day 29 :: regarding the law

My sister is working every day, so I’ve been spending a lot of time on the list of Things That Must Be Completed in Order to Take the Bar Exam. It’s going well. Unfortunately, all this sitting around and completing tasks has coincided with some of the shortest days of the year. I hate short days.

So I was getting a little crazy, cooped up inside while the weather outside is Low of Negative 15 (120 degree Fahrenheit difference from current temperatures in Sudan), and I decided I had to DO SOMETHING. I thought about working, but that would require references, and I don’t want to waste my professional references, which I shall need come, oh, March, when I look for a real job, so I came up with a new idea.

This afternoon, after completing some of the items on the list of Things That Must Be Completed in Order to Take the Bar Exam, I drove to the county seat and found the courthouse. It was conveniently located on the main road.

I was the only spectator in the little district courtroom with church pews and brown checked tile floors.

In fact, it is apparently so uncommon to have spectators for a normal day of non-jury hearings that the clerk and the judge and three different lawyers started conversations with me. It was my first taste of what the name of my law school can do among lawyers outside of New York.

“Where did you go to law school?” the judge asked.

“[School That Sucked My Will To Live]” I said.

“Oh,” she said, “I applied and didn’t get in there.”

“Oh,” said one of the lawyers, “that’s a really good school.”

Until now, I’ve always interacted with people in New York, to whom the school is not surprising because it is, you know, in New York, or non-lawyers outside of New York, who stare cluelessly.

I went looking for a particular lawyer’s office (suggested by the court clerks) after I got tired of the divorce case whose rebuttal I was watching, and ended up driving on a desolate, hairpin turn mountain road. It went on so long without any sign of a turnaround or a bit of civilization that I got a bit worried.

Then I finally made it back to town, overshot the office again in the other direction, stopped at a gas station and finally found it. Now I have plans for next week to tag along with an actual lawyer and learn some actual law-like things. Or something.