top 10 things i've learned in law school...thus far.

1. You can pretty much sue anybody for anything at anytime. As my torts professor told us, when approached with a possible tort, you must think about anybody connected to the defendant who you might be able to hold liable---mom, dad, boss, dog. Once you've done that, sue those people, too, just in case.
2. Insanity is pretty much a ‘get out of jail free card.’ Plead insanity and you have a good chance of getting off. I mean, if a guy can be acquitted for killing three people because he "blacked out" and doesn’t remember doing it, then the insanity defense has to be pretty legit. Moral? No. Legal? Yes.
3. There are always those people who think they’re smarter than everyone else. We like to call them ‘gunners’. They're also the people who raise their hands to answer questions the professor has specifically directed at someone else, or try to show that the professor [who is probably a legal genius in their own right] is wrong. So far, three have been identified in my section. All I can say is that it must be hard being the smartest person at the 16th best law school in the country.
4. People don’t like it when you talk in the law library. They're quick to give a hostile ‘shhh’ to anyone who speaks above a whisper. As Ty likes to say, you’ve got to be as quiet as a mouse.
5. The law is not completely devoid of morality. Only most of it is. [See above discussion on torts and insanity.]
6. Law school professors don’t like to answer questions. Any question you ask will be answered with another question. As I have found, it is quite frustrating for those of us who just want the answer and not the twenty minute discussion that comes with it.
7. I am officially a nerd. When you begin to justify not doing the reading because you think a possible defense in court would be that a ‘reasonable person’ would not have done the reading either, you know you’ve sold out. [For those of you who haven’t had the distinct pleasure to scour thousands of cases dating back to the 1600s, the reasonable person standard dictates what should be acceptable behavior in the eyes of the law].
8. Pretty much any professor you run across is some sort of legal genius in some field. For example, I was doing my Con Law reading the other day when none other but my Con Law professor himself was quoted. Crazy. [And for the record, Con Law has nothing to do with being a felon. Or, at least a 'criminal' felon. You might be a Constitutional felon, but I suppose that's a different subject for another day.]
9. Law school is pretty much like being a high school freshman again…you don’t know anybody, the same kids are in all of your classes, people congregate around the lockers, and everyone wants to be the best.
10. Law school is hard. These people weren’t joking when they said we’ve entered the house of pain.