I’m officially signing off.  It is time to go into the deep, dark, hole where sweatshirts, yoga pants, tennis shoes, and hats live.

This year has been crazy-busy but also exciting and rewarding.  I worked, competed in a regional and national mock trial competition, studied, laughed, cried, screamed and experienced any other emotion you can think of.

 As I look back over this whirlwind of a year, I can definitely say that I am not the same person I was when I started.  Each day, each class, each semester I have added a new tool to my arsenal.  I’ve learned not only from doing but also from seeing.  I’ve learned from my professors, my mock trial teammates & coaches as well as opposing counsel in mock trial. 

Even though I don’t always know if I’m coming or going or what day it is, I know the fruits of my labor will most assuredly pay off.  The experiences that I have had so far in law school are not only helping me to narrow down my interest but also providing me with the practical tools necessary to become an amazing attorney.

As I finish out my 2L year and prepare for my last year, I am confident that I have made the right decision in my new profession as well as choosing TU Law. I hope that somehow my experiences will help you on the road to law school.  The ride is not always smooth but from where I sit it is well worth it. 

Now it is time to find my sweats and get busy! 

L

Our ambassador year is coming to a close, and this is my final blog entry for the semester.  But that doesn’t mean that we are all gearing up for a summer off around here.  Being in law school does not include a summer vacation.  Even for the 3Ls, they have a summer’s worth of studying for the bar exam coming up.  For me and other 2Ls, we have a chance to work for a law firm, or take classes, or complete an internship.  These things often take more hours out of a day than regular school year class hours.  So, although classes will be ending soon, the workload continues.  

For me, the next few weeks and months will be filled with studying for exams, taking exams, writing a paper for my externship, planning my son’s birthday party at Incredible Pizza with ten of his closest friends, working at a law firm, taking summer classes, arranging summer childcare plans, completing an independent study project paper, delivering kids and sliced oranges to soccer practice, and beginning my term as the incoming Editor in Chief of the Tulsa Law Review.  

I like to be busy.  Many of these things I have taken on because I want to, but law school will keep you busy anyway.  The message I would like to convey to you, however, is that you can do it.  Especially if you are reading this and you have a spouse and kids and you are wondering if it can be done—it can.  It is helpful if your family is supportive of you and your goals, and I would highly recommend that you talk about it with them before you commit to law school.  But once you’re here, and everyone is on board, you’ll find yourself accomplishing the goals you set out to accomplish—and actually enjoying yourself!  

Law school is a great experience that will change you for the better.  It will affect those around you as well, but in a positive way.  I know that I am setting a good example for my kids—that of a dedicated, hardworking mom who is pursuing a worthy goal.  They and my husband are proud of me, just for attempting this law school journey.  It has given us a new appreciation of each other.  We treasure the times that we do spend together as a family.  Family night has become something we all really look forward to.  The journey has made us a closer-knit family.  

Law school is a big decision, especially when it affects more than just you.  But for me, it is a decision that I do not regret making.  I still have time for the most important people in my life, and I am also proud of my accomplishments in school.  It is a wonderful and do-able combination.

It is fair to say much of your academic life in law school will center on your courses.  The classes you take are the vehicle for teaching you the law and how to understand it.  Administrators spend great time crafting academic schedules of offered courses each semester.  Professors take great care in constructing the particular classes they teach.  Both the administrators and the professors focus a lot of attention to the details of the academic curriculum they offer and teach.  As a consequence, you stand to be challenged—to your ultimate betterment—from your legal education at the University of Tulsa College Of Law.

 To best benefit from the efforts of those working at the school to teach you the law, it is important to craft your own academic course schedule and construct your own particular study plan for classes.  Likely, your first year of law school will have been ‘mapped-out’ and your schedule will be pre-set by the college.  But, even with having your course schedule already handled, this still leaves open the area of creating your own particularized study plan. 

Study Plans

Your particularized study plan should generally cover the same focus areas for each of your classes. Some sample focus areas are the following: 

• · Attendance Requirements
• · Class Participation Requirements
• · Homework Reading Assignments
• · Taking Class Notes
• · Making Outlines
• · Reading Legal Supplements
• · Doing Practice Exams
• · Taking Final Exams

 When structuring your study plans, the first important step you need to take is to examine your course syllabus.  Professors each have their own manner of structuring classes and the syllabus is the ‘contract’ you have with the professor about your obligations for the class. Different professors weigh various course components differently.  For example, some professors have class participation count for a percentage of your overall grade while others may not give credit for questions and comments.  It is important to review your syllabus to determine what your professor expects before you start.  You do not want to find yourself half-way into a semester in a course only to discover that the teacher has been grading everyone on participation while you sat there quietly.  Furthermore, examining the syllabus is important for understanding your professor’s expectations of you regarding the other focus areas listed above, such as having required homework assignments or practice mid-terms that need to be passed-in.               

Preparing for Finals: Outlining

Another important step you need to take is preparing for final exams.  Most, if not all, of the work you do for each of your classes has the ultimate purpose of preparing you for its final.  Therefore, it is necessary for you to develop a way to marshal all of the different data you take from a course and organize it into an outline.  An outline acts as the penultimate container of your law school knowledge: It contains all of the information you gathered from a class in one place.   Saying that, though, still leaves the question: What does an outline look like? 

                An outline usually is a typed document written in MS Word that is topical with many subtopics.  An easy way to visualize this is to look at the ‘table of contents’ of a case book.   A casebook table of contents is an outline of the book.  Simply put, it is the skeleton around which legal information is organized within the textbook.  Your outline should have this same skeleton.  The legal information you gather from class, from homework, and from reading the textbook will be the ‘flesh’ you put around that skeleton.  By outlining in this fashion, you learn to condense and organize information.  The biggest hurdle will be learning how to identify information that needs to go in your outline from information that does not need to go in your outline.  It is important to not get frustrated with yourself or to become overwhelmed if your outlining attempts do not go as planned.  If you find yourself ‘spinning your wheels’ by trying to put every little detail in your outline and you sense that some of the information you are putting in is not necessary, it will help to consult supplements, such as Barbri bar review materials or CrunchTime review books.  At TU, these books are usually readily available from the library or from friendly upperclassmen.

                Equally important with understanding how to make outlines is working to keep them up to date.  Outlining takes time.  So staying on task by having due dates for where you want to be in your outlining process for each class is essential to getting them complete before exams.  Outlining during the readings days before a law school final is one of the most stressful experiences a student can experience.  It is easy to get overwhelmed by feeling that you need to finish outlining before studying the material while also thinking that you need to be studying all of the material already in your outline.  For this reason of avoiding stress, setting personal due dates to get everything done is critical regarding your outlines.

Preparing For Finals: Practice Exams

                Law school exams are difficult.  The multiple choice questions are long and tricky.  The essays are packed with facts and complex legal issues.  Practicing taking law school exams is helpful in many ways.  First, it familiarizes you with how legal questions are presented.  Second, it makes you rehearse writing out the IRAC process (Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion).  Third, it teaches you to deal with time constraints.  Fourth, if your exam is open book, it allows you to practice consulting your outline during the exam.  Practicing your test taking is one of the best ways to teach yourself how you are going to transmit the knowledge you gained while studying the material to the paper you will ultimately turn in for your course grade.

I will graduate from law school in roughly 45 days. I have been sitting at this computer for 15 minutes trying to figure out what to write about. I am virtually unable to think about anything other than graduation, but in the recesses of my mind I know I have a choice.

Choice – “the power of choosing” and “a grade of meat between prime and good” – Merriam-Webster

There was a time during my law school adventure where I felt I lacked the ability to control my day-to-day schedule. In my mind there were no choices to be made, it was school, work, or nothing else. A perceived lack of choice makes accomplishing tasks very difficult. I felt I was working on things against my will. Then I changed my entire way of thinking about school and work.

I focused on my decision to attend law school, and my decision to attend class, work, and study. I do not necessarily enjoy these things, but I reminded myself it was my choice. I owe no duties to my legal education, but I know I must respect it to be successful.  There are times during law school when you feel school runs your life. I write this as a reminder that everyone has the ability to make choices, but each person has to realize a choice is being made.

If you make the choice to attend law school just remember you are in control. You may not like the choices you need to make, but maintaining a mindset of control is essential. After I changed my way of thinking my schedule did not change. However, it made everything I did more enjoyable. Law school is not an easy three years any way you approach it, but a simple choice of mindset makes an extraordinary difference in how much you will enjoy those three years.

Reading back through this blog I am unable to determine if it makes any sense. I fear I am suffering from 3rd Year Dementia (made up syndrome).

Just remember you have the choice to take my advice or take my advice.

You may have heard this already, but it bears repeating.  One of the most important goals of your legal education should be to improve your legal writing skills. 

I came to law school feeling fairly confident in my writing abilities.  I have always enjoyed writing and I had the benefit of learning from excellent writing professors and teachers throughout my education.  I have even been told that I am a good writer.  Ok, that was mostly from my mom.  But when I started law school, I discovered that I was not as prepared as I thought I was.  

I learned quickly in the first semester that I needed to start from zero on my legal writing learning curve.  It is so different.  Of course, the rules of grammar and subject/verb agreement all still apply, but there is a hard-to-define balance in legal writing that can be difficult to strike.  

I have had to put my brain in an entirely different frame to complete a decent legal writing product.  I still struggle with the art of composing a succinct and persuasive brief.  In my externship for the U.S. district court, I still stare at the blank computer screen for way too long when I try to write a memo.  Last week, I submitted my law review paper to the executive board.  The final product was the result of five drafts, and the editing comments of three editors over a period of three months.  It is not a creative writing process.  It is very structured, methodical, and organized.  As in any writing, brevity is golden, and word choice is important.  Words should be descriptive without being over the top.  Passive voice is the devil, and I discovered how very, very frequently I use it.  

Last year during on-campus interviews, the majority of the interviewers talked at some point about legal writing.  This is a huge part of what recruiters are looking for in candidates.  Your writing skills will play a part in the job offers that you receive.  The company that hired me for the summer stressed this when one of the recruiters told me:  “I may not agree with your legal analysis, but you have to be able to write a decent sentence.” After almost two years of law school, I have a new understanding of legal writing and what makes it great.  I read judicial opinions, briefs, and memos differently.  I can now say that I know good legal writing when I see it.  Have I achieved it myself?  Well, I’m getting closer!  But I realize that this will be a long-term pursuit for the rest of my legal career, and with practice, each draft I write gets better and better.

So, there is s song that has inspired this week’s post.  Hopefully, if you know it you won’t judge me for using it– I really only know two or three lines.  The reason it has been inspiring is because, as the song says we “started from the bottom now we’re here.”  

Throughout this year I have written about my experiences in class, work, and mock trial.  Now as a write, I have competed in both a regional and national mock trial competition. 

Admittedly, we were the underdogs, or so they thought, when went to our mock trial competition.  TU has not always had a consistent showing in our region.  We quickly showed them that we were there to play and we were not going down without a fight. 

In the end we made it to our regional finals.  We beat the teams that consistently made it to the finals and placed.  We advanced to nationals and as far as we know it this was only the second time in TU history that one of our teams made it to nationals for BLSA. The first time being just a few short years ago when our coach and former ambassador and his team made it. 

We had two weeks to learn a new fact pattern for nationals.  We practiced nearly everyday to go through our direct examinations, cross-examinations, opening statements and closing arguments.  

When we arrived at the airport we were a teammate short.  And when we boarded our flight we were still a teammate short.  Our teammate missed the flight.  We pleaded with the competition director  who allowed us to substitute a 1L who had joined us in her place.  She had not had any trial skills courses or evidence and we still made it through the first elimination and earned high scores.  

In the end we did not make it to the final round but we still made a great showing despite starting from the bottom.  We put TU back on the map this year.  Next year, I am confident we will be in the finals in both the regional and national competition.

Two weeks ago, I attended the Winter Meeting for the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE) in Houston, Texas. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (Anadarko), my summer employer, was gracious enough to send me there to learn more about Anadarko and the oil and gas industry.  For those who are unaware, NAPE is the world’s largest exploration and production expo that spans several days. According to NAPE’s website, the NAPE Expo provides a marketplace for the buying, selling and trading of oil and gas prospects and producing properties via exhibit booths.  Roughly 20,000 people attended the expo and over 1,000 companies exhibited at the event.

Only one word can describe NAPE: stunning. The expo was contained in the George R. Brown Convention Center and made Jerry Jones’ football stadium look like a shoe box. Every company spent thousands of dollars on their booth with the intent to seal the big deal, show off their future or to intimidate the competition. Throughout the day, industry experts, leaders and consumers shared their ideas through lectures series, presentations and networking. It was unbelievable how much you can learn about the oil and gas in a short period of time.

Anadarko showed me that I made the right decision to work for them during my visit to Houston. I was given first class treatment and every Anadarko employee was extremely hospitable. The Land Division setup several meet and greet events for me to interact with my future co-workers and educated me on the future of Anadarko by explaining their strategy. Additionally, it was great to meet my fellow interns from different school, but specifically Oklahoma College of Law and South Texas College of Law. They gave me a different perspective on the law school experience and I am excited to get to know them this summer!

As a whole, NAPE was an excellent experience and it helped me to further my career. I am very thankful to Anadarko for being so kind and sending me on such an eye opening trip. Everyone at Anadarko treated me so well, I wanted to drop out of law school and start working the next day. I really want to thank Brett and Katie, the Anadarko TU campus recruiters, for helping me over the last few months. They came to TU’s campus to recruit and from there have been my contacts for getting assimilated to the Denver office. Hopefully, you all will be able to meet them when they return! (That is if they ever come down from the mountain) I hope you all enjoyed the post this week!

Keep your stick on the ice,

Andrew

The value of a legal education does not reside solely in legal training. The numerous skills I have acquired throughout my time spent at TU are invaluable. While my “chills” are multiplying in anticipation of taking the bar exam I find comfort in knowing TU has provided me with the skills I need to be successful. Additionally, I imagine my law school graduation resembling the end of Grease. I will fly away in a magical car with Olivia Newton-John, and my friends and family will wave at us with no fear for our safety…….How absurd is the end of that movie!? Also, what high school has a team of professional teenage auto mechanics?? I digress.

On the eve of the TU Family Law Negotiation I thought highlighting the various skills offered in law school would be proper. My 2L year I was a member of TU’s ABA Negotiation Team. Prior to the experience I did not know one could receive training for negotiating. My coaches did a wonderful job in preparing us for competition, and taught me many lessons on the finer points of negotiation. The skills I developed during my time on the team will be with me throughout the rest of my life, and will benefit me in everyday life.

The greatest skills acquired during the legal education process are analytical reasoning and writing. The development of these two skills allow law graduates to succeed in any career field they chose. My writing style and analytical process have drastically strengthened over the past three years. These skills have practical application in all career fields, and assist in arguments with family members. If you are committed to completing your legal education the opportunities available post graduation are by no means limited to the legal field. I would venture to say a modest percentage of my graduating class are currently pursuing jobs outside the legal field, and started law school with the same intentions.

The law school journey is a worthwhile decision. It is an investment for your future, and an investment in yourself. In light of my law school training coming to an end,  I will leave you with the actual dialogue from Grease:

Sandy: Todd…is this the end?

Todd: Of course not; it’s only the beginning.

I did not think much about the criminal world when I applied to law school.  I knew why I was coming and it had nothing to do with the criminal realm (unless it was white collar).  I had no desire to represent or defend alleged criminals. 

Many people abhor lawyers for various reasons particularly those lawyers that represent alleged murderers.  I never felt one way or the other about those attorneys that represent alleged murderers but I just could not imagine myself carrying out that task. 

Last week when we received our fact pattern for our national mock trial competition, I was given that exact role. 

While the general public, oft times abhors the lawyers that represent the most hardened criminals, those (alleged) criminals need someone to zealously represent them.  Many times the representation is not about the client’s guilt or innocence but about the guarantees to procedural due process granted to all of us by the Constitution.  It is about the right to a fair trial.  It is about punishment that is equal to the crime charged and not overly excessive. 

So from my mock trial I am not only learning about courtroom skills or criminal law & procedure but about the soft skills of zealous representation and how to personalize a client accused of a heinous crime. 

I know I don’t have to visit my fictitious client in jail or look at bloody and gory photos but I am now beginning to understand the mind of a criminal defense attorney and the difficult job that each one has and the respect they deserve. 

P.S. My client didn’t do it!

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to attend the investiture of the newest U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma.  The official ‘investing’ of authority for Judge John Dowdell was a full house event – all three district courtrooms in the federal building were standing room only (I was one of the standers).  The new judge was sworn in, and he promised to preserve, protect, and uphold the Constitution of the United States. 

I was struck by the importance and significance of the event as part of our nations’ judicial system.  Judge Dowdell said in his remarks that we were bearing witness to the peaceful transfer of power, which is something that not all nations of the world enjoy.  The formality of the event was moving and it made me proud to be a part of such a distinguished profession.  Although I am still just a 2L, I felt a sense of community and common calling among the crowd of lawyers, judges, and public officials.  

To be an officer of the court is a noble pursuit.  Despite the unending supply of lawyer jokes, it really is an admired and respected calling; and we are obligated to protect and maintain the integrity of our profession.  We are called to represent the profession well – with character, courage, honesty, and wisdom – even now, as students.  Sometimes with all of the stress of law school, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture – why we are here.  It is easy sometimes to focus on just finishing the semester, or passing that exam, or turning in that paper.  So, it is nice to be reminded of the bigger picture, to see it in action – a judge taking an oath with his family by his side, before all of his friends and colleagues, with all of the seated judges behind him, flanked by the flags of our nation and state.  

Someday soon, you and I will both by lawyers.  Events like this one remind us of the importance of what we do, and the importance that our actions will have, not just for our clients, but for the legal community in general.  It has given me a renewed sense of pride and determination to do all that I can to vigorously protect the image of the profession, and to call myself lucky to be a part of it.