Law School Day 1

*The following events are real (real meaning based on my reality as I
experienced it), the names of the people within have been omitted to
protect their true identity and to prevent lawsuits (especially
defamation).*
---------------------------------------------

So there we all were… Room 120…waiting for our first official law
school course to commence – Property.

"Would I be on call first?," the question that robbed us of our
peace, sense of dignity, and (perhaps most importantly) our sleep.

Eyes darted around the room restlessly, uneasily… As mine wandered, I
noticed the curious pastel colors that brimmed so many of my student's
casebooks, a testimony to their obsession with highlighting, but more
importantly, to the effects of the first day of law school and the
terror of the unknown. I marveled at the sheer number of notes some
of my fellow students had compiled for this first day, but the volume
itself betrayed how each one of us felt. It would not exceed the
bounds of reason to say that we felt like a pack of seals, tirelessly
thrashing about as we chased an evasive school of fish in the early
morning hours, knowing we too were being hunted. It was the same
feeling those seals have when suddenly, all of the fish disappear…
The visceral, sharp mental and abdominal pain of realizing why the
fish vanished…the precise moment before the kill…

I looked at the clock, 10:59, heard the door slam shut, the nervous
murmurs disappeared like the prescient fish.

The immense dorsal fin pierced the surface.

Enter our Professor.

At that exact moment, I felt like my seat, the floor, the ground,
everything supporting me had instantly fallen away. That I was
plunged into the frigid water with the seals, and the massive fin was
going to circle the pack before inevitably turning towards me.

Professor was dressed like Professor Kingsfield (from the Paper
Chase). Behind the small glasses and bowtie stood a grayed, tall,
and empowered man. He held a mangled trumpet in his left hand as his
eyes carefully scanned the room. He knew exactly how we felt and he
was going to let us writhe in suspense for as long as possible.

Suddenly, from the lungs of a bull elephant, he shouted, "Who am I?!!"

Silence…

His hand squeezed the poor trumpet.
The scanning turned into glaring, and with even greater force he yelled, "WHO AM I?"

A death hush choked us.

One student managed to escape the clutches of silence and squeaked out, "Professor P?"

With the thunder clap of Zeus – "WRONG!"

I didn't know exactly where I was at that moment, but I was certain that I was no longer among the land of the living.

Professor slowly raised his trumpet, siphoning the oxygen from the room into his chest, and with the force of a hurricane of mythical proportions, blasted the frail horn.

At that instant, all of the demons that had clouded our notion of reality were slain.

A ROAR OF LAUGHTER

Not wasting a moment's opportunity, Professor again erupted "WHO AM I?

One brave student, feeling empowered by the trumpet blast and eager to show his brilliance shouted back, "Post!"

(Post was the Defendant in the case we were assigned to read for that day)

Professor "GOOD! Now, what color is my coat?"

Silence…

Professor was in fact not wearing a coat of any sort. Bowtie, white plaid shirt, brown plaid pants, but no jacket.

Were we slipping from the bedrock of reality back into our previous, neurotic state of dementia so quickly?

Silence

Professor, "WHAT COLOR IS MY COAT!?"

Trying to gather my thoughts at that moment was like single handedly rounding up a heard of 10,000 stampeding buffalo during a thunderstorm.

Wait a minute...the professor is Post! The color, the color... I frantically flipped through my casebook. I too had scarred my $140 casebook w/ hieroglyphics and markings. Color? Coat? Where does it say that in our book? I had spent 6 hours reading this case, re-reading, again
and again. I could tell you the court's reasoning. I could tell yo why this case was important. I could even tell you the dissent, and why it was less rational than the majority opinion and even the policy implications of both opinions.

How could I miss something so simple? Doubt began to crush my confidence.

Another brave and brilliant student shouted – "RED"

Professor – "EXCELLENT!"

I could feel the whole room lifting itself from the ground and begin to spin in a massive vortex.

Professor, screaming and gesticulating like a manically conductor, "Am I riding a horse?!"

Another highly intelligent student shouted – "Yes"

Was that a lucky guess? How did she know our Professor, pretending to be Post, was riding a horse?

As Professor kept firing off these obscure (or at least non-obvious) questions while the students responded with equal speed, I felt as though we were all given new wings to fly but were expected to just "figure it out." One by one everyone else seemed to be taking flight and soaring high as my wings had left me grounded and alone.

Then, as though Professor had spotted me from the heights of heaven and had seen that I was unable to fly, he asked pointedly, "and how do you know I'm on a horse?"

The vortex had screeched to a halt. All those fledgling students who had seemed to so readily pick up flying were at once back with me, shackled to the earth.

I normally wouldn't be excited by another's downfall, but I was beginning to feel like everyone knew the answer to these "basic" questions and my whole assurance that I would succeed in law school was about to receive a death sentence.

Professor, trying to get the momentum moving again asked, "Does it say so in the text?"

Silence…

At last! My colleagues were again unable to answer. In my excitement I let out a faint cheer.

Professor – "Turning to page 24, in the dissent on footnote B, what
does it say?"

(Quoted)
"But who would keep a pack of hounds; or what gentleman, at the sound
of the horn, and at peep of day, would mount his steed, and for hours
together, "sub jove frigido," or a vertical sun, pursue the windings
of this wily quadruped, if, just as night came on, and his stratagems
and strength were nearly exhausted, a saucy intruder, who had not
shared in the honours or labours of the chase, were permitted to come
in at the death, and bear away in triumph the object of pursuit?"

(That's one sentence. Did you see "steed"? If so, could you also tell me what that sentence was about without re-reading it? If you could, you are preordained for law school.)

Compared to the questions prior, this was "easy."

**********

During the remainder of the class we examined the social-political aspects of the case, Pierson v. Post. I didn't realize that law school would expect us to learn the obscure rules, their 10,000 exceptions and the 19,000 exception to the exceptions (and learning that "exception" in legalese means an objection to be preserved on appeal, but no one will tell you that) in addition to learning what influences judges, including their social status and local biases. Surprising, but
highly practical.

The other classes of that day, Legal Reasoning and Torts, were equally
fast paced, stimulating, exciting and scary.

At the end of that wild day, I felt like I had competed in a mental triathlon without having any practice or training.

I was exhausted: physically, mentally, and emotionally.

I had survived my first day of law school and had an impossible amount of reading and class preparation to do all over again with little time and even less sleep.

This would be my life and it was only the first day.

As I lay in bed, trying to find peace amidst my torrential thoughts, I reflected on all that had happened. I then sighed, smiled, and said to myself, "Welcome to law school."

*Note:
I have not read 1L by Scott Turrow so if any of this seems "familiar" it's purely a coincidence and is just a product of a common experience - the first year in law school.