There was a makeup class for Immigration Law on Friday. I don’t think I’ve actually gone to a make up class since first semester of first year. I was thinking I would like to go though b/c I had missed a few classes due to covering another attorney’s caseload. I thought that it was too bad I’d be in court all day, but then I got to court.

As luck would have it the DA’s office made a mistake in their filing program and had to set over a bunch of cases. The end result was that I was out of court at 3 pm. That gave me plenty of time to get home, change, find some supper, get my friend a birthday present, feed the cat, go to the record store (I can’t wait for some free time to listen to the new Sparks CD on In The Red) and make it to the campus for the 6 pm make up class.

I strutted in early, tracked down the classroom and realized that I had missed the Immigration Law make up class and was in the Employment Discrimination class. I haven’t really missed this class that often, but I was here and the professor has seen me. So I decided to live blog the class for the benefit of the other students who aren’t here. That would be everyone but Mr. B, Ms. R and me. Oh yeah, and the other lady.
I’ve checked my email and I’m going to refer to my outlines. Nobody has read. That’s like a kick to the gut of the class discussion. Something about sexual harassment. The crossword is tough today.

I hope that was clear for everyone.

I took the MPRE yesterday. That's the ethics/professional responsibilities section of the bar. I hope I passed, I assume I passed. It's 60 questions, 10 aren't graded. I'm not sure how it's scored but from what I gather you can score a maximum of around 150 and need something like 80 points to pass. So basically you have to do a little better than 50%. It seems that the scores are adjusted so that if everyone missed question 25 then it's not counted.
You are probably amazed at this point. How does anyone become a lawyer after such a rigorous examination of the expectations of this highly venerable profession. As dumb as this test was and as dumb as the scoring is (the dropping questions makes some sense to me after taking the test b/c some questions were written incredibly poorly) there will still be some people who fail. It boggles my mind. If Jack Abramoff was able to pass it what kind of a sleazy bastard fails it. I think you should have to go register as a sex offender if you can't pass it. You deserve some kind of shame.

I think one of the first places that lawyers should start reforming themselves is in the professional responsibility section. It's a joke. Almost anyone could pass this test with four hours of preparation. When lawyers talk about their ethical responsibilities and those responsibilities are measured by such a low bar then no one takes us seriously. I don't blame people for that either. There should be some actual ethical analysis of what's going on in the rules. We want to avoid conflicts then we should avoid conflicts. Getting a client, who apparently doesn't have a deep understanding of the law in first place and therefore hired a lawyer, to sign a consent form is a bullshit cop out.

I need to go eat some snickerdoodles to get the bitter taste out of my mouth after the test yesterday.

I went to Berkeley and got to meet some other Latino law students. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be in Texas or California where I would have a little more room to not be perfect, not that I approach anything near perfection (Unless by perfect we mean middle range grades, coffee addiction, and frequent stupid questions in class). Some of the students said they had 30 or 40 Latinos at school. I think there's about 4 in my class and I'm far and away the most visible one. It'd be nice to just kind of blend occasionally.
I also did a crap load of record shopping while I was down there. I hit both the Rasputins and Amoeba's and a couple other places. B/c of the gentrification there are fewer of the small shops everytime I go to the bay. I used to find all sorts of cool stuff. Now I'm finding less. On the up side though, I find a lot of the weird stuff I want through Ebay, Craig's List, and random blogs. I still prefer the experience of going to the store though.
I think if I lived in the bay that instead of stalking baristas I would be stalking cute Amoeba girls.

I was downtown today picking up some files and I saw a guy playing music on the corner for money. There's nothing uncommon about this by my office. Usually there's about 10 or 15 people playing on corners within a block of my office.
At first I thought this guy was wearing a skirt. That still isn't unusual either. Various states of cross dress are usually seen in the neighborhood.
What was unusual was that he was playing the bagpipes. It was loud. I was able to hear it in my office. Now, play what you want and do what you want. The guy who plays the keyboards and adlibs songs about the people walking by is one of my favorite street performers. Never mind the facts that he can't sing, or play, or that his songs make no sense. You can tell that he was influenced by Wesley Willis. With the bagpipe guy I have no idea.
Bagpipe music isn't short and sweet. I'm not going to stop on the corner and tap my toe while he plays McPherson's Rant for 8 minutes. It's also not that catchy. I never really think, "Man if I get Scots Wai Hey stuck in my head one more time I'll have to listen to Kelly Clarkson."
As far as money making strategies go it kind of sucks. Even his skirt, which turned out to be a kilt, diminished my urge to give him money. I thought, this guy isn't a real freak. He's just bad at gauging his audience.
When I see a street performer I want extreme goofiness and catchiness. I want to be able to take in most of the song within 1 block. I don't care about technical merit. Lyrics like "Hey the lady with the blue stockings, your hot let's get rocking, yeah whoah, yeah." and bad casio always wins out over a wicked rendition of Herb Albert's Tijuana Brass. That gets my money.
It's hard to Ceilidh dance on the way to work is all I'm saying.