bar exam observation

700 people in a room all typing on their laptops sounds like rain. 700 people filling in bubbles on a standardized test form sounds like 700 stressed-out people. Tomorrow's a rain day again.

Vulcan lawyers

Having spent time programming computers, and having spent time studying the law, I am now absolutely convinced that Vulcans would make terrible lawyers: they're far too logical to do the job. (Not to mention they'd probably give the world's most boring opening statements.)

practice performance exam

I just took a practice performance exam. This one went so well that I spent a few minutes afterwards scanning the want-ads for programmer positions. If work in the real world feels anything like that, I'll be back in engineering so fast you'll hear the sonic boom.

Yech.

Enough whining. Time to get back to focusing on the goal. If I can't dive into this thing gracefully, then I'll at least do a damn cannonball.

community property

Community property has to be the hardest subject I've covered. It's not that the concepts are difficult--in fact, they're usually straightforward--it's that reading this area of law is like sifting through the debris from the wreckage of a thousand marriages. Every little rule is a tombstone, a crater left by another marriage that exploded.

For example, normally either spouse may buy or sell community property. So you can spend your wife's salary to buy the family groceries, for example. But there's this lovely little exception: a spouse cannot sell personal property used in the family dwelling--furniture, furnishings, etc.--or clothing without the written consent of the other spouse. Imagine the scenario that gave rise to that gem of a rule.

Alright, back to slogging through this stuff. I'm coming up on what happens when one spouse tries to sell the family home. Yay.

back at it

I took a day off to rejuvinate and it's made a big difference. Now I'm back at it, trying to soak up some subjects for the first time. We just had wills and trusts in two days. Today was a review of professional responsibility. Still in the lineup: community property and agency & partnership.

hitting the wall

I'm hitting the wall in studying. It's a lot like training for a marathon--sometimes you hit a wall and have to back off. I'm getting to that point now, where my study time is quickly becoming a lot less efficient.

Last night, I finally quit at 9:00, so after a quick e-mail check I wound up surfing the net. If you're an Ask a Ninja fan or a Mythbusters fan, there's a hilarious crossover on the Ask a Ninja site, along with a Scooby Doo-style music video reposte.

simulated MBE

We took a simulated multistate bar exam today. It's a six hour, 200-question multiple choice exam with some of the most devious multiple choice questions I've ever dealt with. It covers six subjects: real property, torts, criminal law and procedure, contracts, evidence, and constitutional law. Needless to say, we were all pretty drained by the end of it.

However, inspired by the gentle lovingkindness that is the MBE, I offer the following for your consideration:

Questions 1-20 are based on the following fact pattern:

Debbie owned Blackacre in fee simple in state X, where she operated Killemex, a chemical factory that produced deadly nerve gas. Blackacre was separated from Whiteacre, a private religious school, by a piranha-infested non-navigable stream with a bridge in which the common owner had granted both parties express easements, promptly recorded, with a covenant making each 50% liable for repairs. Blackacre also had an electric fence along what had once been the edge of the stream, but accretion had moved the stream slightly towards Whiteacre.

Debbie received a fax from Supplemex, an out-of-state chemical suppler, saying it would provide "your requirements, up to 100 tons, of Upyournosic Acid, at $250/ton, F.O.B. state Z, firm offer." Debbie tried to accept but her fax machine was broken.

Congress has just passed a statute that provides books to all schools, private and public. At the same time, the legislature of state X had just passed a statute granting a 10% sales tax rebate to all alien-owned out-of-state businesses selling product in state X. The state legislature ordered the newspapers not to publish the rebate, but the newspapers learned of it by searching through garbage a state legislator had placed at the curb for collection. Debbie was both a strong Atheist and someone who objected to paying taxes. Upon reading of the two statutes, Debbie suffered severe emotional distress and forgot to lock the gate to the factory as she left for home.

As Debbie drove across the easement and turned onto the main road, Walt exclaimed, just as he had done habitually every single day for the last ten years, "Look at that! That yellow car made an illegal right on red!" As Debbie drove home, she became angrier and angrier at the thought of the tax rebate her competitors would receive and the books that would go to Whiteacre. She became so enraged that she stopped to purchase a cigarette lighter with which to burn down her own house.

In the meantime, 50 schoolchildren, noticing the gate was unlocked, swam across the piranha-infested stream onto Blackacre. Due to a manufacturing defect in the electric fence (which had been installed by an independent contractor), they were not electrocuted. They soon began enjoying a game of "superheroes" on the factory grounds. Little Danny opened a valve to a nerve gas storage tank in an attempt to frighten little Paula, whose back was turned at the time. Fortunately a defective batch of Upyournosic Acid which Killemex had previously accepted in shipment from Supplemex had rendered the nerve gas in the tank inert, but the liquid stained Paula's shirt a bright green.

When Debbie learned of the children on the factory grounds, she abandoned and renounced her plans to burn down her house and instead created an oral contract with Peter to remove the children. She told Peter "time is of the essence: I want them off the property by tomorrow morning" and in exchange offered to convey a 50% undivided interest in Blackacre "to Peter for life, remainder to Peter's widow, but if Blackacre should ever not be used for National Defense purposes Debbie and her heirs shall have the right to reenter and retake Peter's interest." Peter agreed, began removing the children, and immediately applied for and received six mortgages on his interest in Blackacre, only the first and last of which were recorded.

reviewing con law

How can such a little tiny Constitution have so many moving parts?

Never give up! Never surrender!

Civ Pro and Cal Civ Pro from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., nonstop high speed lecture. My head's spinning. It's going to take a while to get all this stuff straight. If this process has been a marathon, we're in the final uphill stretch, and I'm mostly running on determination. Never give up! Never surrender!

expect sporadic to nonexistent posting

Wildly busy studying for the bar. Expect sporadic to nonexistent posts till some time in August unless I can figure out a way to reign in this schedule.

three days into the PMBR six day

When I was young, we had a German Shepard who loved tennis balls. She was a champion tennis ball catcher and could carry two or three at a time. One day, my parents came home with a whole shopping bag full of dead tennis balls. We dumped them out on the living room floor. There were so many tennis balls bouncing everywhere that she couldn't catch any of them because everywhere she looked there was another tennis ball!

That's roughly what this bar review process feels like.

I'm in the midst of the PMBR 6-day. In the morning, we take a two hour practice exam from 9-11, one subject per day. In the afternoon, from 12-3:30, we go over the fifty multiple choice questions on the practice exam, which essentially amounts to a capsule review of the subject in 3.5 hours. The review goes quickly enough that I've abandoned trying to take notes using pen and paper and have switched to the laptop. After 3:30 and my head's cleared a bit, I start reading the outline and reviewing the next day's subject.

The process seems effective, at least in teaching test taking skills for the MBE: I've gotten better at sniffing out answers that look right but feel wrong, and the class covers techniques to boost your performance on each subject. As for the substantive law, well, it's giving me a new appreciation for how much of it we didn't cover in class. The PMBR folks do give you a huge pile of flash cards when you sign up, but I haven't cracked them yet. The next couple months are going to see a serious attempt to soak up a lot of law.

finals time again

Finals time again.
Flash cards stay the outdoors' call.
The world in 3x5.

it's a blur

We're approaching the end of the semester. I've barely had time to figure out which way is up, much less to blog. Some time after Monday, I hope to have a series of blog entries on net neutrality and the AT&T / BellSouth merger drawn from a section I've contributed to a paper. May also post some lighter stuff once I have a chance to catch a breath. Until then, full steam ahead!

angry students stage bluebook burning

I'm in the midst of figuring out the proper way to cite an ad in the Journal of the American Medical Association that warns doctors about prescribing Accutane to pregnant patients. This article, obviously an April Fools joke that got slightly mis-dated, does my heart good.

Sources close to the students say the impromptu protest began the night before 1L Ames briefs were due. 1L Jim Johnson was attempting to figure out the proper citation in Massachusetts state court for a government report co-authored by three different agencies and posted on the Internet as an MS Word document.

When not a single one of his Hastings floor mates proved able to assist him, Johnson walked the short distance to Gannett House where he began throwing stones at the windows and shouting "Come out, you [expletive], and Bluebook this [expletive] [expletive]."

The Bluebook's citation system is irregular, occasionally contradictory, and a general mess. It should take no more than 15 pages to express a flexible, uniform citation system. Time for an overhaul, I say.

hitting my personal October Point

After the MPRE, I'm hitting my personal October Point. What's an October Point? It's that point in the semester when the stress builds up and your system starts rebelling, one way or another. It just so happens that this one's on St. Patty's day instead of Halloween.

I did go running this morning for the first time since, oh, about high school. Nick and Noelle invited me to come along on a charity run. I'm proud to say I survived the experience. Surprisingly, cardio wasn't the main problem. Shoes were. I need to look into some good running shoes or cross-trainers if I want to do any more running.

OK, back to work. Ad astra per aspirin!

the MPRE is over

The MPRE is over. Time for the next thing to bubble to the top of the priority list. Onward and upward!

sign in class

"Death penalty presentation. Free food!"

reusable highlighter, part 3

I might not be too bright, but at least I don't give up easy. Behold the implements of destruction for the next assault on the problem of the reusable highlighter. In this episode, our hero attempts to reload a Bic Brite Liner liquid-filled highligher using Noodler's Firefly ink. Here's a picture of the firefly ink in natural light. Since I don't have an eyedropper, I poured some into a Nalgene bottle with a squeeze top. Be prepared to have your fingers highlighted during this process.

Here's what it looks like with the flash turned on. Notice the unearthly glow. Ooh! Aaah!

Right, lets get down to business. Do not take the back end off the highlighter (the bit the pliers are pointing to.) The barrel is sealed inside, so if you try to pour ink in from that end, you'll just get ink on yourself. Trust me on this one.

Instead, take the front end off. Not the felt bit--which, incidentally, pops out easily enough but doesn't give you enough of a hole through which to pour ink--but the housing around the felt bit. Use your pliers to grasp the yellow plastic just behind the felt. If you turn it a little, it will rotate inside the barrel. So rotate it back and forth and pull on it. Eventually, you can work it out of the barrel.

Now you can pour ink into the barrel. Be careful about over-filling it. You don't want it squirting out as you stick the tip back in. After you've filled the barrel (over the sink, just in case you spill--not that I ever spill(ed)), you can re-insert the tip of the highlighter. At that point, it should work good as new. Or almost new, anyway.

So, is it worth it? Honestly, probably not. It's kind of a pain. I may keep doing it just because throwing away the empty highlighter after only a week or two of use offends my rather peculiar sense of aesthetics, but for most people it'd more trouble than it's worth. On the other hand, if someone would make a nice felt nib for a cheap fountain pen with a converter, that'd simplify the whole process quite a bit.

follow-up on fountain pen highlighter

I've given up on using the italic fountain pen as a highlighter for a couple reasons. The first is that the nib on the pen is too narrow and its squared-off shape makes it too hard to lay down a stroke of highlighting ink. As I pull it across the text, it highlights only about half the line, and if I'm not very careful I get skips in the line. The second is that the Firefly ink, while initially fluorescent, seems to fade to ordinary yellow after a few days. Coupled with the narrow lines, it makes the highlighting difficult to see.

I haven't entirely given up on the reuseable highlighter idea, though. Bic makes a line of liquid-filled highlighters called the "Brite Liner" series which I quite like because I can see when one's about to run out. The next time I empty one, I'll probably experiment to see if there's a way to refill it with the Firefly ink.

I wonder if someone makes felt nibs for fountain pens.

Update: follow-up here.

the more I learn, the less I think I know

"As the circle of light increases, so does the circumference of darkness around it." -- Albert Einstein

"Vast is the field of science. The more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know."
-- Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), English novelist

"Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know." -- Socrates (469–399 B.C.), quoted in Plato, Apology, sct. 19

"To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty." -- Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.), Tao-te-ching, bk. 2, ch. 71, trans. by T.C. Lau (1963).