3L or Bust

revealing my (past) ignorance

before business school and law school, I would have read the following sentences and really not understood what they were talking about: "The critical issue is, does the IRS consider these [home improvement] projects improvements or repairs? If they are improvements, I can include them in the cost basis of the house, and thus reduce my capital gain if I ever move to a cheaper place. And if they're repairs? I'm out of luck."

Thanks to law school Tax class, I have a frame of reference for understanding the reasoning underlying those statements.
Thanks law school ... thanks.

uh, yeah.

Can I get a ruling on this?

so I was driving home last night listening to sports radio, and some east coast caller was talking about Joey Harrington and how good he was in college at Oregon, only he was pronouncing it "Or-eh-GONE" . . . okay, that bugs me. The only people I've ever heard refer to it that way are people that have obviously never been there. People, it's "ORE-eh-gun". please say it right.

oh man

you've got to love squib note cases like the following:
In Estate of Neiderhiser, 2 Pa. D. & C.3d 202, 59 Westmoreland County L.J. 60 (1977), the groom dropped dead during the marriage ceremony, after he and the bride had each said "I will" (equal in other marriage ceremonies to "I do"). The court held that marriage is a contract which becomes binding upon the exchange of vows, and the bride was entitled to an elective share in the groom's estate.

yeah, good thing she gets half of his estate for the blood sweat and tears she put into the whole twenty seconds of marriage.

Rush . . . (not the band)

So I'm sitting at the firm Friday morning, and one of the partners shows up about an hour before I was going to leave ands says the following: "I have a final pretrial conference on Monday and we just got these motions in limine and we need a quick response to them, can you respond to the first one by Monday morning?"
(grrrrrr)
Me: "of course! I'll get right on it, I'd be happy to ..."
(right)

But, it was a good exercise in quick research and response. Times like that it's good to have had a first year advocay course under your belt because you can follow the paradigm as so eloquently (and long-windedly) espoused by Neumann (i.e. Rule, Rule Proof, Rule App., etc.). The only problem is that I had to wade through about 200 pages of depositions to find sufficient grist for the mill of my argument. Also, I essentially turned in what amounts to a first draft (and we all know what that means), but hey, that's what you get when you ask a 2L law clerk to respond to a motion in limine within four hours.
(shrug)

Time to Panic

first final two weeks from tomorrow

number of outlines I've started: zero

yeah, time to panic