Posted by TDot on Apr 20, 2010 in
Student Government Those of you who are long-time readers here at law:/dev/null may recall this mid-February entry on tuition, where I highlighted the tremendous response the UNC Association of Student Governments had gotten with its statewide tuition petition campaign to repeal a 8% tuition increase mandated by the North Carolina General Assembly…
…and gently pointed out that at least two parties (a certain administrator at UNC General Administration and the student newspaper at my alma mater) ended up eating their respective words of opposition, uttered back when UNCASG’s efforts with the petition first began 
More vindication came today while I was sitting in CivPro trying to pay attention.
Quick prefatory note: the tuition petition campaign was just one piece of a multi-faceted plan of attack for the Association. Starting literally the day after the General Assembly adopted the budget — you can read an email from me to campus Presidents in UNCASG’s archives — we began preparing for the 2010 legislative session that starts next month. Since August there have been numerous meetings between our folks and policymakers in Raleigh. Numerous meetings with policymakers in their home districts. Numerous phone calls. Numerous emails.
Oh and did I mentioned there were signatures from 22,000+ students? 
The entire effort has occurred largely out of the public spotlight (which is just as well since the Daily Tar Heel’s Editorial Board would probably just complain anyway), but needless to say it’s been a tightly-focused, methodical, and consistent effort on the part of student leaders to get this student tax repealed.
And then this morning the Governor of North Carolina decided to say thanks by including UNCASG’s request in her budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year! 
This marks the first public endorsement of our proposal by a high-ranking elected official since we started pushing the idea back in August 2009! 
Now it’s true both chambers of the state legislature have already started work on the budget, so this is just one link in the chain. But it means (i) we’ve been promoting the right ideas all along and (ii) we’re successfully persuading the people who count.
Equally important: it also means the Governor’s lobbyists, the University system’s lobbyists, and the students’ lobbyists (me+UNCASG) will all be pushing for the exact same thing when legislators come back to town in May.
Now if only I could be right this often in Contracts… 
Tags: Competence FTW, It's good to be right..., Tuition & Fees, UNCASG
Posted by TDot on Apr 19, 2010 in
The 1L Life Just abruptly change your study habits
I forced myself to stay at NCCU Law today despite the final exam tension. And I successfully sat (relatively) still for a whopping 4 hours doing actual school-related work.
I was understandably proud of myself…
…until I emerged from the basement to an array of stunned and inquisitive looks from classmates reminding me that I usually depart promptly when classes end. A random bystander would have been forgiven for thinking one of my appendages had arbitrarily fallen off.
::awkward turtle motion::
Wonder what will happen if this turns into a habit over the next few days? 
Tags: 1L, Awkwardity FTL, Exams, NCCU Law
Posted by TDot on Apr 18, 2010 in
Randomness This week is going to be all sorts of ridiculous, so rather than try to put together a cogent entry today I’ve opted for the bullet-point approach:
- I hate being around NCCU Law this time of year. I’m convinced the only people that study at a law school are the super-Type A personalities about to have brain aneurysms over the possibility they’ll get an A- instead of an A. The stress in the air is palpable… and for reasons unknown it cripples my ability to focus and get things done.
- It’s even more odd considering I have colleagues who head over to UNCCH Law or Duke Law for “a more relaxing study environment”… but also know several students at both of those institutions who come to NCCU for the same thing
Bizarre…
- Unfortunately my apartment isn’t much better for the whole exam-week study marathon — it’s structured to be a laid-back reading atmosphere, not one for outlining, reviewing outlining, memo drafting, and handling the other non-law-related business coming up this week.
- Added apartment distraction? Wii Sports Resort. I’m a much better golfer on it than I am in real life
- And I literally just found out the legal research memo I thought was due at 8am Wednesday is actually due at 8am Tuesday… #fml
- In blog-related news, I’ve finally started using tags (only took me 9 months!) so at some point in the weeks ahead I’ll go back through the old entries and tag them appropriately.
Possible Gravatar pic?
I’m kinda partial to the current one though, so still debating…- I also added a number of bloggers to the blogroll, discovered through the ClearAdmit B.o.B. nominations I mentioned yesterday along with a handful of others linked off those sites. Make sure you check them out!
- Speaking of new bloggers, Madame Prosecutor decided to join the law student blogging craze yesterday — I’ve got no clue what she’s going to end up writing about, but you can follow along here.
- And with Madame Prosecutor now entering the arena, that makes 3 Legal Eagles I’m aware of in the blogosphere (the other has his blog here)… and we’re all 1Ls in the same section
So the self-proclaimed “honors kids” are in §102. The class’s political leaders have been in §101. But only §103 is running the law school to the point where we’re willing to open the window for y’all to see what goes down
- Speaking of §103, I liked CivPro a lot more last semester…
- I’m going sufficiently insane that for the life of me I couldn’t find the printed version of QuietStorm’s beef tips recipe anywhere in the kitchen… so I logged on to the blog from my phone
- No matter how things turn out and no matter how stressed I get, I know 2 weeks from now it will all be over. It’s a great feeling
I hope all of you had an amazing weekend, enjoy the rest of your Sunday, and have a terrific week ahead!
Tags: 1L, Blawg Love, Exams, Legal Eagles FTW, Madame Prosecutor, NCCU Law
Posted by TDot on Apr 17, 2010 in
The 1L Life Welcome to the weekend everybody!
This is one of those post drafts I mentioned a couple days ago, the ones that were supposed to be done last week before I randomly disappeared. So this is old news for my colleagues at the N.C. Central University School of Law who happen to stop by, and to y’all I apologize.
But I love being right and just couldn’t resist
Regular readers here at law:/dev/null know I’ve got a fairly dismissive view of grade secrecy in law school and the whole “omg we’re all competing with each other!” worldview. I’m candid with all of you about my grades (e.g. here and here and here) even though they’re not that great, simply because (1) it’s a better option than wasting time/energy trying to stay secretive, and (2) everyone knows I’m not a top student so I conveniently get excluded from the law school gossip mill
Every 3.0+ student at NCCU
The folks who preferred the secretive approach found out I was right last week, albeit for totally unexpected reasons.
As part of its mission, N.C. Central University — not just the law school but the whole thing — intentionally serves students who otherwise might not be accepted to college elsewhere. Since it takes a “calculated risk” admitting those students, grade inflation is practically non-existent: the “curve” is set at 2.000 in nearly every course of study, and professors will promptly flunk you if your performance is not acceptable.
So it’s probably no surprise there are some Eagle alums in their first year at Harvard Law School, some current NCCU students scoring in the top percentile of all Praxis-takers statewide, and a massive poster touting every student with a GPA above 3.0 in every department.
Yes, you read that right
We have an annual Honors Convocation for everyone in honors range, but what many of the 1Ls didn’t know (myself included) is that the Convocation folks also print massive posters for each of the academic buildings on campus. These posters list out everyone currently at the cum laude (3.0-3.29), magna cum laude (3.3-3.49), and summa cum laude (3.5+) levels.
And that includes the law school.
The good students @ NCCU Law
I can’t accurately convey to you in words a week later how much buzz and consternation and gnashing of teeth this poster caused for the 2-3 weeks it was up
Some folks were upset their names were listed, others were upset that other people’s names were listed, etc etc etc.
Personally I found it all eminently amusing, no doubt partly because everyone knew my name wasn’t going to be on there… but mostly because a number of people who’ve talked big game about their grades have been exposed as frauds by their absence 
So to any pre-Ls looking forward to attending NCCU Law next Fall, let this be a lesson to you: listen to TDot I won’t steer you wrong
Tags: 1L, Amusement, Law Grades, NCCU Law, The Curve
Posted by TDot on Apr 16, 2010 in
Friday Drive-by Amid all the craziness trying to get caught up — with exams starting next week too! — I totally overlooked an email from the folks over at ClearAdmit back on Monday. Turns out law:/dev/null is one of their Top 25 nominees for the “Best of Blogging 2009-2010″ Award!
The nomination was a total surprise, particularly given the far more talented writing of many other nominees (not to mention my frequent and arbitrary disappearances ).
But now I’ve got a better understanding of where Oscar nominees are coming from when they say it’s an honor just to be nominated. To have this blog included in the same list as my own “Big 3″ (Jansen, TRPLS, and idwsj) is a big honor in my book
So to the folks over at ClearAdmit, many many thanks! And also *THANK YOU* to all of you readers who keep coming back… and thus encourage me to keep writing
I’d encourage all of you to check out the other blogs in the Top 25 — I even found some new entries to the blogroll in this list
Have fun reading y’all And a great night!
Tags: Blawg Love, ClearAdmit, Competence FTW
Posted by TDot on Apr 15, 2010 in
Student Government It’s officially official: today marked my first day working as Treasurer of NCCU Law‘s Student Bar Association
Everyone on the group’s Executive Board seems like cool people who will get along well in the year ahead. Granted that might just be my irrepressible optimism talking, but I’d say it’s a reasonable belief so far.
More importantly than getting along: the other officers are big on getting things done.
Take the SBA website as an example. I think it’s fair to characterize our current web offerings as unacceptable, as we instead put most of our information through the clunky and poorly coded TWEN system.
So during our transition meeting on Tuesday, as the outgoing officers were giving their reports, the Secretary and I were sitting next to each other getting things in place for a new website. By the end of the meeting the URL was registered, hosting provided, WordPress installed, new theme installed, and listserv up in the background for communication.
There’s still a ton of graphic and content work that needs to be done over the summer, but it was a pretty solid improvement for 30 minutes’ worth of work
Everyone’s got a ton of ideas: power strips in our Fishbowl, some kind of snack option during exams for students who stay here ’til the wee hours of the night, linking up with the undergraduate SG to build a coalition on issues like food services, my personal goal to make our appropriations process more rigorous, the list goes on and on and on.
The Secretary summed it up well earlier today when she remarked “This is gonna be one of those revolutionary type of e-boards, I can tell.”
Things do occasionally get awkward for me at times since I was the only 1L to get elected out of the 3 who ran. So the other 4 executive officers have known each other longer, had common experiences, etc, and every now and then I feel an obligation to “mind my place” in the law school heirarchy.
But the upside to a group sharing a common vision is that the interpersonal divide should melt away in favor of getting that vision implemented. Time will tell.
And until then, there’s work to be done… and haters to be proven wrong Have a great night everybody!
Tags: 1L, Competence FTW, SBA, SG
Posted by TDot on Apr 14, 2010 in
Mail This was originally a TDot’s Tips entry titled “Tips for the Pre-L’s” — until I started writing it Monday afternoon, when Delta the 2L sat down next to me in the Fishbowl and wanted to know what I would be doing at 7:00pm that night.
I’ve learned the only acceptable answer when she asks me that question is “What would you like me to be doing Delta?”
Turns out the Pre-Law Students Association at my alma mater was holding a panel discussion titled “What is Law School Really Like?” and she wanted a partner from the N.C. Central University School of Law to help rep for the Legal Eagles.
Since I came at law from a non-traditional angle I had to say yes. Besides, y’all know how I am about competition
There were about 30 undergrads in the audience, and the panel turned out to be a solid mix of folks with 3 students from Campbell Law, 3 from UNCCH Law, 2 from Duke Law, an alum from Wake Forest Law, and of course Delta and I from NCCU Law. I think 6-7 of us were 1Ls, but the 2Ls/3Ls/post-Ls were represented by at least 1 person apiece.
The questions covered a wide range of topics that you’d expect from aspiring law students: workload, types of classes, “gunners” and competition, and so on. But some panel members did tend to commandeer the discussion and recognize new questioners before folks had a chance to answer the previous question, and yesterday one of the sophomores in attendance shot me a message.
Rather than do the usual Q&A format for past mail entries, I figured I’d post what he sent me and offer my $.02 from there. Here’s what I got:
Overall, I enjoyed listening to the panel and attending the event. I do wish the the questions/answers had been more organized so that each student from each law school could have given a more direct answer and that every student could have been given the chance to answer each question.
I would have liked to have learned more about the admissions process from the students also. I believe the bar exam was only mentioned once or twice in the whole forum; from what I have heard the bar exam is one of the top things that law students are trying to make sure they pass, that was one dimension that was almost forgotten about….and I’m not quite sure why?
It seemed like the whole time all of the students were all up tight and bashing the amount of work load and la la la the whole time. I was like okay I get the point that law school is a lot of work, I’m aware of that now, I am more than willing to put in the time and effort, enough with the talks about how much work it is, tell me more about WHAT LAW SCHOOL IS REALLY LIKE – tell me about the professors, tell me about the elective courses you can take, tell me about the mock trials you can participate in, etc etc.
I fully understand, and *commend* every single law student out there for the amount of work they have to put into law school; but this forum was not meant to whine about the work load if you get my gist.
Let me preface my thoughts by pointing out I’M NOT NORMAL. You hopefully figured this out at some point amid (i) Student Government being my preferred hobby, (ii) picking a T4 as my first-choice law school despite higher-ranked options, or (iii) deciding to go the law route at all after getting a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. I’m strange, I’m upbeat about my own law school experience, and I’m even optimistic about the future prospects for the legal industry.
I’m also apparently one of the very, very, very few who feel that way
So before reading on, I’d encourage you to check the other bloggers in the list at the right of this page. Dennis Jansen in particular has a ton of advice well worth reading — I read it myself before starting law:/dev/null, that’s how legit it is.
Now back to that email…
Admissions
Admissions was actually something I studied quite a bit as a side project when I was an undergrad. I’m not an expert by any means, but here’s some of what I’ve learned both in NC and nationwide:
- The admissions process is going to vary by school of course, but pretty much everyone uses some form of indexing in their decisions. Essentially take your undergraduate GPA and multiply it by a given fraction, take your LSAT score and multiply it by a different fraction, take whatever “special” factors your chosen school considers (e.g. legacy status, socioeconomic status, etc), add all those numbers up and you get your Academic Index score. Students above a certain number get in automatically, below a certain number get rejected automatically, and the folks in the middle get a closer look at your actual application to decide if you should be accepted, rejected, or waitlisted.
- Any school that tells you they read all the applications is lying to you. There are simply too many applications for every school, and your typical admissions committee is roughly 3-5 people — usually 1 or 2 administrators, and the rest senior faculty. In other words they’re all busy people, and are simply not going to read 1,000+ essays or more per person. Period.
- Apply early! Most schools also use “rolling admission,” which means they start accepting students throughout the application cycle — including those folks with the high Academic Index scores. Typically that means by the time the advertised “deadline” approaches for a given school, all of the seats have admitted students filling them and you’re competing for spots that only open up when the accepted folks go somewhere else. The odds already are not in your favor; they get precipitously worse by the deadline.
- Consider applying at public law schools in your state (if they’d be a good fit for you of course). Most state-supported institutions have caps on out-of-state students, making it comparably easier to get in if you’re in-state. For example, UNCCH Law limits out-of-state students to 25-30% of the student body even though out-of-staters typically make up 75%ish of the applications received. Private Duke Law, by contrast, had over 80%+ of its Class of 2012 coming from outside North Carolina.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I call this the “nontraditional” approach to admissions: if you know someone who’s an alum from your school, or back when you were a kid you used to mow the lawn for one of the professors, or one of your parent’s coworkers knows a friend of a friend who plays golf with the Dean, see if they have any advice they can offer to help you be as competitive as possible. The era of a well-placed phone call to the right person securing your acceptance has largely died off, but there are always “intangibles” in every process and there’s no harm in trying to line up as many as you can in your favor.
Bar Exam
At most undergraduate universities, when you finish all your required courses you’re usually entitled to graduate, get your degree, and start working in whatever field you studied.
Not so with law.
After you graduate, you’ll sit and take a bar exam for the jurisdiction where you want to practice. This is essentially a 2-3 day affair featuring multiple choice questions, essays, and similar tests on a variety of subjects to verify your competence to become a lawyer. Pass the bar, and you get to jump through the next set of assorted hoops to get your law license (“character and fitness” reviews, etc). Fail, and you get to wait 3-4 months to try again while desperately trying in the interim to find some way to pay your bills.
Training you to pass the bar, enabling you to become a competent attorney, is the #1 job of a law school. It’s also not easy — so make sure you pay attention in your law classes, because that info will be coming back in a few years.
The Work
There’s not much I can say here that will be useful to any of you, since I honestly don’t think the work in law school is that hard.
Why? Because I was horrible at my undergraduate major
As a result I was/am already accustomed to sitting in one place in perpetuity (e.g. at a desk) doing the same thing for hours non-stop (e.g. debugging code) and giving up certain necessities of life (e.g. sleep and a social life) to get projects done on time. Law school has been a cakewalk by comparison, since the only “project” is generally a midterm and final exam — and reading case law for a few hours is infinitely easier than tracing Java code looking for an elusive bug.
Trust me
Law school is a sizable volume of work, for certain. You’ll want to read all the cases you’re assigned so you’re able to understand the discussion taking place in class, which in turn will make it easier to digest the material and study for finals.
But law school is also a huge mind game. If you go in knowing you’re going to have a large volume of work and you take a disciplined approach to getting that work done, you’ll be fine — and should even have time for sleep and a social life
Professors
They’re all different, and it shows. MDG and Professor CrimLaw both have witty and disarming personalities — and are merciless graders who force you to know your material. Professor Torts takes a more disciplinarian approach. Professor Ks represents the “new school” and is more laid back than the others, while The Traveling Professor holds it down for the “old school” with her regal demeanor.
One unifying characteristic of the professors is that they’re all smart people. And the vast majority are friendly, approachable, and go out of their way to help students succeed at learning the law. After all, even these folks were 1Ls once upon a time.
The key is to not let yourself get intimidated — as your legal elders they’re entitled to a certain level of deference, but not to the point where you’re afraid to talk to them.
Electives
I’m not really qualified to say much here, simply because for almost all law schools your 1L year will be set in stone for you and cover “core” classes like Property, Contracts, Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law and Constitutional Law.
If you want to browse around, NCCU Law has most of its electives posted online. Typically law schools will have electives on a huge range of topics (intellectual property, bioethics, veterans law, etc) and offer law clinics for students to experience first-hand different areas of the law where they might be interested in practicing.
But given the breadth of offerings and the differences between each law school, the best I can recommend here is to check out the individual offerings for every school you’re interested in.
Extracurriculars
This is another area where the philosophies of law schools tend to differ, but at many schools 1Ls get to participate in most of the exact same stuff as their upper-level colleagues.
Speaking for myself here at NCCU Law, I took part in 3 different mock trial competitions just for 1Ls, signed up for the 1L Moot Court competition (before realizing it conflicted with a UNCASG meeting), participated in an ABA-sponsored client counseling competition, played on the 1L basketball team in the annual Law Week tournament, attended several events for the Black Law Students Association, and got elected Treasurer of the Student Bar Association.
And there are literally dozens of other groups and activities that I could have done if I had other interests (or more time).
Most law schools will have class councils that throw parties, hold forums, host speakers, and so on. You’ve got legal fraternities like Phi Alpha Delta and Phi Delta Phi. You’ve got BLSA and HLSA and undoubtedly other LSAs I don’t know about. You’ve got liberal orgs promoting things like workers’ rights, conservative ones promoting things like constitutional originalism, and everything in between.
So as far as extracurriculars go — at least in my admittedly limited experience — law school is as much a full-spectrum experience as college.
“What would you do differently?”
If I could change one single thing about my experience here at NCCU Law, I wouldn’t be as nervous.
Those of you who are long-time readers at law:/dev/null might recall the comedy of unforced errors that was my orientation experience. I’ve taken my Socratic beatings too. But you know what I found out over the course of the semester?
Everybody experiences the same thing at some point.
All the 1Ls are going through the same trials and tribulations. Some folks are more adept at it than others, but there isn’t a single person out of the 50ish in my section who haven’t been flummoxed by a professor. Rather than the “gunner”-filled atmosphere you read about, most of your classmates will be on Facebook or Gchat or “whispering” hints at a slightly-above-whisper level, all trying to help you succeed — because they’ve either (i) been there too or (ii) will be soon.
So don’t be nervous. Go in confident, know you’re going to slip up at some point, and take it all in stride. It’ll make your law school experience far more enjoyable
—===—
That’s my $.02 on what law school is really like, at least on those few topics Feel free to hit me up if you have any other questions!
Until then, have a great night everybody!
Tags: Delta the 2L, Duke Law, Fan Mail, Legal Eagles FTW, LSAT, MDG, NCCU Law, NCSU Wolfpack, pre-Ls, Prof CrimLaw, Prof Ks, Prof Torts, The Traveling Professor, UNCCH Law
Posted by TDot on Apr 12, 2010 in
Randomness First, my apologies to the regular readers here at law:/dev/null for the short entries over the last few days — I’ve been working mightily to get caught up in Civil Procedure and in Property, so that I can eventually catch up in Contracts
I promise you I truly do have posts drafted on things other than the random banalities of my life. Really!
Tonight’s just isn’t one of them
Please also accept my apologies if you’re a vulgarity-averse reader who happened to stumble upon this entry. I actually curse far less on this blog than in real life, and it’s a tremendous effort to keep the language here PG-rated and still get a point across.
But apparently I’m an asshole.
That statement comes as a surprise to about -0- of you, which means I should preface the remainder of the post with a clarification
At the risk of oversimplifying things a bit, in general there are two types of assholes: (a) folks who act a certain way because it’s their job or demanded by the circumstances, and (b) those who act that way because they’re too self-absorbed to care about anyone else.
I readily concede that when it comes to just about anything even tangentially related to student government / higher education / politics / etc, I frequently occupy the first category. It’s why I don’t hesitate to ridicule campus op/eds or professional pundits, why I take pride in successfully making at least 2 grown men cry, and why I contemplate non-constructive criticism with a desert-sized volume of salt — my peers asked me to do a job, I take that job seriously, and those who don’t take their own jobs seriously (by writing illogical commentary, making unethical decisions, or spouting pointless vitriol) deserve to be called out, defeated, or ignored respectively.
So I stipulate to being a Type (a) asshole. And yes I’m proud of it
But I strenuously try to avoid slipping into Type (b) asshole-ishness. Why? A good chunk of it is just my personality and upbringing; another is learning from the experience when I went overboard as a college freshman. Then there’s also a fairly large piece I attribute to abject terror that I’ll one day become one of those folks we all hear about, the type who eventually do well in life and then “forget” the people that helped them along the way.
To combat that last point, I fought my natural shyness and turned into a zealous people person. When I became Student Senate President — bringing with it a university-provided meal plan — I scheduled daily “Breakfasts/Dinners with the President” where any student, even ones I had never met, could send me an email and I’d take them to breakfast or dinner to talk about whatever issues they wanted to talk about. When I took over UNCASG, the Pickle Princess and I started a “Listening Tour” where we spent hours upon hours (upon hours) driving to every single institution in the UNC system multiple times apiece just to meet regular students and hear what they wanted out of the Association. Staying a people person is why I send thousands of text messages a month, hate the law school bubble, and get all weepy-eyed when people remember my birthday.
“Forget your vulgarity, TDot,” you may be saying. “Get to the @#$%ing point already!”
My point is apparently there are some people who just don’t talk to me because I try to be a people person
雅雅 was in the library studying tonight, and during a break she pulled up my Facebook page. A guy sitting next to her mentioned he knew me from a class we had in Spring ’08…
…but he never spoke to me because I was “the popular kid”
That really bothers me for some reason, not least of which being that I spent most of my natural life as a social leper and had a serious chip on my shoulder when it came to the “popular kid[s]” growing up.
So to the guy in the library next to 雅雅 who had a class with me years ago where we never actually met, hopefully you’ll know someone who knows someone who knows someone who points you to this blog entry, and we can meet one day to talk about politics or Comp Sci or something.
And that applies to everyone else out there too! I’m not wealthy enough to be a celebrity or ethically-compromised enough to be a politician — I’d love to talk to you
I’m heading off to bed, have a great night folks!
Tags: About TDot, 雅雅, NCSU Student Senate, The Pickle Princess, UNCASG
Posted by TDot on Apr 11, 2010 in
Technology …I created a Twitter account
And in less than a minute no fewer than three separate people pointed out I had caved to the peer pressure despite my obstinate refusal and stated oppostion to using it.
#fail
Sooo…. anyone with graphic design talent wanna cobble together a file for my Twitter background?
Tags: Tech Talk
Posted by TDot on Apr 10, 2010 in
The 1L Life That’s how the end of the semester feels right now, like being somewhere smack in the middle of the Sahara or the Gobi or the Mojave, completely out of food and water, crawling on all fours like a TV commercial, heading toward what looks like vegetation on the horizon, only to find when you get there… more sand.
Ugh.
Sorry I’ve been MIA for the past week, I’ll explain tomorrow hopefully. Have a great night!
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