Five highlighters and a Dictaphone

Though it's supposed to just be orientation this week, the work is already being piled on. Today, during our first full day of orientation, we were walked through the basics of writing a 'brief', then assigned a case to brief for orientation classes tomorrow. Feeling like an idiot, I'm told, is all part of the law school experience.

A brief is, as I discovered today, a way of taking all the details of a case and boiling them down into a short list of important details. The segments they have us break them down into are Case Name, Procedural History, Facts, Issues, Holding, Rule, Reasoning, and Disposition. Yes, it looks like English but it is most definitely not. And though we were walked through the process of writing a brief today, writing one solo today took me the better part of two hours. Doesn't sound like much time but considering we're going to need to brief 2-4 cases per class and there are 6 classes, you can see that it's probably going to start cutting into my drinking time. That is, unless, I learn how to speed up the process. We were told that we'll feel like retorts lost in an amusement park for the first few weeks, though, so I guess it's all part of the plan.

Aside from orientation stuff, I've been procuring a few good people to pal around with. For some reason, the three friendlies I've acquired thus far are all Boston natives. Pete's just out of the Navy (ROTC), Matt's been in San Fran for a few years but just returned to Beantown after a stint in HR and Marina is a native that's worked for the last few years in local bureaucracy. All of them have the Thirst, save Marina but she doesn't complain when the booze fairy delivers unexpectedly. They'll be good folks to share a pitcher with at the end of the week.

S.