Legal Writing

As much as I like to write, legal writing was not my favorite subject in school. In fact, I still cringe when I think about that first year legal memorandum project. The question was whether Alice-somebody could keep an engagement ring after her relationship went south. When writing my first draft of the memo, I was interested in Alice’s plight. On the second draft, I could care less about Alice and her problems. On my third draft, I wanted to wring Alice’s neck and say, "Give back the blasted ring and get on with your life you stupid idiot!" (Wouldn’t I make a great plaintiff’s lawyer?)

The interesting thing about moving is that you discover stuff from your past that you had buried in some deep closet and put far from your mind.

Last night Kevin unearthed my senior paper. "Look at this!" he exclaimed. "Oh no," I mourned, "You found it. I thought I’d lost it and I was glad." Kevin started laughing because he remembered how bad I was and how much I complained while writing it. I was in my last year of law school and just wanted to be done. The only thing tying me down was that dreaded paper. I think I block-quoted at least half the paper. It had to be 35 pages and I didn’t have the mental energy to write that much about a topic I wasn’t even interested in. (That was my problem - I couldn’t think of a topic I was particularly passionate about that fit the criteria. So I picked Eighth Amendment considerations of the death penalty. Blah.) The last page, which is (incidentally) page number 35, contains half of a sentence that was stretched-out across the top of the paper! But I made it!! (Whew.) "Kevin, didn’t you help me edit that paper?" "NO," said Kevin. "You just don’t want to be associated with that paper in any way, do you?" (More laughter.) Well, my Prof gave me a B. So, obviously, he didn’t think it was totally shabby. Ugh.