professor: Nevermind. Any more questions? I just realized I am missing the first half of a Nuggets-Spurs game and my 35 year old wife just got back from Europe and needs a good roll in the sack.

Creepy Old Woman: [still looking for case, about to cry since it begins to dawn on her that her outline is a fucking glorified doorstop]: I know its...here.....

Girl Who Doesn't Give a Shit: Giggles [openly typing into 4 IM windows, not paying the least bit of attention]. [Adjusts thong sticking out of sweatpants]

Professor: Unless someone else has something, I think that will be all...Remember, the exam is four hours and I will take about 3 minutes to read each one while listenning to a Beatles record my nephew just put on my iPod. So make them snappy! Good luck and please do not stay in touch. I don't answer any email to my current students, there is no reason to think that I will answer yours when you are no longer enrolled. Toodles!

Sometime during exams

2005-04-27T01:14:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of bad things about finals. Almost all of them. They have, however, been covered ad nauseum elsewhere. Here is one good thing about finals: if you aren't dating but have a kind of on-off-sometimes serial hookup and it's finals and there ain't shit else to do besides study, well you end up getting together even though you haven't seen each other in a month before or talked in weeks. And when the deed is done you have a perfect escape: it's finals! And we don't waste time during finals.

To make a long story short, the AnonymousLawStudent DNA is not yet quite completely off her face and I am already in pants, phone in hand, ready to head out the door.

"Are you going already?"

She missed a spot right below the right eye. I wish my phone had a camera right now. Then again the picture quality is so crappy it probably wouldn't show anyway.

"I have to go to office hours tomorrow...Evidence. Um...you know..."

Office hours are 4:15-5:30.

Friday 04/22/05

2005-04-23T00:04:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite blogs has a rather exenstive look at rimjobs. Apparently they are as momentus an event as a George Lucas movie. While I have certainly enjoyed the ramblings of the Philalawyer before, I thought he was shockingly prudish on this particular issue. I mean I never thought I was tha-aa-t adventurous but frankly is this activity THAT big of a deal? Is a little visit to the rear of the store when going down on a girl something shocking?

While everyone is out there trying to squeeze their squib cases into an outline this is what keeps me up late at night.

Thursday 04/22/05

2005-04-21T23:48:00.000-04:00

I was walking around campus today and three girls/young women/whatver were walking ahead of me. Not law students but not undergrads either. One of them is wearing a denim jacket and as she flips it over right shoulder a thong falls out of its right pocket. A pink and white tiny looking thing. I want to say something but I really don't know a good way to approach it. The three girls are all relatively hot and it's hot out and I havent had my coffee I don't have anything good to say. They wander off into the proverbial sunset and I go on my merry way. Walking over the same spot later I see that the article in question is still lying there. This time it has been [picked? kicked? raised? blown?] to the other side and I notice that it most certainly says "SLUT" in rhinestones on it.

Definitely should have said something...It's going to bother me for the next month now.

Monday 04/18/05

2005-04-19T00:15:00.000-04:00

A lot more people coming to class these days, with finals looming. Like the ones who haven't shown up since week 4. I really don't care one way or the other but more people coming to class means that more of us have to sit in closer proximity to each other. Which means that instead of my usual free space on either side, today I am sandwiched between some crazed-looking foreigner who clearly has not showered and a girl who looks like she might keel over and die. He is wearing a striped shirt with French cuffs with an inexpicable Ronald McDonald t-shirt underneath and picking his nose with the rubber end of a mechanical pencil, flicking the remnants of the nasal treasure away with a swift motion. Yeah real smooth, you fucker. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that 75% odds say that he doesn't have a job.

I am pretty sure that the girl has not been to class in some time because she is deathly ill. She just looks like shit, all swollen and ashen and just not very fuckable even though she was kinda hot before she got SARS, or e.coli or whatever she has. As if there was any doubt about her status, immediately after the Professor kicks things off she starts coughing. And I am not talking about a little *cough, cough* here, I am talking about chucking up a fucking lung. It sounds like she was working the coal mines in a Dickens novel or something. Assuming he wrote about coal miners. I think he has but who the fuck knows. She is red and tears are coming out of her eyes and I can't hear anything. I am trying not to breathe at all lest I catch via airborne virus whatever the fuck she has and the whole time I am wondering whether her passing out in class will mean that I will be forced to interrupt my online poker game to help her or not. I finally concede that if she falls to the floor I might have to intervene but if she just passed out head down on her desk, that's her fucking problem.

AnonymousLawStudent Answers Your Questions and Concerns.

2005-04-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

" First, Columbia is not really in Harlem, especially as the neighborhood because increasingly gentrified."

Yes, I forgot that Columbia is in "Morningside Heights," a quaint way to rename Harlem, created by real estate agents and Columbia employees seeking to quell the fears of rich suburbanites sending their children to go to school in an area that can only be generously desribed as a complete shithole.

"The fact that you said "Worst Fear to Attend" : wandering into Spanish Harlem is both racist and pathetic."

You are right and I am wrong. In fact it was racist for me to mention the mere possibility of things such as crime in El Barrio. What those of us in the "know" realize is that crime in New York City is a myth, a fabrication of the racist police force perpetuated by the racist media. Spanish Harlem is a bustling area that is completely safe and most certainly does not have runaway violent crime or a thriving drug trade. There are no cocaine dealing syndicates controlling the area or violent street gangs around. Those are just rumors to keep housing prices down.

"And here I was hoping to go to law school to get away from that stuff! You mean to tell me there's no way to escape from it?"

I am sad to inform you that law schools basically run on 1) producing critical scholarship 2) producing less idiotic scholarship that counters the critical scholarship 3) the inevitable critical counter-response, which is inevitably even more radical.

"So what do you think of the Scalia brouhaha?"

My Anonymous friend is referring to this, which I think is a most unfortunate episode. I personally believe that it is the right of every consenting adult to fuck any other consenting adult in any and every body cavity that they desire. That right, however, is not in the Constitution. Yes Scalia's textualist dogma is a little tiresome but he has the better of the argument here: the aforementioned right to fuck another consenting adult in any orifice can be taken away by the legislature.

And it does nothing to advance the argument to lower the level of discourse this way. What Scalia does with his wife is irrelevant: the legislature has decided that it disapproves of a certain kind of fucking and, whether you like it or not, Antonin does not WRITE the law. If you want all fucking legal, go bother the legislators not the men and women who interpret their pronouncements. And yes, I know that there are all kinds of rights being discovered in the Constitution but that is a dangerous road to go down since the right wing nuts will want their own right being read into the Constitution as well. To make a long story short, whoever accosted Scalia is a prick and if you are going to be a prick why not just join the times and throw a pie.

Tuesday 04/12/05

2005-04-12T20:55:00.000-04:00

Now I realize that the crack-smoking panhandler in the old neighborhood didn't get there by the virtue of strong logical reasoning skills, but this is a little too much. Why the fuck does he insist running after me in the excitement of a football player seeing a passed out freshman Tri-Delt asking for change when I am coming home from the gym? I have on shorts with no pockets and a t-shirt and my two keys are danglging from my hand. Where, Mr. Urban Blight, might I be keeping the change you are so eagerly after? Did you think I would open my my anal cavity and dislodge a wad of singles for you? Maybe I am carrying around a pouch of cash, Colombian drug-mule style taped to my stomach. And of course hearing your incoherent ramblings, I would crack it open and hand you a crip Benjamin. Or maybe I have singles stuch to my sweaty back from the gym bench. Because you see those are the only places I could have anything. Or perhaps you wanted to come back to my apartment, we could read some Gilbert's outlines together and discuss the confused state of separation of powers jurisprudence.

Of course I get home to an email from the public interest wench soliciting my yet unearned money to fund legal services for fuckers like him. Good luck with that one.

Monday 04/11/05

2005-04-12T02:37:00.000-04:00

I was out with a friend earlier. He works at a hedge fund, which apparently made a killing today flipping a stock that is about to get taken over. Something like 10% in a week's time, he says. Come out, he says, big party we are celebrating some clients and people are going to be out. Models. Cool shit, it's gonna be awesome.

I put on my finest striped shirt and make a beeline for one of Manhattan's, how shall I say this, trendiest bars. There are more 9s and 10s than I have ever seen congregated before in my life. Pretty soon I am trashed on single malt and grabbing a Polish model's ass, asking her how growing up in Prague was. Since she thinks I am making a mil+ a year, she is being very discreet about moving my palm away from her g-string and not informing me that I am several countries off. I am completely trashed but among the top 10% of sobriety of the people I am there with. Apparently they held quite a bit of the target corporation and are wasted beyond belief.

I run to the bathroom and come back for the tail end of a conversation between my friend--the young gun slinger--and his boss, a minor player in the New York hedge fund scene. The only thing I hear is the old guy saying with a smirk "...Oh yeah? Well why don't you blow me?!" I expect everyone to break out in knee-slapping laughter as they do. I am trying to flag down a waitress to get a glass of $40 port when I hear the exchange continuing:
"No, seriously, why don't you blow me."
"Um...get of here."
"No, I am not fucking around. Why don't you blow me. Get down on your knees and suck my ...."
"Dude. This is not cool."
"Hey! Fucker! Don't call me "dude." I make millions a month. You hear me? Millions of dollars. What have you done except for fuck up that Hong Kong deal last month? I buy and sell shit like you before I have breakfast. Have a little fucking respect."
"I'm sorry...I..."
"So if you want to keep that cushy job of yours and the money I waste on your incompetent ass every week, get down on your knees and...BLOW ME!"
He screams the last part. I mean at the top of his lungs, thundering the words louder than the Paul Van Dyke re-mix of some Kylie Minogue song that is blaring. The whole bar is shut down and looking on in horror. I mean the whole place stops and the Eastern European models and the gay waiters and the downtown traders and the hip wealthy children of wealthier parents all stop to stare at our table. My friend looks as white as the walls of a hospital and is nervously looking around. He has a great job that he probably could not get again and if he gets on this guy's bad side...well let's just say there won't be many models in his future. There is a silence that seems to go on forever.
"I am just kidding around, you prick."
"Um..."
"You looked like you were gonna blow me any second there."
The old guy is trying to channel Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas" but it comes out even more abusive somehow. I realize I have to piss again because I have been drinking a Thai microbrew that has appeared in my hand from out of nowhere. My friend comes in and without taking two steps throws up in the sink. I try to calm him down but he looks like he just saw a ghost.

Monday 04/11/05

2005-04-11T09:47:00.000-04:00

8:42 AM.
*phone rings*

Fumbling around, confusion. Anonymous LawStudent picks up the phone.

ALS: Hell...Hello?
Phone: Hello, this is your service staff at AnonymousBank. How are you today?
ALS: Um...did I overdraw or something?
Phone: No, sir. We are conducting a study as to how we can serve you...
ALS: I didn't overdraw?
Phone: No, sir.
ALS: And you are calling me at 8:40 in the morning to see what you can do for me?
Phone: Yes, sir. As well as to notify you of our exciting stable of financial management products, such as...
ALS: Ok, first of all don't ever call this early again. And second of all, don't EVER fucking call me unless there is an emergency of some sort. Get someone else to do your market research for you.
Phone: I um...don't think that kind of language is necessary.
ALS: I do. Fuck off and another word out of you and I am going to the National Bank of Brazil which is offering a free swimsuit calendar with every account. When was the last time you fuckers sent me any titties?
Phone: Like I said, I dont um...really...appreciate the...
ALS: Don't ever, ever wake me up again, you outsourced phone monkey.

Hang up phone. Make a burrito and search internet for flights to South America.

Saturday 04/09/05

2005-04-09T16:42:00.000-04:00

Where have you been? You, the incredibly hot undergrad walking around in your little spring/summer outfit, making me unable to concentrate on doing work. Where do you hide when it is cold? Every undegrad that I bump into now in between hurried law school obligations I want to forget when it's sunny out. Do you hibernate or migrate out of this snowy metropolis when you can't wear strappy tank-tops that create mounds of cleavage over sorority butt-shorts? I don't know but I want to find out for the next winter. Yes you might be completely vapid between the ears and you might smoke Camel Lights outside of pretentious clubs because that is the epitome of cool for you at 19. Right now you are bounding around campus with your friend of equal hotness. You are perfect right now. You have long tanned legs and thin arms and a sweet sweet sweet ass and perky young ripe breasts that stand up on their own and that look of pseudo-sophistication you picked up by going to college in the City. And in a little while you won't be nearly as hot, you will take up a "cause," or decide that your 3.0 in English isn't going to cut it for later on in life, or realize that those nice boys from the baseball team are offering you jello shots with a particular activity in mind, or the fact that you are becoming jaded will start to show overtly. And one day you will go back to the suburbs from whence you came and annoy some guy about heating bills and aluminum roof siding and be very serious at PTA meetings, wear pantsuits over your no longer smoking hot rear end and all of that. But right now you are just a sophomore taking in some sun before your seminar on post-feminist critiques of Chaucer and you are basking in the rays and you are hot, ripe, delicious, golden. Robert Frost was right when he wrote that nothing gold can stay.

Sunday 04/03/2005

2005-04-03T23:04:00.000-04:00

Leave me alone. Just let me be. I don't care about social injustice in southeast Asia, or the plight of the Honduran shit farmer, or how George W. Bush stole the election with the help of his brother. That was 5 fucking years ago, even Al Gore has gotten over it. So no, I nor anyone else in their right mind wants to attend a teach-in on the topic. Couldn't you have picked up on the other parts of being a hippie, like the drugs and the great music? I guess not, that's not what law school is for. Law school is for the self-righteous prick who loves to hear himself talk and the self-righteous prickette, who knows better, due to the intellectual rigor of her Haverford degree in Medieval English poetry.

I don't care about the Solomon Amendment and how it is hurting American law schools. I mean what is the big deal: if there was a draft I would think about becoming gay just so I wouldn't have to go be shot at by crazed Iranians or slightly less crazed Syrians. I don't care about the Falun Gong and how the Chinese government is torturing them. If I wanted to join a cult I would do the one all of the celebrities are in. I think its Kabbalah-tology. You joined a cult and the communist totalitarian state reacted in a negative way? Really? Well fuck you. Although those t-shirts are unintentionally funny in a weird way.

I don't care about either side of the affirmative action debate: neither the bleating moronic entitlement to have your intellectual record ignored if you are "underrepresnted" nor the hard-headed hidden racism of the "libertarian" that dare not speak it's name. I hate to break it to you, but you are not that naturally brilliant, Mr. Right-Wing nutcase. If your parents didnt invest in that SAT prep school class you might have ...gasp...gone to a state school. And not even a good state school, I mean THE Ohio State University or something of that ilk.

I don't want to hear about the newest, most "cutting-edge" development in the field of interntional law. I care not about transnational actors, about how "distance is disappearing" and not in the least about "what that means for all of us." And you know that really interesting lecture by that one visiting prof from that school on that really pertient topic? Well, I don't care about that either. Even if there is stale fucking pizza dripping with artery-clogging orange grease. So take me off your damn e-mail lists, don't bother me with any petitions. And don't even think about asking for money. I really could care less that this institution is unwilling to fund your summer attempting to do some kind of half-assed litigating against McDonalds for making the lower classes of this country fat. I like an occasional McSausage and if the rural fucking South has a lower life expectancy because of them, then so be it.

And take all of your righteous indignation about the world and how it should be and your little limousine liberal values and shove them up your middle-class over-educated, socially-useless ass. Unless you are that dark haired girl from Canada with the Long-Island looking blonde-highlight haircut and the too-bright lipstick...I got other plans for you and your ass.

Monday 03/28/05

2005-03-29T00:47:00.000-05:00

A fun thing happened today. I am walking home from the gym and it's a little dark and out of nowhere an [let's just say "urban"] youth of 16 or so jumps out at me. Just lands in front of me and leans forward at me, like he is about to give me a chest-bump. Only he is not, he is there for his own fucking entertainment and that of his fat-looking friends who are not far behind. The whole purpose of the excercise, you see, is to startle someone by your presense. You jump in front of someone as close as you can and they usually react. Then you tell them off and move on, hopping along in your 4X size Ecko t-shirt and Yankees hat with a perfectly unbent front. Apparently if you are dirt poor this is how you amuse yourself in a city. Of course out of sheer reflex I react and instantly pull up in surprise. The young man in question gives me a crooked smile and mumbles out something along the lines of "You better axe somebody." Meanwhile three of his friends are making excited noises, akin to the ones in the latest basketball-themed Coke commercial. I stare at them in digsuist as they run on and do the same thing to a cute undergrad girl.

This whole thing leaves me a bit introspective. Now, this is not to say that I didn't do my share of anti-social activities at his age, but they usually revolved around some kind of benefit to myself beyond confrontation of stangers. I have heard enough critical theory bullshit to be able to explain this kind of behavior along any number of lines [acting out on feeling on powerlessness, class dichotomies, blah fucking blah]. If you follow that strand long enough though it is completely my fault and I should go find this young man and apologize to him and perhaps give him some money for a new do-rag and zirconia studs. But I don't think that is right. What about the whole underlying shitty culture of violence and confrontation and humiliation that this kid is obviously growing comfortable with? Should we all just nod and smile at that? Is it no longer acceptable to say: "this is moronic and wrong"? Probably not; then I am opening myself up at being culturally/racially/socioeconomically intolerant. Reams of critical legal scholarship have told me that. Which brings me to the conclusion that critical scholarship is an even bunch of shit than I had thought. And if you don't believe that, well then, you better axe somebody.

The Battle for New York Law Schools: A look at the numbers US News & World Report 2005

2005-03-26T19:39:00.000-05:00

Peer assesment:

Columbia over NYU: 4.7/4.5

Assessment by professionals:

Columbia over NYU: 4.6/4/4

Acceptance rate:

Columbia over NYU: 14.2%/19.8%

But what do those numbers mean?

Columbia v. NYU Law school: Settling the Battle Once and and For all

2005-03-25T15:13:00.000-05:00

The decision time is upon many of you pre-Ls and for an inordinate amount of people that choice boils down to NYU Law School versus Columbia Law School. Let's have a break down of the schools to see which one has the edge in the battle for NYC legal education supremacy.

LOCATION
NYU: Tha Village. A fun place that's expensive.
Columbia: "Morningside Heights"...ok who are kidding? Harlem. A far less fun place that's less expensive.
Advantage: Even. Per dollar they probably come out even. I think I've been reading too much law and economics as of late.

DO NOT GO IF YOU ARE AFRAID OF:
NYU: Non-heterosexuals. It is, after all, the Village.
Columbia: Non-caucasians. It is, after all, Harlem.
Advantage: It would be un-PC to say. Either way, you're not in Kansas anymore.

FAMOUS SKETCHY ALUMNS
NYU: Rudy Guiliani, former Mayor of this fine city.
Columbia: Mark Belnick, former General Counsel of Tyco.
Advantage: NYU. Rudy wins this one hands down. Between the good times him and Bernie K. must have had back in the day and the whole NY Post-glazed divorce, he is way more fun than a would-be embezzler who found radical Catholicism in mid-life.

CRITICAL RACE SCHOLAR YOU DO NOT WANT TO ARGUE WITH IN CLASS DISCUSSION
NYU: Derrick Bell.
Columbia: Patricia Williams.
Advantage: NYU. Bell left a tenured position at Harvard to prove a point. You don't think he would tear you a new one in class just to prove another?

CURRENT SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ALUMNS
NYU: None.
Columbia: Ruth Bader Gisburg.
Advantage: Might seem like an obvious one but for anyone who has read many Ginsburg opinions, this one could cut either way.

MENTIONS IN MOVIES
NYU: Surprisingly frequent.
Columbia: Not as frequent but of higher quality.
Advantage: Columbia. Not only does Spider-Man go there but the campus is used in all kinds of cinematic endeavors.

WEB DESIGN LOOK
NYU: Sea of white.
Columbia: Lake of blue.
Advantage: Columbia. Frankly, the NYU one looks like a mid-level CS major's end of the semester project.And this photoa looks just downright freaky.

UNDERGRAD IS FOR
NYU: City kids who will never leave the city, Ivy rejects, creative types, massive stoners, Olsen twins.
Columbia: International finance/engineering types, children of socialites, suburban overachivers who declined their NYU scholarships.
Advantage: It all depends on how you weigh the odds of an Olson twins sighting v. making out with the daughter of a CEO in a dimly lit fake punk bar.

DEAN OF THE SCHOOL LOOKS LIKE
NYU: Richard Fish from Ally McBeal.
Columbia: Your uncle who is a successful investment manager.
Advantage: Who knows. They both went to Yale, which shows you what the REAL top school is.

HARVARD-ENVY
NYU: More than you think.
Columbia: Less than you think.
Advantage: Roughly equal. Both are populated by 75% or so big H rejects. Nothing to be ashamed of.

WORST FEAR IF ATTEND
NYU: Wandering into a bridge and tunnel bar.
Columbia: Wandering into Spanish Harlem.
Advantage: Columbia. Have you ever been around a bunch of Jersey teenagers with gold chains while they are drunk? Better take your chances with the guys slinging rock.

GULTY PLEASURE
NYU: When going out to eat knowing that your model/actor/writer/director of a waiter will almost certainly go home to Ohio to become a district manager of something or other after blowing through 40 grand a year to go to Tisch.
Columbia: When trying to get a cab having options between the licensed and the patently illegal unlicensed TownCars swirling around.
Advantage: Columbia. Gypsy cabs rule.

WHAT THE SCHOOL SAY ABOUT RANKINGS
NYU: Remember that one glorious year when we topped Columbia? Wasn't that awesome... [Looks away wistfully].
Columbia: How did Stanford get ahead of us? Do they even assign reading there?
Advantage: Much like the conflict in the Middle East this is a struggle that will not be solved in our time. But because a shitty magazine that no one reads says so, let's go with Columbia.

*FINAL ANALYSIS*
This is a Pepsi-Coke type of choice. Some swear by one, some by the other, most can taste no difference. There is a plucky upstart with a little momentum versus an institution that has defined the field. I say as long as you have managed to keep yourself out of Fordham, things are going well.

Wednesday 03/24/05

2005-03-24T00:07:00.000-05:00

What is the big deal about Scalia opinions? You've read them one, you've read them all. Stick to the text, motherfucker! Yeah that takes a real intellectual giant to come up and articulate.

Whenever I see those backpacks on wheels being dragged around I just want to scream: "Asshole!" Especially if the girl doing it is holding out her free hand perpendicular to her waist, palm-down, in a 50s housewife-prance.

Whoever invented spyware should be killed. Or better yet sent to Iran to be killed. The upside of living like a fundamentalist savage is that you can really kill people with some flair.

If I could have one piece of movie knowledge imparted on me, it would be to hear what Bill Murray says to the kind hot brooding chick at the end of "Lost in Translation."

If you are taking an elevator one flight up and you are under 30 and not carrying anything heavy, well I have no fucking respect for you.

Are the fire-and-brimstone morons parked outside the Teri Schiavo resting place aware of what we are doing in the Middle East? If so, wouldn't sending perfectly healthy men and women to be maimed and killed for somewhat vague goals be more of a conflict with the hallowed "culture of life" than letting a woman in a vegitative state meet her natural end?

Is there a more under-rated classic rock one hit wonder than "Rock 'N Roll Hoochie Koo"? I say no.

The fact that Pat O'Brien's IM was in Paris Hilton's hacked phone goes a long way for Pat to be in on the hot celeb scanadals this year. Now if he could get to testify in the Jackson trial, he would hit the trifecta.

It is a crime that all of the cabs in New York city are cars that give no more than 12 miles a gallon. An absolute crime.

Any time there is a case and the dissent is 3/4 and up of the length of the actual opinion, I just go "What the fuck" and turn on the TV.

When a professor brings in a "guest speaker," be they practioner, judge, other professor, illegitimate child, politician, or semi-famous celebrity, they are basically telling you: "I won't be teaching you today." It's kind of like high school when the bio teacher was obviously hung over and would just show you a video instead of teaching anything. Those were good times.

Tuesday 03/22/05

2005-03-22T22:04:00.000-05:00

You know what I am sick of? That Kerouac quote: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live..." blah fucking blah. Is there a piece of writing that has been more worn down to meaningless cliche by quoted overuse? I think not.

Monday 03/21/05

2005-03-21T16:03:00.000-05:00

I was at a club on Saturday night with a couple of friends. Some professional soccer players were there or something so the full eurotrash contingent was out in full force. Impossibly thin women who put more thought into their outfits than Laurence Tribe did into his last law review article. Impossibly sleazy men with carefully cultivated three day stubble and near-matching dress shirts that cost half a grand now that the dollar is sucking. All of this amidst music loud enough to make your balls vibrate. So I wouldn't normally spend my early Sunday morning at such a place since the odds of picking up a perfectly bronzed model-esque specimen at one of these places requires a million dollar+ annual income or a professional modeling contract, but I am with some friends who haven't had that point sink in yet, or are scoping out their future war prizes after they have million dollar incomes, or just don't care about wasting a night out.

AnonymousFriend is chatting up a group of girls who look a bit subprime for this locale so we may have a chance. I quickly saddle in behind him in the circle to find that one of them is visibly pregnant. Now I am not talking about like 8 and a half months bulge but there is a pretty obvious line of baby hanging out. I try to figure out if perhaps she is just oddly shaped in the belly region when AnonymousFriend2 rolls in. He has been drinking for the past 5 hours because, as a banker, this might be his only night off for the next six weeks. Thus he has been trying to make the best of it and is on pace to be comatose within 2 or so hours. He immediately pokes me and announces that there is a pregnant girl in the club. The music is way too loud for anyone else to hear so we run through possible scenarios: maybe the baby daddy is here, maybe she work[s][ed] here, maybe this is her last night out, maybe this is how people get rid of unwanted children nowadays.

To make a long story short, I end up drinking quite a bit more and out of pure animal curiosity meander over to woman w/child. The final tally: 1)is pregnant 2) apparently not afraid of F.A.S., although to be fair what harm could a Smirnoff Ice do to anyone? 3) the baby daddy not in the picture as she very unsubtly invites me back to her place. Lacking the prerequisite fetish, I end up at a diner until the sun comes up absolutely horrified. At least I am not irresponsible by some standards.

I end up feeling like shit all of Sunday and can't get any work done. An incomprehnsible-sounding European calls to yell at me for trying to slip his fiancee my phone number but I don't even remember that happening and in either case am too out of it to yell back.

Saturday 03/19/05

2005-03-19T13:38:00.000-05:00

I was away at a friend's wedding recently. It was lovely. Well mostly the open bar. That was lovely. A few thoughts:
-I have reached the point in my life where weddings are coming with an alarming frequency.
-Is it wrong to discuss the odds of divorce within five years at the wedding? If so, I don't want to be right.
-Speaking of divorces, this particular affair featured a surprising amount of sneaky-hot mid 30s women with one wedding already behind them.
-Trashing a hotel room is only a good idea if the record company will pick up the tab.
-While in possession of a rented car is there any greater joy than ruining its breaks/tires for no other reason than you can? Of course it would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't an econo-box with 15 inch wheels.
-I am swearing off alcohol till at least later tonight.

Tuesday 03/08/05

2005-03-08T12:33:00.000-05:00

I am in line to get some breakfast this morning and some moronic 3L who I know starts talking to me. I am trying to just move along with my muffin and not be too obvious that I am staring at the ripple of the electric blue thong sticking out of the $200 jeans of the smoking-hot Japanese girl picking up napkins off the floor. Instead of being able to concentrate, I must endure forced small talk. Where am I going this summer? To a firm in New York. Oh which one? I name it. The 3L is impressed as he is fumbling around looking for a quarter. I would give him one if he wasn't so damn annoying but instead I will hold onto it in case I need to do laundry later this month. Finally he volunteers where he will be working after graduation. I don't know why, it's a pretty shitty firm. He must have not done very well.

"You know, I hear they are going to raise associate salaries. If not this year then the next. These firms have been losing mid-level associates...[lisp as he bites into bagel] in troves..." I don't say anything to that except to grunt but where OH where do these morons come from? First of all, even if SOME firm out there raises salaries, it is by no means automatic that your piece of shit firm will join the fray. Then, even if that did happen, it would just cut into the bonus that they pay now. And finally, in some off chance that total compensation did go up in its totality, all that would mean would be more forced layoffs. The billing rates can only go so high and the partners are sure as shit not taking any pay cuts.

More importantly though, losing mid-levels is how the firm is structured. If 100 first years start, the big firm doesnt WANT more than oh, I don't know, 20-30 fourth years, if that. The salaries went up in the boom-boom 90s when associates would leave in EXTRAordinary amounts and that was only possible because there was a whole universe of non-legal employers willing to throw down some cash. Oh dot comes, where have you gone?

Far be it from me to delve into the heart of law economics but it amazes me how little thought most law students give to their potential employers. The supermajority of law students have no idea how firms operate, what the valuable practice areas are, what the fuck a billable hour is and why it is there. It's amazing. Is it a function of being a graduate student or are lawyers just inherently so poorly endowed with a sense of the real world that they just act so completely fucking stupid? I wonder if med students waltz into a hospital when they graduate and have no idea how a hospital makes it money and what it does to stay afloat. Do physics PhDs slave away for years on manipulating greek letters without any thought of how labs or universities operate?

My muffin was terrible by the way. Last fucking time I eat one of those around here.

Monday 03/08/05

2005-03-08T00:23:00.000-05:00

I was in an elevator today going up to see a prof. Two maintenance guys were loading a cart of office supplies into it. I had to stand there for what seemed like a damn eternity watching them roll this thing in, then roll it out when it wouldn't fit, then roll it in, then all over again. I am watching these two guys who are obviously in no hurry to go anywhere because, well they are maintenance guys, but I am since I just woke up and need my fucking coffee. Finally, after a few more grunts they roll this cart in and we start the trip up. I am relieved at first but then I realize that something is wrong: one and/or more of them has definitely ripped ass. And I am talking about in a major league way. The eleveator is not that big and there are three of us in there and the stench is so beyond awful I am about to cry. I mean my eyes are watering with sheer agony of being in the middle of this thing. While I am trying not to lose it, the two jackasses are fiddling with the cart. Then one obviously smells what is going on and fake-punches the other. The culprit in turn lets out a belch followed by an extremely dirty joke in Spanish. I practically hurdle the cart when it is time to get out. I am tempted to tell the gaseous wonder that judging from what I just experienced, he should probably have a LOT less pork in his diet, but I refrain. I am pretty sure that a sizable minority of the staff is here through some kind of second-chance fellon program.

Sunday 03/06/05

2005-03-06T22:45:00.000-05:00

I have seen a lot of pretty awful people in my day: soulless fratboys, angry crackheads making demands on my money, worthless foreigners, but no one gets my blood boiling quite as much as the GirlLookingForHusband. Well that's not true. But I just ran into one this weekend and I am just pissed off. I was a few drinks in, as per usual, when I found myself in a particularly dark corner of a particularly dark bar near the Bowery talking to a blonde who did not seem alltogether bad looking. She did seem to be showing an awful lot of interest in basically hearing my resume recited. In my drunkeness I assumed that she was interested in the same thing as I was--a trip back to her place for a little reactreation of William Jefferson Clinton & Intern, followed by perhaps a delivered pizza and the Cartoon Network. In fact she was just trying to approximate my lifetime earnings potential. When she was a few drinks in and instead of making out with me on a couch, as good taste would indicate, had the poor poor POOR taste to inform me that if she still single by 30 she will shoot herself or move back to her midwestern suburb, I knew exactly what was going on. Ah yes, another GirlLookingForHusband.

If you have lived in a major urban center, you have seen her too. She is between 25 and 30 [after that she is no longer a "Girl"], she came from an nice--but not TOO nice--upper middle-class home, she at one point had the potential to do something socially productive with herself but quickly lost all motivation to do anything and now is just looking for a man to hang onto. She watches a lot of romantic comedies, drinks a lot of cosmos, and skanks herself up for at least an hour and a half before going anywhere, and is generally borderline intolerable in conversation. There is a good reason why she is single: if you are the kind of guy to be in a committed relationship, you would run like hell from her. She isn't interesting or particurly bright but she IS needy and hopelessly, terribly boring. Like a Potamnkin Village, undernearth her low-plunging top and short short skirt she is probably wearing underwear big enough to parachute herself down the Chrysler Building.

This species has also apparently found a home in law school. Now I am not saying that every young woman I know who is a budding lawyer falls along those lines but sadly enough of them do. They have come not for the JD but for the MRS. They go to the firm receptions for 1Ls and make with the sexy at the herds of male associates that come before them. They go on an endless stream of dates with guys in their mid-30s, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle.

The one nice about them though? If they go to class at all they at least don't try to make asinine comments in class because they have, as a rule, not done the reading. Heavy duty dating takes a lot of time.

Wednesday 03/02/05

2005-03-02T23:11:00.000-05:00

"Why bother with indigent services if you don't like it?"

Why bother with anything? To get one more step on the ladder towards something or other. Climb the tree faster than the other monkeys trying to get a banana. It's nothing new really.

You take advanced classes in high school and do extra-curricular activities that you could not care about in the least. Then you play some stupid sport with a psycho coach and sweat away your afternoons instead of enjoying the best years of your life. Then you plop down a grand a half to take some ridiculous test, ALL in order to get into a school that a third-rate weekly news magazine has appointed as one of the elite institutions in the nation.

Then you go there and you realize that to actually do anything worthwhile with yourself you can't just get by, you need to do "well" since the name on the diploma alone won't impress anyone despite being really really really fucking expensive. So you once again burn the midnight oil taking classes that are of little interest to anyone but might give you the "skill set" and/or "tool box" and/or "insert buzzword here" to become a consultant/banker/trader/financial asshole since they are the only ones paying anything remotely close to a living wage straight out of school. Of course by the time you are ready to graduate the market has crashed and Phi Beta Kappa econ/math double majors are ready to blow fat old men just for a second round interview: so it's on to law school.

Being at your super-duper university doesn't mean shit because the law schools have to impress the above-mentioned third-rate piece of shit weekly news magazine that absolutely no one reads except for its academic rankings. So you have to spend a shitload more time and money getting ready for yet another ridiculous test that will determine 80% of your admissions chances.

You do well and now get to go to a super-duper law school. 99% employment rate and all of that. But to go to a firm that won't make you clean roaches in the basement of the storage room during your lunch hour, you once again need to do well. All of this among a field of classmates with an average 99% LSAT. So you have to do "well" in classes but the curve is set up in such a way that the mean predominates.

So to differentiate yourself you need to get on a journal so you do that and you write some stupid crap and spend enough time at the library that the legal "scholarship" has burned its intiials into your brain. But this is it, right?

Not so fast, my friend! You also need to "clerk" for a judge for fucking peanuts so you can show your employer that you are smart and a go-getter and know how the legal system and courts works. Apparently three fucking years of law school is not enough. But to get there you have to develop some relationships with professors and find yet more ridiculous extra curricular activities.

So I have just described eleven years, eleven stony grey steps toward the grave, you know, the box. Which is waiting, extra-curricular activities, interesting resume or not.

I sincerely hope that this answers your question.

More Public Service

2005-02-25T14:07:00.000-05:00

Despite a raging hangover, I am forced once again into the realm of public service this morning. It is my turn to be the student volunteer intern for a well-meaning underfunded organization providing legal services for the indigent. I am forced to wear a suit even though the clientelle is, well let's just say would probably be receptive to alternative forms of dress by their pro bono attorney, considering most of them sleep outdoors in good weather. The first woman I talk to is incoherent and quite obviously drunk or high or both. I am pretty sure I have seen her pandhandling the subway near my apartment many a time. She was supposed to come in for an appointment to fill out some work conserning mental health disability benefits. The fact that she is here at all is already a monumental achievement: the appointment showing up rate is roughly 20%. As I am shuffling papers around and hoping she sobers up enough to be of some use, she launches into her pandhandling speech. I almost drop by Starbucks cup from sheer surprise when she shrilly announces "My name is Gina and I am homeless. I am forced to sleep here on the subway. Last night while I was asleep a man attempted to rape me. I fought him off but now I am scared. I am working with City services..." I have no idea what is going on but I cut her off to establish that 1) her name is not Gina 2) we are not on the subway 3) according to her file she resides in a permanent shelter for women. This prompts her to curse at me and leave.

I surf the web for a while before a guy shows up and without asking me any questions launches into a tirade about the fascist policies concerning cigarettes in the city detention centers. Every other sentence is "I know my fucking rights." I am not sure that he does although he does look a remarkable amount like a younger, skinnier Suge Knight. At one point he looks at me and asks me if I need someone to buy alcohol for me, in which case he is more than willing to help. When I inform him that I am in fact 24 he also curses at me and leaves.

I hate pro bono. So much.

Thursday 02/24/05

2005-02-24T13:42:00.000-05:00

I haven't written on this thing in a few days. Here' s a quick run through of what's been goin' down:

-Phone call to Pauly Shore [thank you Paris Hilton's hacked phone]. Seemed like a nice guy, I told him I enjoyed his work. Yes I could have called Lindsay Lohan and commented on her rack or something. But that's so cliche. Plus I am more of an ass-man.

-Impromptu gathing to honor the life of Hunter S. Thompson. Since my brother was involved, I did not attend class for the next two days. I heard it was fun though.

-E-mail from the smokin' hot pre-L. Score! E-mails from less than smokin' hot pre-Ls. Well you gotta take the good with the bad.

-Weird get together with b-school student. Run into her at bar, she is really into me despite the fact that at some point it becomes obvious that I erased her number. Turns out she is 31 instead of my originally estimated 27. I can't decide if that is a good or a bad thing.

Now let's get reaaaadah for the weekend!

Some more useful advice

2005-02-21T13:27:00.000-05:00

For the 1Ls out there, some ruminations on the firm call-back interview. I am guessing at least some of you have already been through the drill, but a lot will only be doing it in the spring months. At least for me, the interviewing was mostly in February and March. So, these are some dos/and don't from a man with a pretty strong all-time callback/offer rate:

-Try not to fall alseep or look like you are falling asleep. This is much easier said than done because lawyers love to talk, they are billing the firm for the time you are there, and it's basically like a work break for them. At some point during the 4-5 hours you are interviewing you will hit the wall and want to run out of there screaming. Don't. Instead try to sit up as straight as you can, smile, and count your future summer earnings in your head.

-Do not ask about pro bono. Yes I know it's a "legitimate" question. And no one is supposed to count it against you since it is a professional responsibility blah blah freakin blah. But in the real world firms make money by billing paying clients and do pro bono out of the goodness of their hearts. You wouldn't go to a banking interview and inquire about the quality of their softball team before getting an offer, would you? So wait to show your bleeding heart until you are in the inside and it is too late to weed you out.

-Always go to lunch, if asked. It's another chance to get a couple of people to like you and possibly stick up for you if they are on the fence about hiring you. Always remember that lunch is an interview. It's ok to let up a little in how formal you are but not ok to take your tie off and ask where the closest strip club is. Frankly the only point of this is to see if you are an anti-social freak, as a surprising amount of law students tend to be. So just act like a normal humanoid and you will be fine.

-Don't bad mouth your school. The one softball everyone gets is "How do you like law school?" Sure you may think about slitting your wrists before taking another round of exams at the end of the semester but no one wants to hear that. People don't like a downer. So the moral of the story is that you like law school a lot and you find it rewarding.

-If your interviewer is hot, try to ignore that fact. Nothing good can come out of anything but the utmost professionalism. Unless they openly hit on you, in which case...I don't know you are on your own there, it's never happened to me.

-If your interviwer asks you an inappopriate question: smile, deal the best you can with it and move on. If there is overt ass-grabbing you might want to complain to the firm but if it is partner, I wouldn't recommend it. It's a little early to be getting blacklisted.

-Do not badmouth other firms. It might be very tempting, in the comraderie that has just developed to drop something along the lines of "Oh, I interviewed at Firm X and let me tell you, they are a bunch of ball-busting assholes." It is, however, very poor form and you should never do it. If you are asked where else you are looking, drop the names of some other places that might or might not have expresed interest but don't try to trash any of them.

-Laugh at all the fucking jokes. No matter how inane or lame. But don't laugh too hard so it looks like you are kissing ass.

Sunday 02/20/05

2005-02-20T14:05:00.000-05:00

This guy I don't know emails me out of the blue. Apparently he is a friend of a friend of a friend or something and he is working at the firm where I spent the summer last year and wants to know all about it. "I turned down Firm X, Firm Y, and Firm Z," writes Senor Dumbass, "because I heard that this firm had a better lifestyle." Then it's followed by a bunch of questions too asinine to repeat. What can I possibly say to this guy? I mean Firms X,Y, and Z are hands down better places to spend a 2L summer, they do better work, make more money, send their discarded associates to better jobs, etc.

The firm that hired me and lured this poor fucker in is basically staying profitable through a policy of making the associates extremely unhappy [really shitty benefits, really shitty bonuses] and milking them for all they are worth before sending them away with not even a decent name on the resume. They gave me a job as a 1L because they are a horrible employer no one in their right mind should go to. So they hire 3-4 1Ls from target schools and hope that they liked their free lunches so much they will lure their friends in. As for "lifestyle," that really means "we have a few practice groups so slow due to key partner departures that you will have a hard time meeting your billable hours and we will kick your ass out even sooner." Oh yeah and one other thing: there is no official billable hours target. They tell you that all the time. The recruiting literature is filled with it. The recruiting website notes it, right next to the obligatory pictures of some friendly partners warmly smiling and a sufficienly diverse group of associates sitting in a conference room. But go out to dinner with this firm and hang around late enough, after there have been more wine bottles that people present consumed and you get to find out that dipping below 2200 hours means that, well you should be polishing your resume. Oh and that layoffs have been a constant since about the late 1990s. But that's neither here nor there.

Also, the work performed is largely the kind of cookie-cutter stuff that the better firms don't do because it isn't profitable enough [think a lot of airplane lease agreements on the corporate side and securities ligitation where you want to put up a little fight, then quickly settle]. The people are miserable, including the partners, who if they are worth anything jump ship to better firms. And yet stupid 2Ls throw themselves down the well.

So being in a good mood, I decide not to divulge this guy's career suicide and wish him well. I tell him he is going to have a FANTASTIC summer and to be sure to do an assignment for Partner Joe Blow because he does REALLY interesting work [yeah right]. Good luck, chump. You will need it.

Back for a bit

2005-02-19T19:16:00.000-05:00

So I ended up going to the art thing in Brooklyn. I don't even know how to describe exactly what was going but but my friend was correct, there were indeed babes. And thanks to his girlfriend being there I got to be introducted to them. Sadly most of them had the same reaction to my being in law school as most people have to meeting a convicted baby killer. Perhaps I should have stopped shaving, moved to a warehouse in the outer boroughs and spent my days dumping paint on objects from the homeless, arranging them in piles, then giving them names like "Paralysis and Confusion No. 12." Then I would fit in a little better with this crowd. I was more than a little disguisted and ready to leave when I was talking to someone and she, out of the blue, expressed amazement that Alan Cumming was in "Son of the Mask." Can you believe that shit? Apparently he was big on the hipster theater circuit back in the day. So I had something to talk about at least.

Saturday 02/19/05

2005-02-19T13:29:00.000-05:00

I wake up and I am in a bad mood. My wallet is empty and I have at least three stamps of various sized and colors on my right hand. I have no idea why or where they came from. I look for some food but there is nothing in the fridge. I have a semi-angry email from an editor of my journal strongly suggesting I turn in something that is three days overdue. I have no idea what he is talking about since I don't remember seeing this assignment. My head kills. I buy a 64 ounce bottle of Gatorade and play some video games trying to hydrate myself. A friend calls and he wants to know if I want to go to a warehouse in Williamsburg to some art gallery installation his girlfriend is working on, promising "major babes." I can't since I have to find a treatise on European trade regulation 1950-62 in the business-school library. I am so fucking incensed I want to go on a shooting spree. Instead I put on some pants and march down to where the b-schoolers sit around and socialize. Their library is louder than most bars since they "work" in groups. I am miserable and they look like a bunch of horrible assholes and of course I am not even good enough to be one of those assholes, I am going to be their LAWYER. The librarian gives me a hard time [apparently this treatise is oh so valuable] while I am secretely wishing that at least some of these people will go to jail for white collar crimes. I go home and realize that I am completely spent, I can't fall alseep again and I am too hung over to read.

Also the sub I ordered hasn't come.

Woe is me.

The pre-Ls are coming

2005-02-18T15:24:00.000-05:00

Some pre-Ls showed up today to "look" at the school. It's not the official weekend or anything so it's the real go-getters among them who somehow found each other and traveled here as a pack. Weird. I only got involved because a friend of a friend was dragging them around campus and "showing them around and stuff" and I ran into her and was promptly introducted. "This is AnonymousLawStudent, if you have ANY questions that I have not been able to answer, I know he would love to help you all out." In fact I would not. I just wanted to get some coffee and go read in solitude. Instead I get roped into giving a standard spiel about myself: hometown, undergrad, major, favorite drugs, summer employment, journal, food allergies, future legal career plans, etc. The pre-Ls wince in excitement whey I um casually drop my summer employer's name. Apparently they have heard of it. A wave of satisfaction washes over me as I contemplate running home for a bit to look at some porn instead of reading when I realize that one of the pre-Ls is smoking hot. Blonde, just a tad slutty looking, no more than a year out of college, with a slim runner's body and an ass that can only be accurately described as "grabbable." I notice the latter part when she half-turns to whisper something into the ear of a considerably fatter girl next to her. While maintaining eye contact with the blonde wonder I make sure to give my email. If you have ANY further questions you can email me. Oh yes I am looking at you, you should definitely email me. She kind of half-smiles and jots something down on a map of our library that they all picked up somewhere. Well perhaps I accomplished something today. As I scurry off I notice that given the extremely tight tan wool pants she is wearing there is undoubtedly nothing greater than a g-string under there. I no longer go for coffee and instead delve right into my antitrust reading instead.

Wednesday 02/16/05

2005-02-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

Thoughts and life-altering questions/queries for today:

-There needs to be a name for the situation where a professor calls on someone, that person is there and they just sit there pretending they are not.

-If you are a foreigner and you are using a cellphone loudly and obnoxiously around other people, does the fact that you are speaking a language that no one else understands mitigate the annoyance to others in your own mind? Because it only raises your anoyance for others.

-People who give money to pan-handlers should be given tickets of at least $100 a pop. If you are such a fucking humanitarian why don't you just give to a soup kitchen as opposed to subsidizing crack?

-The first guy who said "hey, this porn scene should end with a facial!" is one of the most unheralded geniuses of our time.

-If you are a theater/drama major is it required that you look like you are constantly high or do you actually have to be high?

-Are the names of people currently purchasing Google stock available? I have an e-bridge to net-sell them.

-When a cabdriver is on the phone at 4 AM chattering away in non-English, who are they on the phone with? It can't be the homeland: too expensive on a cell phone. It probably isn't family, it is 4 AM after all. My guess? Other cab drivers. What are they talking about though?

-Is there anything more disheartening than skipping hundreds of pages of reading that you have done at the expense of a night out just to find out that it won't be discussed and in all probability not on the exam? Well there probably is but I am a law student, that's pretty much as bad as it gets for me.

-Is there an official in this administration in charge of making veiled threats to middle east nations? If so, can I want that job. I would send the spiritual leader of Iran a newly released copy of "Saw" with a post-it "this is what we are going to do to you and Syria." Then again, that would probably cause a nuclear episode.

-40s are the most cost-efficient and readily available way of getting drunk. And people say Manhattan is expensive!

-Where do the guys who work in food carts go to the bathroom? And when they do, who watches the food cart?

Tuesday 02/15/05

2005-02-15T12:33:00.000-05:00

This guy I know was, sua sponte, telling me about how great he did the first semester 2L year. Faaaantastic! Let's just announce your grades to me, you miserable ass. Undeterred by the look of disguist I was trying to muster [think Robert DeNiro in that dopey AmEx commercial where he is wandering around NYC looking like he just found out that Joe Pesci has been porking his wife], he just went on and on. Even counted the GPA for me. Isn't that great? He did so great. Great, great, great. I just let it go.

Had I wanted to, I would have, and perhaps should have, reminded him that he should have thought of doing well LAST year when our grades actually mattered. Now with his gig at some branch office of some firm ranked in the 50s this summer, what is there left to salvage? Yeah if he keeps up his torrid pace he might be able to move up a couple of spots but he isn't getting in anywhere really good. 3L recruiting is like 3 AM in a bar: the attractive people have all gone home with each other and nothing but the dregs are left. Both in terms of firms and applicants. Sure good grades always look good but it's one thing to do well as a first year, when everyone is trying hard and another thing to do well as a post-1L when the curve gets 50% friendlier at the top, half of the class doesn't care in the least, and the classes get progressively fluffier.

Instead I asked him where he was working this summer, knowing full well that it was a piece of shit. When he mumbled out the abbreviated name, I told him I had never heard of it. This of course made him tell me the FULL name [including the LLP at the end!]. To which I let out a weighty "Oh...." After letting that hang in the air I told him I had to go to the gym. The moral of the story: don't tell me your fucking grades, I just don't care.

Monday 02/14/05

2005-02-14T14:01:00.000-05:00

Valentine's day! A day to ponder why you are single but more importantly for the wiley among us, a day of opportunity. Sometime after college graduation the prospect of getting old alone in a tiny Manhattan apartment becomes a frightening thought for a lot of women. A lot of young women. A lot of hot women. And now is the time to act on that. It's like a market correction. If they are single they are depressed and think that something is wrong with them. A guide to evaluating her "desperation" scale following V-day:

-Recently broke up with her boyfriend: +2 points. This one is obvious. Re-bound.
-Years of age >25: +1 point. That clock only goes one way.
-Had a boyfriend this time last year: +1 point. Even if she was over it before, today will make her all melancholy again. If you ARE the ex-boyfriend, give yourself like fifty points. Unless you were physically abusive you can probably ride back into town for one last go-around with a low-level flower investment.
-Mentions casually about how much Valentine's day "sucks":+1 point. Yes, you are the ONE female in the world that hates V-day. Either that or you are bitter and lonely.
-At an "anti-Valentine's day" party: +1 point. A gathering of the bitter and lonely. And probably horny.
-Has been living in New York for more than 2 years: -2 points. Has probably gotten jaded by now. Better let this one go.
-Works in "media":+1 point. That's not a real profession, it's a way to bide your time before finding a man to latch onto.
-Has been on a blind date within last month:+2 points. This is the low-hanging fruit of the dating scene. Be the smart monkey and get at it.
-Has been hitting the gym with an increased 25% or more intensity in last 3 months: +1 point. Is she trying to turn her fortune around with a reduction of the old posterior? I say yes.
-Has had a close friend get engaged in last 3 months: +2 points. This one will get them pretty riled up. Extra points if they aren't REALLY friends and are "fake friends" that are superficially nice to each other but really bitchy when apart.

Anything over 5 on the scale is what you should be targeting in the following week. The world is yours to conquer, young man!

Family Time

2005-02-13T22:09:00.000-05:00

Today was my uncle's birthday. So AnonymousBrother and I went to have dinner with him and his lovely trophy of a wife at some upscale italian establishement whose name already escapes me. It's the kind of overpriced black hole that firms take their nervous interviewees for the "informal" lunch during a callback. The whole vibe there freakes me out with bad memories of trying to explain why I was interested in a particular strand of litigation without spitting any of my miso-glazed bass on the third year associate sitting across from me.

My uncle is a VP of something or other at a major conglomerate here in midtown Manhattan. During the bubble run-up of the late 1990s he was an i-banker making an obscene amount usually reserved for rap moguls and professional athletes but when the stock market cooled, one day he was told that perhaps it was time to move on. As in now. As in he did not get to go back to get the pictures off his desk. So he was pretty down in the dumps for a while but managed to land on his feet as the aforementioned VP of whatever it is he does. Albeit at a fraction of his former salary. But we don't talk about that at dinner now. Instead we drink a couple of bottles of 2000 Sassicaia, which was lovely and I smile a lot.

Over a glass of vintage port at the end, Mrs. Uncle asks me how law school is going. Apparently she thought about it too back in the day. I don't know what to say to her and as listlessly as I can I inform her that it is going quite well, all without looking at her midriff which is a perfectly bronzed color in the middle of Februray and flatter than the table. It's showing juuuust enough to remind us all that it is there and the result of many a mid-afternoon stomach crunch at the Equinox gym near their apartment. She looks like she could outrun me in the mile even in her Jimmy Choos. My brother chimes in with something idiotic and I am saved from talking to her.

I am sitting there with my spotless glass of Fonseca and some depressing thoughts. Is this going to be me, jumping from job to job, woman to woman, co-op to co-op? I mean my uncle doesn't seem like a bad guy. He doesn't seem unhappy. He wears red power ties, smokes cigars, goes vacationing in Belize, all of that good stuff. Then again even since getting canned from his master of the universe gig, he has been lacking a certain bounce in his step. You would think his wife's two rows of perfectly even white teeth set between lips that almost certainly have been enhanced would keep his spirits afloat.

Mail Time.

2005-02-12T14:11:00.000-05:00

I think it is high time, I have answered the email that has piled up at anon_law_student at yahoo...well you know the rest.

"Hello, Allow me to present the latest discover in pleasure devices for men's!!"

Hello, allow me to present why the benefits of outsourcing may be getting a bit overstated.

"This is a one time offer. NO other emails you'll receive from us!"

It's like a "Dear John" letter sellinng some kind of flashlight-looking thing you can fuck. Both informative and vaguely melancholy. But as appealing as it sounds, I will stick to at least attempting for real live women for the time being.

"D‮ae‬r Yah‮!oo‬ Mem‮eb‬r,

Th‮si‬ em‮lia‬ was se‮tn‬ by the Ya‮oh‬o! ser‮ev‬r to verify y‮uo‬r b‮na‬k ca‮dr‬ i‮noitamrofn‬. Y‮uo‬r ba‮kn‬ ask Y‮!ooha‬ t‮ od o‬so bec‮sua‬e s‮emo‬ of t‮rieh‬ m‮me‬bers no l‮regno‬ h‮va‬e a‮ssecc‬ to e‮liam‬ addresses on Y‮ooha‬! and they n‮dee‬ to v‮yfire‬ you. You m‮tsu‬ com‮lp‬ete th‮si‬ proc‮se‬s by cli‮kc‬ing on the li‮kn‬ be‮ol‬w:

Suprisingly enough after sending my credit card information, ATM pin codes, mother's maiden name, billing address, time of day when is no one home, the spot where the extra house key is hidden, the code to the safe inside, where the keys for the deposit boxes are and their locations, I have not gotten ANY follow up from this helpful organization. I hope they verify me. I would hate not to be verified.

And the non-spam...

"Any other clues as to your secret identity? 2L, right? Any more goodies?"

Well there a couple of clues here and there. I am indeed a 2L. I can provide more goodies if you allow me to verify your bank card information...sorry I got carried away.

"You suck and you aren't funny."

I am afraid not even I can fulfill your comedic needs. I hope I was able to fulfill your need for inner peace by slining mud at someone else [chokes back tears]. I am ok, I really am.

"Are you sure you're not gay?"

Ok this one wasn't emailed so much as left as a comment. Let me check and I will get back to you. Thus far, 24 years into my life the possibility of sweet sweet woman juice has been a large impetus for doing much of anything. There is, however, a possibility that I have been living a lie and do in fact crave the penis. If only I had known sooner, I could have been subscribing to much better magazines.

Friday 02/11/05

2005-02-11T16:39:00.000-05:00

So I guess Valentine's day is coming soon. I didn't really notice until now but having attendined a vaguely Valentine's Day themed party last night, it reminded me that the 14th is just a stone's throw away. I am trying to figure out if anyone of the female species looks particularly um in need of companionship when some rather pungent foreigner corners me into a conversation. Apparently I have a seminar with him. Great, I say. I furtively look around, this cannot be happening. Apparently I had a class with him last semester. Oh, goody, we are practically blood brothers. After a long awkward silence that I am praying makes him disappear, he announces that he did very well in the class we had together. "An aye m-eye-nooos." I am so glad that he decided to confide that in me that I inform him that I need a new drink and try to walk away. He looks in my full 20 oz. glass of Bud Light with some puzzlement.

Instead I am now conversing with a mid to late 20s [we are being generous here] b-school student. Apparently there is a gathering of these assholes here as well. She is wasted and not entirely unattractive. Of course that could be just the booze talking. As the night progresses, I find out that she went to Stanfurd undergrad, worked for a venture capital firm, had a very serious long term boyfriend, and currently has a lazy eye. Well she doesnt TELL me the last part, I kind of notice it as the night rolls along. I am completely hammered by this point and the only relevant inquiry I have is whether said condition was caused by the ex-boyfriend accidentally [or not] depositing his DNA onto it. Frankly, I am more then turned off by the ex-boyfriend talk. Instead of asking though, she gives me her number and I float home to order a chicken shwarma and watch Japanese cartoons that make no sense.

I hate Thursdays. None of my friends who work will go out.

Why There Should Be NO Class participation

2005-02-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

Is it just me or is the Socratic method a completely useless way of trying to teach a room of 150? The whole thing is predicated on instructor-learner interaction but when your sole interation will be for a 10-20 min span total during a semester that's not very helpful. What also isn't helpful is that you have to hear everyone else's interactions, which can be painful. Some of the lowlights of any law school class:

-Someone who didn't do the reading. If they are particularly ballsy it will take a loooong time for this fact to finally unfold in the professors' eyes. Either that or they just don't care and want to waste time too.

-The jackass who just read a "really interesting piece in the National Review" about the VERY same topic [although not really] and wants to discuss it until you are ready to stab, stab, stab.

-The Asian girl who speaks in a whisper so soft as to be inaudible even to the other Asian girl sitting next to her. She will stare into her 4 inch 1.7 lb laptop and mumble something. The professor will tell her to speak up twice, three, four, five times. Every time the professor will come away with naught. For she will not raise her voice in class even if the professor were to light her on fire.

-The dude who doesn't speak English. He has no problems projecting volume but no one is quite sure what he is saying. Is he advocating the violent overthrow of the means of production? Agreeing with the Ginsburg plurality opinion in Gasperini? No one will ever know.

-The old woman who is in law school...well who really knows why. Once she has a stage, look out. Years of pent up aggression over her failed marriage, lost career, and kids she never had result in a geyser-like ability to blabber on nonstop.

All I am saying is, unless it's a seminar in which Socratic interaction can work, law school classes should just be lectures. No one who participates has anything to say that is more worthwhile than the professor. This is if I actually cared about learning the law. Since I can't say that I do, the current system suits me just fine.

Tuesday 02/08/2005

2005-02-08T20:51:00.000-05:00

The only people who still voluntarily talk in class after 1L year are the complete freaks and the transfers. The transfers have something to prove. They aren't very entertaining but earnest and very hard working. Way to do the reading on time, Timmy! Just like they taught you at Tuskaloosa College of Law and Pottery, or wherever it is you crawled here from.

The freaks can be roughly classified into two catogeries, roughly correlating with gender:

Conservative Boy: This guy beats off to Ayn Rand. And not the weird sex scenes. Everything he says gets reduced to some kind of market analysis. Usually, it bespeaks a horrible understanding of how markets work and are structured. If you told him that the U.S. should go back to the gold standard, he would be your friend. If he believed in that "friend" thing. The surprising thing about him is: If he is such a strident believer in the efficiency of markets, how can he continually expose others to the negative externality of his blathering?

Liberal Girl: She is kind of attractive in an odd way but mostly just annoying. She has no conception that things cost money or that raising taxes indefinitely is not something the world has agreed on. If you want to make her cry give her a graph and an integral equation to solve. Or just remind her of the plight of the Bolivian dirt farmer in this harsh globalizing world of ours. Despite her concern for the common good there is no doubt that she will marry a financier of some sort and drive an SUV to school board meetings somewhere in, near, or around Wilton, CT.

How to Write a Friendster Profile [Male Edition]

2005-02-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

Gender: not a lot of leeway there.
Interested in Meeting people for: If you actually have anything other than "Friends" and/or "Activity Partners" you are one pathetic loser.
Status: Can get tricky when you are starting to date someone. Don't bother with this one.
Age: Not a lot of leeway there either.
Location: Say where you are. Don't try to be funny.
Hometown: Say where you are from.
Occupation: Say something obnoxious like "navel inspector" or "man in suit."
Companies: If you actually name any real companies your status will be "single" forever.
Schools: Use only one name for each. As in: Groton/Yale/OfHardKnocks.
College/University: No need to repeat from above.
Affiliation: This is your chance to shine and be witty. So be witty.
Hobbiest and Interests: Sound interesting without actually naming any. Hobbies are lame.
Favorite Books: Try to combine the pretentious, the lowbrow, and the professional. Something along the lines of: James Joyce, Tom Wolfe, Financial Analysis of Derivative Instruments. Oh and throw in some obnoxious philospher treatise to show the opposite sex how deep you are.
Favorite Music: Think of the most asinine, unbearable indie bands that just plain suck. Now name them. The more obscture the better.
Favorite TV Shows: No one cool watches TV anymore. Except for Curb Your Enthusiasm. That's cool.
About Me: A long rambling list of things you enjoy doing. Here is where you throw in that you lift weights regularly.
Who I Want to Meet: Name a D-list celebrity from the 80s.

Sunday 02/06/2005

2005-02-06T13:44:00.000-05:00

I went out to some bar around here with a bunch of law students. Big mistake. Some transfer from the netherworlds of the Third Tier attached himself to me and was drunkenly making uncomfortable confessions even though we barely knew each other. Things like him finding a gay roommate "un-Christian." Something about lack of morals or whatever. He kept blabbering on and on and I just could not separate myself without being a total dick. About the only interesting thing he expressed was utter disappointment over his academic performance. He was convinced good times were ahead just because he had done "amazingly well" at Tier Three University Law School on their rather harsh curve. Well Bub, apparently you got some work cut out ahead of you before you can hit a major league curveball. Sure the curve here is probably 40% more forgiving but the level of competition is higher. Of course I took the opportunity to tell him that, hoping he would leave. Instead that led to an unrelated near-tearful confession about $8,000 in credit card debt. Was there anything aroudn to stab him with?

This was all of the more frustrating because there was a real war prize there. About 5'7", blonde, with an amazing-looking ass encased in those classy ass-hugging black pants that the JAPs favored before the current denim craze. Just the right amount of lip gloss to indicate that she was down for a good time but not so much as to indicate that those good times were previously spent in Seaside Heights. When she leaned over to whisper something to her less attractive but significantly sluttier looking friend, just a hint of a hot pink string revealed itself. And I was stuck listening to some idiot from fly-over country bitch about his academic shortcomings. Of course by the time I ditched him the war prize in question had busied herself with this other jackal I go to school with. I should have just been a dick.

Lunch

2005-02-05T16:08:00.000-05:00

I had some lunch today with AnonymousFather who was in town to transact some business, over the weekend no less. You see, people other than lawyers have to work on the weekends occasionally. Although probably less often.

We hit up a lovely steakhouse, talked about this and that. There was a guy sitting right across from me who looked just like Willem Dafoe would if he was cast to play Gordon Gekko. I am talking about black pinstriped suit, power tie, tons of hair gel. On a weekend no less. It looked like the guy stepped out of 1988. He was fiddling with his blackberry and occasionally sipping from his $375 bottle of burgundy and pretty much ignoring the smoking-hot blonde he was with. What is the point of having it all if you don't have a trophy wife to signal you have "arrived"?

So I spent most of the meal staring at her ass. I was going to say something to AnonymousFather about it but then, I thought better of it. I wouldn't want him to get a trophy wife. That might severely cut into my lifestyle. Oh and the ceasar salad sucked.

How to Dress Like an Asshole [former i-banker in Law School edition]

2005-02-04T11:30:00.000-05:00

1. Start with a tasteful pair of leather shoes. Add designer logo and 250% price increase. We would not want anyone to miss that.
2. No denim whatsoever. Only pants you can wear to the old country club will do. Denim is for poor people and you are not poor. Or if you are you most certainly can't dress like you are.
3. Light colored dress shirt under dark colored sweater. Bonus points if the dress shirt's manufacturer is identified by what little of it is sticking out. Extra bonus points if the sweater is from Brooks Brothers.
4. Cup of coffee. While not technically an item of dress, this accessory is permanently in your hand so it might as well be. How could you possibly be expected to provide meandering monologues on the highs and lows of your former career in class without your cup o'joe?
5. Obnoxious scarf draped around your rather inconsiderable shoulders [you will only attend a gym with a personal trainer, or none at all]. You will begin wearing it at the first sign of cold weather and straight through May since it just makes you look so darn dignified.

Add endless stories about how f-ing cool you were when you were "banking" and you are ready to be this breed of asshole.

My head hurts

2005-02-04T10:50:00.000-05:00

As you can probably guess I got sloshed last night, it being Thursday and all. For some moronic reason, however, I have a Friday morning class, which I have not been to in a while. Why did I sign up? Perhaps a moment of sober eagerness where I really wanted to learn about derivatives. Perhaps I am just not good at planning ahead.

A friend of a friend showed up to a bar where a lot of us were hanging out. About this time last year, in a different bar very close to here, her and I made out on a couch for a while. Apparently with enough gusto that it made it around the school. Either way, she was there with her boyfriend which made it a little weird since, well let's just say we had a torrid little fling.

He had a lovely little goatee and works for a hedge fund, like everyone else in this city. I drunkenly asked for some stock tips but he did not seem to be very much amused, perhaps he was pickin' up on the sexual tension. I end the night stumbling around looking for a slice of pizza at 3 A.M. on Third Avenue and end up having a lenghty conversation with a homeless guy about how the current uncertainty in federal sentencing guidelines might affect his life.

Wednesday 02/02/05

2005-02-02T23:15:00.000-05:00

I had to go see the Prof. I am assisting with his crazy critial legal studies research today.
I knock on the mahogany door and get no answer. Hanging out for a while, then all of two and a half bills of his secretary waddles down the hall and informs me that he is in his office and I should knock harder. I do and he is indeed inside, fiddling with the wheel of his iPod. "Baby I Got Your Money" is blaring loudly out of the earbud he has just put down. The new direction in crit scholarship is extracting messages of majoritarian oppression from, um urban music. The Prof puts down the iPod and finally turns it off and without any hint of apology for making me wait outside announces that he was listening to "Old Dirty Daddy." I fidget uncomfortably, to which he corrects himself.
-"Old Dirty Man. ODM."
-"...Bastard."
-"What?!"
-"Um....Old Dirty Bastard. His name was Old Dirty Bastard." I knew I shouldn't have said anything. He is looking at me with a mixture of disdain and disguist. He is supposed to be interpreting the angst of the inner city, not some kid who used to make out with strangers to the song at frat parties.
-"Well no matter, he was shot a while ago. Very sad."
At this point I know I shouldn't say anything but it is just bubbling up inside me.
-"He ODd."
-"Excuse me?" He takes a big meaty swig from a bottle of European bottled water with an unpronouncable name.
-"Old Dirty Bastard overdosed. Drugs. He wasn't shot."
At this point it is clear that it is time to leave. The Old Dirty Man is now mad as hell and there is nothing I can do.

This is odd

2005-02-01T21:25:00.000-05:00

Can someone explain to me what the fuck Alan Cumming is doing in "Son of the Mask"? I understand Jamie Kennedy, that guy is about 18 months removed from "Celebrity Mole." But Alan Cumming is a real actor! Is that hard to pay the bills?

Last Night

2005-02-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

"Last nite she said
Oh baby I feel so down
When you turn me off
When I feel left out
So i, I turned round
Oh baby don’t care no more
I know this for sure
I’m walking out that door"
-The Strokes.

Last night: I wind up in a Murray Hill bar with some hedge fund masters of the universe I went to undergrad with. I get very drunk. I am very drunk when I am talking to some random girl who is telling me about her college thesis on post-feminist critiques of the FCC's media ownership rules and how she turned that into a gig at a major network. It sounds like she is a glorified secretary but since she attended a school I had never heard of, that must be pretty exciting. I am looking for a way to weasel out of talking to her since she seems bored and distracted tapping uncomfortably on the unevenly sugared rim of her appletini glass. Instead she takes out the gum she was chewing and starts making out with me. To make a long story short, twenty minutes later we are in her apartment and I am sprinting into the bathroom since I had about 4 Black'N Tans to end the night.

When I come out I hear a sound that would wake the dead with its sheer monstrosity. She is puking her brains out onto a chair. It's one of those $500 Aero chairs with the curved ass-seat which is doing a fantastic job of collecting the red chunks. At some point I realize that is going to go for quite some time and pick up my jacket to quietly slip out during the festivities. A sleepy-looking Asian girl in a man's "Villanova Intramural Basekteball Champ!" t-shirt comes out of a bedroom which I did not realize was there and before I am forced to make some horribly uncomfortable small talk I just walk out the front door. As I am trying to find the elevator, all I hear "What the fuck did you do to my chair!" Perhaps the last three rounds of sambuca shots were a bit much.

This morning I am sititng in my suit, with a notepad, looking very serious, listening to some ranting speech about police "disrespect" from an elderly man with many missing teeth. He was detained for what he says is peaceful loitering and what the police say was harrassment of customers of some deli uptown. I am supposed to help him litigate the restraining order the deli owners have against him, or something like that. I don't know. My head hurts and I am only thinking about one thing: what kind of underwear she was wearing. I bet it was something cool.

Monday 01/31/05

2005-01-31T17:06:00.000-05:00

What I did today:

-Wake up and realize it's an hour later than I would have liked it to be.
-Shower. Not much exciting happening there, still very much asleep.
-Evidence: 2 pages of notes, +$30 in online poker. Cute girl in third row has a magnificent pair of underwear showing. Some kind of white g-string that doesn't quite meet in the top. Note to self: find out her deal.
-Restaurant Week lunch at Sushi Samba. The guy at the door is a predictably hurried and annoyed, in the interests of political correctness let's just say less than heterosexual, who eyes me up and down disapprovingly. I meet a college friend who is already there and only has 40 mins since he has to run back to his hedge fund and do whatever it is he does there. We don't have much time to chat and I leave a shitty tip.
-Gym. Some undergrads there shakin off their baby fat, not much to say except that the smell of b.o. is a little more overwhelming than usual. Some guy with a wrestler's physique is grunting entirely too loud for me to concentrate on my copy of Vanity Fair on the treadmill. Why did I leave my iPod at home? Why oh why.
-Nap. I should be reading for Antitrust but half of the class doesn't speak English so I am not too worried.
-Seminar. The professor's protege presents a paper on "victimless" crimes from a law and economics point of view. I leaf through it tiredly since I never read it but discover to my delight an entire section devoted just to potential punishment for sodomy law violations. Sadly, there are graphs with Greek letters in them. Reading shit like this is NOT why I came to law school. In order to justify my existance I ask a couple of moronic questions during the Q&A portion, including a totally superflous follow-up to an equally moronic question some Asian LLM asked in inaudible non-English.
-Porn break. Hey, I deserve it.
-Shower #2 so I can hit up a bar later. Tonight won't be a big night since I have to meet with some civil rights organization to do some research in defending the jailed indigent or something like that. If you are wondering why: yes there is credit involved and according to more than one 3L who knows, this is absolutely essential for my clerkship applications. If it was up to me, I would deport the indigent to Iraq. Still I will put on a suit and smile and listen to some guy with a criminal record longer than a law review article inform me why the police were wrong in hassling him for frightening young women in the East Village.

At least it's not snowing.

How to Dress like an Asshole [Brooklyn Hipster Edition]

2005-01-31T01:45:00.000-05:00

1. Start with any shoes that might have been in a phys-ed class in the 1950s.
2. Non-denim pants of extreme tightness.
3. An 80s concert tour of a 70s band t-shirt.
4. Puma/Addidas track suit jacket with miscoloration somewhere on it.
5. To cover up your bedhair in the cold, one of those hats with the earflaps like the slightly retarded janitor of your high school used to wear.

Voila!

My Money Where Did You Go

2005-01-28T11:02:00.000-05:00

Writing down the sum of my summer earnings a few days ago reminded me of something: it's all almost completely gone. How did I manage to stumble through twenty grand in five months you ask?

$9000: Rent
$3000: Stock purchase of questionable future value. Current value: not quite $3000, quite far from it.
$2000: A couple of new suits.
$200: Bottle of Chat Cheval Blanc 1995, 96 points Wine Specator.
$350: Some ties and a belt.
$750: A print from a minor contemporary American artist who is friends with AnonymousFather. Consider this an investment.
$175: Getting the undergrad diploma framed, which I had previously forgotten.
$500-1000[?]: Visits to various establishments of entertainment of the not fully clothed variety.
$500: Shoe upgrade.
$750: Weekend in Florida. Don't remember much of it but it was warm.
$300: DVDs.
$400: New speakers for video setup. A gigantic disappointment, they sound like complete shit.
$100: Rolling Stones '66 Tour vintage concert poster.
$75: Framing the above item.
$300: Video games.
$225: Bottle of Gunderloch Nackenheim Rothenberg Trockenbeerenauslese 2002, 98 points Winse Speactator. Just splendid!
$300: Greasing the palms of various club bouncers.
$500: *REDACTED*
$50: Socks. Hey, you gotta have socks.
$700: AnonymousCleaningWoman.
$200: Tanning of the less than natural variety.
$250: Parking tickets.

Ok there's gotta be more. Cause there is none left now.

Almost all the grades are now back

2005-01-26T20:37:00.000-05:00

My transcript brings all the firms to my yard
And they're like, it's better than yours
Damn right it's better than yours
I could teach you
But I have to charge

Time to celebrate.

Ouch

2005-01-26T13:50:00.000-05:00

Walking to my Evidence class, I slipped on some wet floor. And fell. Fell hard. We are talking about completely parallel to the floor at my highest point. Oh, the humanity. Adding to the experience was the thud that I made and the furtive turning of dozens of eyes to see what idiot took the nasty spill. Not one of these assholes even offered to help me up until a not-unattractive female of indeterminate origin walked over. By then I was already up and with it enough to notice a rather pleasantly tanned backside practically spilling out of her low-low rise jeans as she was bending over. So things could be worse. I just hope this doesn't seriously affect my squash game later today.

Damn it, damn it all.

2005-01-26T00:43:00.000-05:00

Anonymous Cleaning Woman must not have thought much of my seminar paper which I was still finishing up from last semester. I say that because she has uncerimoniously disposed of a whole ream of research that I had done for it. It's not that big a deal since the thing is almost ready to be thrown into the fire of grading but it's just the principle of it that is upsetting. Made even more so by the fact that I could not even communicate the problem to Anonymous Cleaning Woman due to a rather sizable language barrier. Now my desk is adorned with: "No lance fuera de el Westlaw listado más." Let's hope it works.

Tuesday 01/25/05

2005-01-25T14:09:00.000-05:00

I just got back from having lunch with a prof. At one point he picked his nose with his right pinky. Just a little at first to explore, then some circular action in there to dig some bad boy out. While we are eating. But he is tenured and somewhat well known and can be of assistance so I just looked away and plesantly smiled when he was done. I am doing some research work for him on his latest Law Review opus on how parking regulations are part of a systematic campaign against women and minorities or something like that. You see he is a "crit," or a Critical Legal Studies scholar. Where you and I might see a set of rules, he sees oppression and phallus-centeric cultural violence. That last phrase is repeated no less than five times in the rough version of the piece I am helping him research. And by research I mean footnote endlessly with quotations of other similarly-thinking "scholars." In case it is not yet abundantly clear, I find it unfathomable that he gets a pay check and a corner office for what he does. But I am willing to lend a hand since I am getting school credit as well as a gentleman's handshake agreement for some hot clerking recs when the time comes. I just hope he doesn't come around to the realization that such an arrangement has the net effect of perpetuating the white male power elite school paradigm. That might look good on my clerkship applications.

Here's something useful

2005-01-23T12:25:00.001-05:00

If you are a 1L and are desperately seeking that golden dream of a 1L summer associateship, gather around the fire. It's hard to find one but depending on your school and your grades, it's doable. Hell, I did it and that 20 grand post-taxes [we are hoping for a nice fat tax return as well] is pretty damn sweet. Here is some advice on how to find that coveted summer associate gig [following advice is for non "diversity" job searches only. If you happen to be a minority 1L, congratulations! You need not bother with this]:

First of all, as a psychological matter, give up any illusion that you are of ANY use to a firm as 1L. After a year of law school all you will know how to do is smile while wearing a suit and not get drunk at lunch. 2Ls are just as useless work-wise but they are recruited simply to be brought back as live bodies after they graduated. Since the 1L firm that might hire you knows you are NOT going back to them the second summer, they are in effect wasting money on you. Once we have reached this critical epiphany comes the fun part: find a firm so pathetic, desperate, downtrodden, ugly, declining, and otherwise deformed as is willing to hire 1Ls. The key questions to ask are:

-Has the firm had to fire associates in the past and have a bad reputation because of it?
-Have key partners been defecitng as of late?
-Has there been a scandal involving institutional racial insensitivity? [bonus points if you are a member of the racial group offended]
-Have business publications hinted at the firm closing?
-Is the firm below market in its benefits pacakge/bonus/etc.?
-Is the firm known not to give offers to all of its 2L summers?
-Is the firm the butt of jokes, as in "I sure hope I don't get a B- in Civ Pro, or I will have to work for firm X"?
-Is the firm trying a little too hard with promotional materials/cutesy recruiting pages/trying to be warm and fuzzy?
-Do people say "things could be worse, I could be headed to firm X"?
-Has the firm had any well-publicized suicdes of late?
-Do small children cry when the name of firm X is mentioned?
-Is the firm often compared to Brobeck?
-Have there been e-mails circulating around the internet displaying a partners' wrath at an associate?
-Have there been resignation e-mails filled with venom from a former associate circulating around?

The point of the exercise is to find some employers who are so unattractive to 2Ls that only the substandard and criminally insane would work there. Also add any office of a European-based firm, since they can't compete with the locals and will probably be gone in five years. Voila! Now go get a job which will allow you to experience three course lunches four times a week while doing little to nothing.

The reason the crappier firms desperate to raise their profile will look to 1Ls is because they are even more desperate for a job, don't know any better and will be so grateful to be thrown a bone that they will come back raving about the firm. This will in turn increase the morons at the margins who will overlook the fact that they are going to a shithole of an employer the next summer. Everyone wins!

A Rant

2005-01-21T12:05:00.000-05:00

I have been ripping on the old people in law school enough but another rather annoying demographic is the "wanna be fratboy." These are the under 30 males who either straight out of college or a few years out decide to live their glory days in law school. And I say live as opposed to re-live because it is painfully obvious that they were, well to be nice, lacking in social options as undergrads. You know the type. Went to a pretty good school, spent spring breaks at home reading How to Get Into Law School, spent summers in financial service internships that apparently never quite panned out, just missed out the fun around them and now they will soak themselves in beer and occassionally their own piss and run around screaming what a good time they are having.

The sad thing is when they travel in packs. It's like a group of slightly retarded animals who look alike: brown hair with a part, cell phone holsters, a lot of J.Crew looking sweaters and tan slacks. I bet most of them owned the same SUV at some point. Like an aging aspiring actress who is past her prime without having had a prime they cling onto the youth that they missed out on, they are depressing and to be avoided. Also, they scare off any attractive women by the sheer fact that they travel 6-8 horny drunken assholes at a time.

Friday 01/21/05

2005-01-21T11:45:00.000-05:00

So I went out last night. Ended up in a loft somewhere near the East River that I had been to before, still no idea how. Today I must sober up and get a few things done, like try to return some Chrismas presents I have been too lazy to try return until now. Two days ago I got into a pretty nasty tiff at a store trying to return some horrific tie for booze money. First I get an old guy who looked like some kind of accountant laid off late in life without a pension plan. I felt bad being mean to him but then his superior, who looked like a career retail loser shows up and I had no problems chewing him out. I ended up getting my refund and proceeded to buy a lovely bottle of 12 year old scotch.

Last night was kind of a waste. Met up with some old college friends who are bankers or something like that. The verdict: I don't think I do enough drugs to be a banker. Then very oddly I ran into the EIC of my journal. She was incredibly wasted and with some people I didn't know. Pretty sure she has a live-in boyfriend but she was definitely coming on to me, slurring on and on about how she appreciated my hard work [what hard work? I haven't shown up to do anything in months]. She is definitely a looker so I briefly contemplated *it* but the prospect of future weirdness and being assigned more cite-checking if things ended up awkward was too unsettling.

This morning I get an email that I have a huge cite-checking assignment that will require a trip off-campus. The moral of the story: sometimes you just can't make things more complicated than they are.

A rant

2005-01-19T20:54:00.000-05:00

Why does every foreigner who has somehow made it to this school feel a sense of self-importance of a Supreme Court justice? Hey Jacques, next time you have an incoherent but predictably long rant about the idiocy of civil procedure rules in the United States how about you pick up a little Anglais first. "Zee...um...class...how do you say...action...is..." Oh and one other thing, no one cares how they do it in your country. Especially if it's one of those shitholes that members of U2 have to campaign to save from their debt obligations. No. One. Cares.

Wednesday 01/19/05

2005-01-19T20:47:00.000-05:00

Feels weird to write "05" for anything. Will probably get used to that sometime in March, when the year will be 1/4 gone.

So I had lunch with AnonymousFriend today. He is applying to law school since he hates his "monkey-level" job in finance [his words, not mine]. I tried to make it clear to him just how much monkey work will be in his future if he follows the law route. Also, he quite sadly did not break the 170 mark on the L-S-A-T, meaning that a good school is probably out of the question. Well maybe not but I tried to stress to him the grimness of his later years if he doesn't crawl above the G-town line of law school respectability. Because frankly at that point he should start thinking about becoming one of those guys who cleans animal shit at the zoo.

Summer Class

2005-01-18T00:02:00.000-05:00

I got a friendly email from the firm I will be lunching at this summer over the weekend, no less, announcing the members of our "class" and some other administrative to do. I knew a couple of people from this school and one or two names slithered through the cracks of memory from the Anonymous Alma Mater. Good kids, all of them. Thankfully there weren't any of the older, "nontraditional" crowd. And by that, of course, I mean many of the geezers who flamed out in their first career and marched on down to law school to try again. Man are they a sorry bunch. Mostly because they won't shut up about how great cave digging/free-lance journalism/business ownership/museum curatorship was. Oh, the war tales they have. Of course if they are so fucking successful what are they doing in school with the likes of me, taking on $150,000 in debt and foregone earnings?

Every incoming 1L under 30 should get a translation chart to deal with this crowd. Stating "occupation" that a fellow classmate will announce and what it really means. Something along the lines of:

"Consultant": Someone who looked good in a suit but didn't do very much.
"Author": did a lot of drugs, traveled through some ski resorts.
"Free lance journalist": worse drugs, less impressive ski resorts, much more sex with strangers.
"I-banker": poor schlob who was only employable during the 90s when all it took was a pulse and ability not to fart in meetings to be in at a bulge bank.
"Movie producer": lived near L.A., may or may not have actually been near a movie lot.
"Owned my own business": owe a lot of money to a lot of people. No chance of a home mortgage any time son.
"In sales": the less successful character from Glengary, Glenross.
"Worked for family business": ran family business into ground.
"College professor":fucked and undergrad and had to leave in a hurry.
"Worked on the Hill": answered phone for someone who was important, did a lot of coke in bathroom of Georgetown bars.
"Worked for a non-profit": just turn around from this person and walk away.
"Pharmaceutical company": sold a lot of questionable chemicals during boom times, fired when sales staff made way for lawyers.
"Management in corporation X": fired for incompetence/sheer stupidity/inability to add.
"Computer technician/consultant/PhD": not very good with computers despite creditials, will not be very good at the law thing either.
"Paralegal": the equivalent of a law fluffer. Not a lot of leadership potential here.
"Worked for the government": managed to moved out of an field that lives on its own ineptitude.

Classes Started Again

2005-01-11T22:49:00.000-05:00

The fun thing about first week of classes as a non-1L is the whole "class shopping" thing. Profs are actually trying to be somewhat less monotonous and not drown you in the reading. Ok, who are we kidding they aren't trying at all because all that the school cares about is the amount of academic sludge that they churn out. According to an AnonymousDean I had the pleasure of speaking once at a cocktail reception when he was quite loaded, the faculty is evaluated on one and one thing only: academic scholarship. Beyond that, "It's nice when they don't fuck the students." He actually said that to me, in the midst of a vodka gimlet while eyeing a female in short skirt the same way I look at cheesesteaks on menus when I am hungry walking down Third Avenue.

The point being that the profs don't care, they know that we don't care since we all have jobs. Except for a couple of people who are so blindgly dumb they should have probably considered a career as accountants. But we don't care and during the first week when we go to classes that we probably won't stay in we care even less. Except for the couple of nutjobs who write down everything the prof said verbatim and sit there in rapt attention as if the paunchy old white man in front of them, very obviously mailing it in big time and obviously in no small hurry to get back to his spacious office and footnote his latest law review opus, or surf the web, or whatever it is that they do in there, will reveal some great truth. Those people are destined to get the B-s. They lack imagination and probably cannot write at above a seventh grade level.

It's Evolution, Baby!

2005-01-10T19:22:00.000-05:00

"All through the shadows they come and they go
With only one thing in common
They got the fire down below"-Bob Seger.

I don't think long-term relationships are natural. I mean they are fine for a while and all but ultimately we are just fighting our evolutionary hard-wired desires and you can only do that for so long. If you don't believe me, check out the divorce rate in this country.

I caught myself thinking that when I was checking out a particularly curvy third-year in a rather tedious introductory class in corporate something or other. Or maybe evidence, who knows. Half of the people in the room won't be back next week so the prof is mailing it in and I am only there because I was rip-roaring drunk most of last week and feel bad about it. So there is a a third year about 30 degrees to my northeast lookin' mighty fine. A little thick in the trunk, especially when accentuated by tight-fitting jeans that surely set her back at least two Franklins but otherwise just marvelous. And I find myself thinking yeah she is hot and maybe single and maybe I can somehow wedge my way into her circle of friends and "hang out" and one thing will lead to another and maybe sparks will fly and there will or won't be amazing sex to be had. But then I will be bored and I will want her out of my room so I can watch cartoons and the Yes network in my queen-sized bed and I will get bored and wonder if she has a sister who is a theater major in the undergrad here and...well thats just how these things go. But don't blame me, blame evolution. Because pre-historic protolawstudent who thought like me [the AnonymousCaveman if you will] got to reproduce quite a bit. And here I am, carrying out their legacy.

People That Annoy Me

2005-01-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

-Men who use chapstick.
-People who pick up the cell phone on the subway during the 1/10th of the second there is a glimmer of service below ground. You know you will lose the call in about two seconds. How about instead of screaming into the phone you let them leave a message?
-Professors who send the syllabus way, way, way in advance.
-Employees of the more upscale stores in Manhattan. Yes I realize most of your clientele is a lot wealthier/powerful/more famous than me but if not for the chic name out front you would be nothing.
-Tourists and college kids on break who flood into the city.
-People from Long Island who say they are "from New York." You are from a cesspool of suburbia that happens to be in the same state, don't fool yourself.
-The Anonymous Alma Mater Alumni Development Office. Stop bugging me about money, I will give when I am ready.
-Girls who think $200 jeans are a way of dressing up.
-The guys working the door at really shitty establishments. I am only here because my friends from out of town don't know any better and don't give me an attitude because you look like any further violence on your part might violate the terms of parole.
-Girls who work in advertising/media/PR who insist on name dropping the celebs they have seen at work parties. You still make $30,000 a year and the fact that you were once close enough to spit on Sarah Jessica Parker won't change that fact.
-Anyone who lives near, on, or around Murray Hill.
-Panhandlers near my gym. If I am in my gym clothes, I am usually not carrying lots of change. And even if I did, I would rather spend it on my drug problem and not yours.
-Everyone who will enrich themselves off the relief aid for the tsunami. Red Cross administrators, the Thai army, Sri Lankan officials.
-AnymousOlderBrother for not having a job, sleeping with no less than a different woman a night and somehow avoiding the stress that I have built into my life.
-My trainer, who has no idea what he is doing because he is from the Midwest somewhere. Or maybe Oregon. Either way, hick.
-People who will buy the book of Scott Peterson's mistress. Half completed degree in massage therapy+big ol' fake tits+affair with convicted murder=She must have something to say!
-Myself for knowing what she majored in.
-Ironic, know-it all Brooklyn hipsters who have never had a job in their life and probably never will. By the time that time comes they will graduate to be post-ironic, post-Brooklyn shit-eating respected members of the middle class.

That's all for today. I think a night out is in order.

Tuesday Means Getting Well

2005-01-04T18:42:00.000-05:00

Tuesday is when I see my therapist. Twice a month. On Tuesdays. We sit on the floor and talk. The sitting on the floor thing was his idea, it is supposed to held me relax and all of that but today I spent a lot of time worrying about how it would affect my new Zenga pants I got as a Christmas present. I shared that with my therapist, who quite correctly asked me if I was having anxiety about being on high floors again. He's a sharp guy, very good.

All of us: AnonymousFather, AnonymousMother, myself, and AnonymousOlderBrother used to go to another guy as a family once a month back in the day but he landed most of the cast of some Broadway show for group therapy and then some soap opera actors and jacked up his rates that AnonymousFather, as the sole income provider found unacceptable. And knowing what my current therapist costs, I can't really blame him.

After that little detour into the mysteries of the inner being, I had lunch with AnonymousOlderBrother. He is a video-artist or a graphics desiner, or a painter, or whatever it is he feels like today. As far as I know he has not incurred a paying job of any sort since I was a junior in college. He does a lot of interesting-sounding drugs and has sex with a lot of female i-bankers from Chappaqua, who don't want to date him but lose their expensive underwear quite fast at the sight of a man who never wakes up before 1, has tussled hair and lives in a loft. The current loft is in some shithole in Queens, because "Brooklyn is so over." While we are lunching he babbles on about a great cover of an 80s De La Soul hit he heard by a punk band at a warehouse party in Astoria last Sunday night. He can't quite finish a sentence and when I confront him about it confesses to being high. Following my therapist's advice I offer to pick up the bill, which he doesn't protest. Even though in either case AnonymousFather will be paying, I find this a bit inconsiderate. Something to discuss in therapy 2 weeks from today.

New Years' Resolutions

2005-01-02T20:51:00.000-05:00

-Make some new friends. Mine are too busy trying to mate with each other to be a lot of fun. And it's all about fun.
-Stop over-tanning. It looks great but who needs the health headache.
-Go to the Yankees home opener. Big Unit on the mound, me Anonymously drinking suds in the stands.
-Drink less beer and more red wine. I read that is good, or something.
-No more college alumni events. Everyone who hangs out at the old alma mater club is borderline intolerable.
-Buy some commercial outlines this time. One girl in an in-class exam was leafing through hers rather thoughtfully and dammit, I cannot fall behind the curve now.
-Buy another suit for the summer. Hopefully Cerruti or Cavali will have a sale. If not, I will have to brave the M.S.R.P.
-Less roadtrips, more coming to class. Sure the random jaunt to L.A. is a good time but I have got to wean myself off that.
-Read something other than the Wall Street Journal.
-File a Vioxx lawsuit.

The New Year is Here!

2004-12-31T00:51:00.000-05:00

"Before I got into porn, I didn't get to fuck beautiful women in the ass. It just didn't happen."-Brandon Wood, Male porn actor.

In case you are unfamiliar with the genre, Mr. Wood (nee something else I would imagine) makes his living doing just that. For him, it happened! My aspirations are slightly different and besides, its not THAT kind of blog. I may not know exactly what the professional equivalent of filmed sodomy is for me but who knows: it may be something just as exciting. Like oh, I don't know, negotiating a big settlement, saving a company, telling an adversary that I will see him/her [who are we kidding, him] in court, something dramatic along those lines. It just isn't happening now but it still may. Of course having worked in a big firm I may just have to find my inner happiness from wearing a Patek Philippe.

Every Dream Has a Price

2004-12-30T00:37:00.000-05:00

Bud Fox: How much is enough?
Gordon Gekko: It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another.

A lot of my AnonymousFriends like to sit around shoot the shit and discuss how they don't want to be the lawyer being told what to do, they want to be the decision-maker, calling the shots, captaining the ship, raping and pillaging or whatever it is they think that CEOs or business owners or whathaveyou do. These are of course my LawAnonymousFriends, who are tolerable up to a point but due to geographic convinience I must endure their delusions of grandeur.

Of course they never think about the downside. For every winner, there is a loser. That's just how business works. For every Warren Buffett there are a lot of guys in middle management who tried being Warren Buffett and lost the farm. For every Michael Dell there are plenty of similarly amibitious college drop outs who are living in trailers hoping one of their six children develops a fastball so they don't have to work at a Wal-Mart late in life. For every Sumner Redstone there are dozens, hundreds, thousands [he's been at it a long time at age 85] who got fired somewhere along the way to he could be Sumner Redstone, 85 year old billionaire. For every success story there is a fucker somewhere who is not sleeping very well because he owes people a lot of money and knows will never pay it back.

So everyone wants to be Gordon Gekko and no one thinks they are going to be the guy who gets fired when Gordon Gekko comes roaring to the gates of their company. Some of us know what we are good at. I am never going to be Gordon Gekko but I am not going to be chewed up and spat out. Of course should I have male offspring, they are learning to throw a fastball left-handed. Because hey, you never know.

Ah, the old Undergrad: Part 1

2004-12-29T00:39:00.000-05:00

A while ago I had conducted an evaluative interview for admission to the Anonymous alma mater. My first interviewee was a very impressive young woman. Definitely more so than when I was when I was applying. All kinds of very well-researched and astute questions about what the experience was like, residential life, career services, the alumni connections, blah blah blah. I really tried to make it as clear as possible that her experience would be exactly the same whether she ended up where I did, any other similarly situated school, or even if she turned out to be less impressive than I thought, at a place like Tufts. Shudder.

What I really wanted to say was: you look like the kind of girl who will probably do too much coke, develop an eating disorder, date a few guys from Westport with flowing golden locks of hair sticking out from underneath their A&F hats, by date I mean screw, go on great Spring Break trips followed by worried visits to the doctor, not take anything too seriously, go to bed late and wake up non too early, drink till you puke, hit the gym at least four times a week, then graduate with a degree in Art History/English/Psychology to find yourself living in Murray Hill and working in publishing/media/advertising living on a shit salary but not really because the parents will take care of their little girl.

It was more of a warning when it started but shit, it was sounding pretty good considering that I had finals coming up. She was talking about her community involvement or art award or hatred of the Taliban or something but all I could think about was filling an SUV with AnonymousCollegeFriends, slapping on that A&F hat and drivin' to school.

I should have drunk more champagne.

I am in Law School Yet I hate Law

2004-12-28T18:21:00.000-05:00

I hate people who are in school with me who say things like "Oh I would never be a lawyer" and "I can't believe people want to be lawyers!" Guess what, you're in a professional school that, last time that I checked, was centered around the study of law. Take our friend the "real" AL for example. After three years of HLS he, apparently, wants to be a Hollywood writer or something dignified like that. Billing hours is distasteful and not-so-young Jeremy has decided to go West and "find himself." That is after a $150,000 in eeducation and at least in much in foregone wages. I guess my question is: what the fuck are you thinking? Why not just go find yourself after college, why not just jump out there and become whatever it is you were going to become? The problem of course is, that in our increasingly sensitive society the time for one to "find himself" is increasingly pushed back. Used to be 18--23 or so was good enough: goof off for a couple of years in college, find something you are at least interested in and run along to it. But no more.

Now there is the "professional student": a money-draining pest on family, higher education lenders, and society that gets degrees "just in case" and quite frankly will not do much with themselves. And for whatever reason, law school draws the brunt of these lost souls. Graduated with a liberal arts degree and don't want to take your lumps starting at the bottom? Come to law school. Flamed out in your first career but are unwilling to acknowledge it? Come to law school. Interested in "policywork" or perhaps "something creative"? Come to law school. You can start a never has been and never will be club. The school is very generous with funding when the tuition alone is north of $30,000 a year.

How it all got started

2004-12-27T18:23:00.000-05:00

I was a confused bright-eyed undergrad, anxious and willing to do just about anything to erase the indebtedness of having attended an Ivy League institution. Much like many of you I stumbled onto "Law School," combining a certain quiet dignity with the possibility of yet more debt followed, of course by the large cash pay-off and self-fulfillment of going to work in an expensive suit. My real introdution to the process was at an informational meeting held by an Admissions Director of a top-14 law school that seemed a whole lot more impressive to a college junior than to a second year law student at slightly better school. He seemed like a nice enough guy, complete with a charming southern drawl. I didn't know anything about law school or the law so there I was in the back, munching on a turkey club sandwich. He went through his routine [legal market good, his law school grrrrreat!] and finished. Some people ran up for questions and while I had absolutely nothing to say to this man, why the fuck not? So there I am in front of Earl or whatever his name was and I inquired about my lack of any and all extracurricular activities. You see my academic performance was satisfactory enough but my involvement in the "interpersonal learning" that our admissions brochures so heavily promoted consisted of binge drinking and the occasional drunken self-inflicted injury. Earl looked at me and in a very somber monotone informed that his institution selected only the finest of the finest of the finest of the 6,000+ applicants that they had recieved and that only those who had exemplified the most outstanding of human traits would be rescued from the reject pile. Exhibiting moral virtue, communal involvement, oustanding citizenship was an absolute neccessity to be gained the "ticket" as he lovingly referred to it. I got home and after two days of heavy drinking [this event was, I believe on a Thursday, and thus to be immediately followed by libations] reflected on what happened. Perhaps this study of law and suit-wearing respectability was not for me. Fortunately Earl was lying through this teeth and all that his, and every other school cared about was an index of G.P.A. and a four-hour standardized test. Less than a year later I had a signed acceptance from Earl in a fat envelope of brochures promoting the school's selection of only the best, brightest, and the most virtious but by then I was smart enough not to want anything to do with him. The elbow-patched jacket did not help.

Hello, friend[s]

2004-12-27T18:19:00.000-05:00

So the AnonymousLawyer turned out to be a hoax. Well, "turned out" is pretty dramatic because frankly some of his turnout was so over-the-top that, well it didn't leave a whole lot to being in touch with reality. So why not stories from a real law student and not a law student pretending to be a lawyer. And if you don't like it, there is always something on the old T.V.

AnonymousLawStudent

Summer Associate Event

Explaining my absence

Time to start up again

Answering E-Mail

Exam morning

It's that time of year...

Review Session: A New Off-Off-Broadway Play.

Sometime during exams

More fun with my readers

Friday 04/22/05

Thursday 04/22/05

Monday 04/18/05

AnonymousLawStudent Answers Your Questions and Concerns.

Tuesday 04/12/05

Monday 04/11/05

Monday 04/11/05

Saturday 04/09/05

Sunday 04/03/2005

Monday 03/28/05

The Battle for New York Law Schools: A look at the numbers US News & World Report 2005

Columbia v. NYU Law school: Settling the Battle Once and and For all

Wednesday 03/24/05

Tuesday 03/22/05

Monday 03/21/05

Saturday 03/19/05

Tuesday 03/08/05

Monday 03/08/05

Sunday 03/06/05

Wednesday 03/02/05

More Public Service

Thursday 02/24/05

Some more useful advice

Sunday 02/20/05

Back for a bit

Saturday 02/19/05

The pre-Ls are coming

Wednesday 02/16/05

Tuesday 02/15/05

Monday 02/14/05

Family Time

Mail Time.

Friday 02/11/05

Why There Should Be NO Class participation

Tuesday 02/08/2005

How to Write a Friendster Profile [Male Edition]

Sunday 02/06/2005

Lunch

How to Dress Like an Asshole [former i-banker in Law School edition]

My head hurts

Wednesday 02/02/05

This is odd

Last Night

Monday 01/31/05

How to Dress like an Asshole [Brooklyn Hipster Edition]

My Money Where Did You Go

Almost all the grades are now back

Ouch

Damn it, damn it all.

Tuesday 01/25/05

Here's something useful

A Rant

Friday 01/21/05

A rant

Wednesday 01/19/05

Summer Class

Classes Started Again

It's Evolution, Baby!

People That Annoy Me

Tuesday Means Getting Well

New Years' Resolutions

The New Year is Here!

Every Dream Has a Price

Ah, the old Undergrad: Part 1

I am in Law School Yet I hate Law

How it all got started

Hello, friend[s]