The 3rd Generation of Ness Law

The end is near…

mudman1948 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:05:44 +0000

The title sounds grim but the reality is awesome. I’m less than a semester from graduating law school! Me! How weird is that!?

All disbelief aside, I’m pumped. I’ll be back working as soon as the BAR is taken care of. There isn’t much I’ll miss about law school, but I know for a fact I’m looking forward to getting back to working.

There is something calming about working and earning money for that work. For me, at least, it gives me a tangible feeling of importance.

11:43 PM

mudman1948 — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:52:49 +0000

…is when I left the library. That’s a solid work day.

This is Why Law School is Hard

mudman1948 — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:09:42 +0000

… and this is only a couple programs.

Quick Post

mudman1948 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:25:33 +0000

I’m not gone people. I’ve just been über busy. I’ll have a few posts sometime in the next few days/weeks, but as many of you may know, law school is a time thief.

Brb.

Tired

mudman1948 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:14:04 +0000

It’s amazing how so much and yet so little can be done in one day. Try as I might, I never seem to get everything done.

We had our first real study group today, and I have to say it was quite productive. I was able to learn my way, which is to teach the material to others. I learn best by explaining something to someone else because it helps me better understand the principle myself.

So, that was good. Other than that, it’s mid-term. My wife brought it to my attention, but it’s hard to believe that we’re 1/6th done with law school. It’s flying by, and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Saturday’s are about to become a study day. I’ve tried the 5 days on, 2 days off routine, and it isn’t working. There’s too much information to organize and absorb to get it all done in 5 days.

All in all, however, I’m loving law school. I wasn’t sure when I came if I would like it, but I can honestly say that I’m loving it. Loving it. Not just liking it, loving it. Research and formulating arguments is so much fun. Everyone tells you that you should do what you love, and how the heck was I supposed to know I’d love doing something that, up until I came to school here, I’d never done before? Maybe at some point I’ll write a post about my opinions regarding the public education system. I can’t promise that, but maybe after exams or something.

Laters.

Ness v. Pizza

mudman1948 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:42:05 +0000

It’s all-to-easy to fall back into the “What’s for dinner?”… PIZZA!… attitude that many of us fell into during college. I’ve been getting the $2.00 or $3.00 pizzas from the grocery store and that’s what I typically eat for dinner. Bad choice.

Thus, as soon as my last one is gone — which I may leave for my roommate — I’m going to fill the fridge will less awful things like Lean Cuisines etc. That way I have portion control. To fill in the void of vegetables, I’m going to follows the genius advice of my wife and get V8 fruit juice. I love juice. V8 juice tastes great. So, 1+1 in this case definitely equals 2.

If you haven’t guessed by now, pizza makes you fat, or at least it makes me fat, and I’m not too egotistical or manly to admit that I have been beaten by 14 inches of bready, pepperoniy goodness.

Ruling entered for the Plaintiff (ME) and remanded for a trip to the grocery store.

Not entirely true…

mudman1948 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:28:43 +0000

This is a bit of back-tracking, but when I was first accepted to law school, the word spread around my hometown pretty quickly, as it would in most small towns. A family member, who is also a lawyer, asked me, “Why?” I answered his question as best I could, but, in all honesty, any excuse I can come up with about wanting to help people and that this is the best way I knew how, feels like a lie. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not entirely untrue, I do like being helpful, but there are lots of ways to do that other than being a lawyer. I’m pretty good with computers. Some people have even gone so far as to tell me I’m a “wiz” or a “guru.” So, in that way, I could help people, but it wouldn’t make me happy.

I missed home, and I still do. There’s something about being able to be outside, in the woods, where no one can tell you what to do or where to go or charge you for just being there. Being a lawyer lets me help people, sure, but for the most part, it allows me to come back home and make a decent living.

So, after today, if anyone asks me why I decided to go to law school, I’m going to tell them it was because I wanted to come back home and be part of a community that helped raise me into who I am. There it is, I finally figured it out.

2nd Full Week

mudman1948 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:57:31 +0000

I spent the last couple weeks trying to figure out the best way to take notes and prepare for classes, and what I have decided upon is a pre-class outlining strategy.

I brief all of the cases in our reading and go ahead and put them in an outlined format. The next day during class, I add comments and notes or points that we cover. I tried other things, but this way I don’t have to reformat when it comes time to study for finals, or at least that’s my hope. As a former professional IT guy, I cannot stand redundancy, and redoing work makes me cringe.

Tuesday nights, Wednesdays and Wednesday nights are the worst. 3 classes on Wednesdays make them a long ~36 hours. Other than that, studying etc. are exactly as I expected. Law school doesn’t seem to be all that “hard,” but it’s just A LOT of work. It’s impossible to explain to someone that it took me 3 hours to finish reading and studying 12 pages, unless of course they had gone to professional school. I’m sure medical school students experience something similar, but that’s just a guess.

Going to parties in high school meant a bunch of stupid teenagers, their cars, and questionable activities… I’ll leave it at that.

Going to parties in college meant a bunch of stupid, young adults, their fraternity/sorority house, apartment, etc., and not-so-legal activities, depending on age, if you get my meaning.

Going to parties in law school… is a totally different story. A bunch of young adults, none of them stupid, participating in legal activities (no pun intended), maybe “lawful” is a better word for it… yeah, I think that works better… so, lawful activities. The cars… Porsches, Jaguars, etc. I think I’m making the right friends. Oh, and the houses… yeah, huge.

It gives me little more perspective of what can be achieved by hard work and dedication.

Contracts and Legal Reading & Writing

mudman1948 — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:36:20 +0000

Contracts is going to be dull. There is so much ambiguity in a subject that seems like it should and would be “cut and dry.” Guy A agrees to do 1, 2, and 3 if Guy B gives him x. Simple, right? Nope. I can see this course giving me more than a few headaches. While I know that the law and the legal profession is all about ambiguities, I tend to like the 1+1=2 approach to things. I’m working on rearranging my comfort zone, but I can see already that it’s going to be an arduous process.

Legal Reading & Writing is going to be interesting and tough. My professor is adamant that writing is what can make or break a lawyer, and I’m sure she would eat me alive for using catch phrases, but this is my weblog and I can write however I want. That’s what makes it mine, and I like it that way. Rest assured that I will not be using them on my school work or legal writing, ever.

I tried to find a free tool that would let me OCR my PDFs that we’ve been getting from our classes, but so far, I’ve found nothing. There are a few that I found that limit file size to 2MB, but most of mine are bigger than that, so they were not much help.

I gotta get back to it, but I needed a brain-break.

GO BLUE DEVILS FIGHT!

mudman1948 — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:16:18 +0000

Just found out my Torts professor is a Duke Basketball fan, sweet!

No flame comments please.