Bay Area Blawgers 3.0

Sadly, I'll be out of town for the 3rd Bay Area Blogger's meetup. But the invitation is open to others:

The High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law is pleased to sponsor Bay Area Blawgers 3.0, the third gathering of legal bloggers in the Bay Area and friends. This time we're thrilled to co-host the event with the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at the UC Berkeley Law School. As we have done in the past, we'll spend about 1 hour of our time in a structured discussion, with the balance of our time for informal chit-chatting. The details:
When: May 20, 6-8 pm
Where: Goldberg Room, UC Berkeley Law School. Directions and parking.
Who: Everyone is welcome, but this event principally will cater to active legal bloggers. Bloggers and friends who have said they plan to attend include: Tsan Abrahamson, Robert Barr, Eli Edwards, Cathy Gellis, Eric Goldman, Beth Grimm, Kimberly A. Kralowec, Ethan Leib, Cathy Moran, Dana Nguyen, Aaron Perzanowski, Elizabeth Pianca, Mark Radcliffe, Jason Schultz, John Steele, Kevin Underhill and J. Craig Williams. (This list will be updated as new blawgers and friends RSVP).
Cost: Admission is free.
CLE: This event qualifies for 1 hour of general CLE credit. Santa Clara University School of Law is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider.
RSVPs: RSVP to Eric Goldman (egoldman@gmail.com).
Some background materials:
* Announcements of Bay Area Blawgers 1.0 and 2.0.
* Recap of the first gathering
* Photos from the second gathering at Fenwick & West's San Francisco office. More photos.
* List of possible discussion issues
* Census of Bay Area Blawgers

Who Knew?

From a CALI exercise: someone can be your stand-in at your marriage.

Occam's Razor

Wednesday I had my last law school class, a Corporations pseudo-review session. (My professor: "I don't want this turning into a pop-quiz of the professor. Don't go asking me for the elements of the Business Judgment Rule.")

A week from today is my Corporations final, my only one. (I also have a paper due in another class, but all it needs is a polishing.) When I was a 2L a 3L friend advised me wisely to take as few exams as humanly possible in the last semester. I'm reading an Emmanuel's supplement and taking CALI exercises online.

Also, I cashed in my Westlaw points! (Westlaw and Lexis are the legal databases. Students are granted free access and opportunities to earn "points" that cumulate throughout law school. Reminder: they expire 30 days after you graduate!) I chose a 10-blade kitchen knife set (about 3000 of my 4000 points).

I guess you get what you pay for: it only had 9 knives.

Moral Teasers

You've seen it before: the folks at PMBR, or student groups in the promenade, sitting there behind a table with a bowl of candy. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Nerds, Starburst two-packs. You have zero interest in whatever they're offering you, other than the candy of course, in which you have an immense interest.

I hate this moral dilemma! Do you:
1. Feign interest and listen to their pitch as you take a piece of candy,
2. Grab the candy openly and shamelessly and walk away,
3. Wait till they're not looking and snag some candy as you slip by, or
4. Give them apologetic, questioning eyes and take the candy with your head down.

I hate this dilemma so much that I usually suffer through the last option, which is: not take any candy at all. Such a tease!

Frankly...

My Corporations professor, after a reading assignment on shareholder distributions (dividends and selective repurchases):

“If anyone had fun doing tonight’s reading, please see me after class." He paused. "There are therapies for that.”

Short-Form Mergers

My Corporations professor, an adjunct - he's an Antitrust partner at a firm - was recently offered a permanent position to teach the course. Last week he admitted he was horrified to learn that we law students refer to the class as "Corps."

"I know this class isn't as exciting as some others, but really guys - we have come up with something better than that!"

The amusing part to me was that he didn't know we called it that! I've known it as "Corps" from my first year, and I assume the reference is passed down every year. (Other examples: Civ Pro for Civil Procedure, Crim for Criminal Law.) As weird as it may sound, I don't actually think there are negative connotations.

I mean really, how else are you gonna abbreviate it?

Like a Phoenix

The oft-repeated summary of life in law school:

1st year: Scared to death
2nd year: Worked to death
3rd year: Bored to death

P2P, Renewed

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the recent news in net neutrality. Comcast has agreed to work with BitTorrent, the P2P megasource, and to begin ceasing discriminating against BitTorrent traffic. I credit the pressure from the FCC investigation and the overwhelming business sense: P2P is becoming a vital way to transfer video legally.

In other news, Warner Music is exploring subscription-based music downloading on the ISP end, the idea of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohman, which I stumbled on almost exactly a year ago. Jim Griffin, who's heading the project at Warner, "forecasts that such ISP add-on fees could generate as much as $20 billion annually to distribute between artists and copyright holders."