Good Intentions

Well, I’m an intern at the federal courthouse. And let me tell you, it’s pretty damn awesome. We interns strive to strike a fine balance between working on our writing assignment and watching various court proceedings. Unsurprisingly, however, I favor watching court proceedings. Luckily, my judge feels more or less the same way.

I got to see part of a jury trial today, from the jury selection process to the testimony of the first witness. Absolutely fascinating. All of this just solidifies my resolve to be a trial lawyer.

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a great experience.

Conan the O’Brien is on right now. AWESOME. Must watch now.

It looks like Net Neutrality is under attack again, this time by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA).

For those of you who do not know, Net Neutrality is a concept among Internet aficionados describing the fact that the Internet essentially belongs to all of us, and should remain that way. The fear among supporters of Net Neutrality is that ISPs could, conceivably, throttle off bandwidth to certain websites and only allow traffic on that ISP’s connections to other ones.

Let’s say Amazon and Comcast sign an exclusivity agreement. So, that would mean that the packets traveling from your computer to Amazon would be at a priority. Doesn’t sound too bad. But let’s say you want to go find a book at Barnes and Noble instead. So you try to load the page and…nothing. Comcast has locked off websites competing with Amazon because of that agreement. Or, perhaps you try to get onto the Barnes and Noble site, and suddenly you see a page saying you have been charged X dollars for accessing Barnes and Noble.

These are the fears of Net Neutrality supporters, and rightly so. ISPs could also implement tiered plans, where for a basic fee you get basic access to some sites, with more sites opening up based upon the more you pay the ISP.

The Internet needs to remain free and open for all. It has really replaced the landed media as the Fourth Estate; it keeps politicians, businesses, even religions accountable. I expect China to do the censorship song and dance game, not our own politicians here in the good old US of A, protected by that First Amendment thingie.

Net Neutrality should be a huge interest to lawyers though, because the Internet is the Old West for the law right now. It’s only been recently that statutes have even mentioned the Internet, and it’s really my generation and younger who are most used to it; in fact, I believe my generation was the first to actually grow up using the Internet. We saw it formed from BBS systems and newsgroups to Google Groups, Facebook, and WordPress.

My fellow law students, we should become the staunchest of Net Neutrality defenders. The Internet is inexorably tied up in our futures, and I for one will not tolerate restrictions or censorship (outside of things that are criminal, of course), especially by entities which are solely driven by power and money in the guise of morality (politicians and ISPs).

That’s “age-ed” and “learn-ed,” up there. I have to be snooty about words. Because I majored in words.

Well anyway, second week of this semester and already I’m getting swamped. My schedule does lend itself to allowing me some leeway in reading (read: using breaks between classes to read), which is nice. This happened last semester as well, but moreso here.

Three of my four substantive law professors are–how shall I put this–old.

And I don’t mean this in a bad way. They’re just old people. Prof. ConLaw is an older lady; this is her final semester teaching. She’s Jewish, which I find amusing–being a Hebrew myself–and she is very enthusiastic and even bombastic in her teaching style. An anecdote:

Prof: *starts to explain the Cohen case* “…What were these three Jews doing selling lottery tickets? Shameful! I’ll just cover up their names…”

She’s like that all the time.

Prof. Property is amusing as well and has an interesting teaching style: He draws cartoons up on the board. Yep. They help us understand. Really. They do. Also he’s focusing a lot on theory and less on black-letter law, which is a departure from last semester.

Prof. CrimLaw is ALSO entertaining, and might be the most entertaining. Observe:

Prof: “So I will be calling on you so we can have a discussion, and you can all have a discussion with each other…unless you’re all complete dullards.”

Gems, I tell you! Comedic gems!

Prof. Admin is a pretty interesting guy. He used a coin to create a binary number to decide who won some books he gave away. Quite amusing and enjoyable.

Anyway, hopefully this semester chugs along at a nice pace and doesn’t kill me. Fingers crossed.

That’s what Prof. CivPro said after he ominously intoned my name during class today. And I was kinda shocked, because he did, indeed, pronounce that correctly.

Anyway, it wasn’t too too bad. He switched midstream from interrogating someone else, so that threw me off some. And, of course, I answered “I don’t know” a good number of times, but I feel it was justified, because I legitimately didn’t know. I mixed it up a few times with an “I’m not sure,” which is also legitimate, because I was not.

What irked me a little is when I tried to quote the Supreme Court from the decision, and he cut me off, saying he did not want me to quote the court, he wanted “an argument.” Well, sir, my argument is what the Supreme Court argued, so I would be remiss if I didn’t quote them.

And then, of course, not 5 minutes later, someone said EXACTLY what the court said–and by extension what I was trying to say–and he told that person they were right. Bah.

I understand why professors feel the need to cut us lowly students off: power, ego, trying to control the conversation, sake of brevity. But at the same time, AT LEAST let me get my answer to your question out before you interrupt or shoot me down! I’m not as dumb as I look–and that’s pretty dumb, sure. But I’m really not! I had an answer, you just cut me off too soon. Sigh.

Torts is canceled today, hence why I’m blogging and not in class. Waiting for LRW. Want to go home. So tired.

Final debate is tonight. Let’s see whose minds are changed after it.

My prediction? Nobody’s.

Phew, that was a bit of a break.

So, here I am, with only 8 more days of work left and then the real fun begins: the agonizing countdown to orientation and the first day of class. I’ve actually finally received my schedule from UH, so that’s somewhat comforting. Except comforting is the wrong word; really what I mean is terrifying. But in a giddy, schoolchild kind of way.

You know, like back in elementary school when you’d get your teacher assignment and you’d scan the room looking for someone you know but then that slow-dawning horror of realization crosses your mind like a dusky shadow, that no, you don’t know anyone in this class and you never will, no, you will be the pariah, the outcast, eating your peanut butter and jelly sandwich alone every single solitary day of elementary school, alone, alone, all alone.

Or maybe it was just me? Ha.

Anyway, the sched is fairly ok. I start at 9:00 MTTh, 9:30 on Friday, and 10:30 on Wednesday. Not too shabby. Torts, Contracts, Legal Research, and Procedure. Fun stuff, right?

Right.

I was looking at the orientation schedule for UH, and it’s two days long. Not so bad, right? Well, for the first day’s schedule, it goes from 8am til around 4pm…ALL IN ONE ROOM. No other room is listed. I hope we don’t have to sit on our asses for 8 hours in the auditorium. That would suck a skosh.

Only 8 more workdays left, and it seems my tasks are drying up. That’s a good sign, right? Well, not so good for boredom. On the plus side, blogging at work is fun!