Tigershark

One of my friends who graduated nine-years before me sent me some her 1L outlines. I think she passed down her Civ. Pro. outline to everyone she ever met, because everyone in my section had a copy of it that they got off some outline bank somewhere. It was just a good summary of the professor and his class that it was considered to be the gold standard for outlines, at least for that class. Ironically, she got a C- in that class. She was a really good student and graduated in the top 10% of her class, but just did not do well on that exam. I had hard copies of everything (I graduated in 2013). I retained and comprehend things a lot better when reading a hard copy versus a computer screen. For most of my 1L classes, I took notes by hand. I really like taking notes in the margin of casebooks, right next to the case being discussed because I don't have to write as much and can circle and star the important points from the case rather than paraphrase them. I switched to using a laptop my 2L year when I had two professors who did everything on powerpoint, and would email the slides to the class ahead of time. It was much easier to follow along when I had the slides in front of me and I could take notes in the notes section.

Thirst? They went to Thirst? Okay, I definitely need to rewatch this episode, because I wasn't paying much attention to the bar Kym and Allie went to. I studied abroad in Oxford between my junior and senior years of college and Thirst was our go to bar. We went there almost every night. Loved the puffin greeter!

My first year, my criminal law professor cancelled the entire last week of classes, but he also scheduled make up classes to account for the missed class time. My Civil Procedure professor also cancelled a couple of classes due to a speaking engagement, but knew well in advance, and on the first day of class he gave us a revised schedule with make-up dates. Almost any time there was a make up class, the professor was required to video-tape it in case there were people who couldn't make the class. For first year classes, I don't think a law school would have much patience for a professor cancelling classes without scheduling make-up dates. The stuff you learn your first year are the subjects that are the most heavily tested on the bar exam, and bar pass rates are a huge factor in law school rankings. I do know of one instance when an Evidence professor couldn't make his class and had another Evidence professor teach the class one day, but instances of that don't happen often. In that particular instance, it made all of the students who had the missing Evidence professor resentful of all the students who had the professor who subbed for him because the substitute was a better professor. Also, at my school, there was one first year section that was taught primarily at night. You could request that option.

20 hours is technically the maximum number of hours a full-time law student is allowed to work according to the ABA. The ABA recommends that 1L's don't work at all, but that usually never happens. There is some wiggle room for this requirement if a student is getting a lot of credit for an internship, etc. However, there are lots of instances of this rule being broken. The public defender's office in my county is notorious for requiring law students to work for 30-35 hours a week. Some of the lower profile law schools turn a blind eye to this practice. According to some of my classmates, the public defender's office is one of the most difficult places to get a job after law school. They only hire people who spent their entire law school interning at the PD's office, and even if you did that, you still are not guaranteed a job. I made the comment about public interest lawyer because during orientation, my law school had an alumni panel of different types of careers, and it was hijacked by a public interest attorney who thought public interest law was the most important thing in the world and looked down on people who didn't want to go into that area of law.

Another thing that bugged me in the pilot was when Prof. Keating made a snotty remark to one of the students about how he could just go do corporate law, as if only the best attorneys can do criminal defense work and doing corporate law is for losers. Not everyone goes to law school wanting to do criminal law. There are lots of people who go to law school with the intent to do corporate law, tax law, family law, etc. and have no desire what so ever to be a criminal defense attorney. That does not make them a bad lawyer. There are people who think that the type of law they practice is the most important law in the world, (usually they are public interest lawyers) but they typically don't teach law school.

Yeah, the stuff taught in that class would more likely be covered in Evidence class, not Criminal Law. Some school let you take Evidence second semester of your first year, but none that I know of allow you to take it first semester. In law school, the first year curriculum is pretty uniform across most law schools. Most schools would not hire a first year professor who deviates so much from the standard curriculum. Unless they are brilliant and tenured and well-known through the law professor community. My Civil Procedure professor was one of these professors. He spent the first six weeks teaching a book he wrote on legal theory. In order to get tenure, a professor has to publish. There is no way that Ms. Keating is tenured, because there is no way she has time to publish legal scholarship, teach, and run trials.

After last night's FJ, I really think the Jeopardy writers hate me.

Discrediting a witness is a perfectly valid strategy in trial. As a lawyer, you are obligated to zealously advocate for their clients, and often that means calling into question the credibility of a witness, that's what you do. But the term that lawyers and law professors use is impeach, not discredit. But discredit sounds so much more sinister to the non-lawyer types.

I agree with the sentiments that this was insanely ridiculous. Has anyone involved in the show been to a law school? Sat in on a law school class? Even the set design looked inauthentic. It seems to me that the show runners came up with this really cool premise, but failed to ask if the premise is even plausible. Here are a few of the many inaccuracies: 1. The set- law school lecture halls do not look like that. Most class rooms have tables or at least desks large enough to accommodate a laptop, a giant law book, and paper notebook. Those desks were teeny and not big enough to support a law book or a laptop, let alone both. It would be very difficult for a student to follow along in the casebook and take notes in that set up. Plus that lecture hall was huge. My first year classes had approximately 75 students, but that hall appeared to have at least twice that number. 2. The idea that a professor that is a first year professor is a full-time practitioner. According to one of my law school professors, teaching first year classes is way more time consuming than teaching second and third year courses. Additionally working on a trial is incredibly time consuming. Unless this show takes place in an alternate universe where days are 36 hours long, I'm not buying it. 3. The whole concept that she is teaching the practice of law and not the theory. You can take classes like this in law school, but they are much smaller (15 students max) and not open to first year students. And those classes actually would be taught by an adjunct professor who still practices. I took a couple of those. Most of those only meet once a week, typically at night. One of those classes I took was constantly being cancelled because professors were in trial or away on depositions. 4. The law firm had interns in their month of law school. A firm that focuses on trial work would never, never hire interns who have not taken evidence. 5. A professor telling their first year students to ditch torts class. This must be Ms. Keating's first year teaching, because no law school would let a professor get away with that. There were other inaccuracies. Most of those could have been avoided by having the class be a small class of second and third year students. But that does not bode well for future seasons. However, designing a set like that is unforgivable. Someone on the staff for that show could have called up a law school, said they were a prospective student, taken a tour, and sat in on a class. The only scene that was realistic was the scene was the mixer between the students and the professors. Stuff like that happened all the time when I was in law school.

I was in a production of the show. In the script, John the Baptist and Judas are the same character. At the beginning the script refers to the character as John the Baptist, but for most of the show, the character is referred to as Judas. It's the same character and is played by the same actor, and it's not one of those situations where the an actor playing more than one role. When I saw the question, I thought it was a poorly written question and that both answers should be correct.

I agree, there were way too many TSs in this game. It's really hard to believe that Jeopardy had three contestants who didn't know who Margaret Thatcher was, didn't know about FDR's New Deal, and apparently can't locate St. Louis on a map. Those were not hard questions. I predict that Elizabeth will be a one and done champion. (Then again, I said that about Julia Collins after some head scratching TSs in her first game, and look how that turned out.)

After the interviews today, I'm really pulling for Alan. I also did the Geography Bee. I made it to the state bee, but I didn't come close to winning. I kind of felt bad for Jeff when he said he came in second. I've been getting every FJ during the teen tournament. So many of them have been about YA fiction, which is one of my guilty pleasures.

Whoever made this mash up should have waited until tonight. Alex's pronunciation of the FJ clue was ridiculous.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/alex-trebek-foreign-words-supercut_n_5631945.html?

I really hope none of my friends who just graduated from law school were watching Jeopardy tonight. Did Jeopardy really need to include a clue about the bar exam, THE DAY BEFORE the freakin' bar exam? I would have been freaked out by that. Then again, I got freaked out anytime there was a press conference at the SD Civic Center and the marque that had the dates for the CA bar exam was visible in the background.

Two things I should have brushed up on- Internet Slang and Dr. Seuss. Who expects to get those categories on Jeopardy?

I definitely brushed up on Presidents because it comes up a lot, but that was a total waste, because I didn't get any questions pertaining to any presidents. Maybe I should have brushed up on world leaders instead. Two things I was glad I brushed up on were space and Canadian geography. I got a $1000 in the Jeopardy round about Jupiter's moons and a $2000 question in the Double Jeopardy round on a lake in New Brunswick that I would not have gotten if I hadn't reviewed those categories.

The fact that no one got Material Girl made me sad. That was my favorite song when I was 5 and I got excited everytime it came on the radio. I got FJ tonight. It wasn't an instaget, but eventually I figured it out.

Good categories for me: History in general, but especially American History; British Monarchy; Geography; math; Science, particularly categories that deal with abstract concepts of hard science, but ones that deal with scientists or technology I'm not as strong on; anything related to theater or plays, especially musicals; Presidents; Supreme Court cases; Movies, TV, and most pop culture related categories. I also tend to do fairly well with the sports categories, particularly the baseball and football ones, but I wouldn't want to go on Sports Jeopardy. Okay categories: Literature or books- I did pretty well with the ones I got in the DJ round, but then wiffed on the FJ I got on British Authors. Wordplay categories- I'm all over the map. Opera is a category that I usually get the lower valued clues, but not the higher valued ones. Bad categories- last night there was a country music category. That was not good. Anything dealing with space or anatomy. Also, Classical Music. And World Leaders (seriously considered risking $0 when that came up in FJ. In hindsight, I should have). Before I was on Jeopardy, I probably would have put economics on the list because I hated that class with a passion, but the category I got wasn't that bad.

Everyone's knowledge is different. When I was on Jeopardy, there was one question that was a TS, and when I read this board and a bunch of other boards people were commenting on how easy that question was and that they couldn't believe it was a TS. But I had never heard of it, never come across it, and didn't have a clue, but I'm sure there were a lot of questions that I knew that other people didn't. That's funny because Shakespeare and Chemistry were two categories that I would put on my "dream" list of categories. That's probably because I was a chemistry major and a theater minor, so those categories are right up my alley. Instead I got a Classical Music category. That's one category I knew I'd be completely useless in. I think I made a half-hearted attempt at ringing in on one question (I actually knew the right answer). But someone a couple days ago noted that classical music fans find the classical music questions on Jeopardy to be easy. Fortunately there was a movie category and a quasi-chemistry related category to make up for that. A while ago I read an interview with Ken Jennings, and he noted the people who tend to do well on Jeopardy are people who like a lot of different subjects and have a lot of different interest, because you tend to remember things you like. I was watching Jeopardy with my mom and we were both yelling at the TV when no one got the Joe Montana question. Then again, we are both 49er fans.

I actually said John Muir. I think I was paying more attention to the conservationist part rather than the President part of the clue. FJ was crazy easy tonight. There have been some easy FJs lately. The evolution one was pretty easy as was the one about the "wardrobe malfunction."

I usually look up FJ before the show airs, and last night's kinda threw me. The chemical formula they gave is also the chemical formula for butanol, and I kept thinking "What term means pertaining to butanol?" Finally, I realized that ethereal fit the first part of the clue and that the chemical formula in question could also be for an ether.

According to the contestant coordinators, the answer to that question is yes, betting strategy changed when people took home what they earned rather than a small amount. They changed it because people were not playing to win, and it made for a boring game.

British monarchs is a subject I feel really confident in. I've always been really interested in the history of the British monarchy and I've read a lot on the subject. Wives of Henry VIII is one of those categories that if I hit a DD in that category, I would have been tempted to make it a TDD no matter what the scores were. I easily ran that category. Could not come up with FJ tonight. Only one this week I didn't get.

"We've had a lot of one and two day champions in the last couple of weeks." Really Alex? Really? Wasn't there a 3 day champion just last week, or am I remembering this incorrectly? I'm surprised that Jeff was not immediately ruled incorrect on "hungry heart." I seem to recall that on Friday a contestant made a very similar mistake and was immediately ruled incorrect, allowing another contestant to ring in. Not that I would have noticed a thing like that. Okay, bitterness aside, I was really rooting for Beverly. She was at the taping for last weeks shows, and she and I would probably be really good friends we didn't live on opposite sides of the country. However, I do like Christi. FJ was an instaget for met tonight. As soon as I saw it, I said "Stone of Scone." I went to the Edinburgh castle when I was in college and remembered that the Stone of Scone had a dramatic history, so was pretty sure that was the right answer.