Me, to the highest bidder

(First off, I wish to thank TJ for bringing attention to my resume situation, and for those who asked, I did get a few interviews out of the batch.)

The following is something I've been considering, and perhaps it will help a good cause:

I've noticed that more and more hits are coming from UCLA domains or coming from google searches of "UCLA 1L blog." I also notice more chatter re: this blog in the halls. Naturally, there is also much speculation as to my identity. Who exactly is the tall, charming, witty, and dashing Fox, people wonder. I don't live under the illusion that I will be anonymous forever, as sooner or later I will slip up.

So, I've recently thought of the following. I might be willing to put myself up for auction (no, not a date auction, since I did that once during college, to disastrous/hilarious consequences.) More specifically, the public interest people will have an auction during the spring to raise money for summer funding. So perhaps, I might be willing to auction off my identity to the highest bidder. I will in all likelihood be working in a big, bad firm this summer, and I might as well help a good cause. I'm not sure how all this would work out, but there would definitely need to have a reserve, as I'm not that cheap and (sl)easy (at least not before a few drinks).

Details to be determined. I'm putting this out there to gauge interest.

Of course, here's the law school training kicking in: this post should not be construed of as an offer, but merely as an solicitation to receive offers or as an invitation for preliminary negotiations.

Quote of the day

"Why do you have lipstick marks on your face?"

-7 year old (I estimate) girl, to me, during after law school prom festivities.

Another day in the life

The Petersen Automotive Museum is one of the largest car museums in the world, appropriately situated in the most car-conscious city in the world (driving and cars are among my favorite activities). There are some sweet cars inside, of both historical and aesthetic value. The Petersen was also the place where Biggie Smalls (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.) was gunned down in 1997 after a party at the Petersen. To be technical, he was killed in his car while waiting for a stoplight next to the museum.

And the Petersen was also the location yesterday of the Law School Prom, last night from 7pm to midnight. I will not attempt to describe it in full, since I don’t remember much due to the open bar. The Dean graced us with his presence for an hour, and the rest of the evening resulted in the law school’s drunken hookups (not with the Dean), drunken grinding on the dance floor, drunken stumbling, drunken fights, people getting kicked out for fighting, and lots of vomit in the bathroom.

In all, we will probably not be welcome back for any future events at the Petersen.

Anyone want 50 highlighters?

One of the benefits of going to a "good" law school is that "good" firms come to recruit. Sure, some 1Ls have lined up interviews/offers at firms. But mostly, this semester has been more about these aforementioned firms coming to school to make their name known with the 1Ls so we will bid and interview with their firm come the fall.

After going to several of these law firm receptions (free food and booze) to mingle with lawyers, I've noticed just how much money these firms, (a) have and (b) have to throw around. A reception, by definition, requires that lawyers give up time to spend mingling. That's 3 hours per lawyer, average of 4 lawyers per firm at each reception, by the $400/hour per lawyer in billable time the firm is losing out, all of which equals a lot of money. Then there is the cost of the food and booze. Then there is renting the reception place. Then there are the travel expenses for the lawyers to come. Finally comes the price of all the goodies they give out (I've gotten flash drives, numerous pens, keychains, highligters [including the top of the line highlighter and post-it flag combo], flashlights, around $50 in Starbucks gift cards, umbrellas, and even a dart set, all for just talking with them. I'm not sure how much that adds up to, but that's surely a lot of money to talk to people they will not even be interviewing until we are 2Ls.

[Note, here's a post from a 3L UCLA blogger about how much it costs a firm to recruit an incoming associate.]

Compare these recruiting budgets to the recruiting efforts of government and public interest organizations, and you begin to see the real disparity in resources. The more money they have to squash the little people I guess.

In other exciting news, East Coast firms last week raised their starting salaries to 160K and West Coast firms to 145K.

Prom

Something is definitely in the air when girls are checking out different dresses online in class...

Typical conversation I've heard countless times:
Girl: "Are you going to Barrister's Ball"
Boy: "Yes. Are you?"
Awkward silence ensues. Both are going stag and neither wants to bring up suggesting that they should go together.

My suggestion to the guy:
Boy: "Um, [looking down] I was wondering [scratching head] um, if you don't, um, have a date [hands in back pocket] and I don't, um, have a date [nervous rocking] and maybe we should [still looking down avoiding eye contact] maybe, like, go together [more scratching head] but if you, um, don't want to [more nervous rocking] that's okay too."

Might as well make it like high school all over again.

Prom, except we can all legally drink this time, and the open bar...Coming this Friday.

Reports of my demise

Single people contemplate their bachelorhood / bachelorettehood when their single friends start to get married. The elderly contemplate their mortality when their friends begin to die.

Likewise, the shutdown of two law student blogs have made me contemplate my own demise. No, I am not quitting law school, but by definition, a law school blog has only a finite shelf life, i.e. until people graduate. Also inherent in a law school blog is that first year tends to be more interesting than the next two combined, at least when it comes to blog material.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I will continue to write until I have nothing interesting left to say. I don’t know when that will be. I should be good for at least until the end of the semester. How long after that, I’m not sure. But knowing my track record with commitments, don’t expect this blog to make it through until graduation.

I'm still here

Second semester has rolled around, and a few people at school have decided that law school is not for them. And at least two fellow bloggers have decided not to become lawyers either. As I wrote about previously, good for them.

I have a lot more respect for people who realize that something is not for them than those who keep doing something that they don't like. I'm talking about more than just law school, about life in general. I have tremendous respect for people who decide that law school blows and that they will be happier doing something else. I also have tremendous respect for lawyers who, six months into a job, decide that corporate law is not for them and become public interest lawyers/poets/restaurant owners/etc. People who continue doing something based on societal or family pressures or based purely on monetary reasons compromise something of themselves far more important than the [whatever reasons they have for continuing to do something they don't enjoy].

I won't say that I enjoy law school, but I don't hate it. As a former English major and not a science or business major, I see the world in shades of gray without clearcut lines or answers. And intellectually, at least, law offers me the maybe and not just yes or no. (That's probably why my B- last semester was in the class where the final exam was multiple choice.)

Anyway, good luck LSV and LTF. You've earned my respect.

Impossible

The impossible has happened. No, Michael Jackson has not become normal. No, the Arizona Cardinals, Matt Leinart and all, has not had a winning season. And no, Paris Hilton has not become smart.

It snowed in LA today.

OK, by snow I mean flurries for 10 minutes and not even a half inch stuck to the ground. But still, the sight of snowflakes in Los Angeles is absolutely unfathomable.

Why you should proofread

Today was the deadline for signing up for OCIP. Earlier, I had sent out about 25 resumes on my own and I figured that I might as well participate in OCIP. I opened up the resume word document to update my telephone number. I proceed to read the rest of my resume.

My interests, according to the resumes I sent out, were "travel, ass fishing, piano." It was supposed to read "travel, bass fishing, piano."

I am not making this stuff up.

If I get a job out of my first batch of resumes, it will either be because 1) the interviewer just looked at my GPA and skipped the rest of the resume or 2) the interviewer enjoys ass fishing as well.

So I have this friend...

So I have this friend who writes a blog about law school in Los Angeles. And this friend has a question about the proper etiquette about meeting someone in real life. A certain female blogger/reader is going to be in town and has talked about meeting in person. My friend would have no problems knowing how to interact with a male visitor. My friend would take him to a bar and proceed to get hammered while exchanging PG and PG-13 rated stories about law school.

But my friend is not exactly sure about the proper etiquette for a female, since he has never done any of this online dating thing or has ever met anyone off the Internet. Does my friend even meet this female blogger/reader? If yes, does my friend first go facebook/myspace/google her? Where's the appropriate first place meeting? How would my friend greet her? Waive/handshake/awkward uncomfortableness? Does he hug her? If so, to what degree--the stand 2 feet apart and lean in with just the arms/the typical male-male hug pat on the back type/the close enough so he presses up against her boobs hug? And then what? Does he offer her some kavosier and buy her a fish sandwich (as would be prescribed by Leon Phelps)? If everything is awkward, does my friend pretend to get a text/call and excuse himself saying something important came up? And my friend has other questions, but he can't exactly think of them because he had a very long weekend.

My friend would appreciate any input on the matter.

I'm back

I'm sorry for the lack of posting, but I was not in a coherent enough mental state to have posted during the long weekend.

I also did something I will probably regret later on, but only time will tell.

I also got into my first major fight with TheLadyFriend over the weekend over something that had been brewing for a while but came to pass this weekend. We both got very angry for quite a bit of time, but I guess it was not something that some makeup sex couldn't fix.

Back to the grind.

Quote of the day 2

Career services lady: "Some of the firms that recruit explicitly state that they will consider only people with technical backgrounds in the sciences. Political science is not a science."
Audience laughs.
Career services lady: "You laugh, but believe me, it happens a lot."

Quote of the day

[Note, I was not present when this happened, so this is all hearsay. I was told this story by someone.]

Setting: Crim Law class, talking about underage sex between two minors. Professor was a child prodigy who graduated college at 15. Student answering knows that.

Prof X: "Most 15 year-olds as you know are not mature enough to be responsible when it comes to sex."
Student: "But others graduate from college at 15."
Prof X: "And he probably did not have as much sex as he wanted to."

I'm a posterboy

Apparently there is a segment of law school students who subscribe to the "grades are a complete crapshoot" philosophy. I'm not sure that I subscribe completely to it, nor do I completely disagree. But anyway, I've gotten all my grades now, and I could definitely be the posterboy.

My grades : A+, B+, B- (the writing class is graded only for 2nd semester)

Prof. A+ recently sent me a note saying that I got the highest grade in the class and that he/she "sense[s] that there's something special" about my abilities.

I can imagine the following conversation between Professors A+ and B- (both are friends with each other):

[Prof. A+]: "[Fox] is an absolute genius. His exam was absolutely brilliant, and he spotted and analyzed more issues than I even had on my checklist. Definitely future law professor material."

[Prof. B-]: "Are we talking about the same [Fox]? His exam was absolute crap and my three-year old could write a better exam than him. Definitely future unemployed, fail the bar four times material."

Quote of the day

1L: "We're like caged monkeys forced to breed with each other."

-on law school relationships

Life is hard

Today was January 9th, and the high temperature today in LA was 87 degrees. I was in shorts and flip flops today. Life is hard here.

What did I do in the afternoon after class? Not doing the reading and not being in the library, that's for sure.

Now there's less incentive for the rest of the professors to turn in their grades.

It starts again

So today was the first day of class. Nothing special.

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I had meant to write about this earlier, but I never had time to.

During exams, everyone sits in the same room and types their exams on their laptops. The only ones missing are those crazy few who decide to handwrite their exams and are in a separate room, lest listening to others type distract them. And then, there are a few more who are missing, those special few who have secured special accommodations.

I have no issue with people who need special accommodations for real disabilities. People who have cystic fibrosis (there's one in law school), people who are blind, people who are missing an arm and can't type as fast as the rest of us, etc. Giving them extra time and/or special accommodation equipment to take their exams is the right thing to do.

And then there are the people who claim ADD. And many of these people who claim ADD I have seen in class pay perfect attention to what the professor says. They are part of the generation where parents shop around for a mental health professional willing to diagnose little Johnny or Mary with ADD (a very subjective diagnosis to a very subjective condition, as I recall from Psych 1) so as to earn their little princess or prince an added advantage in class. A school will accommodate their "disability" and give them more time on the exam, since a school will not want to appear to discriminate against the disabled. They get extra time in high school. They get extra time on the SAT. They get extra time in college. They get extra time on the LSAT. And the accommodation continues into law school. And in an environment where everyone is graded on a curve and the extra time can only help them spot more issues than others, such unneeded accommodation is unfair.

My problem with those who claim ADD: Okay, so they finish law school and let's say their accommodation helps them get a job they otherwise would not be able to get. What do you think would happen if they ask the partner at White, Old, and Rich, LLP for extra time to finish a memo because of their "disability"? Or ask a judge to postpone a hearing because they need more time to prepare? MOTION DENIED. (I'm sure, however, that a request from someone with CF or a blind lawyer will be granted.) If these ADD folks can and will suck it up in the workforce and work on the same time schedule as everyone else, why can't they do so in law school? Sooner or later, their "disability" will no longer be accommodated, and it might as well be sooner.

Luckily, at least at UCLA, professors are the ones who ultimately say yes or no on whether to grant an accommodation. There is at least one professor who will grant extra time only for what he believes to be real disabilities (read: not ADD). But most grant them, because they don't have any vested interest in the matter.

Sure, I recognize that ADD can be severe enough that I might be willing in those cases to look favorably on an accommodation request. But in the majority of cases, these students have no trouble concentrating on movies, video games, reading trashy magazines, or surfing the Internet (read: fun things) and claim to be distracted only on academic matters. These cases seem like people trying to game the system.

Last point: I recognize that some people will think of my position here as inconsistent with my position on affirmative action in the last post ("Hey Fox, you're willing to give an advantage based on race but not on disability"). Not so, I counter. I am likewise opposed to those 1/8 Native Americans or those "my great-grandmother was born Cuba" types but who identify only with white suburbia and try to game the system. I'm in favor of AA only for those who make a good faith effort; likewise, I support accommodation for those who really do have a need.

Post if you disagree with what I just said. Or email me if you don't feel comfortable commenting publicly.

209, revisited

I wrote a post a while back about my support of affirmative action and the post generated a lot of comments.

There is an excellent article in today's New York Times that profiles these issues at Berkeley. I believe the article presents a balanced view of the whole debate, especially the negative consequences of a UC system without affirmative action, as well as the people who are uncomfortable about the predominance of Asian Americans as a result of meritocracy.

Drinking in the morning

I have just raided my liquor cabinet. I have just gotten back my first grade of both the semester and law school. As a result, I am drinking early in the morning. Have I cracked out the Banker's Club (the cheapest, most disgusting vodka they sell at the supermarket) to drown my sorrows away or the Johnny Walker Blue Label to celebrate? That's for you to decide.

Scenes from winter break

On an airplane:
I was stuck at the Denver airport for a while, and the airline tried to make it up to me by bumping me up to business class, i.e. I got to board faster than everyone else. What did I like the most about the upgrade? That I actually got legroom? A wide leather reclining seat? That they actually served me real food? The Bose noise-canceling earphones? The priority handling so I got my bags quicker than everyone else? None of the above.

The real joy to business class was the free alcohol. I've been cut off plenty of times in bars. I've been cut off at fraternity/sorority formals in college. I've even been cut off once at the Cheesecake Factory. But on the flight out of Denver, I experienced a first...I got cut off by a flight attendant.

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Before the flight in the waiting area:
(A lawyer is telling me how he is challenging jurisdiction, even though his client was served while present in state.)
Lawyer: I'm filing a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. Damn opposing counsel should know better than that.
Me: Um, I'm pretty sure that the jurisdiction was valid.
Lawyer: Believe me when I say it wasn't. I know the law.
(pause)
Me: I have this strange craving now for some burned ham.
Lawyer: Why would you want burned ham? What's that got to do with jurisdiction?

(5 minutes later, telling me about due process)
Lawyer: You know what's ironic about the abbreviation of due process?
Me: No, what?
Lawyer: You would think that DP would violate a woman's due process.
Me: I think having this conversation is violating my due process.

--------------------

I sit in business class next to a folksy grandmother. We talk and I tell her I am in law school, talk about winter break, blah blah. She proceeds to show me a picture of her granddaughter and give me the granddaughter's number.

Me: Um, thanks.
Grandmother: You should give her a call. You're such an upstanding young man.
Me: I'm glad at least one person thinks that way.

Believe it or not, it was not the first time a grandmother has tried to set me up with her granddaughter since law school has started. Maybe I should rename my blog Grandmothers Love Law Students.