I wrote this column because law school is not great, but it has so much potential to be great. Welcome to my top 10!

#10: Contracts (Prof. Winnie Taylor)

While I did not do well in this course (B-), and while I sat in the way back row of the classroom (top left), and was doomed to failure by anxiety, I still hold the belief that Contracts is one of the hardest classes in law school. It should actually be taken over both semesters for six credits (as Prof. Taylor also believed); the, reading, however, was always a pleasure (go figure!). There was a ton of reading and I didn’t put it into a good outline, but Prof. Taylor brought so much energy into the classroom everyday that I couldn’t help but pay attention.

#9: Administrative Law (Prof. Araiza)

Araiza is an excellent professor. This course sounds boring, and sometimes it is a little boring, to be honest, but its importance is adequately understood: the “headless” fourth branch of government probably has more impact on our everyday lives than any of the other “big three.”  There are also a few fascinating cases that branch off into many different areas of the law.

#8: Trusts & Estates (Prof. Serkin)

This was a fun course to take, and the casebook certainly made things interesting. By far, of all the classes I took, this had the most bizarre casebook I didn’t learn the intestacy regimes as well as I should have, but I felt the final was one of the “fairest” I have ever taken, and I feel that Serkin taught this course almost masterfully.

#7: Employment Law (Prof. Minda)/Debtors’ & Creditors’ Rights (Hon. Martin Glenn) (tie)

Elizabeth Warren wrote the casebook for Debtor/Creditor and it was the best one I studied in law school. Employment Law was a fascinating area to study: I am glad I read From Widgets to Digits, and equally glad I wrote a paper in lieu of a final exam (the only time I was able to do that).

#6: Constitutional Law III: First Amendment (Prof. Araiza)

Araiza gets two mentions, but this course ranks higher because it has some of the most fascinating jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. Araiza never talks about his clerkship on the Court, but it hung out there in the back of my mind. Hearing his eminently reasonable and incisive interpretations of the Court’s opinions was a true highlight, and I bemoan the fact that I will never be able to take a course with him again. Not only is he a good professor—he is a good person, and made himself more available to students than any other professor I had.

#5: Evidence (Prof. Pitler)

Pitler delivered a stirring lecture in our final class on the Crawford case and the Confrontation Clause that was one of the most entertaining and informative talks I have ever attended. The school should have video recorded that class, because it was a definite highlight for me.

#4: Criminal Procedure (Prof. Baer)

Professor Baer warned me that if I took Crim Pro with her, she would “kick my butt.” The reading was usually quite interesting (some people call it Con Law IV because it is all Supreme Court opinions) and Prof. Baer always assigned a reasonable amount of reading for each class. I never felt overwhelmed and felt that she used her time in class very effectively. I also do not think she will “kick my butt”, because I took the course pass/fail (and update: I passed).

#3: Interviewing & Counseling (Prof. Schultze)

Everybody should take a class with Prof. Schultze. Prof. Schultze could have his own reality show based on his classes. While the class was easy, it was also fun and useful—learning how to appropriately approach clients is a fine art, and it is one skill that I will leave law school believing I have learned well.

#2: Business Reorganizations (Prof. Gerber)

Also known as “Debtor/Creditor Part 2,” this was a fun 3-credit class to take, and Prof. Gerber is one of the best at BLS. While the course can sometimes be challenging, Prof. Gerber always made it comprehensible through his classes, which blended lecturing and calling on volunteers.

#1: Securities Regulation (Prof. Fanto)

Securities Regulation may be one of the most difficult classes in law school but it was always a pleasure to attend the lectures, even when Fanto admitted that he hated teaching the material (on Regulation S).  Simply put, I was very lucky to take a class with him.

The full and original column can be found in all of its 4,736-word glory on Jack’s blog, at http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2013/06/negligent-infliction-of-emotional.html

Our normal view

The view from the top

Brooklyn Law Students for Sensible Drug Policy (BLSSDP) hosted its first annual Drugs and the Law Week this April. The Week featured three panel talks on drug law and policy, and finished off with a screening of the documentary The House I Live In and a Q&A with one of the filmmakers. Here is a recap of each of the events, and videos of each can be found on BLS’ iTunesU page.

A Lasting Peace: Beyond Criminal Justice in the War on Drugs

The first panel focused on how the criminal justice system deals with the War on Drugs and featured three panelists: Professor Bennett Capers, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York; Farrah Diaz-Tello, staff attorney for National Advocates for Pregnant Women; and Leah Horowitz – attorney with the Bronx Defenders.

Professor Capers started off the event by presenting some of the striking numbers produced by the U.S. criminal justice system: between 1970 and 2005, the prison population increased by 628%; 1 in 100 individuals is incarcerated, translating to 2.5 million incarcerated individuals; the U.S. contains about 5% of the world’s population, yet holds about 25% of the world’s prisoners. Professor Capers noted that many of these numbers could be attributed to the War on Drugs, which has mushroomed the prison population since the 1980s. An analysis of the War on Drugs reveals huge costs – financial costs of incarcerating large numbers of people and collateral social costs such as people losing their rights to vote, to public assistance, to housing, and job prospects. These costs perpetuate themselves, noted Professor Capers, since more incarceration creates more communities with more crime.

Ms. Diaz-Trello touched on a subset of those affected by the criminal justice system and the war on drugs: pregnant women. She described how some states such as Alabama allow for criminal prosecutions of women who test positive for a controlled substance at any time during a pregnancy and how there have been numerous instances of drug testing of pregnant women or their babies without consent. Diaz-Trello argued that this goes against public health policy, that women giving birth need to receive post-natal care instead of being locked up and separated from their babies, and that scientific research has shown that many of the health problems present in babies that have been attributed to mothers’ drug use during pregnancy actually stem from poverty.

Ms. Horowitz described a number of trends she has seen working with the Bronx Defenders, including defendants facing years in prison for the sale of very small amounts of narcotics; aggressive undercover police operations and a willingness to arrest bystanders rather than actual sellers; and undercover operations that target heroin addicts receiving treatment at methadone centers. In these operations, undercover police officers posing as heroin users approach recovering addicts exiting methadone clinics and beg for some of their methadone, claiming that they are feeling bad and desperately need it. If the methadone user helps the officer, he or she is arrested.

Horowitz pointed out that incarcerating someone for a year is more expensive than sending them to an Ivy League college for a year, and opined that the way the current criminal justice system handles the War on Drugs is too expensive given that it’s counterproductive and it fails to address what is largely a public health problem.

Professor Capers stated that police resources should focus on violent crimes rather than on nonviolent drug crimes if living in a safe environment is the priority. He also suggested a change in incentives: for example, the US Attorney’s office’s funding is based on its number of indictments. While the office is generally more interested in white-collar crimes, it is easier for the narcotics unit to obtain indictments. As a result, the office often pursues narcotics indictments rather than the white-collar crimes the office is actually more interested in.

Finally, Professor Capers advocated trying to change people’s attitudes. “As a society, we tend not to care about entire groups of people, and we’re happy to get those people out of our minds and out of our sight. If we really cared about heroin addicts,” argued Professor Capers, “we would give them treatment instead of locking them up. Similarly, if we really cared about pregnant women who might expose their unborn kids to meth, we would take them out of poverty and give them treatment.”

The Business of Drugs: Prohibition to Regulation

The Business of Drugs panel consisted of Professor Christopher Serkin; Susan Guercio, Senior Counsel for the NYC Department of Mental Health and Hygiene and former chair of the NYC Bar Association Committee on Drugs and the Law; and Noah Potter, practicing civil litigator, author of the New Amsterdam Psychedelic Law Blog, and former chair of the NYC Bar Association Committee on Drugs and the Law.

Samuel Corman, ’15, opened up the panel by citing a 2005 report called The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition. In that report, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimated that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion a year in government expenditures and would yield $6.2 billion per year if it were taxed at amounts similar to alcohol and tobacco.

Professor Serkin spoke about one of the current obstacles that medical marijuana dispensaries face: zoning laws. In states where medical marijuana has been legalized, many municipalities use zoning laws to prevent dispensaries from opening. These laws operate directly (enacting outright prohibitions on dispensaries in zoning laws) and indirectly (such as imposing enormous land use or regulatory burdens that effectively make it impossible to open a dispensary). Professor Serkin compared dispensaries to NIMBYs – things like gas stations, waste disposal sites, and wind turbines – that people want in the abstract but don’t want to live next to.

The tools that states can use to prevent municipalities from digging in their heels for NIMBYs can also be used for dispensaries: sticks such as state law preemption of municipal zoning and anti-discrimination rules that prevent zoning that discriminates against dispensaries, as well as carrots such as allowing local governments to collect half the sales tax on medical marijuana.

Another way to avoid the zoning issue for dispensaries is through delivery. The State of Washington mandates that cannabis sales go through brick and mortar stores, but Colorado does not. Professor Serkin noted that while delivery avoids the zoning issue in many municipalities, someone must distribute cannabis from somewhere and someone must grow cannabis somewhere, so you can’t completely avoid the zoning issue. Noah Potter pointed out that one of the problems with delivery is that it lowers security – transporting cannabis in a vehicle is generally less secure than keeping it in a locked and guarded dispensary. Additionally, there is an upside of obtaining cannabis from a dispensary in terms of the personal interactions patients and staff have that might not exist in a delivery system, particularly when a third party service is performing the delivery.

Moving to the conflict between federal and state law, Ms. Guercio discussed the Controlled Substances Act and pointed out that only a person can be prosecuted under the Act. Guercio wondered how the federal government would react if a state began to regulate marijuana’s production, potency, and distribution and even grew and distributed it itself. This underscored one of the common themes in current drug law: legal uncertainty and potentially dramatic future changes in law. “The task at hand is legalizing an entire market,” noted Potter, “and a market of this size and significance will present many job opportunities for lawyers in areas like regulatory law, medicinal law, privacy law, tax law, business law, and others.” Potter encouraged those interested in the future drug industry to study current alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceuticals laws.

Progressive Policies of our Foreign Colleagues: Drugs and International Law

The Drugs and International Law panel consisted of Allan Clear, the Executive Director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, and Heather Haase, international drug law attorney, current Chair of the NYC Bar Association Committee on Drugs and the Law, and UN drug policy blogger at Full Circle US.

Jacob Englander, ’13, started the talk off by noting that although the international community has largely criminalized drugs, several countries such as Holland and Portugal have taken a different approach – decriminalization and open tolerance of some drugs such as cannabis – and have not seen upticks in violent crime or implosions of civil society. Additionally, the legalization of cannabis in Colorado and Washington has had ripple effects on the international community. The U.S.’s position in it, as evidenced by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and other leaders suggesting that these legalization initiatives undercut U.S. moral authority to demand that other countries adhere to heavy-handed prohibition policies.

Mr. Clear emphasized that due to the U.S.’s international influence, its domestic drug policies have effectively become the model for drug laws worldwide. International drug control law consists of three core treaties: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention Against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. “All countries are signatories to the treaties,” said Haase, “but the binding resolutions of the treaties are not directly enforceable – at most, countries can be threatened with sanctions and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) can call countries out on their noncompliance. Many countries simply ignore the INCB,” said Clear, “and Colorado and Washington’s legalization of cannabis, which directly violate the treaties, make it hard for the U.S. to push other countries to adhere to the treaties without looking like a hypocrite. “

Indeed, many Latin American countries and Mexico, which has been ravaged by a drug war that exists because of the U.S.’s demand for drugs, have moved towards decriminalization, stating that the U.S. can no longer require them to adhere to the treaties given that its own states openly violate them. “A change in U.S. federal law would be the tipping point in the debate,” noted Clear, “but it’s likely that for the time being the U.S. might take a similar approach to Holland: keep the federal laws on the books so as to comply with the drug control treaties on paper, but simply not enforce them in practice and allow the states to set and follow their own policies.”

The House I Live In – Screening and Discussion

The House I Live In is a 2012 documentary film about the U.S. War on Drugs and its economic and social effects. Following a screening of the film, David Kuhn, one of the film’s producers, and Emma Andersson, an attorney with the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, led a conversation with students.

Emma Andersson identified changes in public opinion and perception as a main driving force in increases in medical marijuana and decriminalization and legalization initiatives. Films such as The House I Live In and television shows such as The Wire play a significant role in changing public opinion, and generational shifts in terms of older and more conservative generations being replaced by generations who have had more experience with drugs will have effects on the discourse surrounding drug policy. Andersson stated that it’s important to drive home the message that empirically, white and upper-class youth are using drugs at the same rates as poorer youth and minorities, and that it doesn’t make sense to make minorities and the poor pay extremely heavily for their mistakes compared to everyone else.

David Kuhn stated that lawyers have an important role to play in all of this, both in terms of working towards better policies and in terms of pressuring lawmakers, prosecutors, and police officers to realign themselves with better policies. He pointed out that many judges, prosecutors, and cops don’t agree with the current drug policies but feel compelled to follow them due to their professional responsibilities, so it would be a mistake to demonize them as being simply a part of the problem. It’s important to keep in mind that people care what lawyers think, said Andersson, so whenever possible put yourself in others’ shoes and give them the opportunity to show you their perspective. The most powerful tool that lawyers and policy makers have in undermining the real villains in the War on Drugs is public opinion.

Professor: What do you think about disclaimers on lawyer advertisements?

Student #1: I think it’s on lawyer advertising so much these days that it just fades into the background.

Student #2: I think that if someone is going to be swayed by footage of lawyers getting dogs to sit, they’re not going to process a disclaimer.

Student #1: I think he has a better point.

First, we consider http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com, which has just said “goodbye” on February 27, 2013, after 500 posts. One statement bears excerpting:

Nineteen months and 499 posts later, it turns out that the core message of this blog – that legal academia is operating on the basis of an unsustainable economic model, which requires most law students to borrow more money to get law degrees than it makes sense for them to borrow, given their career prospects, and that for many years law schools worked hard, wittingly or unwittingly, to hide this increasingly inconvenient truth from both themselves and their potential matriculants – has evolved from a horrible heresy to something close to conventional wisdom.

So the scamblogs have gone away because people got tired of repeating themselves over and over again, until people at the ABA decided that it was time to take their concerns seriously. I personally dislike this blog because he brags about getting 50,000 comments (I have about 100 comments and 30,000 page views, but I would like to think that I have written on a far more diverse range of topics). I also have little sympathy for law school professors that write about how they know they are “duping” their students—if you believe that strongly about it then get out (maybe it’s all he’s qualified to do, though).

Next up we have the always popular “ATL.”  I will not say much about this website as I have written at length on it in my previous special comment linked to above, but I will just say that I was very distressed to see them report on the resignation of our Director of Career Services, with a “hot tip” from a BLS student who bemoaned the fact that a position of “Claims Adjuster” was listed on Symplicity. (Note to self: Claims Adjuster is not a “legal job” – it’s at an insurance company and they always need lawyers so they wouldn’t be posting there if that wasn’t at least part of the concern.) Plus those jobs pay pretty well, and the lead singer from the band Pissed Jeans is a Claims Adjuster for his day job so I think it would actually be kind of cool to do that.

I hate “ATL.”  I have visited it less and less over the years. It loads slowly. It’s TMZ for nerdy lawyers and law students. They make all their money off advertising from various “legal companies” and then they don’t exactly bite that hand that feeds them, but might as well [tell everyone that if they score beneath 170 on the LSAT don’t go to law school]. I have very little respect for this website and hope that my blog will never fall prey to being such a sell-out.

Lawschoolfail.blogspot.com is our next stop on the tour, and this site at least opens up with a nice post (dated December 26, 2012) asking whether the scamblogs are wrong. Now this is an interesting question. The scamblogs may have been right, and they may actually have affected a grassroots-type of change in the legal profession, now that U.S. News & World Report has changed the way they list employment figures for graduated law students. But do we really need scamblogs anymore?

The blogger makes an interesting point:

What is the point in not getting married or not trying in life because you did not get a job after law school?  What is the point in feeling sorry for yourself over the internet year after year?  There has to honestly come a time when you get off the internet and start striving again. I just can’t get over the fact that law school has broken so many people. I can’t come up with any other conclusion than these people were very weak individuals. Some seem to literally revel in their own self pity, wallowing in the perceived idea that they are pariahs. Many act as if they have given up on life, instead of trying to do something else, they just say “I can’t do anything with my degree.”

This is basically the point I wanted to make here. Law school is not for babies. If you’ve never had a job before starting law school, then you may not know what it is like to search for a job, and how demoralizing it can get. It’s probably going to suck. But things are different in 2013 than they were in 2012 or 2011 or 2010 or 2009 or even 2008. They still pretty much suck, but they are, ever-so-slowly (we are told to believe) getting better.

ThirdTierReality.blogspot.com is an especially vicious site with offensive imagery that seems to revel in parades after parades of horribles. In the past, this blog has taken pot shots at BLS and our President. Now, many of us may feel strongly about our President, but nobody really knows how much of a role she plays in our school. She is higher up than the Dean, no?  She is the at the very top and has done her best to plug holes in the sinking ship that is a law school of our caliber in New York City in these economic times. As much as people might love to hate on her, the fact is many of us have not even spoken to her, and have no idea what she is doing behind the scenes. We will not pay any more attention to the woman behind the curtain.

***

Higher education may indeed be a scam, but it is a scam with which we must live. Persons concerned that they are not getting their money’s worth should avoid private education. (Though it is worth noting that many public institutions have rather inflated tuitions for law school—see University of Illinois at $38,250 a year (in-state); I base my statement on the cost of attending Northern Illinois University, however, which most people would consider reasonable at $19,811 a year (in-state).)  Many people from my generation will find it necessary to obtain a higher degree because they have found out that liberal arts degrees are a-dime-a-dozen and they are simply not competitive in the labor economy. I would not say “the hard is what makes it great,” but I would say “the hard is what makes you prepared to accept the terms of reality.”  I’m not going to make $160,000 in my first year out of law school, and indeed may not even get a job paying $57,000. But I am not going to blog about how I wish I had known better. Law school has been a rigorous education and has opened up a few more job possibilities than were open to me with a B.A. I will continue to blog about literature, film, music, and interesting legal matters. I will never suggest that BLS “tricked” me into attending (though I may file a complaint against them in small claims court for $6,000), and whenever I give my “unauthorized tour” of the library to prospective students, I tell them that it is a very good school, and the tragedy is that because we are all so well-qualified, a fair number of us will just get left in the dust because there will always be employers that only care about class rank.

BLS has cut back the number of students per class, and ultimately this is the wisest resolution of the “hyper-saturation problem.”  We may never be as good as NYU or Columbia, but my hope is that one day (hopefully soon) we will be recognized as a school on equal footing with Fordham. And I do not think that is an unrealistic hope.

“I bet this makes the highlight reel”

Wait for it…

Stealing home…

“MY PRECIOUS!”
“Should I be standing here?”

So, as I was saying, Marbury v. Madison stands for the proposition that…

Game? What game?

Too cool for school

I know this looks unorthodox, but I got on base!

“I hope no one photobombs me”

Say cheese!

Contact!

As she waves to her adoring fans…

1-0

Glove exchange?

I have a gift for you

2-0

I’m going to give you a BIG HUG (while running to first base)

Some of the team

Anand, the ball is on the ground…

Here’s my non-photobombed debut!

Wow, that’s high!

More of the team

I know this picture LOOKS precious, but I’m actually a spy for the other team

No comment

I FINALLY beat World of Warcraft!

He FINALLY beat World of Warcraft

Study break

I hope you know that you can’t take my picture without the signed written consent of Major League Baseball

I’m going to steal Colin Hedrick’s “Captain Morgan” title

We caught one!

I told you I’d make it on base!

]]> http://blsadvocate.org/2013/04/bls-softball-at-university-of-virginia-tournament/feed/ 0 http://blsadvocate.org/2013/04/overheard-20/ http://blsadvocate.org/2013/04/overheard-20/#comments Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:00:41 +0000 BLS Advocate http://blsadvocate.org/?p=2938

On February 20, 2005, the defendants, his uncle and aunt, respectively, without permission or authority, allegedly entered the Website from their home computer in Florida, deleted all of the files on the Website, and placed their own picture of the plaintiff on the Website, with phrases such as “Pig of the Year,” and “I’m going to eat everything in site,” next to the plaintiff’s picture. The plaintiff denies ever receiving such title or ever eating “everything in site.”

Davidoff v. Davidoff, 12 Misc. 3d 1162(A), 819 N.Y.S.2d 209 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2006)

Please be advised that a handwriting specimen is required for those taking the July 2013 New York State Bar Exam. You must provide photo identification and complete the required form in the presence of a member of the Registrar’s Office.

To facilitate this process, representatives from the Registrar’s Office will be available in the Moot Court room to assist on the following dates and times.

Last names from A-C: Monday, April 15 from 10AM – 12PM

Last names from D-G: Monday, April 15 from 2PM – 4PM

Last names from H-K: Tuesday, April 16 from 10AM -12PM

Last names from L-McK and all part-time students: Tuesday, April 16 from 4PM-6PM

Last names from Mei-Rol: Wednesday, April 17 from 2PM – 4PM

Last names from Ros-S: Monday, April 22 from 10AM – 12PM

Last names from T-Z: Monday, April 22 from 2PM-4PM

Please contact the Registrar’s Office if you are unavailable at these times or need additional information.

The SBA took several measures in order to minimize the effects of the changes in the budget. In order to maintain the number of student events, the SBA asked students to be reasonable with their spending and budget requests by, for example, serving pizza instead of more costly lunches and dinners. When pizza has not been appropriate, SBA Treasurer Roman Zelichenko has worked personally with student organization treasurers to find cheaper alternative options.

The SBA also put in place a policy of not reimbursing student organizations for individual purchases of plates, cups, and utensils. The policy came about partly because a large amount of plastic was being wasted and partly because purchases of small batches of utensils for every event by individual groups were far more costly than buying in bulk. The SBA has combined all the leftover plates, cups, napkins and cutlery that were previously bought by student groups on an individual basis and keeps a supply of them by its office for all student organizations to use. Zelichenko noted that student groups have been helpful in returning all clean and unused supplies to the SBA, and that there has been no need to resupply some of the items.

Additionally, several changes were made to the budget guidelines. A limit of $150 for expenditures prior to final budgets was put into place as a safeguard against groups assuming that their final budget would be as large as they requested and spending too much on their student organization fair tables and first events. Checks made out to treasurers must now be co-signed by the president, and new checks have a 90-day limit on them.

There will be even fewer students at BLS next year and another overall decrease in student budgets is certain. Several more student groups have been approved this year. The smaller student budget will again be spread out among a larger number of groups. “Hopefully,” noted Zelichenko, “the smaller student body size will lead to smaller expenditures for events, and budget changes should balance out in the end.”