I was so focused on unwinding from my first semester of law school that it only just occurred to me (almost two weeks after it ended) that I should write some reflections about it. In typical law student fashion I decided to outline this blog entry before filling out each sub-topic, so you'll have to forgive me for the departure from my previous blog formatting conventions. Here goes something!
I. Curriculars
I ought to say something about each of the classes that occupied my first semester of law school, just so future me can look back on them in amusement. And think about how far I'll have come, I guess. Here is a highlight reel of each of the four classes I was required to take, because at this point in my law school education I only take required 1L classes.
A. Torts
The only reason I knew what "torts" meant before starting law school was because I speak French, and "tort" roughly translates to "wrong." Torts was the class I felt most immediately engaged to and the one which I was able to follow from the very beginning. This is because our professor, Professor Kahn, explained that what people find offensive or wrong can also evolve as social norms evolve, which appealed to the anthropologist in me. Essentially, torts are things you can sue other people for, such as assault/battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, defective products, etc. Our professor clearly had a lot of love for the subject, which we all found engaging and endearing, and he gesticulated a lot. I tried to capture that in the below drawing, which I did in class (doodling helps me focus ok). Professor Kahn loved it.
B. Civil Procedure
This was the class I found most intimidating when the semester started, but it ended up becoming my favorite class. Long story short, we learned about how to file a lawsuit in the federal courts in the United States. Suits in these courts are governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a mess of a book with text that is hard to follow. Whenever we were assigned Rules to read, I would get completely lost and not understand anything, but things made so much more sense when we read the accompanying assigned cases. They also made more sense in class when our professor, Professor Williams (we call her Lucy) explained them. She has been teaching at the school for more than thirty years, and it shows. She amazed us with her depth of knowledge and blew our minds when she would show how seemingly "neutral" Rules actually impacted the outcomes of cases and the lives of the people who were implicated in them.
It was in this class where I arguably peaked in my law school career. Toward the end of the semester, we had a module about personal jurisdiction, which concerns the power a court has over a given defendant. Since plaintiffs choose the court in which they file their case, for the court to be able to hear the case, it has to determine whether it can institute a ruling that can bind the defendant in the first place. This module was a mess and involved much drama about defendants saying the court had no jurisdiction. We read such cases as one that involved one good sister and two evil sisters (Hanson v. Denckla) and one that involved a plane crash over the Scottish highlands (Piper Aircraft v. Reyno). In a footnote of one case we read was a reference to another case, Perkins v. Benguet Mining Co. I thought Benguet sounded Filipino and indeed it was, as the case involved a Philippine mining company as the defendant. That piqued my interest. The issue at hand was whether an American court could hear a case against Benguet, the defendant, when it was based in the Philippines. It turned out the answer was yes because, long story short, the company's president fled during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and established an office in Ohio. Lucy said as much in class. I found it interesting that the case text mentioned the Japanese occupation but nothing about the fact that the Philippines was also a US colony at that time, so I mentioned it in class for some helpful historical context.
For lack of a better word, Lucy was floored at my comment. She said nobody had ever brought it up before in class, nor did Justice Ginsburg mention it in the opinion that referenced Perkins. The Perkins opinion itself did not mention it. She said that the context was more than helpful, it was crucial. She brought up my comment a couple more times during the semester and during a Critical Legal Theory talk I attended. She also told our class that she did some of her own extra research and could not find any articles written about how the Philippines being a US colony played into the Supreme Court's decision in Perkins. I decided that nothing else I could say in Civil Procedure (or perhaps my law school career) could top that comment, and nothing else did. But now I do have an interesting point of further inquiry as I continue my legal education.
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| Picture is from Quimbee, an online law school study aid that brings me life and knowledge |
C. Property
This was the most difficult class and final exam. Even if I had more time to study for it than the others, and even when it was completely open note, I'm still convinced that I did the worst at this class compared to any of the others. There was a mind boggling amount of content, and I find that I just don't care about real estate deeds and the like. But there were some moments I was genuinely interested in the content (putting aside the fact that I wrote my whole anthropology thesis on housing issues). So interested that I volunteered to engage in dialogue with our professor, Professor Kelley, during lecture about two cases, Charrier v. Bell and Town of Belleville v. Parrillo's.
1. Charrier v. Bell
Something that drew me to this case was the involvement of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard, a place with which I consider myself acquainted. The case itself involved this wannabe Indiana Jones (my words) treasure hunting on unoccupied land. He ended up finding burial goods that an indigenous tribe, the Tunica-Biloxi, had left. He loaned them to the Museum and tried to profit from them, seeking a judgment from the court that he was the rightful owner because the items were "abandoned." The court said nah, they aren't yours just because you found them. Burial goods are meant to remain where they are placed. The anthropologist in me was like, yes court! You're right! But I was also surprised that the court actually ruled in favor of leaving the goods where they were left, and not in favor of individual profit. Sometimes the law actually does the right thing, it turns out!
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| Photo creds: Quimbee |
2. Town of Belleville v. Parrillo's
When I think of this case, I think, the audacity! But like, in a good way, sort of. Weirdly enough, one module in class I liked was about zoning regulations, but I ran with it. This case involved a restaurant, Parrillo's, which was established in an area that was rezoned in such a way that restaurants could no longer operate there. Because they had operated as a restaurant before the rezoning was enacted, however, they were granted a "prior nonconforming use" and allowed to continue operating. Then things get a little spicy (my words). Parrillo's decided to no longer operate as a restaurant by itself, but also a discothèque. The restaurant had the audacity to apply for a discothèque license, knowing full well what they were doing. The Town, of course, denied it and then sued Parrillo's to stop them from operating such a rowdy joint. The trial court ruled that the use, which now included psychedelic lighting (Judge's words), departed substantially from the original prior nonconforming use such that Parrillo's new use was no longer valid. Parrillo's appealed, and the appeals judge actually ruled in favor of Parrillo's. That judge must have liked to party! Then the Town appealed and the Supreme Court of New Jersey agreed with the trial judge and reinstated that verdict. What a party pooper.
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| Photo creds: Quimbee |
D. Legal Skills in Social Context
This class, which lasts the whole year rather than only the semester, is composed of two components. One is the legal research and writing component, and the other is the "Law Office," where we work on a social justice project in a group of fifteen or so students throughout the year. I figured I would do well in this class, and according to my interim evaluation, I did. Thanks Professor Leahy!
1. Legal research and writing
I was a bit nervous about legal writing at first, considering I had no experience in it and I didn't know how different it would be from traditional academic writing. It turned out it wasn't too different; it just involved a lot more in-text citations and succinct sentences. Legal research itself also isn't too different from "normal" research, whatever that is anyway. Mostly it involves sifting through huge databases of cases, articles, secondary sources, etc. and using nifty terms and connectors if you want to find things like "personal jurisdiction mentioned in the same paragraph as US colony/colony of the USA/United States colony." I will say I appreciate how much simpler it is than research I have done in the past, which included commuting more than an hour to a field site to talk to people who may not want to talk to me, or reading newspapers written in German from the early 1900s.
2. Law Office
Something unique that Northeastern does is implement a social justice lens in its first-year curriculum. Each first-year student gets to work on a social justice project in a group of fifteen or so students, known as a Law Office. Each Law Office partners with an organization in the community. Our partner is the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior (CLBB), and we are helping them research trends in juvenile sentencing following the Supreme Court's ruling in Jones v. Mississippi. More specifically, we are looking at juvenile life without parole sentencing around the US. Our Law Office was divided into several subgroups of 3-4 students each, and each subgroup had a particular topic to research. I had mentioned to my professor that I was interested in international work, and she took note of it and included "international perspectives on juvenile sentencing" as a topic for my group to research. I was very happy to apply my interests to an area of the law I hadn't explored before and had a great time doing research for our project. (As great of a time as one can have studying depressing topics, anyway.) What's more, we had to give a presentation to update our partner organization. I was put in charge of the PowerPoint and I added a graphic I made to it. At the end of the year, our project's final deliverable will be a research memo, and our Law Office will be divided into teams to put it together. It's well established that I will throw a fit if not placed in the graphics team.
II. Extracurriculars
One of my priorities entering law school was to continue to have a life outside of law school. I refused to give up any of the things that bring me joy, such as sleep, a social life, and my hobbies, and was totally fine if that meant I wouldn't be a top student. I contented myself with doing my personal best in the classes and forgiving myself for not understanding every single module we learned. It did me well and I managed to make it through the semester with good mental health and even better friendships.
A. Art
Not only do I do art for fun, but I have a paid side gig doing art as a commission-based artist for the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. I haven't written too much about the union on this blog, which is atrocious, but I will say that before starting school I was simultaneously a member of the union and on its staff working as an organizing intern. I so enjoyed my time there (and they enjoyed having me) that I've remained as an on-call artist of sorts. So yes, I do art as a hobby, but also to make a little extra money these days.
1. iPad art
Last year, I bought an iPad with the express purpose of doing digital art on the iPad app known as Procreate. The purchase was well worth it, considering how much my skills at digital art have improved and how many pieces I was able to make throughout the year! One such example is the dove I made for the Law Office presentation, which I originally made for my union job. Another example is this fan art I made of my friends that I turned into a holiday card.
There's actually a cute story to "Row 1." On the first day of class, I found myself getting ready to enter the lecture hall with my roommates Parris and Meiry and three people who would quickly become three of my closest friends at school, Grace, Tiffany, and Abby. We showed up at room 220 around three minutes before class was due to start, and the only seats available were the ones in the front row. We sheepishly sat ourselves down on them. It turned out to be one of the best things that happened to me this semester.
2. New paints!
Once I finished my last exam, I headed over to Blick art materials to treat myself to a new set of paints. I had been wanting to try out acrylics from Golden, an acrylic paint company that recently became 100% employee-owned, after I heard wonderful things about it. The only problem was I hadn't painted since May 2020 and never painted anything serious with acrylics. I had always been an oil paints kind of gal. I was a bit intimidated because acrylics dry much faster than oils, but that only means it's easier to cover up mistakes. Besides, I had just finished an entire semester of law school, where I had faced down much more intimidating things like civil procedure. There was no reason I shouldn't give it a go.
Thus, I spent three days living like a hermit in my apartment after my roommates had gone home for the holidays, painting in the living room and watching 90 Day Fiancé. The first painting I did was a commission for James, who wanted a depiction of our favorite pugs on Instagram. He took a screenshot from a video where the two pugs are rabble rousing and I made it into the little piece below. Fun fact–the canvas panel is from the original set of five I purchased at Michaels mentioned in the April 2019 blog entry linked above! Funny how it also features dogs like the first two did. (The next two feature frogs.)
B. Music
As usual I have my ukulele with me and continue to sing cute little songs. Although I haven't acquired a piano, I do have a friend in Cambridge who has a piano where I have been able to play. What's more, I randomly became friends with a trumpet player from the New England Conservatory. His name is Ryan and he is an incredibly talented trumpet player who can improvise like nobody's business. Behold, the greatest musical moment of the past semester.
C. Cooking
Ever since I lived in Atlanta, where I had the best kitchen I've ever had in my life, I have enjoyed trying out various recipes. Since I've always loved eating, it was natural that I would want to make food that I love. Eventually this became a love for making food for other people. I think it's just my Filipino blood. I mentioned to my friend Tascha who has a piano (see supra Section II.B) that I would cook a Filipino dish for him since he hadn't tried it yet, so I stayed true to my word and planned a dinner party. I also invited my friend from school, Jesse, who has spent time in the Philippines and whose parents lived there for many years. (Fun fact, his parents also knew who I was before Jesse and I became friends because a labor lawyer I knew through my job at Justice in Motion told his parents about me.) The other guests were my lovely roommates, who live in the house and so kind of have to eat my food because they're already there. I made kare-kare with oxtail and it was a smashing success.
D. Reading
While on break, I did something completely unheard of during the semester. I read for fun! Well, I finally got around to reading some articles from a list I compiled more than a year ago after taking an online course on movement lawyering. Notably, I read two keynote address by a Kenyan law professor named Makau Mutua about Third World Approaches to International Law and an article about the Philippine model of people's lawyering. All of it reaffirmed that I am in the right place.
I would like to write more about my takeaways about the readings and thoughts as I look ahead at what's coming, but I will save that for later–I've already worked on this blog entry for hours and am currently on an Amtrak train after waiting several hours at the Old Saybrook station. With that, I leave my first semester of 1L in the books. Bring on the next one!
am I the first CM of the blog ?? well just wanted to say super impress with your blog keep it up , I always wanted to make something like this but I was too lazy for it, but seeing your blog might give me the final push to do it :D
ReplyDeleteYes, you're the first commenter in a while! Hello and thank you so much! You're anonymous though, could you tell me who you are? Hehe 😉
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