Not the specialty I had in mind…

A couple weeks ago I mentioned to y’all how law school’s caste system melts away when 2Ls and 3Ls end up in class together. A comment by Va. suggested the reason for that lack of social division is folks developing their various specialties in given areas and becoming a “go to” person for that topic, regardless of class year.

It appears I’ve been typecast due to this blog, because it seems my specialty is “Computer Scientist Guy”

One of the now-3Ls at NCCU Law contacted me last night for help setting up email accounts for a civic organization he leads. He’s a decent guy so I agreed to assist. The project ended up being a bit more expansive than our initial discussion, but about an hour later we’ve finally got everything set up, functional, and properly working with his Microsoft Outlook installation.1 Then literally moments later — we’re talking 10 minutes, tops — a 2L (unaffiliated with the 3L) called asking for IT help for her organization.2

Now don’t misunderstand me: I’m truly and deeply grateful to my alma mater and its Department of Computer Science. They took excellent care of me the last four years, and I’ll be giving back as soon as the post-J.D. paychecks start rolling in. I also love being able to help my fellow Legal Eagles be successful. And I didn’t give law:/dev/null the subtitle “Musings of a Computer Scientist turned Law Student” by accident.

But this is now the 5th pro bono web project I’ve done for my NCCU Law colleagues in less than a year (including two for Madame Prosecutor) alongside the normal IT-related questions. It’d be nice to have someone calling me up for CrimLaw or CivPro advice instead

</mini-rant>

Our new favicon!

In blog-related news, law:/dev/null now has…

…wait for it…

…a real favicon!  Yes, dear readers, now instead of the blank page or globe or whatever generic image your browser used when it tried to download our non-existent favicon.ico file you should instead see a 16px-by-16px copy of the image to the right.

I thought about doing something fancier, but I figured an image that served as a double entendre was appropriate. You see it’s not only a visual depiction of my nom de plume — it also looks like a body that lost its head, which is a fitting description for how I feel about once every other class

That’s all I’ve got for tonight ladies and gentlemen Some time this week I’m hoping to pen some thoughts on today’s holding by the Supreme Court in Berghuis v. Thompkins, a CrimLaw case that seems tailor-made for late-night comedy show jokes. Just look at the first sentence of the holding section of the syllabus: “Thompkins’ silence… did not invoke his right to remain silent.”

I happen to agree with the majority, but they probably could have worded that a bit better

Anyhow, if I get through the paper due tomorrow and presentation due Thursday I’ll try to cobble together some thoughts on it. Until then, have a great night!!

1. Unsolicited advice for anyone planning to buy a new laptop for law school:  get a Mac [↩]
2. It must have just been a bad day for technology all around, because as I was working with those two folks I got a text message from a classmate needing help finding where the hard drive was located on his ThinkPad [↩]

Tags: 2L, Blawg Love, Madame Prosecutor, NC State, NCCU Law