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In just a few short weeks I will be facing off with the dreaded final exams, the last barricade that blocks my path out of 1L-hood. Two of my classes (Contracts and Civil Procedure) are year-long, and this last test counts 75% of the final grade. The other two (Criminal Law and Environmental Law) are semester-long and these final exams will determine my grade for the class. The pressure is high, but having survived this ordeal once already I am slightly more confident than I was last fall. I know what I’m getting into and I won’t flounder like a new fighter who gets dazzled by the lights and crowd. No, I know what’s coming this time and I won’t have to eat a few (pedagogical) punches until I settle down and hit my stride.

That’s the theory anyway. I feel like I’m doing a better job of preparation this time around as far as synthesizing everything I’ve been half-paying attention in class for the year into what I need for the exam. You see, I have resolved not to mess around this time. This time will be different.

A big part of law school exams is what they call “issue spotting” or recognizing the parts of the question that correspond to aspects of the law that the professor has covered in class. I will spot issues like they have never spotted before. I will spot issues like the fat kid at your 6th birthday party spotted the Reese’s Pieces that spewed forth from the pinata: all of them. I plan to spot issues that the professor didn’t even know about when they wrote the exam.

Good law school exam advice tells you that once you have spotted the issues, you are to argue both sides of every issue. Well, I aim to take that one step further. I will not only argue both sides of every issue, but I will argue both sides of both sides of every issue (that’s FOUR sides total!). Surely that will earn me exponentially more credit than those other chumps who stick to the conventional method.

I can hear the naysayers out there saying “Nay! Not only does that not make any sense, but it will eat up all your time and you’ll won’t be able to make the big arguments about the important issues.” Well I find their lack of faith disturbing. That might be true ordinarily, but I have been working to master my time management skills to the point where I can calculate the amount of time it takes me to write a hyperbolic blog post where I make a bunch of ridiculous claims about my exam preparedness out to the millisecond (or possibly deci-second, metric confuses me): 22 minutes, 43 seconds, 1.7 next-lowest measurement. Developing this ability wasn’t easy, but I am confident it will turn out to be a better use of my time than things like studying and outlining.

Moot Court is now over, yet another obstacle of my first year of law school that I have sort of blindly skipped my way past. It’s a required class so I had no choice in the matter. Moot court has two aspects, a written brief and an oral argument. The Powers That Be grade it as pass/fail, which sends kind of a mixed message for a required course. On the one hand, this made me happy because it was one less thing to get really worked up over. But like those mysterious breeds of fish you hear about trolling the Mariannas Trench who implode when you remove them from their high-pressure habitat, I need a certain amount of stress to thrive. I think I would have done a much better job on both my written brief and oral argument if I was worried about getting a real grade. When the school says “It’s required, but we only give you a “P” or”F” what I hear is “You have to do it, but only with the bare minimum of effort to not look like a total slacker.” Granted, that has much to do with my own inclinations towards sloth, and with everything else I’ve had going on I won’t be complaining too loudly.

I have been working on a case that was actually argued before the real Supreme Court a couple weeks back. The case has two with some strict gun control laws in Washington D.C. and the Second Amendment. Gun control isn’t one of my pet issues, so I didn’t have strong convictions either way, but my first instinct is usually towards less government control, not more. At the same time, I can see the public safety need for regulation. I was randomly assigned to argue for the District of Columbia ( in favor of a de facto ban on pistols). Training future lawyers to have nimble minds and argue both sides of any issue, and all that. When the real deal went down at the big show, most commentators read the court as probably ruling against my side.

Writing the brief was not the most fun I’ve ever had, but I managed to get through the much-ballyhooed “10 Error Test” which requires the grader to stop reading and automatically bring the red pen hammer down on any brief with more than ten mistakes, be it missed comma or swollen margins. I had exactly ten errors, and so was able to narrowly skate by.

The oral argument was a bigger weight on my mind though. I was pretty sure I would earn my “P” with a good faith effort, and my competitive nature wasn’t kicking in to drive me toward victory. I couldn’t care less if I won the fake argument, but I still got nervous because I didn’t want to look like a total doof up there. It was an intense experience, in an actual court room with a trio of judges who wore actual robes. The simulation was enough to kick my (normally more active than most people’s) sweat glands into high gear and I was literally dripping from my forehead as I approached the podium. But once things got going and I answered the first judge’s questions with stuttering and sputtering and generally choking like a dog trying to swallow a dorito, it was actually fun. The time flew, which was nice because my greatest fear of the whole thing was silence or the sound of crickets chirping. I even pulled an Obama and spent the whole time my opponent was speaking writing down points for rebuttal. There were no big missteps. The only near mistake was when I almost called one of the judges “Coach” which is something I tend to do with male authority figures, probably owing to a youth of organized sports run by grown men in stretch-cotton shorts and whistles hanging from their necks.

I enjoyed myself up there way more than I imagined I would. Not enough to even consider signing up for a Moot Court team next year, mind you, but enough that I won’t just write the whole experience off as a semi-embarrassing waste of time.

1. The Siegel Superman decision “After seventy years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago – the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics Vol. 1.” This is exactly the type of case I would love to deal with once this whole Law School thing is in my rearview.

2. Late Grades? Pay Up, Professor “Florida State is what she believes to be the only institution in the country that fines its professors when they turn grades in late at semester’s end. The tab: $10 per grade.” It looks the kid gloves are coming off at my alma mater and the Registrar is hitting ‘em where it hurts.

3. 101+ Web Resources for Students Lots of almanacs and dictionaries and stuff, handily compressed into one place.

4. A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq At least these would be congressman have one.

5. Driver blames speeding on bad Oreo dunk We haven’t quite covered cookie mishaps as an affirmative defense, but it it’s still the early stages of my law school career so there is still time. via StopSmiling

6. Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing “It’s possible to (mis)use all seven words in a one-sentence book report: “Mario Puzo’s intriguing novel eschews the lyrical as the author instead crafts a poignant tale of family life and muses on the compelling doings of the Mob.” Guilty as charged on multiple fronts.

7. Violence against emos sweeps across MexicoI guess the sales of eyeliner and super-tight pants will soon take a nosedive.

8. The full text (pdf) of McCain’s speech delivered this week at the World Affairs Council. A run down of just what the man has planned on the foreign policy front, via a speech he gave to some interested parties.

9. The Obama Doctrine A run down of just what the man has planned on the foreign policy front, via a sitdown with some of his advisors.

10. Modern slaves You can call it “human trafficking” if you want, but we all know we’re still talking about the same thing, the very same thing Benjamin Skinner discusses with Salon. He mentions spending time in Romanian slave markets.

11. Since ‘01, Guarding Species Is Harder - washingtonpost.com “With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.” The very same I act I am now studying in my environmental law class. Kind of funny to see how it is currently put into action.

12. Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’ by David Mamet “I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.” the playwright says in the Village Voice. Looks like the writer of Glengarry Glenn Ross has shifted to a more conservative political view of the world.

Frank Einstein had a brief flirtation with a career in the circus. He traveled with the troup on a sea journey, but to say that the circus folk didn’t exactly warm to our snazzily dressed hero would be putting it mildly. Take for example this early encounter with the show’s skinless strongman:

Frank may in fact be something of a scaredy-cat, but the man has some serious moves:

A master of running an interior dialogue, even after getting kneed in the chain, Frank may hate pain but can still take a punch:

Pain, maybe. But never death. He has also apparently mastered some heretofore unknown martial art thatmakes his kicks have defecatory sound effects:

He even manages to lay the final smackdown while pondering some of the deeper questions that plague us on this moving sidewalk we call life:

Madman has it all: depth, agility, charisma. Just like Bahlactus.