My first semester at Notre Dame Law School begins one week from today.

I’ll be flying to South Bend tomorrow (well, actually, flying to Chicago and taking a bus to South Bend), then beginning the moving-in & orientation process… and then starting schoool. So blogging will probably be rather light for the forseeable future, and my Olympics coverage will be sparse at best (hence asking the guestbloggers to pick up the slack in that area :).

I haven’t had a chance to finish organizing my photos of Becky’s and my trip to Lake Powell, but I will do so ASAP (possibly on the plane tomorrow), and post them shortly thereafter.

I also hope to compose something more substantive about my thoughts on starting law school and post it. Maybe I’ll do that on the plane, too.

For now, adios! And go USA!

I just logged onto the Irishlink student information system, intending only to check my Notre Dame account balance. But then I saw a link for “Fall Schedule” and figured, what the heck, I might as well click it. My understanding was that my schedule wouldn’t be available for another week or so, but what harm could it do to check? So I clicked the link, and lo and behold, my schedule is there! It looks a little something like this:

Monday
9:00am - 9:50am: Civil Procedure I
11:00am - 11:50am: Legal Writing I
1:00pm - 1:50pm: Torts
4:00pm - 4:50pm: Legal Research I

Tuesday
10:00am - 11:15am: Contracts I
1:00pm - 1:50pm: Torts
2:00pm - 3:15pm: Criminal Law

Wednesday
9:00am - 9:50am: Civil Procedure I
11:00am - 11:50am: Legal Writing I

Thursday
10:00am - 11:15am: Contracts I
1:00pm - 1:50pm: Torts
2:00pm - 3:15pm: Criminal Law

Friday
9:00am - 9:50am: Civil Procedure I
1:00pm - 1:50pm: Torts

First reaction: No 8am classes; Hallelujah! Second reaction: Mondays will be manic, then it’s all downhill for the rest of the week. Third reaction: My longest solid block of class time (and the only instance of consecutive classes) is from 1pm to 3:15pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays (Torts and CrimLaw). Fourth reaction: Wednesday’s not bad at all; I’m out of class before noon! Fifth reaction: Friday is also not bad. Woohoo!

As I understand it, this schedule is subject to change for load-balancing reasons, so I shouldn’t consider it final until I get my schedule at orientation. But assuming it stays this way, I now have a time, not just a date, to count down to… 9:00 AM EST, Monday, Aug. 23… if I can find a reliable, time-zone-specific countdown clock applet, expect to see something in the left-hand sidebar very soon… :)

UPDATE: A bit more research reveals who my professors will be, if the above schedule stays intact…

Torts: Alan Gunn
Contracts: M. Kaveny
CrimLaw: F. Dutile
CivPro: Jay Tidmarsh
Legal Research: Dwight King and/or Warren Rees*
Legal Writing: C. Venter or Stephanie Vetne*

*schedule is unclear

Now I just have to find the student-written “Irish Law Guide” and see what they say about each of those profs…

UPDATE UPDATE: Here we go…

Alan Gunn
Teaches: Torts, Federal Income Taxation, Taxation of Business Enterprises. J.D. from Cornell. Fan of Socratic method, has a very good but very dry sense of humor.

Cathleen Kaveny
Teaches: Contracts I & II, Ethics and Law at the End of Life, Mercy and Justice. J.D. from Yale. Her pep talks are terrific, and she has a tremendous bag of word pictures for contract concepts.
[Yeah, I know “Cathleen” doesn’t start with an “M,” but she’s the only Kaveny listed in the guide, and she does teach Contracts… -ed.]
[UPDATE: The Kaveny first-name mystery is explained here.]

Jay Tidmarsh
Teaches: Torts, Civil Procedure I & II, Federal Court Jurisdiction, Modern Tort Liability, Remedies, Complex Civil Litigation, Law Review. J.D. from Harvard. Well liked and funny, Professor Tidmarsh is perhaps most well remembered by first year students for his use of “props” and card tricks to demonstrate the facts of cases read by his class.

Fernand “Tex” Dutile
Teaches: Criminal Law, Law of Education. J.D. from Notre Dame. No one knows how a professor from Maine with a Boston accent got to be called “Tex” but his criminal law class is very popular with first year students, despite his other nickname – The Smiling Assassin. Along with his University position as faculty NCAA rep comes an enormous football national championship ring from 1988.

Dwight B. King
Teaches: Legal Research. J.D. from University of Michigan. Poetry and cartoons are both part of the teaching of legal research when Professor King is in the room. A very popular teacher of legal research.

Warren Rees
Teaches: Legal Research, Advanced Legal Research. J.D. from Southern Illinois University. Professor Rees is a quiet fountain of knowledge for first years eager to learn how to do effective legal research. Has recently earned his wings as a pilot.

(Nothing listed for Venter or Vetne.)

So much for pennies from heaven. Just four days after I discovered an “extra” $800 in spending money for my 1L year, I’ve been hit with two hefty, unanticipated, unbudgeted fees totalling $1,646.50.

The bottom-line result: instead of seeing my weekly spending-money total increase from $60 to $75, it has now decreased to $55. (It would be $50 or lower, if not for Toni’s generous offer to host BrendanLoy.com and some creative budgeting.)

Ugh.

(more…)

From a new comment on my June 23 post about my nightmare of being kicked out of class on the first day of law school because I hadn’t done a homework assignment that I had no knowledge of:

Actually, as a ND law grad, I can tell you that there is one 1L class in which your dream may very well become a reality on the first day. It’s a tradition at ND to sacrifice someone to the 1L gods on the first day. Maybe it will be you.

Good luck in South Bend.

Well, that’s reassuring.

UPDATE: Then there this, from the commenter’s blog:

I think just about everyone in a 1L class knows a fellow student who went throug a divorce, or engagement broken off, or serious relationship problems because of law school. During my first year our class saw:

1 divorce.
2 serious threats of divorce (students didn’t come back Spring term).
4 broken engagements (at least, I lost count).

I’m not too concerned about that, though. Just get me through the first day without being thrown out of class, and I think I’ll be fine. :)

I got my first official financial statement from Notre Dame Law School in the mail today. One might expect this to be a sobering, even traumatic moment, as the reality of being charged $14,870 for a semester’s tuition sets in. But for me, examining the bill was actually a rather joyful experience.

(more…)

Over the last week or so, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, planning, and consulting with other involved parties (Becky, my parents, relevant Notre Dame weasels) about my calendar over the next month or so. Yesterday I bought two plane tickets, and now my plans are pretty much set. They go something like this:

Today through July 30: The daily grind routine continues: working at Intertec, living in Mesa, yada yada yada. :)

Friday, July 30: Last day at Intertec. Depart Phoenix for trip home to Connecticut on 10:45 PM red-eye flight.

Saturday, July 31: Arrive at Providence airport at 9:01 AM; begin Newington visit.

July 31-August 10: Visit parents and friends in Newington. Sort through my old stuff; throw a lot of it away, pack up what I’m not throwing away so I’ll eventually be able to move it out of the house. Help parents begin to clean house in anticipation of Becky’s Thanksgiving visit. Also do other miscellaneous things, like ripping the rest of my CD collection into my iTunes library. :)

Tuesday, Aug. 10: Depart from Providence airport 3:00 PM, arrive Phoenix 7:04 PM.

August 10-17: Final week living in Mesa. Possibly go to Lake Powell or Lake Mead or some such place with Becky for a few days. Pack for law school. (My iCal tells me to “PACK LIKE A MOFO” on the 15th and 16th.:)

Tuesday, Aug. 17: Depart Phoenix 6:35 AM, arrive Chicago Midway 11:55 AM. Board bus to Notre Dame 1:15 PM, arrive Notre Dame 4:20 PM. Check in with ND Housing, move into apartment in Fischer.

(Originally, Becky and I were planning to take a road trip together to South Bend, rather than me flying there alone, but that proved impractical because of conficting schedules — Becky has TA orientation at ASU on the 18th — and also because neither of us could really comfortably afford a road trip at the moment. But Southwest Airlines allows three checked bags per person at up to 70 pounds each, plus one carry-on, so I should be able to haul all my really important stuff out there, and then Becky can bring any additional stuff, if necessary, bit by bit when she visits me during the semester.)

August 17-22: Get settled in, buy books, meet fellow Domers, etc. Law School Orientation is Aug. 20 and 21.

Monday, Aug. 23: Law school begins. (Cue horror-movie music.)

A Notre Dame Law School professor helped train the judge in Saddam’s trial.

Blogger Tom Maguire suggests “a Congressional investigation into the timing and content of John Ashcroft’s press conferences.” Heh. (Read the whole thing to find out what the heck he’s talking about.) He’s not going far enough, though: I call for numerous, overlapping investigations into the timing and content of John Ashcroft’s press conferences. :)

And since I’m stealing that link from Instapundit (not to mention stealing a joke from my dad), I might as well steal this link from Insty, too:

Congratulations, law school graduate! You’ve taken the first step on your path towards fortune and glory, and that throbbing sensation where your soul used to be won’t bother you a bit in the years to come. …

After dropping as much as $100,000 and spending three years obtaining a law degree, you probably don’t know enough law to practice it professionally; most law school graduates don’t. Now perhaps you’re wondering: if the point of law school was not to prepare you for the practice of law, just what was the point of law school? Easy: the point of law school was to make money for the law school. Mission accomplished! Oh, and as a secondary matter, the point of law school was to flatter the egos and delusions of the brainiacs who teach there. And that, young law school graduate, is why you can pontificate at endless length on theories of critical legal deconstructionist realism as touching upon Marxist feminist radical queer Afro-Latino post-structural comparative gender issues, but you still can’t write a damn will.

Heh. It goes on.

Last night, I dreamed that I was in my first law-school class at Notre Dame (sitting next to Sean; go figure), during which I was censured by the professor not once, not twice, but three times, for various different offenses, until finally I was tossed out of class — becoming the sacrificial lamb to the 1L gods — because I admitted to having not done my reading the night before (apparently we had somehow been given a reading assignment prior to our first class, but I had missed the memo even though everyone else seemed to know about it).

Really, though, none of this was my fault; the professor was clearly picking on me. I felt rather like Harry Potter in Snape’s class. :)

After class, I had a one-on-one encounter with the Evil Professor of Death, in which I apologized for my various infractions. But instead of accepting my apology, he stated that I was just a crappy student and a crappy person and he expected nothing but trouble from me. All this maybe two hours after meeting me.

No, I’m not subconsciously nervous about starting law school at all… why do you ask? :)

(I should point out that, as I recall, my one-on-one encounter with the prof inexplicably took place near the front steps of an ornate, medieval-looking castle; also, during part of the class, we were in a swimming pool for some reason. But what do you want from me? It was a dream; dreams are weird sometimes. :)