Blog Entry 34

February 4h, 2010
Already Thursday! 

Yesterday was a pretty fun day of classes, especially core concepts where we were working on negotiations. Our hypothetical for the semester is that we are representing a large company that wants to buy a smaller plastic bag manufacturer. Today’s negotiations related to the fact that the plastic bag company was cited for several Occupational Safety and Health Association violations. As such, the company buying the plastic bag manufacturer wanted to negotiate lower fines, where OSHA had their own interests to represent. We took about fifty minutes in small groups to attempt to negotiate. I was the OSHA representative against two company representatives and they were pretty zealous, as was I. Our group wasn’t able to reach a negotiation, but based on where other groups ended up, I think they really should have accepted my generous offer… 

Today has been a pretty funky sort of day. Minutes before I left my house, I decided on a whim to check my e-mail, where there was a note letting me know that my 9am contracts class had been cancelled. I made very effective use of my extra time by watching a couple Law and Order: SVU episodes that I had DVRed. I still got to campus a bit early in order to go to lunch with a couple friends from another section. After that, we had a different sort of ALTA class taught by our TA, Chris. It was pretty helpful to get his perspective on our briefs that we are writing. That was about a half hour instead of the usual hour and a half. I decided to attend my first lunch with a lawyer this afternoon, so now I am just waiting for that to begin. 

Apparently it is “prepare to practice month” with the lunch with a lawyer series, so today’s lunch has a panel of three attorneys who all specialize in bankruptcy and restructuring. I have never really considered bankruptcy as a possible career, but I decided that I wanted to start taking advantage of the lunch with a lawyer offerings, and I just might learn something.  

After I leave here, it’s home to do…whatever. One of the girls I babysit is home sick today, so I have the day off. I have a fair amount of reading to do for civil procedure and property tomorrow, and then hopefully I can find something supplemental to work on with my extra time. 

Anyhow, this quick blog post is way too long. Kudos to you if you made it all the way to the end…it will make for a smooth transition to all of the reading you will have in law school!