Down By the Bay

I've decided to go to the ACLU of Northern California for the summer, so I'll be in San Francisco (and San Jose). 

No Dough

Sorry, Will. Looks like it's gonna be SF instead.

Bean Counter

Good Will Hunting was on TV on Thursday night and I ended up watching my DVD of it over the last couple of days, partly because I have a bit of nostalgia for the movie (I went to see it with my mom when it came out) and partly because I may be in Boston this summer. I haven't spent a lot of time there - in fact I haven't been there since I was 13 - but my sister went to grad school there and a friend, coincidentally, is getting married there this summer. 

Watching the movie has put me on a Elliott Smith kick once again, which takes me back four years to my time in London. I spent a lot of that term walking around the streets listening to Figure 8 and Either/Or. Dunno if I would want to do that in Boston, though...

Answered Prayers

(The title of this post comes from Capote's final, unfinished novel Answered Prayers, for those who don't know. Capote died three days after I was born - make of that what you will).

It is a lovely 38 degrees out today, which means the snow is melting and I might actually not have to hike through snowdrifts for a couple of days.

And I have a job offer!

Teleconference Call

Phone interviews - nerve-wracking! My ear starts to hurt after a while - I need one of those headsets that people at the phone companies use - and the last one I had was a conference call that started to develop feedback halfway through, so I started to hear my own responses, which didn't help very much.

I should be happy to even have interviews, of course...

Where To?

An interesting article about lawyers abroad from the Times. I don't think I'll end up in international law or in an international office, but it's still an intriguing possibility. 

Second Life

I need another me to: apply for jobs, look for a new apartment (I want to live closer to campus), do all my reading, finish my outlines, study for exams, read for pleasure, and maintain some sort of life. Volunteers?

Balancing Test

With the recent economic crisis it's hard not to think about what the job market is going to be three years from now, even though I'm only three weeks into school. Of course, it's actually more complex than that for me since many firms hire their 2L associates at the beginning of the 2L year (i.e. a year from now for me) and those summer jobs are what often turn into post-grad employment. So, the economic situation next fall will probably make a big impact on my job prospects.

The other issue is balancing my own interests with the more pragmatic elements of the law. I'm not raring to go into corporate law but I am interested in antitrust, which means that I'll probably have to take at least three business law classes (argh). But also I want to study mass media and copyright, and do some clinical work and maybe a research project....and how do you jam all that into two years of elective course work? Not very easily.

So once again I've put the cart before the horse and neglected thinking about my actual courses. 

Future Interest

It's hard not to think about what's going to happen after law school is over (if it ever is), maybe because a lot of it is pre-determined far earlier than you would think. To recap: people start looking for their post-1L jobs during the middle of the academic year (from about December to March, I think), and then you look for the job you get post-2L at the very beginning of 2L year. So, the people who are 2Ls now just had interviews for jobs they won't start until May. And that job, the post-2L job, can often lead to the job you have after you graduate.

All of this, of course, is floating around in the ether as I study. Today I went to a meeting for a club focused on intellectual property, which I may or may not be interested in (apparently my interests are more "soft IP" - copyright and trademark, rather than "hard IP" which is more patent related and requires a techical - science or engineering - background).

But is that really what I'm interested in? Am I even interested in anything having to do with the law? It's a little dangerous for me to start thinking about jobs because then it leads to the question about what I'm even doing here, if anything.

Well, what I should be doing is HW, right? Right.