Law school'd

Well, it certainly has been an interesting first few days. I just finished my first day of law school! I'm on my way to being a lawyer! I have no idea what I'm doing!

The University of Texas actually uses this picture to promote their law library. Awesome.

This Saturday was the first get-together for our first year mentor group. In most law schools, the first year is divided into sections that take all the same classes. Because UT is such a large law school, they break up the sections into two societies and each society into two mentor groups, so we finally end up with a group of about 30 people that we'll see every day for the rest of our lives (or so it seems). Not surprisingly, each mentor group has a second year mentor, and we had out party on Saturday at our mentor, Danny's, house. Burgers, hot dogs, beer and 100-degree-plus heat. What more could you ask for? The party was good in the sense that we got to meet people before the first day of orientation.

Orientation, Day 1:
We go to the law school bright and early for probably the best breakfast spread I've ever seen and to pick up our orientation packets. After awkwardly mingling for 20 minutes or so, we head on over to the LBJ auditorium for a few hours' worth of professors and alumni about how great it is to be at UT, how great our professors are, how smart we are, etc. After free pizza for lunch in our mentor group, we had a career services presentation and - get this - we are basically guaranteed to pass and guaranteed to get a job after graduation. Sweet! As they kept telling us, Monday marked the first day of our legal career. So what do we do? After a BBQ dinner provided to us with free beer (!), we all went out and got drunk at Buffalo Billiards and played pool and darts. This is the future of our country.

Orientation, Day 2:
A few more speeches about how great we all are, that lawyers are not horrible people, despite the jokes and popular perception. According to a Gallup poll from last December, lawyers rank 18th in terms of people's perceptions of honorable and ethical careers, just barely above Congressmen and used car salesmen. In Russia, on the other hand, a recent poll of high school students shows that lawyers are considered the second most honorable profession, behind accountants. They also ranked contract killers and racketeering 16th out of 38. This was only technically half a day, so I managed to get home in time for Dr. Phil (very important).

Today:
First day of school! Today is a late day, so I didn't get up until around 9 (God, I would never wake up that early in undergrad), went to Criminal Law, had lunch and went to Contracts. Both professors seem good and nothing too hard for today. The work isn't too bad... yet. We'll talk in about a week.

The funny thing about law school is that everyone is very anxious to make time to blow off steam. Tomorrow, we have a society-sponsored happy hour at Scholz's Beer Garden, next Tuesday we have a boat party with free booze, and next Thursday is the Student Bar Association back to school party with free beer at Buffalo Billiards. I'm thinking with enough booze flowing in, it won't be too bad a year.