Esquire.

Check it. I'm officially a lawyer, admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I got sworn in today. The best part? You get a complimentary pen reading "Welcome to the Mass. Bar!"

The pen doesn't write very well. What a noble profession.

Bye Bye Lexis.

If you search for any law student blogs ("blawgs" as we nerds call them), you'll find early on the same posts during everyone's 1L year regaling the first days of library work where Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw are introduced. They are the 2 major databases for legal reference used by everyone (yay oligopoly -- when will Google buy them out?), and much like drug dealers, I mean, smart businesspeople, they make their services free during law school and then jack up the prices for professionals. I won't go into that part of it much more (seriously, just google for "1L" and "blog" and you'll see the same posts talking about how confusing both databases are -- again, yay oligopoly).

As part of their bait, they have reward points for using their database, sort of like frequent flyer miles, because you know, doing online research is exactly the same as flying to Fiji. If you're awesome, you might accumulate enough points for really cool stuff, like a digital camera, or a TV. Sort of like all that stuff on the top shelf at the arcade that you used skee ball tickets to try and get. I was never patient enough, so I ended up settling for tootsie rolls and Now 'n Laters. So you can imagine how my Lexis point acquisition turned out.

After 3 years: A $25 gift card to iTunes and 2 $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble. Supreme Court library, watch out, I'm a legal researching MANIAC.

So Close.

Bar/Bri has been building so much state pride in me... until today. Apparently, it's still legal to marry your cousin in Massachusetts.

Swing and a miss, Massachusetts. Swing and a miss.

I'm a Published Author. 25 Times Over.

During law school, I was on law review, which destroyed my social life, but in return let me publish an article I wrote. See, law review is basically an organization (dare I say THE organization?) that rounds up all the top students in the law school based on grades, writing, stunning good looks, and in my case, a deal with the devil, and then has them edit and publish legal articles written by much smarter people like professors, practitioners, and judges, so that they have no time to study anymore and continue to be the top students. (Even the pretty people get fat and ugly sitting around checking whether a period is properly italicized in a footnote at 2am on a Friday night. I'm not kidding.)

To sweeten the "deal," our law review gives members the opportunity to publish, which is sort of a big deal in the legal community. Think Beyonce letting Michelle or Kelly speak at a Destiny's Child news conference. And, as part of the whole she-bang, I get my ve-wee own free copy of the issue of the journal in which my article appears... and 25 reprints of the article itself. 25. Twenty-five.

So, that's one to my parents... and one to each of my 24 other sets of parents. Phew! I'm so glad they have me covered.

Defensible Massachusetts Domicile Once Again.

Where once I just said, "yeah, I'm from Massachusetts," now to be more accurate I say that "I can defend my claim that I'm domiciled in Massachusetts." When I went to law school, I bought a car in North Carolina not really thinking what that would require having never owned such a beast before. Well, with insurance, and fun state laws, I had to switch all my legal information to North Carolina info. (Fun state fact: pay the local registration tax otherwise NC puts a lien on your car, and they don't f*** around with delays.) The only upside to the whole thing was that with North Carolina tags, I could speed (not that I ever did... uh, right) without worrying too much that I'd be targeted by the cops. They typically focused on out-of-staters.

As of this week, however, I've now officially switched everything back over to Massachusetts: my car insurance, my driver's license (for which the RMV still had my old info on file--yup, they stuck my photo when I was 21 back on my license--don't worry I'm Asian, I look the same), my car registration and title, and my state car inspection sticker. The only thing I haven't yet switched is my telephone number, which I probably won't ever because it's a hassle and North Carolina state fees are inevitably cheaper than anything Verizon is going to charge me in Boston or Washington, and my voter registration, because I just can't decide which uber-liberal location I want my presidential vote to not count in. What this means, legally, is that where domicile is only dependent on my subjective intent, it helps to have paper that backs up my claim. I can't believe I actually know that this matters and how it's done. I. Am. Such. A. Nerd...









... because actually I love knowing this.

Bar/Bri: Day 2.

It's only day 2 and people's minds have already exploded. A friend of mine who is also taking the Massachusetts bar, but attending a different location of the Bar/Bri Massachusetts review than the one I'm attending relayed this story:

*My friend (deciding to be social) introduced herself to the person sitting next to her.*
*small talk*
Person sitting next to her: So what bar are you taking?
*beat*
My friend: Um. Massachusetts.
*My friend decides it's not worth being social.*

My first thought? Hells yeah. That's my competition!

UPDATE: I just noticed that the DVD that Bar/Bri sends out to all students misspelled "Introduction" as "Intoduction." At least we're all screwed.

Bar.

One of the worst kept secrets about law school is that law school doesn't actually prepare you for the bar exam, which is, you know, the main obstacle to actually becoming a lawyer. So, in an effort to extract ever more money from hapless students, about 1-2 weeks after you graduate from law school, you typically enroll in a private class designed specifically to teach the bar. Apparently the norm is to take Bar/Bri, which runs for about 7-8 weeks, with a PMBR supplement before and/or after the Bar/Bri classes. Both are exceedingly expensive classes.

In other words, what we thought we would learn over 3 "leisurely" years in law school, we actually learn in less than 2 months. To be fair, it is apparently common for Bar/Bri to actually clarify that which we learned during law school. For example, the counterpart to grand larceny is petit larceny, not petty larceny. More than 1 student, including yours truly, looked up from his notes and smiled at that little parting of the clouds.

For most jurisdictions, Bar/Bri and PMBR is the only game in town. So I have to entrust my future as a lawyer, in which I have already invested my left arm and my spiritual capacity for joy and forgiveness, to a private company that can't even spell "Massachusetts" correctly in their many emails to me. Pray for me.

Final.

I'm currently taking the final final of my life. It is a 24-hour take home exam. The only thing I've been able to conclude is . . .

I am just astoundingly talented at distracting myself.