Sign I'm living in a bad Apt complex #1.

Not “closed for repair.” Not “closed for maintenance.” Not even “closed by police because some nutjob killed a dozen kittens in it.” Closed by the city health department. I’ve seen some pretty nasty looking pools before, but never one that was so bad that it was closed by the city. I wonder what was so bad that they had to close the stupid thing. Also, why did they have to drain the pool… 30 yards form by front door?

First day

Survived a Hell of a first day. Not too bad. I can already see which professors I will like and dislike most.

Also, I could have done without the Gomer Pyle reference. Although a Sgt. Carter quote would have been appreciated. I am not looking forward to whatever other obscure references that may be lurking in the Prof’s repertoire.

Off to a great start.

I moved into my new apartment this past Friday. I hate moving. Anyhow, I hurt my knee moving. I was carrying a big box containing all my 1L and all my 3 of this semesters books. Needless to say it was heavy. So, in order to avoid waling all the way around the apartment building, I took a shortcut that involved a 3 foot drop-off. I should not have attempted that while carrying ~50 lbs of books. I limped for a couple of days because of that.

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After moving, I decided I needed to get the Hell out of Dodge while I could still do so (at least without the guilt), so I headed out of town that evening. I only took what was absolutely necessary. That weekend I began getting email form profs with first day assignments. So it looks like I’ll be starting off the semester behind.

It took me at least 3 weeks to fall behind last year.

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Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this year is off to a great start.

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PANIC UPDATE: Since I just got back to the apt. this evening, I just realized this new apartment is alcohol free. Not only that, at this hour all the liquor stores are closed!

Yes, a fantastic start.

Brief Review of Orientation… One year later.

Ah, orientation…

Orientations are always a weird kind of thing. Whether it be at work, school, a new cult, anything, the orientation is basically the last commercial they get to show you to make you believe that you didn’t make a mistake. What was most striking about UT’s orientation was the people they brought in, politicians, professors, judges, and of course, lawyers, lawyers, and more lawyers.

I remember what I thought about a year ago when I sat in the auditorium of the LBJ. I thought, wow! I’m really at UT. I’ll admit, the commercial had it’s desired effect on me. I thought of the possibilities. I thought of how all the students there were in the same boat as I am. Now, a year later, I’m far more jaded, cynical, (disgusted), and overall, disillusioned about law school and the whole “law school experience.”

This is not to say that it’s all been bad, just the “law school” part of the “law school experience.”

So my advice to any 1L reading and looking for some advice that is actually useful, enjoy the BBQ and beer while you can. Take advantage of all the free pizza, sodas, coffee, mugs, Wexis crap, cookies, and booze you can. Ditch the conversations with the professors and just make some friends.

BTW: I was too lazy to didn’t get to make it to the Book Exchange in time to sell all my 1L books, and I refuse to set foot on campus until I absolutely “have to.” Hence, I have some 1L books to sell. I’ll make it worth your while. Email me if interested.

Calm Before the Storm.

I enjoyed an ISOM Montecristo No. 2 last night. I few years ago, a friend told me he bought a box of ISOMs made the month and year he began smoking cigars. Since then he smoked one per year during that month. He made sure it was his favorite brand and volita. I decided to do something similar. Since I don’t remember what month I started smoking cigars, I just bought a box of my favorites at that time, Monte #2 and I smoke one a year every August. The one I smoked last night was 5 years old. The Monte #2 is a great cigar. Some purists will claim since the blend changed in 97, the new ones aren’t worth the time. I disagree. I’ve had a few pre-97, and I must say they were fantastic. However, the post-97s have been excellent as well. If I had the time (and money) I would smoke one of these nightly.

Quote

“Three years of law school and I still have no idea.”

Said by a prosecuting attorney when trying to explain what “beyond a reasonable doubt” meant to a jury pool during voi dire.

I couldn’t help but chuckle under my breath. I’m sure I’ll be saying that a lot in a couple of years.

A Lawyer with a grill?

Went to the Dentist today. It was not a good visit. I never have been an anti-dentite, but I may turn into one now. It looks like I’ll need some fairly extensive work done over the next couple of months.

It did make me wonder whether I should invest in a grill. I could be “that lawyer with a grill.” A good idea?

Fulbright gets an F.

Well, here’s a change, maybe their grades aren’t high enough for me. From the Austin Chronicle:

• Five of Austin's largest law firms each earned an "A+" for their efforts to hire and retain minority attorneys, according to the seventh annual minority hiring report card compiled and reported by Austin's minority bar associations. According to the Hispanic Bar Association of Austin and the Austin Black Lawyers Association, minority hiring and retention at Austin's 27 largest law firms is actually down this year, with minority lawyers making up only 10.7% of the attorney workforce, down from 11.3% in 2005 (and down from a seven-year 11.6% high in 2003); statewide, minority membership in the State Bar of Texas is 14%. Amazingly, of the 573 partners at the largest firms, just 45 are minorities. On a brighter note, nearly 30% of all summer law clerks – 43 of 144 – were minorities. Pulling in top grades this year were Locke Liddell & Sapp with 18.4% minority attorneys, and Winstead Sechrest & Minick at 15.8%. Also in the top five: Jenkens & Gilchrist and Thompson & Knight, both at 14.3%, and Clark, Thomas & Winters, at 14%. On the flip side, four Austin heavyweights earned an "F" for their efforts – including Fulbright & Jaworski, Haynes and Boone, and Armbrust & Brown, who, according to the minority lawyer groups, refused to even participate in this year's report card. "In the past, every Austin law firm we surveyed has responded, even when its minority attorney numbers were not good," said Paul Ruiz, chair of the HBAA/ABLA Committee on Law Firm Hiring. "Armbrust & Brown's refusal to participate in our survey indicates to us that diversity and minority hiring are not a priority to the firm or its attorneys." In the report's seven-year stats, Bickerstaff Heath Pollan & Caroom take top honors with consistently high marks; the most improved award appears to go to Jenkens & Gilchrist, which has risen from an "F" in 2000 to an impressive "A+" two years running. – J.S.

I’m not a gamer.

Haven’t been one since my old NEC. Every once in a while, I hear about a new game coming out that makes me wish I were a gamer. But, I know it’s better this way, one less distraction (and expense) in my life. Anyhow, the new game that is currently tempting me is Reservoir Dogs. An awesome movie and it certainly has the potential to make a great game. Also the commercials for it are the funniest I’ve ever seen for a game. Commercial #1 Commercial #2

I spent yesterday in San Antonio visiting my niece. She’s having a birthday soon and I wanted to spend some time with her before starting school. Since I have absolutely no idea what a five year old girl wants, I took her to the mall to let her pick out her own gift. We ended up in a store which I never knew existed: Build-A-Bear Workshop.

I wish I could have been when they came up with the idea for this place. I bet it went something like this:
Rich Boss: “we need to come up with a way to make more money on out teddy bears.”
Boss’s Lackey #1: “we could cut the cost of making them.”
RB: “how, we already make them overseas in sweatshops using slave labor. how could we possible do it cheaper?”
BL1: “we could make the customer do it.”
Boss’s Lackey #2: “no one’s stupid enough to stuff their own teddy bear.”
BL1: “of course there are people are stupid enough. we can even sell clothing for the bears that way over priced, before they ever realize it, they’ve spent $50 on what they now buy for $15.”
RB: “I love it! BL1, you heard up this operation. BL2, you’re fired.

My wallet is now almost $50 lighter, and my niece now has a new best friend. Complete with a new outfit, bow for her hair, and Sketchers, but no purse. I had to draw the line somewhere.

A good thing this is my only niece, but I have no idea what I’m going to do for my nephew, whose birthday is next month.

Well, it looks like Operation Deception was aborted, but not by my choice. I had no idea that the replacement I picked would not come through. I don’t know what happened. Whatever the case, I have no replacement. I don’t have the opinion that I was somehow the backbone of Boss’s practice, but I know it will be more difficult. I’ve been asked to continue working during the semester. I told them if anything, I may be able to do Mondays or Fridays for a half day a week. I don’t know if that would be even worth it for either me or Boss. Whatever the case, I’ve been offered a job should I decide to work during the Winter break.

Sunday Night Football

NBC sure is hyping up the fact that John Madden is coming. Can someone explain to me the appeal of this fat ass loudmouth? I can’t stand that bastard. Anytime there is a game that I want to see that he is announcing, I have to watch the game on mute. The only thing worse than John Madden on a weekend is John Madden on Thanksgiving. Him and that stupid turkey (and I don’t mean Pat Summerall).

Ex.Coll playing hooky

I decided to take the day off today. I know, I know, it’s my last week, why do I need a day off? For no other reason than to stay home. It was a decent day outside, I had nothing major going on at work, so I stayed home. I slept late, watched TV, read, and enjoyed myself. After that I headed over to the Co-Op for no reason other than to see what was new. And then, just for Shits and Giggles, I want to the Law School and wondered the halls for about 20 minutes, that was all I could stand. That’s when it hit me, this is the first time setting foot on campus since my Crim Final.

For dinner, I’ll fire up the grill and throw on a steak. A co-worker who is a huge Cowboys fan (this is the part of the blog where I mention my sheer hatred for the Cowboys) gave me a large photo of T.O. (he knows I can’t stand the Cowboys) and I can think of no better way to start the fire.

Great moment at work!

On my first or second day at work, Boss sent me to the Courthouse to reset about 4 cases. At the time, I had no idea what it meant to “reset a case.” There was one court coordinator, I’ll call him “Gunther,” who was a regular old asshole to me. It was my first time asking for a reset and was very unsure of myself. He snapped at me and yelled at me (well, wisper-yelled, court was going on at the time). Later, at the office, I was frazzled. A little later I found out Gunther is a good friend of Boss. Not just an acquaintance or a guy he works with, but a long time friend. He is also a nice guy, I just caught him at a bad time. For about 3 or 4 weeks, I got at least 4 apologies a week from him. Now he limits himself to apologizing when I see him in person.

Well, that’s just background for what happened last week.

Boss calls me to that court to take care of something. He was in the middle of a hearing on a motion to suppress. He lost. The client was Pissed! He went on and on about firing him, how he wasn’t doing enough, didn’t know what he was doing, etc. Soon it was only me, Boss, Ranting Client, and Gunther in the court room. After a few minutes of chatting with Gunther (while Ranting Client is still ripping into Boss) about how his office remodel is going, he says “let get some ice cream.” WTF? I know it’s pretty hot, but taking off in the middle of the day for ice cream? Thinking he was just kidding around, as he likes to do, I follow him (leaving Boss alone Ranting Client). He took me to the Judge’s chambers where the judge, all her staff, a couple other defense attorneys and some persecutors were all sitting around in a big circle and… eating ice cream. What is Ex.Coll to do? Grab a bowl and have some ice cream. About 15 minutes later, in comes Boss looking for his ice cream. There was plenty.

I think most people not in the legal profession would be shocked to see opposing lawyers sitting around BSing with the judge that just heard their arguments. That’s just the way the law is. The fact is the vast majority of defense attorneys will be in the same court room just very soon and very often, ditto for the prosecutors. These are people that work together day in and day out, it only make sense to befriend them. If it were all like Law & Order, it would make a pretty bad work environment.

A Short Story

It’s been a long time since I have posted about cigars, so here goes.

I had a Fuente Hemingway Short Story today. It was fantastic! Long ago I came to the conclusion that the Short Story was the perfect cigar. It’s a small perfecto cigar. This unique shape allows for a near perfect burn no matter what. The small foot of the cigar immediately swells to the thickest part of the cigar then begins to taper to the head of the cigar. The overall length is so short that any inconsistent burns don’t’ have enough time to become problematic. Then there’s the flavor, even at it’s widest ring gauge, the Cameroon flavor is still predominate yet with enough complexity to make it a great cigar. It’s small size also make it versatile. If you are in a hurry, you can smoke it in about 20 minutes, or you can really savor it for nearly an hour. I tend to make it last about 30-40 minutes. This versatility, combined with the fact that it is the most consistent cigar I’ve ever experienced and the fact that its flavor is superb, make it the perfect cigar. It doesn’t hurt that it’s less than $5.

While I can still honestly say that the best cigar I’ve ever had was an ISOM Montecristo No. 2 (pre-97, although the post 97s are great), it’s size prevents it from being Perfect.

The Opus Super Beli is also superb, but also it’s size. For small cigars, there’s always the ISOMs such as the Bolivar Petit Corona or the Partagas Short, while they are great cigars, they don’t have the shape of the Short Story. The Short Story’s perfecto shape adds to it’s complexity, the flavor profile changes through as you smoke, while the Boli (my favorite petit corona) is great, it maintains it’s flavor profile, same with the Short.

These cigars are semi-hard to find, but always worth the money. I still wonder why I’ve always bought singles rather than a box.

The only thing that might make this better would be if they came in maduro. I have a Maduro Short Story, but don’t know if I will ever be able to smoke it. They were made in extremely limited quantities, and someone was extremely generous gifted me one.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Law School has ruined my ability to read.

I’m not saying that I’ve become illiterate, although I do find it exceedingly harder to read material that does not have footnotes. What it has done is completely destroy my ability to read one book at a time. I’ve tried to do as much recreational reading as possible this summer since I know that luxury will be taken away from me in a few weeks, but before I knew it I was reading 3-4 nonfiction books at the same time. Rarely would I read more than 10-15 pages at a time in either book. I don’t know how concerned this should make me, but my attention span was bad enough before law school without having to develop this habit.

I thought maybe the best way to kick this habit, or at least get around it for a while, was to read something fiction, but I generally don’t like fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I know there is plenty of great fiction out there, but I find it very hard to read and I don’t know why. In the last 5 years or so, I’ve only read one fiction book I can recall. Regardless, I decided to try one, so I picked out Anonymous Lawyer. I’ve never read the blog that led to this book, but I thought the Anonymous Law Firm website was hilarious (my favorite part is the page on diversity).

So far I’ve found the book to be very funny. But like all the other law students reading it, I wonder how much of this is grounded in truth. I suspect enough to make me glad that I never plan on working for BigLaw after I graduate.

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Speaking of BigLaw, I finished up my OCI bidding. I’m surprised at how many firms I bid on. While I still had a good number of bids left, I used more than I thought.

I guess I should mention a funny quirk about my computer. You see it has a hard time processing certain combinations of letters and numbers, so it always displays “top 25%” as “top 90%” and displays “top 1/3” as “top 95%”. I suspect that may have been why I applied at more firms than I initially thought I would.

Maybe I should have that checked out…. Nah.

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!!!OPERATION DECEPTION UPDATE!!!

I’ve made one offer for my replacement. I gave him until Thursday to get back with me… he didn’t. He was a great candidate, would have done a real bang up job, but I’m not sure how he would have interacted with the other attorneys’ staffs. It would have been interesting to say the lease. But, for whatever reason ($$$), he decided not to accept.

I tried explaining to my boss’ bookkeeper that they are going to need to at least double my salary to find someone, but I think she is hoping to capitalize on the desperation of a law student, much how they got me. However, unlike me, they are looking for someone to work during the semester. And to tell the truth, no matter how much I like my job, there is no way I would do it for the (lack of) money they pay me during the school year. I advised the bookkeeper that if that is their strategy, they are going to have to wait until the rejection letters from Fall OCI go out to find the desperate.

There is one other strong candidate, but I doubt that one is serious. She a student at Thrugood Marshall and I don’t know if she realizes that this is a not a summer job she is applying for. So, unless she plans on commuting from Houston every day while taking classes, I don’t think this is the job for her. I’m still wondering how she found out about the position. Maybe I should call her in for an interview just to fuck with her.

Operation Deception is on.

That’s what I’ve decided to call my hunt for my own replacement. The name is inspired by Mr. McGee and his suggestion which I have taken to heart.

However, the apparent lack of interest in my job tells me that I was the only one stupid enough to take this job (at least at my rate of pay). While this will make it easy to give the impression that I am irreplaceable, it does hurt the old ego.

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And speaking of deceptions, School starts in three weeks. I’m looking forward to it. I don’t know if I actually missed it, missed the people, missed the environment, or just want to get out of my job.

Have I enjoyed Law School so far? To tell the truth, I don’t remember. I seem to have some very happy memories, but they tend to all feature my friends, evenings in a bar, or crazy things that happened as BigFirm receptions. I think my memory may have been affected by the mental ass kicking I took by Spring Finals.

Made the jump

I've decided to go ahead and set up camp here.

A little bit of irony: literally minutes after posting that I was moving, I foudn out how to change the things that led me to move in the first place. Oh well...

Sucess!

As my summer gig comes to an end, it appears that it has been somewhat successful, and not just for me but my boss as well. While he hasn’t said anything yet, the office manager, as well as others (including his wife), has commented that he won’t be able to handle the office without me. I know this sounds like I’m full of myself, and maybe I am, but I think he really does need someone to take my place when I leave. Even if he chooses not to replace me, he did well before me and I’m sure he’ll do well after I’m gone. You see, good ol Ex.Coll was his first Law Clerk (which explains a lot, especially why he even hired me). Anyhow, this morning I helped the office manager get an ad ready so he can look for a new student to replace me in the fall. If I could, I’d stay, but my schedule at school is simply too hectic for be to even attempt to work. So, it looks like my last major task will be to seek out, interview, select the finalists for, and train my replacement.

This brings me to a moral dilemma. I can do one of two things: 1) select someone even more inept than me who will invariably fail (miserably, if this is the route I take) and therefore guarantee me a gig next summer and making a reality my self aggrandized view of myself, or 2) pick someone better than myself who will not only steal my job for next summer, but will reveal me for the fraud that I am. I’m afraid if I aim for the middle they will still be better than me.

What to do?
Either way, 12 more working days and pthphth I am gone