E-bitching

We just did our first Real Deal assignment, where you know nothing about the issue and you gotta find the cases and statutes. So-called Open Universe. Persuasive writing and discussion is fun. I think it was the first time I heard laughter in our legal writing class. Actual laughter! Imagine.

I must've spent several days worth of time searching Westlaw and Lexis. You get caught up digressing down the paths of links, keycites, references. Long wormholes, tunnels of stare decisis. Suddenly four hours have gone by and you're scanning some effing patent law case in the District Court of Puerto Rico from 1973.

During class we were forced to read a faux email, which was supposed to be professional but began with "what's up Stan" and ended with a Walt Whitman quote on the existence of God. Our assigmnent was to correct it so that it was more professional. Fall-out from the mass-forwarding of hyper-personal emails of Harvard summer interns bitching to their friends. Message being: don't e-bitch from your work computer. I scribbled on the assignment to FeeFie, "This is an insult to our intelligence." She laughed. Then I looked at her, and she looked at me, and we looked down at what I had written - and I quickly erased it. Irony not being lost on us...