End of an Era

This is my last post as Susie Law School. After this, there will be no more. Perhaps a direction to my new as yet unknown blog, but nothing substantive. After all, this blog was about law school and law school is over. *sniff*

I'm sorry to disappoint those who were looking for more, but at least until my training contract starts, I feel I'll be unable to offer any further wisdom to those who come after me.

But you never know. I might start blogging again soon about something else, and if you're lucky I might tell you where.

It's been fun. Thank you, dear readers.

Love, SLS

P.S. In response to those who asked - yes, I did get a Distinction :-)

The end of an era

Law School is over. Finished. Done. No more.

This state of affairs probably hasn't hit home just yet as it really just feels like any old post-exam day and I will wake up tomorrow thinking it's time to head to the library again.

My exams went ok, I think. None were horrific, but I did remember a few things post-Equity Finance that I know I missed out, but generally speaking ok. The Debt Finance paper was a bit evil, and seems a lot of people missed out on the last two questions due to confusing layout of the paper.

I will get back to you when I've realised it's all over. Right now it just all feels a bit surreal...

Due to popular demand...

... I am back again.

When I say 'popular' I mean that 100% of comments received since my last log-on asked me to return. There was one. And that one said 'come back'. So there you go.

The sad news is, there is only just over a week of law school left. I am mostly trying to pretend this isn't the case, and get all the joy I can out of it. Of course, soon I will have to face facts and come to terms with never being a student again. Any thoughts on how to cope with that?

Not that I'm not looking forward to going to Big Law Firm and being a lawyer. It's just that, well, I'm not good at many things but I am good at studying. When I no longer have that, I need to find something else to be good at. And there might be nothing...

Something weird is going on...

... there appears to be some kind of bug attacking my blawg, normal service will resume ASAP when I find my most recent posts and comments!

Apologies!

That distant rumbling...

.... it's the sound of DOOM!!!

Results on Monday.

The Dreams have started, varying from getting 20% for everything to the dreaded phone call from Big Law Firm telling me I can post my cheque for £31,000 any time I like.

I'm trying to proceed in denial at the moment. Unfortunately, flashbacks of the horror that was BLP just will not quit.

Therefore, doom.

You read it here first.

All drafted out

I'm not very happy about this exam. I don't think I particularly did myself justice, but I also didn't really revise very hard either and the whole thing is making me feel a bit uneasy. The trouble is there is no right answer so there is no way of knowing whether you got the marks or not.

I added up my supposed marks and think I probably managed 26 out of 50 at least, which for me is shocking. But it is a pass. And I will never know. I would imagine drafting is so subjective they can't fail people on the basis that their answers are different to the exact wording in the solution.

I do feel a little ashamed at not revising a bit more and being a little complacent about the exam. I heard last year that very good students often fail drafting because it is commonsense and subjective. Maybe I will fail. I don't want to fail. But I've always had that fear after hearing that... However I answered all the questions, and for once had enough time to check through and add some extra stuff that I feel improved my answers so hopefully that is something.

In response to anonymous who stated left this comment:

Is this diligent student thing serious? Or are you just being funny? I cant work it out. If you really were hard-working and scarily obsessive I'm not sure you'd share that fact with everyone. Give us a clue?

I'm not very clear on where anonymous got 'obsessive' from, diligent for sure, obsessive I hope not! Might I suggest you read some of my older posts, they may give you a bit of insight. Yes, it is completely serious and I'm not sure on why I wouldn't share it with everyone. I hate those people who work their backsides off and then when someone else says "oh did you work really hard for that" they go "oh no, half an hour". I work hard and I'm not afraid to admit it (although the drafting exam is not an example of this as I didn't work very hard at all, shame on me!). Hopefully it will pay off.

Drafting exam

This is tomorrow. I am having very mixed feelings about it.

This is an exam. Exams are supposed to require work. I had made no plans for the weekend and prepared to work.

However, I have found this entire subject very fluffy and difficult to revise. It all seems to obvious and I'm not really sure what I should be learning.

So I haven't done very much.

Which makes me feel guilty.

But then when I try to do some, I end up putting it all away again because it seems so easy and obvious and I feel like it really can't be that hard an exam.

This worries me. Drafting doesn't strike me as particularly difficult to pass, but I am a rather diligent student, so I can't help but feel guilty when I end up doing something else, and feel like maybe I should be afraid and should do more work and learn something else.

So I pick it up again and so the cycle continues.

Stupid.

Results Day I

Accounts and interviewing results today. You will all be jumping for joy to hear that I am indeed competent. Of course I am disappointed not to have obtained 100% in my accounts assessments. Unsurprisingly, I was unwilling to put myself through the ordeal of physically walking up to the wall where the results were pinned up. Instead, I relied on my trusty friend, the computer. And it did not fail me.

The whole thing was somewhat of an anti-climax. Even though in true Susie Law School style I was somewhat nervous, I don't think I ever genuinely thought I had any real chance of failing either assessment. In fact, the absence of nerve-shredding dreams filled with NYCs (Not Yet Competent) and percentage values in the low twenties suggested to me that today would indeed pass without exam-induced hysterics. This was indeed the case.

I'm sure you are all very pleased for me ;-)

What's going on...?

So, new term, new tricks, right?

When I say new term, I merely mean electives have started. Last week was the first week of lectures and this week SGSs have commenced. New subjects means new groups. I liked my old group. i made friends in it. Now I must go forth and associate with new people - what a bother!

That aside, electives are very exciting. I am particularly a big fan of Equity Finance (which is basically all about listed companies and the Stock Exchange and suchlike). This week we are doing floatation - my main gripe with it is that I don't understand why it is spelled flotation as opposed to floatation, like float. Bah.

Debt is almost as good but really pales in comparison to the interest I have towards Equity Finance. My other subject is nothing very exciting as I did not get to select it - Big Law Firm did the honours for me... Can't have everything I suppose, at least I have a job to go to so mustn't grumble!

More PLR (Research memo writing) fun is currently taking place. I think I have finished mine. But the usual PLR concern of "Do I have the right answer" is going on a bit. On the positive side, research memos are quite fun which I hope bodes well for my future career. Sadly I don't feel the same way about drafting...

Drafting exam in a few weeks - I actually feel like I know absolutely nothing about it. We had a few SGSs back before Christmas but the exam felt very distant then! I am sure I can pick up a few things but currently I feel like I am going into an exam on something I am having to learn completely from scratch!

Advocacy is also part of this term's fun. And it should actually be fun. Unlike interviewing. Yuck. I might actually be good at it. Unlike interviewing. Yuck. Which reminds me interviewing results are out in a couple of weeks. Yuck.

I should end on a pleasant note - it is light at six now! This makes me very pleased and puts a spring in my step - in addition to the spring I get from Equity Finance!

Life after Law School

Medically Brunette asked me whether I would continute my Blawg once Law School is over. I have often thought about this myself. The answer is, I don't know. Writing about Law School is one thing but once work starts the stakes are higher and I wouldn't really be able to rant with freedom about life at Big Law Firm. You must have read all those horror stories about people being fired for blogging about their jobs...

So the options are

1. This blawg will end and there will be no more.
2. This blawg will end and Susie Law School will resurface with an alter ego in a different blawg
3. This blawg will continue but become fictional
4. This blawg will continue but stop being about my life in the law.

Call now, calls cost 88p per minute from landlines, mobile costs may be higher. Terms and conditions apply.

During recent upgrade work...

There was a glitch. It seems my blogroll reverted back to an earlier form and is all out of whack. If you used to be on my blogroll and no longer are, please let me know. If you were never on it but would like to be, let me know and I will include you if you are worthy.

Barely Likely to Pass - otherwise known as Business Law and Practice

Big Law Firm: hello

Susie Law School: hi, Susie Law School here. Reckon I failed BLP.

Big Law Firm: That'll be £13,000 please.

Susie Law School: OK, thanks a lot, bye bye.


Stripper-R-Us, here I come!

The Fear

"An emotion experienced in anticipation of some specific danger (usually accompanied by a desire to flee or fight). "

I am experiencing Business Law related fear.

It is immense.

It is not aided by the fact that I get to a point where I feel like I know things, only to find something else entirely that I have not even considered.

In 25.5 hours it will all be over. Sadly said time is not sufficient for me to actually learn everything I need to know.

Fear.

Immense fear.

Exam II... and III

Big day today. Civil Litigation AND Criminal Litigation both in one day! Four and a half hours of flicking through statute books, writing like a small beast and pretending my arm did not ache and it is over.

This is how it went.

Civil Litigation

Some MCQs. Some were easy, some were difficult. Sadly, my two favourite topics, foreign jurisdiction and Part 36 t offers already appeared in MCQ so no long form questions to guarantee full marks from! Managed to do all of them fairly quickly and figured there would be plenty of time for Section B (80% of the paper). Turned over to Section B and found most of it was ok, but I would have preferred different questions. Compare arbitration and mediation. talk about Tomlin orders. Case law on Summary Judgment was v sketchy. Wasn't sure what part of Security for Costs was for what part of the question, put it all down but wasn't sure if it was in the right sections. Disclosure was a disaster. Thought it would be easy marks but managed to completely confuse myself. Also completely confused myself in Particulars of Claim. This should not happen!! I am clever, I work hard. I should be ble to get many many marks for this stuff! Goodbye 100%...

Criminal Litigation

This paper was a dream!!! No rush, got everything down I wanted to say, apart from think there was more to say about bail than I said but wouldn't be too many marks. Case study was almost identical for Formative Assessment!

At least the day ended on a high.

Business Law is on Tuesday. Another very long day and bound to be the toughest. Back to the library I go tomorrow...

Exam madness

Enough said

I really should check my emails...

It seems I've been featured on LawCareers.net! It was very useful to me before I got a training contract and now I'm being featured! So exciting!

Thank you for the heads up those who told me, particularly Asp on comments, as I wouldn't have known otherwise and may have missed it altogether! And there was an email about it from LawCareers but silly me hadn't got to it yet. But yay!

Keep reading, kids!

Exam I

Property Law and Practice was the longest exam I have ever done. And is likely to remain the longest until the New York Bar at least. I mean it actually WAS the longest, three hours and 15 minutes. I left 10 minutes before the end having finished my answers a good ten minutes earlier. This asn't happened to me since my undergraduate exams - I finished early! Oh except for Accounts but that wasn't a real exam...

That in itself is not however, an indication that the exam went well. I had high hopes for this one. I felt like I knew it.

Section A was multiple choice, not a big fan actually. They try to catch you out wit really tiny detail so youneed to be mega-careful to read the question exactly and not miss anything! I got lots of D's. There is of course no statistical probability involved so they could all be D's but it did not inspire confidence.

Section B was about registered land. It was fine, mostly, but I thought for a while I was running out of time and started rushing and possibly didn't answer the middle questions as well as I could have done. There was a professional conduct question which totally threw me and even though I think I got some of the points, I certainly missed out talking about the fact that it isn't in the client's best interest to lie to their mortgage lender... bah.

Section C was on leases, my least favourite topic area. Many were hoping for a big question on Security of Tenure but instead said topic was in MCQs. I hadn't looked at Landlords' Licences in enough detail so missed out a lot of points on section C. Not amused.

Next one is on Friday, litigation. Two papers, one in morning one in afternoon. Am hoping it will go better!

T minus 12 hours

First exam tomorrow. Property Law and Practice.

You will pleased to know tat today I got to that point were you feel like you know a lot of stuff and just want to get to the exam and see what the questions will be like.

I did a past paper, timed, managed 88% which was nice, but this of course means nothing in real terms. It did reassure me that I do actually know quite a bit of stuff though! It also reassured me that there probably won't be such a godawful rush as last year, and I actually have a decent chance of finising the wole paper.

Watch this space! And wish me luck of course.

Last year...

...someone apparently got 100% for Business Law and Practice.

Would be nice. Doable? Perhaps not...

This week students at London Law School were invited to provide feedback on their experiences on the LPC. Despite the fact that the majority of my fellow students compare the LPC to the equally-pleasant experience of having one's eyelashes plucked off one at a time with sharp, heated tweezers, while a 2-tonne weight is balanced on their right foot, I have actually enjoyed it. A lot. I can't wait to be a lawyer.

But how do I know if I'll be any good? How does anyone?

One spends hours labouring over application forms, telling firms about excellent communication skills, team-work, attention for detail, commercial awareness... you get the idea. Then they invite you for interview and it is more of the same, with well-thought out illustrative examples from a previous life. However, that is just practice, learning what questions could come up and what answers make firms bend over backwards to offer you a position. So how is one supposed to know whether one will be a great lawyer - an Atticus Finch or Denny Crane? Or whether one will become a statistic, one of the 1.5 people in professional conduct class who apparently WILL be struck off.

For one, the LPC is very artificial in many ways, consider Practical Legal Research or Interviewing and Advising. Will any of the skills* learned actually translate themselves to being useful in practice? Short of "that guy paying your fees with a suitcase full of cash covered in white powder is not suffering from extensive dandruff, he is money-laundering" - how much of the LPC will actually be relevant to real life law? Will budding lawyers not just learn many things by Mr Supervisor barking at them how to do things when after an all-nighter in the office it turns out they got the whole task completely backwards?

It is a slight fear of mine that I will not be a good lawyer. I love it, I can't wait to do it, but what if it turns out I am genuinely completely abysmal at it? I am doing well on the LPC, I have good academics, I have work experience... but what if I'm simply missing the lawyer-gene which no amount of hard work can substitute? Then what?

*Of course the same applies much less to actual law, since obviously one will need to understand the ins and outs of share issue and conveyancing to be able to get started as a lawyer... but still?

Something wicked this way comes

And I don't mean wicked as in evil. I mean wicked as in excellent.

Dear readers, you may be in shock if my blawg is a new feature of your daily life. But my more established readers will not be surprised.

EXAMS ARE COMING!!!

I like exams. I like revision, suffice to be said. I have been spending some time this week going over what needs to be done in terms of revision, and putting together a revision timetable. And I must say I'm very excited!

The pre-Christmas mock examinations went very well (78% upwards well, in fact some papers very much upwards!) and this has erased some of the horror from last year's exam hell of my first two papers.


In other news - someone suggested a money-making idea in the form of publishing my blawg as advice to budding lawyers. I always have fancied being a published author but I can't see who would want to a) publish something I wrote and pay me money or b) buy it!

But secretly I've already been designing the cover of course...

Now that Law School is back in session and rapidly approaching its end, the time has come to consider my next steps. In other words, think of something respectable, yet fun to do before I start my surely-glittering career at Big Law Firm. I have some ideas, most of which take place outside the confines of the United Kingdom, however I have encountered the age old problem - somehow I will need to fund my escapades.

I have some money. Not very much. Big Law Firm has paid me a nice little grant for law school and Mr. Bank Manager has been kind enough to provide some extra. However, I now wish I had asked for a little MORE extra. I feel it may be too late and in any case I doubt that "I need to extend my loan by £4000 to fund jet-setting around the world for a few months after Law School" is simply not going to fly with him.

Obviously some of the time between Law School and Law Firm will need to be spent working. However, having carried out some preliminary calculations, I would have to earn a rather unlikely hourly wage to have sufficient capital to go securely from June to my start date in early 2009. This hourly wage could of course be obtained through somewhat underhand methods, but despite my career choice as a lawyer, I still have some morals left. And I would hate to be struck off before I even qualify for soliciting of a completely different kind.

The biggest problem is rent. Namely paying it. If I didn't have to pay rent all would be well. I have to manage 13 months rent until my first paycheck. I have enough money to do that at present, but once I've done it, there will not be a great deal left unless I cut out luxuries such as food, electricity and travelling to Law School. So subletting looks like the most viable option, which unfortunately cuts out a lot of my flexibility on how to spend my time.

The crux of this post is this. I need to make some money. A part-time job is of course the most likely option, but I would need to find one that earned me significantly more than the minimum wage in order to be able to spend the very small available part of my time at work. So I turn to you, dear readers. Any other ideas? LEGITIMATE ones only, please.

Susie's back... back again...

Happy New Year, one and all! I hope you are all sufficiently well fed and rested, ready for new challenges.

My holiday at home with Mum and Dad Law School was lovely, thanks for asking.

This year has so far not started so well though. But here are some thoughts to get you going.

1. Isn't it amazing how failure in one sphere of your life can have a completely debilitating impact on your self-esteem in all other areas? As much as one tries to be rational about such things, it is sometimes quite hard to pigeonhole one area of life from others. Let us say, hypothetically, you failed your driving test. This could easily lead to some, albeit temporary, sentiment, that you are also stupid and will fail all your exams.* Currently I'm experiencing some self-doubt of this kind. I'm a rational person and I know it's not a permanent state of affairs, and I know that this said failure does not imply inadequacy in other areas but it SUCKS!

2. The above has led me to further consider the fact that I'm not really very good at anything. I'm above average in some things, but I'm not really great at anything. This probably is true of most people, but it is rather irritating. It would be nice to have something at which I am just really really good. I realise this is my competitive streak rearing its ugly head again but it's been so quiet recently!

3. This leads me to my final point which is to tell you that Competitive Susie lost out in the end, and Logical Susie powered through with the outlining. The mocks went somewhat ok, of course results will only arrive next week and at that point we shall see how well she fared.

Apologies for the somewhat negative and philosophical stance to this post, the year has started disappointingly thus I have decided to pass on the (lack of) joy to you, dear readers, and hope this will have a cathartic effect on the near future at least!



*FAOD I passed my driving test eight years ago, this is just an illustrative example.