Topic: First Semester

First Impressions

First of all, thanks for reading this. Especially if you’re a law student. Not that I don’t value everyone’s readership, but I’ve become acutely aware that every minute spent reading a blog is a minute not spent reading torts. Which is what I should be doing now.

But I think it’s important to take a few minutes and put down some thoughts, try in some small way to encapsulate and describe the first nine weeks of the first semester of law school at Lewis & Clark. So far, it’s been an intensely fun and extremely challenging experience. Coming from a theatre background, I had this secret desire (that I’ve only shared with a few people) that the study of law would be as engrossing as the study of Shakespearean texts. I’ve found this to be the case. The elucidation and analysis of legal concepts has proven to be every bit as vigorous as I’d hoped, and some of the language equally impenetrable.

My first impression of the law is that it’s inherently logical. While it’s amazing to study 19th century cases that, were it not for the mere physical circumstances (a negligently speeding man on horseback instead of a negligently speeding man in a car), are still as legally valid as when they were written, it’s even more interesting to trace the evolution of legal concepts, to see traditional contributory negligence morph into comparative negligence as the law changes and adapts to reflect our best collective sense of justice and fairness at the time.

No longer completely adrift in a sea of statutes and case law, and having survived the tempest of handing in the first graded memo, I feel a slight, tremulous, and barely perceptible wind at my back.

3 November 2008