December 12, 2010
"Due to the blizzard and extremely hazardous travel conditions, we will not give the Civ Pro I exam for first year students today..."
Blizzard Day! Do you like that, when you've studied and you're ready to go, and looking forward to an afternoon of post-exam relaxation, and now — what? — more studying? Or do you get out there and build that snowman?
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13 comments:
Assuming that the professor didn't grade on the curve, I almost always felt that I had more I could do. But then I went to college in North Carolina, so I don't remember ever having class canceled because of snow.
Assuming I ramped up sufficiently, I'd do a little bit of both.
Blizzards are graded on a curve.
Extremely hazardous is 1 to 2 inches.
Define relaxation. On a snow day, it would usually mean digging out the driveway, the front walk and the sidewalk. If you weren't as prepared as you could be, you'd look forward to some more cramming after that.
If you had an A going in and knew the material cold, then it was snowman time.
That would kill me. I had my exam taking down to a science of preparation- I would spend the few weeks up to it compiling my notes into an outline, and the 2 days before the test compiling my outline into a "mini-outline." Once I'd done that, I'm a learn by doing sort of gal, so once I'd done that, I'm not sure what else I could do.
Speaking of Civ Pro, I'm working on a minimum contacts, choice of law, choice of forum, venue, and jursidiction type question now (should be right now, in fact), and desparately wondering how I ever passed Civil Procedure in the first place. Ugh!
- Lyssa
It's rare when I would want more time to study. Usually I'm relieved that I can finally stop, no matter how prepared or not.
On a Sunday?!?! Or is this for tomorrow?
I would hate that. It's like a race or a big game. You train for it, peak for it.
Like Lyssa and David, I would hate the postponement of an exam.
Not only would my "ramp up" energy be spent, but my detailed scheduling for the subsequent exams would be rattled.
I would tend to concur with Lyssa. I tended to pace or time myself in law school, getting myself to a peak right before the test. And, delaying the test a couple of days would leave me stale.
Civil Procedure was my favorite 1L class. Shouldn't have been, but had Con Law as a 2L, my Contracts prof was highly questionable, and Torts was squishy enough that I had a harder time with it (and now spend most of my time involved with the torts of IP infringement). I think that I liked it because it was the most rule based of those courses. I had spent 15 years as a software engineer before then, and those hard rules were a lot more comfortable for me than those I found in other 1L classes. (And, not surprising then, the two classes that I Am Jur'd in were also in the procedure area - Evidence and Post-Trial Procedure).
The evidence classed must have stuck, at least a little, despite not really having much to do with them since graduation. In my one and only jury trial, a decade ago, the other side rested its case, and I moved for a directed verdict. The other attorney, who litigated full time said "What?" Seems he had forgotten to introduce evidence for each of the elements for each of the jury instructions. I had also gotten admitted several pieces of evidence that they really didn't want before the jury too.
And, I thought that people in Wisconsin were tough when it comes to winter.
Speaking of Civ Pro, I'm working on a minimum contacts, choice of law, choice of forum, venue, and jursidiction type question now (should be right now, in fact), and desparately wondering how I ever passed Civil Procedure in the first place. Ugh!
At least if it had been I, it would be because my civil procedure class spent more time on the rules than the law underlying such. Not that we didn't cover such, but we didn't dwell on it.
It comes from having an adjunct who was a practicing litigator teach the class, instead of the full time profs who taught my other 1L classes. He taught us what we needed to practice and to pass the Multistate exam.
But what you are working on is the more fun part of civil procedure - but likely if you are on the better side. Someone in my IP practice group was applauded a month or so ago for winning one of these cases. It seemed to have something to do with the Internet, which is dicey because it is ubiquitous.
For those of you who haven't suffered through Civil Procedure, you typically want home field advantage when you are in litigation. For one thing, it is usually notably cheaper. Usually the plaintiff gets to chose. But not if the defendant doesn't have minimum contacts with the plaintiff's chosen jurisdiction and venue.
And, choice of law can be definitive. For example, Nevada has the most employer friendly law in the country in respect to ownership of inventions, while California next door is possibly the most employee friendly. This is fine, until you have a credit card company asserting credit card company friendly South Dakota law against you. You have similar issues in tort (and Lyssa is likely to know a lot more about this whole area than I do by now).
We got exactly the opposite from my law school: an email reminding us that even if we get stranded in a ditch we can not retake an exam.
This 12/11/2010 blizzard was modestly interesting, in a chilly sort of way! However, it didn't measure up the St. Paddy's Day Blizzard of 1965 when UofMinn campus classes were cancelled for the first time in living memory, also the Minneapolis Public Schools closed too! Now that was a blizzard!
Cheers, and stay warm out there!
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