Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 30, 2010 in
The 2L Life Good evening y’all 
Sorry for never finishing another entry from this weekend! As a super-quick recap:Â Friday night’s post-meeting festivities lasted until about 5:30am, I woke up at 7:30am, and was not only coherent but surprisingly non-exhausted — I made it to the UNCASG meeting 30 minutes early and was the first one to arrive, the first time either of those things has happened in the 4 years I’ve been involved with the organization 
My presentation that morning went well, and I used the rest of the afternoon trying to catch up on ConLaw from last week. The post-meeting dinner was good in terms of company but the service and food were both abominable. The obligatory carousing afterwards made up for it, until folks were a bit too loud for my comfort at 2am and I convinced them it was time to leave my hotel room and venture somewhere else. At which point I promptly fell asleep 
Then of course Sunday was the drive back, being reminded how tedious it is unpacking from a mini-vacation, and reading for class.
Which — coincidence! — is the subject of tonight’s post.
If you ever want to quite thoroughly jinx yourself when it comes to law school, start a blog (like this one) and write in an entry (like this one) that you’re 2 days ahead on the reading. Tempting fate is definitely a Recipe. For. Disaster.
I just spent pretty much my entire night tonight doing absolutely nothing but grinding away on ConLaw to get caught up. My figuring is if that’s the class with material I’m already kinda comfortable with, and it’s worth 4 credit hours, I need to go full-tilt for a solid grade. And I can successfully say I’m back ahead on the ConLaw readings so that’s a mini-sigh of relief.
However…
Catching up on ConLaw meant not touching Evidence, for which I’m now at least 1 full class behind. I’m also totally lost in ZombieLaw, not so much because the material is difficult (it’s not) but because it’s SO F*CKING BORING. Â Legal Letters is at equilibrium, and I’m ever-so-slightly ahead on DV Law.
Not bad, but it’s thrown me that I’m already behind in 2 classes… when just last week I was safely and substantially ahead of schedule.
Hope your respective academic years are proceeding apace and you’re still on top of your readings 
 I’ll be using the Labor Day weekend to get fully caught up myself. Have a great night y’all!! 
Tags: 2L, ConLaw, DVLaw, Evidence, Legal Letters, UNCASG, ZombieLaw
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 27, 2010 in
Student Government Hey everybody!
It was about this time last year that I was down here at UNCW for the first meeting of the UNC Association of Student Governments. Luckily there was no rain this time
My role tonight was to help with the leadership development stuff on the agenda, something I was trained in during the years I was a college dropout. Even though I’ve noticed almost no one knows that. So y’all are among the first to know. Just because I love all of you 
Everything seemed to turn out well, so I’m happy. And even if it didn’t, it’s a volunteer gig so I’ll gladly issue refunds if people are dissatisfied 
I’m off to grab my Grey Goose-laced Diet Mountain Dew and hit the pool for a bit. I’ll try to cobble an entry together tomorrow, but if I don’t get the chance I hope all of you have an amazing weekend!!
Tags: TDot's Travels, UNCASG
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 26, 2010 in
The 2L Life Way back in March I mentioned one of the benefits of 2L status: my weekend starts on Thursday at 4pm.
Didn’t realize how much more appreciative I’d be of that perk after a rough week
On the personal life front, é›…é›… is in Tennessee for optometry school and (understandably) homesick. The problem is she’s been there for 3 weeks now and it seems to be getting worse instead of better. Fully two-thirds of the text messages she sent me over the past couple days have been full of 
faces and references to missing me, missing her family, missing North Carolina, and so on. I try to cheer her up as best I can, but truth be told the whole situation sucks for me too… and constantly being reminded I can’t do anything about it just depresses the f*ck out of me. Not sure how to deal with it going forward but need to come up with something soon…
I figured out a solution fairly quick for Q.T. on the other hand, who over the past week has really gone out of her way to prove she has a maturity level roughly comparable to her height with a moral compass (to the extent it can even be called that) rivaling the most ignoble of politicians. And this is on top of her inconsiderate (footnoted) foolishness back on Monday. Â So I blocked her on Facebook. And Twitter. And Gchat. And BBM. And Skype. I’d remove her contact entry from my phone entirely, but I needed it for archiving the text messages in case I ever develop a vengeful streak one day.
To all you disloyal immature jumpoffs out there: deuces
It’s a crushing change for someone who was a friend for 2 years, attended my graduation, even made my shortlist back at Thanksgiving 
But with some people sometimes you just need to chuck the deuces.
Law school hasn’t been my typical 2L lollipops and rainbows either. The guy who recruited me for the VLAAC had some serious personal issues come up so he’s out of the competition, and me with him. Then there was yesterday’s workshop debacle. And with everything else going on I didn’t finish all the law school reading that had to get done for today, meaning I’ll need to shelve my plans to party this weekend so I can get caught up — I did, however, make sure to volunteer early and often in ConLaw when we were still covering the 3 pages I finished out of the 20 we were supposed to read
Sorry for the downbeat opening y’all, just needed to vent a bit. I’m done now
A huge bright spot of the week: finally getting my $$$ for the semester. So I lifted my spirits earlier today by paying off all my credit cards, restocking the apartment with about $300 in groceries, and buying a new electric razor (I officially now 
 the Norelco Arcitec line). Now I’m packing to head down to Wilmington tomorrow to help with training for this year’s UNCASG delegates, which will at least give me an opportunity to be at the oceanfront tomorrow night — one of the very best forms of therapy ever created 
I hope all of you have a great weekend, and I’ll do my best to keep things updated while I’m in Wilmington!
Tags: 2L, ConLaw, é›…é›…, Money Money Money, NCCU Law, Q.T., Veterans Law Appellate Advocacy Competition
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 25, 2010 in
Fail That’s the excuse I’m using for today: Twitter is affecting my speech patterns
One of my jobs as the Treasurer of NCCU Law‘s Student Bar Association is to spearhead our appropriations process, where we distribute roughly $100K each semester to the various student organizations at the law school.
And one component of spearheading that process is running an annual “Student Leaders Meeting and Budget Workshop” attended by the President and Treasurer of each of those organizations. During my campaign I got several complaints over how the process ran last year (noted in my candidate speech), so I did a pretty extensive revamp for this one.
Expected (and publicized) duration: 90 minutes
Actual duration: 45 minutes
I was 15 minutes late due to technical problems on my end (things like the mic not working in our cavernous Great Hall) before finally deciding to just yell really loud most of the time… and yet we still somehow finished 30 minutes ahead of schedule. 
The agonizing part is that I can’t figure out if I really am just getting better at brevity, or if the more likely scenario that I forgot to mention a bunch of stuff — 45 minutes is a huge chunk of time that was supposed to be filled with something. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say
I guess we’ll find out which of the two it was when appropriations requests start coming in? ::fingers crossed::
Tags: #fml, 2L, NCCU Law, SBA
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 24, 2010 in
Things TDot Likes Just kidding!
Sort of
OK let me at least try to explain with a quick prefatory note before continuing: despite assiduously projecting an ego more-than-once described as “outrageously oversized,” underneath the cocksure exterior I’m essentially the total opposite. And because of that I never really learned how to take a compliment gracefully; most of the time I just get embarrassed, my face turns red, and I quickly change the subject.
Yes, I’m socially awkward. </surprise>
But like a well-trained puppy, I still like knowing when I’ve done something good / positive / cool / etc. I’m not talking about the gratuitous puffery over trivial stuff that passes for complimenting folks nowadays — “You color-coordinated your attire today! Here’s a cookie!” — but the comments made when folks genuinely appreciate something for whatever reason.
For example, back during 1L Orientation two weeks ago I was selling NCCU Law paraphernalia for the SBA and met a 1L student in the evening program who was browsing the merchandise. We talked for a bit about what SBA did, what 1L year was going to be like, and so on… and then she asks “Do you happen to know who it is who does the blog? He did computer science or something like that before law school? I love reading it, it’s so funny!”
Absolutely nothing could have erased the smile I had on my face for days after that remark
That’s the type of stuff I’m talking about. So now that that’s clear, </prefatory note>. Moving on…
We’re in ConLaw today, which as of Week 1.5 is still my favorite class. We’ve finished the core basics on judicial review, including a quick discussion on Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821) and a corresponding mention that only a government/state actor can violate someone’s constitutionally-enumerated rights.
So Prof ConLaw pitches an open question to the class: if one person can’t violate another person’s constitutional rights, how is the federal government able to regulate such huge swaths of private conduct?
For folks who follow politics — or who just happen to enjoy ConLaw  — answers that jump out might include Congressional authority under the “necessary and proper” clause. Or maybe Congress’s taxing and spending powers. Or the 800-lb gorilla in the Constitution, the power to regulate interstate commerce.
But instead we had like 5-6 folks in a row who offered up answers that… well… weren’t correct, let’s put it that way. So I raise my hand and bring up the Commerce clause, then go back to surfing the web. I check out my Facebook wall and see this from a classmate:
Totally made my day And definitely a better specialty than being Mr. Tech Support
Have a great night y’all!
Tags: 2L, About TDot, ConLaw, NCCU Law, Prof ConLaw, SBA
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 23, 2010 in
Mail Good evening y’all!
Sorry for the multi-day hiatus here at law:/dev/null. There’s been some personal stuff going on behind the scenes that has really sapped my motivation to be productive, and unfortunately that included writing an entry for the blog.
But I missed y’all, so I’m making sure I put something together for tonight
Back during 1L Orientation a couple weeks ago, the NCCU Law Student Bar Association put together a student panel where the 1Ls could ask us any questions they wanted. The 2012 class president and I represented the 2Ls, while the SBA President, Vice President and Parliamentarian offered the 3L perspective.
We got uniformly positive feedback from the 1Ls afterwards, but based on some of the faces I saw while the Q&A was going on I have to wonder if we were really just boring the f*ck out of them
The Q&A was capped at an hour, so I’ve gotten a few questions since then that I threw together into this entry. Just remember that my perspective is a bit different from other folks — not always in a good way — so take this with the requisite grains (translation: barrels) of salt…
***
Q: David asks:
One of your colleagues on the panel said she studied 60 hours a week to get her grades. Do we really need to study that much?
A: It depends
Don’t focus as much on the exact number of hours she quoted as on what she said afterwards: you have to know yourself. No one can gauge your own strengths and weaknesses, your own study habits, your goals, and so on better than you. That’s going to be a huge determinant in how much you study.
For example, I didn’t study anywhere near 60 hours a week during my 1L year. After spending over a decade working in the legal arena, a lot of the terminology and reasoning came naturally to me — so I maybe studied 2 hours a day at most, and most of that was just doing the required readings.
But the difference between my colleague and I? She’s one of the top-ranked students in the class, while I barely made the top half
If you have legal experience or naturally “get” this stuff, you may be able to study less; conversely, if the material is difficult for you to digest you’ll need to study more. If you’re content with barely passing, you can have a great time screwing around your 1L year and won’t need to study nearly as much as my colleague… but if you want to have a high GPA to get a decent internship or otherwise do something productive with your life, you’ll probably want to work a little (translation: a lot) harder than I did
***
Q: Ethan writes in with a similar question:
So some of my study partners have been in the library since at least 12pm and stay until the building closes. Am I missing something? I’m worried I’m messing up already…
A: See above — it depends
Some of your classmates will genuinely need to study that much, based on their study habits or their scholastic objectives or other issues; we certainly had folks like that in my classes last year. But you’re not going to get anywhere comparing yourself to them.
Remember: law school is a marathon, not a sprint.
If you want to gauge whether or not you’re “messing up already” before midterms, reflect on how well you’re able to understand the material and follow along in class. If you’re totally lost, go see your professor. If you see you’re professor and you’re still totally lost, then think about studying a bit harder or checking the law library for a hornbook or other useful supplement.
Putting in all the study time in the world isn’t going to benefit you at all if you’re not getting anything useful out of the time you’re studying
***
Q: Felicia’s thinking about skipping law review too:
How time-consuming is being an SBA Representative or some of these other clubs? Do you think I’ll have time to do that and study?
A: Not to give everyone the same lawyer-esque response, but you’ve probably guessed by now — it depends
All of the SBA Representatives will need to participate in the normal SBA meetings, including when we hear requests for funding from all the student groups which historically takes about 6-7 hours. SBA Reps are also required to have office hours (good study time) and help with planning/implementing any SBA events that get held.
If this were the entire equation, I’d say “Of course you’ll have time”… but only you will know what grades you’re aiming for and how much you’ll need to study to get there.
I’d encourage you to run regardless — if nothing else, it’s a great opportunity to get out and meet your fellow 1Ls — but whether you’ll have time for it is a judgment call you’ll have to make for yourself.
***
Q: Gabriel also has studying on his mind:
I’m having trouble deciding whether or not to do my case briefing based on the outlines the 2Ls gave me, the stuff I find on random case briefing websites, or just do the reading and brief it all on my own? A combination of the two or three?
A: Definitely do the briefing all on your own, at least for the first few weeks. The stuff 2Ls pass down to 1Ls is designed to serve as a template since you’ll have no clue what to look for when you first start out. The whole point to briefing on your own is to train your mind to recognize the important stuff in a case.
After you’ve been at it for a month or two, odds are good you’ll be in the habit of briefing the case in your mind as you read — this is the precursor to the common “book briefing” you’ll see other students using, where stuff like “Issue” and “Rule” get scrawled in the margins of the textbook. At that point folks will start using the 2L briefs to save time, because by that point in the semester you’ll be focusing more on outlining than you will on case briefs.
***
Q: Henry is looking ahead to next year:
Is law school really just a big head game? What’s the biggest difference between 1L year and 2L year?
A: To the first question, I’d say yes.
You’ll hear folks repeat the law school aphorism “Your first year they scare you to death, your second year they work you to death, and your third year they bore you to death.” But if you know you want to be a lawyer and you’re determined to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal — or, conversely, you have a backup plan and don’t really care if you fail out — there’s nothing to really scare you in the first year.
And, at least in my opinion, a lack of fear goes a long way to maintaining your composure under pressure and mastering the 1L crucible.
As for the second question, the biggest difference I’ve noticed between 1L and 2L years so far is how relaxed everyone seems. There’s no discernible terror over being called on in class. People understand the material. Folks don’t seem to study as much as last year — hell even a slacker like me was actually two days ahead on the class readings
We’re only a week into the semester though, so I’m fairly sure things will change from here
***
Q: And we’ll finish with a question from Isabella about my own motivations for law school:
What made you pursue law after having done computer science?
A: As bizarre as I’m sure it sounds, I’ve actually wanted to do law since I was a kid
Some time around the 10th grade I really got hooked on civics, public service, and related stuff — read Supreme Court decisions for fun and so on. I decided I wanted to be a constitutional law professor at some point, and wanted to be Virginia’s Attorney General when I got older (before I moved to North Carolina and fell in love with this state ).
But I also grew up in a family that most folks would consider “poor” financially, so my college focus was on what was going to make me the most $$$ when I graduated. I had a talent for computers and I started at N.C. State right as the dot-com boom was hitting its stride. I was going to become a computer engineer and make six figures starting after graduation.
That was the plan at least. I dropped out of N.C. State two years later because I couldn’t afford tuition and ended up $16K in debt to the University
During the five years I was a dropout, I worked in the legal arena the whole time since I could make a decent wage without a college degree. Getting hired for computing-related jobs, by contrast, typically required various certifications that I couldn’t afford to get. So when I finally came back to N.C. State in August 2005, I knew law school was definitively where I was going once undergrad was done.
But I was also determined to get my Bachelor’s degree in some kind of computer-related field because I felt like switching into something else would be like admitting defeat, like I wasn’t intelligent enough to hack it in a “hard science” engineering discipline. I briefly entertained the thought of switching to Communications or Political Science or Economics before coming back to that conclusion every time. Not the most rational thought pattern in the world, I admit… but I damn sure have a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science adorning the wall of my bedroom
So that was a ridiculously long answer where a fairly short one would suffice: I’ve known I wanted to do this for years, I just didn’t do it sooner because I was stubborn as hell
—===—
That’s it from me for the night folks! I hope all of you have an amazing week!!
Tags: 1L, 2L, About TDot, Fan Mail, Law Grades, NC State, NCCU Law, Orientation, Q.T., SBA, UNCASG
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 17, 2010 in
The 2L Life …when your first class on every Tuesday morning is (i) required to graduate, (ii) not particularly interesting, and (iii) 2 hours long
Legal Letters is the 3rd in a series of writing-intensive required courses at NCCU Law (the first two were LRA and LRP for 1Ls). I’m hoping it will be easier than the others since I’ve written all sorts of documents back when I was a paralegal. But 2 hours is just too flipping long to sit still!
Luckily it’s only once a week. We’ll see if my opinion changes
Have a great night y’all!
Tags: 2L, Legal Letters, LRA, LRP, NCCU Law
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 16, 2010 in
The 2L Life Good evening y’all!
The first day of my 2L year at NCCU Law is officially done! ::happy dance::
It’s interesting how much different everything feels as a no-longer-1L. Several of the 3Ls were walking around with a “we have class?” look on their faces, while the 1Ls had that “we have class!!!” look instead. The 2Ls were somewhere in the middle, my guess reflecting a new level of comfort with the law school and the whole educational process.
I figured I’d jot down some initial impressions to see how they stack up once the semester is over…
====================
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: HISTORY, LAW & PRACTICE
====================
NCCU Law was one of the first law schools in the country (and the first HBCU) to develop a clinical program dealing with domestic violence issues. This class is the prereq for working in the clinic and is my first class of the day on Mondays and Thursdays — and several 3Ls tell me the course has a reputation as being the most-work-per-credit-hour-earned at the school  Professor DVLaw seems personable though, so that should makes it more bearable.
The material is another story. The background details aren’t necessary for a family-friend blog like law:/dev/null, but let’s just say I’ve developed a very visceral impulse reaction toward people who abuse others. And I can already tell trying to learn the law and apply it rationally will be a challenge.
For example, today we were given an in-class exercise featuring three trial themes often used by both the prosecution and the defense in real life domestic violence cases: framing it as (i) an issue of personal choices, (ii) an issue of luck/chance, or (iii) an issue of social standing. We were then given the basic facts of an actual Durham DV case we chose at random: a man attacked a woman, pulled her hair, knocked her (1-year-old) child to the ground, and when the police arrived he verbally threatened to kill both her and her other (7-years-old) child when he got out of prison.
Our task? Come up with an argument on the spot as though we were the defense attorney, and then afterwards do the same as though we were the prosecutor. I had the “personal choices” theme with 2 of my classmates, and I totally failed at coming up with anything defense-oriented. All I kept wondering is what “choice” the 1-year-old had in getting knocked to the ground, or what “choice” the 7-year-old had in being threatened. Thinking about the fact pattern just really pissed me off, and I was in a dour mood for most of the class because of it.
My displeasure must have been written on my face or something, because when we switched over to the prosecution side Prof DV points to me saying “this will probably make you feel better.”
Definitely going to be a challenge…
====================
EVIDENCE
====================
Evidence is next in the schedule, and the first thing I noticed is how f*cking PACKED the room was — I swear every 2L and their sister must have signed up for this section of this class. There were even a trio of students who showed up late and had to spend the entire class sitting on the steps because we didn’t have enough desks left in the room
Even though Professor FRE teaches CrimLaw for one of the other 1L sections (not mine), I did talk with him on a couple occasions during summer school and he seems like a quality guy. Good sense of humor, movie buff, former basketball player, etc. Should keep things interesting.
The class itself started with some preliminaries, then we watched the first 10 minutes of the 2000-remake edition of Shaft and discussed how a prosecutor would build a case within the confines of the Federal Rules of Evidence based just on the information in those first few minutes. Then we just jumped straight into the rules themselves, covering a half-dozen of them before class was out.
I’m actually a little nervous about this class because there are so many rules to remember — and usually with several facets to each one. We’ll see how it turns out
====================
CONSTITUTIONAL LAW I
====================
NCCU Law switches things up from our nearest law school neighbors at UNCCH Law and Duke Law, teaching ConLaw I and II as 2L courses rather than covering them in the first year…
…but when we take it doesn’t matter for me though, because barring something totally unexpected I can guarantee this will be my favorite class
Today was just a historical overview lecture from Professor ConLaw, who has a reputation for being a challenging professor (and also teaches Torts for one of the other 1L sections). I don’t know if I’ve got the work ethic to earn an A for the class, but as a guy who used to quote passages from Marbury v. Madison and other Supreme Court decisions way back in high school I will definitely enjoy it one way or the other
====================
ZOMBIELAW (DECEDENTS ESTATES I)
====================
Class today was mind-numbingly boring. Professor ZombieLaw herself is hilarious — she refers to the course as “Dead People’s Stuff 101” — so that should make it a little bit better I hope…
…but it’s basically just like Property for dead people
Upside: it gives me a chance to get caught up on Twitter and Facebook?
***
That’s the rundown on Day 1 of classes Tomorrow is the first day for Legal Letters, then more ConLaw and ZombieLaw before I’m done for the day.
For anyone else reading this who’s already started classes, I hope you have an excellent week! And to everyone else, have a great night!
Tags: 2L, ConLaw, Duke Law, DVLaw, Evidence, NCCU Law, Prof ConLaw, Prof DVLaw, Prof FRE, Prof ZombieLaw, UNCCH Law, ZombieLaw
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 15, 2010 in
Site Stats What do “nom nom nom”, “::headdesk::”, and “#fml” all have in common?
Lots of people looking for nom-ing bunnies...
They’re all internet memes I’ve been using here on law:/dev/null for months now… and they’ve turned into a real headache when it comes to site maintenance
I first noticed something was amiss when the blog got hit by a massive wave of spam comments back on July 11th. The pageview spike was so massive I had to leave out that entire day when updating these bar charts, otherwise the “Pageviews per Day” bar would be about 50% higher than it is now.
To highlight the spike, I created a new chart below graphing the number of spam comments against the number of unique IP addresses we had in a given month (higher bars == more spam comments per capita).
As I spent the next couple weeks re-acquainting myself with .htaccess directives for this spam prevention entry, I noticed something else odd in the log files: we had a trio of referrer URLs showing megabytes upon megabytes of data being transferred but with -0- corresponding pageviews. After poking around I realized the bunny picture from this old Contracts entry was being hotlinked all over the place for reasons I couldn’t figure out.
So I logged in to Google’s Webmaster Tools for the first time in months, and figured out what was going on — over 15,000+ searches on 30 different variations of “om nom nom”
July brought lots of spam...
Apparently when I switched how WordPress sets post URLs last month (from the old numeric “?p=1234” to the current setup), the search index for that Contracts entry went up high enough that the bunny picture became the #1 result for anyone doing a Google search with “nom nom” in it.
Not the entire entry of course. Just the bunny pic.
Things have calmed down a bit now that I’ve started banning spambots and limiting the hotlinks. My guess is traffic will go back to a more-linear growth pattern for August. We’ll see what happens
***
On the search query front, we had a bunch of duplicate searches but also some fresh ones. Here are 20 of the 100+ unique search terms that brought folks here in July:
- chazz clevinger: worked with me as the Vice President of Legislative & Public Affairs for UNCASG two years ago. I haven’t kept in touch with him much since law school started, but he did good work for the students of North Carolina.
- nc dmv 30 day tag for insurance lapse: cost me $63, and I didn’t even need one
- nccu lsat score evening program: for 2009-10, was 151 for the evening program, with the 25th percentile folks at 148 and the 75th percentile folks at 155 according to the class profile.
- blackberry messenger group nccu school of law ’11: exists, but I’m not a part of it since I’m in the Class of 2012 Hit up one of the 3Ls for more info.
- tdot surplus vehicles: HA! I wish I had surplus vehicles…
- does duquesne law school give midterms?: I don’t know about Duquesne Law, but NCCU Law does
- letter demanding payment from ex girlfriend: is probably not going to accomplish much of anything…
- negative things about nccu law: vary depending on who you ask. I’m a huge NCCU Law fan, and my only real complaint is that the wi-fi can be spotty in certain areas of the building (like the Great Hall and the Fishbowl). Hopefully they improved that over the summer.
- 2010 11 tuition north carolina: is unfortunately still going up by almost $1K at several universities, since state legislators decided to balance the budget on the backs of students
- nccu law fall 2010 class calendar: can be found on the Law School Registrar’s TWEN page, or downloaded from the NCCU Law “Academics” page.
- nccu school of law’s grading curve: follows a strict-C median, which I happen to enthusiastically support
- mary wright 1l advocacy competition: takes place every Spring semester for 1L students. You can watch the video of my 3rd place performance here.
- daryl wade unc: is probably not the same guy as Daryl Wade, the former Student Body President at UNC School of the Arts who served as Vice Chairman of the UNCASG Council of Student Body Presidents last year. I’m sure the other Daryl Wade is still cool though… even if he goes to UNCCH
- are 1l’s included in the 30 day delay for financial aid?: For the vast majority of 1Ls, no. This was actually one of the questions we had at my 1L Orientation last year, so you’re not alone in wondering
- what percentage of nccu law school are white law students?: roughly 35-40% each class year. Another 45-50% are black, and the remaining 10-20% are spread across other races. We’re routinely ranked among the most diverse student bodies in the country.
- nccu minority scholarships for white law students: “No, officer…”
- nccu law fall 2010 book list: can be found above the academic calendar on the NCCU Law “Academics” page.
- acpi:system state: could signal a dead motherboard  Take it to get looked at ASAP.
- which computer apple or pc for law students: Apple. Hands down. Trust me.
Definitely a different mix of search results getting here this month…
***
And finally, here are the Top 5 most-viewed posts for the month of July 2010, quite a bit different from past Top 5s due to the new indexing changes:
- On avoiding contract enforcement: Mmm Ks nom nom nom (02/16/10)
- On inexpensive résumé websites: Things TDot Likes: Persona Non Obscura (12/08/09)
- On post-1L class ranks: Learning what I already knew (07/12/10)
- On having a shadow: Spreading the (Law School) Gospel (02/17/10)
- On saving money: TDot’s Tips: Tips for the pre-L’s on $$$ (05/29/10)
*THANK YOU* as always to each of you for your continued support of us here at law:/dev/null!
—===—
Past Site Stats entries:
Tags: #fml, 1L, 2L, ::headdesk::, Blawg Love, Damned Lies and Statistics, Duquesne Law, Exams, I ♥ Apple, Ks, Law Grades, Mary Wright 1L Closing Argument Competition, Money Money Money, NCCU Law, Tech Talk, The Curve, Tips, Tuition & Fees, UNCASG
Posted by T. Greg Doucette on Aug 14, 2010 in
The 2L Life My alternate title for this post? “Things I will not be doing with my law degree #2”
Now folks I know it’s premature to write off a particular course before we even get to the first day of class. I know. Really. Trust me.
But if I were a gambling man, I’d say there are pretty good odds Decedents Estates will be the least-favorite class in my 2L Fall schedule.
I didn’t even discover the syllabus until a few minutes ago; turns out it’s one of maybe a dozen or so courses at NCCU Law that use the LexisNexis implementation of BlackBoard, as opposed to everyone else having a WestLaw TWEN page — including 100% of my 1L courses.
To give you an idea of how few courses at NCCU Law use LexisNexis’ BlackBoard, I didn’t know it even existed until a classmate told me earlier today
I’m all about faculty having the resources to teach a course in whatever manner they think will be most effective for me learning the material, but it would have been nice to have at least some kind of forewarning that I should check LexisNexis if I didn’t see my class in TWEN. So that was my first annoyance.
Then I perused the syllabus and some of the reading material for Monday, and from the looks of things it’s like PropLaw just for dead people   I didn’t do bad in that course last year — I got the exact same grade both semesters — but it’s just not something I was particularly interested in thinking about.
Which is my euphemism for “it was really f*cking boring”
It’s also not exactly the most inspirational of legal topics. Back when I worked for the Wake County Clerk of Court’s Office, I was the Director of its “Division of Special Projects” so my office was at the edge of the suite for the Estates Division. Every day there was at least one person (often more) bawling because they recently lost a loved one and now had to deal with the government and distribution of the estate.
Not to be Pollyanna-ish about dying and all, but thinking about where my stuff is going when I croak isn’t really my thing. If you happen to think differently, more power to you — in fact I might even hire you one day to handle drafting my will. Just don’t expect me to enjoy it
Until then, I’m referring to DE as ZombieLaw so I can derive some kind of amusement out of this class…
Have a great night everybody!
Tags: 2L, NCCU Law, ZombieLaw
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