Note to Future 1Ls

When deciding whether to be a plaintiff or a defendant for the purposes of writing your first-year appellate brief, ask yourself this question: "on a scale of 1-10, how much of a free-spirited hippy is my LW professor?" It can be hard to tell, because everyone is so fashionable these days, but look for the tell-tale signs: regular yoga lessons and lower-back tattoos are usually enough to unmask the demon. It's important because if you choose the government or corporate side, no matter how clear-cut your case might be in the real world, no matter how straightforward the law, she will sabotage you.

We're trying to convince a court to affirm a motion for summary judgment. What do we have to go on? We're in the 2nd district, but our lower court judge relied on an unpublished WI state court case, which says on the cover-page in caps: UNPUBLISHED OPINIONS ARE OF NO PRECEDENTIAL VALUE AND MAY NOT BE CITED. Nice. I'd ignore it, but we were instructed to discuss it in our argument. Found a good 2001 Supreme Court Case that clarifies the issue, and teaches us the current state of the law at the same time? Nope! This note in the instructions takes care of that: "due to a very confusing 2001 case... you are to use no case law after the year 2000."

To top it all off, the issue itself is summary fuckin' judgment. In previous years, students worked on interesting and controversial constitutional issues. I've heard about other people working on compelling I.P. issues or, in the case of O.E., the legal status of detainees under the Geneva Convention. We're working to affirm a summary judgment. And this is from one of the coolest writing instructors out there, which leads me to believe that this is normal. Christ almighty, is this what I have to look forward to?