On the topic of lolcats, bar-studying law grads really shouldn’t miss the Bar Exam Lolcats Facebook group. A few samples:

Heh. (Hat tip: Anonymous.)

Studying for Secured Transactions while listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack on my iPod just now, I came across a line in the BarBri outline that begins, “The Code provides special rules concerning…” and it occurred to me: How much more fun would it be to study for the bar exam if, instead of needing to know about the Uniform Commercial Code, we instead needed to know about the Pirates Code?

I hate Xoxohth, but now and then, it has its uses — like this thread about bar-exam practice-test scores, and what they mean.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first ever BrendanLoy.com-inspired artwork, courtesy of my NDLS classmate Emily Chang. She painted this painting…

…based on this photograph, taken by yours truly in Arizona last Thanksgiving:

Cool!

(Posted with permission. Thanks, Emily!)

When I read this article about the “lolcat” phenomenon (which I’d been previously unaware of), my first reaction was, “Wow, that’s stupid and pointless.” And it is. So naturally, I had to join in the fun:

Sometimes, understanding the law is hard. Other times, it requires only common sense. From the CrimLaw section of the BarBri multistate bar-review book, using an illustrative example to explain the limits of the necessity defense:

Throwing cargo overboard during a violent storm, if necessary to save the lives of the crew and other people on board a ship, would not constitute criminal damage to property. On the other hand, throwing some members of the crew overboard to save the cargo would never be justifiable.

Good to know! Heh.

Hey, wasn’t this a question on Nicole Garnett’s Property exam in 2005?

Who knew that arguably the most heavily (and persistently) postmortemed exam question of our three years at NDLS was so prescient?

Apparently sometime between 11:00pm Monday night and 8:00am Tuesday morning, someone cleared out all NDLS lockers without locks on them. This was not authorized by anyone at the law school, and so far no one knows who did it. This was not done just to the lockers of graduated 3Ls–this was done to any locker without a lock on it. Actually, it appears that any graduated 3L who had a lock on their locker did not have anything taken. It appears that only those lockers without locks on them were cleared out. So far I know of two 1Ls and one 2L who did not have locks on their lockers and had everything taken from them. If you are a 1L or 2L (or a rising 2L or 3L, if that’s the term you prefer) and you had items in your locker and did not have a lock on it, I strongly suggest that you contact Peter Horvath or Anne Hamilton to 1) double check that your locker was cleaned out, and 2) if it was cleaned out, report what was taken.

This is a big mystery to everyone at NDLS that has so far left many unanswered questions. For example, how did this person get into the law school? The law school is locked after 5:00pm, and only students, faculty, and staff can access it after that time through a detex system. I’ve been told that security is reviewing the detex records for that night, but so far they haven’t reported anything back. Also, most of what was taken were books, which raises two questions: 1) Why would someone want so many law books? The law school administration is checking with local used book stores to make sure they haven’t received a large influx of used law textbooks. But still, these books aren’t that valuable, so I can’t imagine who would go to such an effort to take them all. Plus, two jackets that were hanging on the coat rack near the lockers were untouched. I would assume that if someone were just stealing whatever they could get their hands on, they would have taken those too. 2) How would a person transport all those books? From the three lockers I know were emptied, there had to have been at least 50 pounds of books (one person had almost every book from their 1L and 2L years in their locker). Since I’m sure there are more that were taken, the “thief” would have had to have some way to get them out of the law school probably other than just making multiple trips by hand.

My hypothesis is that someone from the University somehow thought these lockers needed to be cleared out, and therefore did just that. I’m guessing that the missing items won’t end up in a used book store or on eBay, but instead probably went in the trash. Still, being that this is not the policy of the law school (the graduated 3Ls’ lockers don’t get cleaned out until at least July, and the 1L and 2L lockers go untouched) and no one in the law school knows anything about it, it remains quite a mystery.

Professor William Kelley is returning to Notre Dame Law School after more than two years as deputy counsel to the president. Replacing him at the White House will be former Xerox general counsel J. Michael Farren. (Hat tip: Brian Foster.)

Are law students emotional wrecks? Does the sun rise in the east? (Hat tip: Jay.)

…and they’re the cutest ones of all. Check out these three photos of Raph and his daughter. I didn’t post them before because I wanted to get his permission first (because, unlike the shots of people walking across the stage with their kids, these are of a more private moment), but he said it’s fine, so here you go:

Seriously: Awwwww.

My commencement photos are online!

Seventy-six of ‘em in all, which is a bit less than half of the total. Some were taken with my camera, some with Becky’s mom’s camera. Enjoy!

A few highlights are after the jump, starting with some bulletin-board material for the Message Board That Must Not Be Named:

(more…)

Needless to say, I have lots and lots of pictures (and a few videos) from today’s festivities. But I’m completely exhausted from a very long day of pomp and circumstance, and we’re planning to leave for Knoxville at like 7:30 AM tomorrow, so I need to get some sleep. I’ll try to organize my graduation photos — as well as my still-unblogged 3L Week and tornado pics — and post them from the car tomorrow, or from Knoxville on Tuesday. No guarantees, but I’ll do my best. In the mean time, here’s a cute shot to tide you over:

Hee hee.

P.S. One more:

Woohoo!

The universitywide commencement ceremony will be webcasted here, starting at 1:25 PM EST. I guess there’s no webcast of the law-school diploma ceremony that follows at 4:00 PM. But of course, I’ll be liveblogging throughout the day. :)

Looks like there’s some prospect for getting some law school student loan forgiveness, but there’s a decent sized hitch.

The House passed a bill yesterday that would forgive up to a maximum of $60,000.00 of law school loans for lawyers who agree to work as a public defender or a prosecutor for three years.

The bill would provide loan repayments of up to $10,000 per year - up to a cap of $60,000 - for law school graduates who work as criminal prosecutors or public defenders instead of taking what are often more lucrative jobs at private firms. The measure, which would expire in 2013 unless reauthorized, has backing from the American Bar Association and other legal groups.

This would seem to work out well for any law student who had aims of being a prosecutor anyway. I don’t know a lot of law students that set out to be P.D’s, but nonetheless, they’re out there. I know that law school was expensive enough when I started eleven years ago (at an in-state, public institution), but couldn’t imagine the cost of law school these days.

P.D.’s and D.A.’s (especially the P.D.’s) are largely thankless jobs, but they’re excellent ways to get tons of experience really quickly. You won’t be trying murder cases anytime soon, but you’ll see the inside of a courtroom, and be in charge of your own minor cases right off the bat.