Breaking a personal blogging rule here

Usually, I don't directly quote conversations here, going on the theory that not everyone who speaks with me expects or wants their words to end up on the intertubes. 

But I'm making an exception today, just as a kind of word-to-the-wise for all the new 1Ls undergoing orientation right now or very soon.

Here are two questions that got asked at today's orientation Q & A session, which I advise you NOT to ask in your own orientations:

1) "Law review or moot court, or both?"

(Context: law review and moot court are both activities you can't get involved in - at least at my school - until you're a 2L. They also both require going through a competition to participate - that is, you don't just decide that you're going to be on law review or moot court. Now, although you really don't have to worry about either for months and months and months, I could see asking generally about law review and/or moot court - like, when the competitions are, what they entail, what are the benefits of doing them - and I can even see asking whether you can do them both at the same time. Just something about the way this one was worded came across really badly - like the speaker knew zie was going to have that choice.)

2) "So, how hard is it, really, to make top 10%, top ten in the class?" [implying, how hard can it be?]

(Well, dude, 90% of the class don't make the top 10%, and about 160 people aren't in the top 10 in the class. How hard do you THINK it is?)

So, my advice to 1Ls: don't be these guys (using "guy" in a totally gender neutral sense here).

Comments

[PhilosopherP]

Do they let you do both law review and moot court? Hubby got an exemption to their rule about doing both -- but only for his 3L year.

[pb]

I had a couple of those in my orientation, too. One guy asking our faculty panel what specialty he should choose. Amazing.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

PhilosopherP - yes, they let you do both here (I do both). Our moot court program may not be as big/strenuous as in some places, though.

pb - I try to chalk it up to nervousness, but sometimes you really can't help but think, really???

[joy]

Yeah, it's hard to tell which ones are actually that arrogant and which ones come off as arrogant because they're trying so hard not to let their terror show.

[Maribel]

Eh, maybe I'm more of a gunner than I thought, but these questions don't seem so outrageous. But I wouldn't have a lot of patience for a Q & A session in which 1Ls are only supposed to ask tame questions that we all could -- in fact, should -- have learned from browsing the website.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Maybe you had to be there. At my school, questions implying you ARE going to be at the top of the class aren't cool. (Everyone knows everyone's going to TRY to be at the top of the class - does anyone go to law school intending to be in the middle or at the bottom of the pack? So why announce your intentions in such a way that implies you assume you're going to do better than 90% of the people in the room with you?)

And no, we weren't requiring the 1Ls to ask "tame" questions - they're welcome to ask anything they want. It's just nicer if they ask questions that help everyone, rather than for assessments of their own personal chances for success (for one thing: dude, I have no IDEA how hard it will be for you, personally, to be in the top 10%. You might be a law savant. You might never grasp the difference between rule and holding. How the hell do I know?)

[Notorious Ph.D.]

Guggenheim, MacArthur... or both?

Heh.

[Jansen]

Amen.

Although at my school you HAVE to do a moot court or journal your 2L year.