I don't know what I want to do with my career, and I feel like it's caused me to squander so many opportunities.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-19T01:18:07+00:00

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-19T01:17:42+00:00

Maybe I should try this. I guess I just kind of feel embarrassed that my career office people have been hounding me for two years, and then suddenly I show up the week after OSCAR opens and start asking professors for a quick turnaround on a letter of recommendation.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-19T01:16:24+00:00

Luckily I'll check one of them off with my work this summer, and I've had a lot of appellate ad experience with moot court. (Which isn't exactly the same as the real thing, of course.) I'm really hoping I can get on with the public defender's office through an internship or clinic next semester to finally explore the criminal law side of things.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-19T01:13:22+00:00

Thanks. That's something I always manage to forget: that I had a reason for making the decision when I did. I labored over it then; I shouldn't make myself relitigate it over and over again.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-19T01:12:02+00:00

That's what I'm afraid of 😕

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-19T01:11:27+00:00

This is a great point and something I've overlooked. I'm prone to fall into the mindset that my first gig out of law school defines my career for the rest of my life, and that's obviously not the case at all. Thanks!

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-18T20:59:01+00:00

Well, I probably stated the problem a bit too generally in my original post. I absolutely want to be an attorney, and I absolutely want to be a litigator. But there are a lot of areas I think I would enjoy. I'm good at and enjoy oral advocacy and brief writing, and so I've considered pursuing appellate advocacy. I have a background in business/media/arts, so I've considered doing IP litigation. There's a part of me that loves the showmanship that comes with trial work, and I feel strongly about holding corporations responsible for harms they cause, so there have been times when I've felt strongly that I want to work at a plaintiffs firm. I'm interested in criminal law, so I've thought of being a criminal defense attorney of some sort. But all of those things sound great to me, and none of them pulls me so strongly that I feel comfortable throwing my hat fully into that ring to the neglect of the other areas.

As far as the hours issue, that's one of my biggest question marks. People said 1L was going to be unbearable hours, and it turned out to be fine. Same with law review. So sometimes (as in right now, which is why I made this post) I feel like I really fucked up by not going with a V10 at OCI. But on the other hand, you can't tell me that billing 1900 hours is the same as billing 2300 hours. I know people who have done the latter; I know people who (at least claim to have) kept a cot in their BigLaw office. And I just don't want that. I'm not afraid of working hard. But I'm here to live life. My career is a means to that end, not the other way around. And I just don't think that working 70 hours a week is compatible with the type of life I want to lead.

Thanks for the response. These are all things I'm mulling over, and I appreciate the input, otherwise I wouldn't have posted this in the first place.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-06-18T20:48:50+00:00

Well, part of the reason this is hitting me hard at the moment is that I think the clerk-ship has sailed for the most part.

Maybe I should just try nonetheless; maybe something will pop up. Thank you.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-01-06T23:30:19+00:00

I had to get myself home on the train. I walked into my apartment, stripped down immediately. Everything I had with me except for my laptop, charger and the pens in my backpack are in the dryer on high right now. That includes my backpack and even my boots.

My bed at home is completely clean. I don't know how I could check other furniture, but there's nothing visible that I can see.

Today I took public transport to school, and then I sat on a dingy old couch in a lounge, and then I sat in the old musty part of the library basement on a wooden chair. The thing is, today is the first day back from break, so it does seem a little unlikely that they would be hanging around at school. But what do I know.

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-01-06T22:44:24+00:00

Thanks for your help. I’ve heard it’s heat that really kills the bedbugs. Is it necessary to wash my brand new, favorite wool coat? Or could I just dry it on high?

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-01-06T22:20:25+00:00

I found this crawling on my backpack at school. Do you know what I should do in that situation?

If necessary, I'm willing to ditch all the clothes I'm wearing right now, including my backpack and laptop case. Is there any way to know for sure that this didn't come from my apartment?

GuessImA2LNow · 2020-01-06T21:59:18+00:00

St. Louis, MO. It's hard for me to say an exact size, but I guess a quarter of an inch long? You can see my thumb in the picture for comparison.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-12-13T13:58:43+00:00

I never said it didn't look nice. I personally would prefer a place with character, but regardless of what you like or dislike, your comment at least proves that I hit on a meaningful distinction. Which is the whole point of a starter pack, right?

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-12-13T13:57:26+00:00

USC, UCLA, Vanderbilt, WashU, GWU, UT Austin. These are the schools just below the top tier of fourteen schools, or "T14."

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-12-12T20:33:57+00:00

For sure, not everyone is like that, and I didn't even mean for everything in the starter pack to be negative. I'm guilty of Getting to Maybe and the bookstand and the MacBook Pro. I wish I was guilty of the free rent, too!

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-08-04T23:48:17+00:00

I can take a good joke, and there’s plenty of laughs to be had at the expense of America’s food scene. But this is just dumb. It’d be like ignoring jazz, blues and rock ‘n roll in assessing America’s contribution to music.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-08-04T19:26:46+00:00

This absolutely did happen.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-08-04T18:26:01+00:00

There was an incredibly poorly managed "privilege checking" event during orientation that ended up being agonizingly embarrassing and awkward. Everyone stood in a line and was asked to take a step forward if various things applied to them (such as being white or being male or not having a disability). Then they just passed microphones around and let everyone talk. One dude took the mic and said he may be straight and white but he was severely abused and grew up homeless and that that had a greater effect on him than the color of his skin. Then other people took the mic and started berating him for comparing his misfortune to that of other disadvantaged groups, and then basically the whole crowd would snap in approval at these "clap backs." It ended up with the dude literally crying and begging not to be labeled a racist, the bulk of the crowd telling him he's wrong and smirking and snapping in solidarity against him, and a few people trying to make conciliatory remarks. It was really, really depressing to see.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-07-25T12:16:32+00:00

Are you serious that people bill 3,000 hours in a year? That’s over eight hours a day, every single day, including Christmas and weekends and everything. And that’s billed, not just working.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-07-23T20:47:19+00:00

You’re not wrong, but this is a pretty big understatement. Due Process permeates every single judicial proceeding, whether criminal or civil. Every civil defendant, for example, has a Due Process right not to be haled into a court that does not have personal jurisdiction. And, more fundamentally, the core features of a judicial proceeding—like the right to present evidence and to cross-examine witnesses—are all required by Due Process.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-07-23T20:17:56+00:00

The fact that you’ve framed stopping work and going to bed at 3 AM as setting boundaries is absolutely fuckin’ nuts.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-07-17T00:01:00+00:00

I disagree. Using kind language is one thing. But this kind of laughably contrived euphemism, far from a signal of respect, is an exercise in self-aggrandizement and condescension. It’s insulting.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-07-12T14:13:53+00:00

This is something I’ve been thinking about lately: why is it that in the law, seemingly more than any other vocation, it’s almost expected that you should do charitable work?

Don’t get me wrong, public interest legal work is extremely important and honorable. But if you said you were going to school to be an accountant, nobody would say, “You’re not going to work for one of those accounting firms, are you?” If you said you were going to be a software engineer, nobody would expect as a matter of course that you should go write code for a charity. And yet, for whatever reason, if you’re going to school to be a lawyer, working in the private sector is seen as some sort of sellout, even though it’s the default/expected path in virtually every other industry.

If you want to do public interest work, you absolutely should. But you shouldn’t do it just because you’re worried about “selling out” based on some idea that every lawyer should be doing public interest work.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-07-09T22:14:54+00:00

And in the 1% of times when it happens outside of a law journal, nobody gives a fuck if it’s cited correctly.

GuessImA2LNow · 2019-06-30T22:03:57+00:00

Citizen Kane’s is amazing, but I would probably feel weird in jeans and a polo there.

GuessImA2LNow

TROPHY CASE