Day In, Day Out

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving!
I don't have much to say today, so I'll keep it brief. I have a bunch of pictures that we've been taking from our daily lives. Without further ado, a day in the life:

Rain on our windows.
Photo by Kate

The view from our apartment. It was a great rainstorm.
Photo by Kate

Our metro station. I didn't have my tripod, so I couldn't really get a steady shot. This tunnel is the southern end of the south-bound track.
Photo by Pete

Northbound train arriving.
Photo by Pete

Part of the gardens/lawn at Georgetown's Law campus. This is what I see every time I come to class. Its a beautiful place; the camera barely captures it.
Photo by Pete.

-Pete

quiet contemplation

Its been two weeks. Kate has hit a writer's block. I dove into my schoolwork. The cats can't type. There are nothing but empty chairs in the writing room, so nothing has been produced.

The reality of big city life is not so glamorous. We're looking for work, which means we're poor. We're doing well enough (genteel poverty is the Sewanee term), but you can't go out every night like that and "live high on the hog" as Sarah Palin put it (how she can use a proudly southern phrase such as that and complain about the media portraying her and her family as a bunch of frozen hicks in the same sentence with a straight face is beyond me). With that in mind, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that we don't actually go out that much. We're masters of the television and prepaid entertainments such as our music, playing with the cats, and our guitar and bass. I cannot tell you how happy it made me to be able to let Kate go to the Bob concert last week (which is pretty cheap as concerts go) and observe her post concert happy dance for the next day and a half. The concert itself contains a mountain of material--including the tale of the quest for the zipcar on the top of Mount Everest. *spotlight swivels onto Kate's side of the stage* But she's too shy, so I am now doing my best to embarrass her into telling you about how much she loves Bob, and all of the fun she actually got to have.

The last thing I have for this post is a repackaging of a letter I sent to a dear friend who is applying to law school. He asked me for some help in writing an essay question, "what skills and traits do you possess that will help you in the practice of law?" As he put it, applicants would have to know what traits were needed to be a good lawyer without ever having spent a day in the practice itself. I have not practiced, but I have studied the topic for a little over a year. Here's how I lit a stick of dynamite in the dam of his writer's block:

To answer your question about what skills and traits you possess, I feel that I must first explain what lawyers do. Lawyers are the champions of their client’s cause. Lawyers use their skills for the protection of their client’s rights and the advancement of their client’s goals. In representing the client, the lawyer must know what a client wants, and where necessary, advise the client on the best legal course of action—whether in or out of the courtroom. In the advancement of the client’s goals, the lawyer must be informed about the facts and laws that apply to the client’s needs. In adversarial matters, the lawyer must know the facts and laws that apply to the opponent’s position as well. Above all, a lawyer must have good judgment. A lawyer must know when to advance, when to stop, and when to retreat. A misstep in judgment can result in bad advice, a botched document, a ruined negotiation, or a lost case—all with potentially disastrous consequences.

Lawyers are also officers of the courts. They are the agents of the court system and ultimately responsible for society’s ultimate belief the that the justice systems (both criminal and civil) are a better system of conflict resolution than self-help methods such as vigilantism or clan feuding. People need to believe that the court system is fair or else they will stop using it and seek other, more seemingly gratifying means of conflict resolution. It is the need to preserve the court systems’ image of fairness that drives legal reform. Fairness is for this reason that lawyers are restricted in the lengths they may go to serve their client’s needs. Fairness is what is causing so much discussion over what lawyers are ethically allowed to do. Fairness is driving the discussions of alternative dispute resolutions such as arbitration and mediation; as well as the discussions of how to make quality legal assistance available for all of society, and not just the rich. Fairness is what gives life to the questions that challenge the profession and quake the foundations of the legal institution.

With that food for thought, what do you think makes a good lawyer?

-Pete

Homecoming

To write about this week as building character in the big city would be cheating. The defining portions of this past week were about 800 miles from the city. I speak, of course, about going to Montgomery for my admission ceremony. To keep in the spirit of the blog, I tell the tale of our travel, and not of our destination.

Our trip began drearily enough with the misty, grey, clammy, Victorian-era muck-for-weather usually reserved for big “R” Romantic short stories. Onward we trudged, sleep-deprived, bleary-eyed, ill-tempered, half-drowned and rushed. Did I mention I had to do my own homage to the “Tin-man at the airport” skit? (Rings, change, wallet (magnetic money clip), belt buckle, keys, D-ring key holder, cap, sunglasses, phone, Bluetooth, jacket, shoes, and a partridge in a pear tree.) At long last, we made it to our terminal with time for food. I don’t know if the cashier had reached her top rung on the McDonald’s corporate ladder, or if her command of the English language needed that much more work, but either way, Kate and I nearly broke our noses running face first into that reinforced wall of a language barrier. After slowing our order down (as Southerners. Southerners! Southerners have to slow speech down for you? Really? REALLY?) and giving her several Mulligans, we eventually got food that was close enough for government work. Food does wonders to improve the spirits, and we were soon amusing ourselves until our flight began boarding.

We climbed aboard and found our seats. Tumbleweeds lazily bounced down the aisle as I scanned the rest of the craft for the other passengers. We stowed our bags and waited for take off. Moments before our scheduled take-off, the captain came over the speaker. In a moment of passenger pilot empathy, our captain spoke with a mixture of mild appreciation and minor annoyance that our flight was delayed due to a missing screw in one of the wing panels. The panel was held on by 20 other screws, but we weren’t allowed to take-off until that make-and-model specific screw was dug up from distant, dusty, long forgotten bin and installed. I’m glad the FAA requires these things to be done. I’d rather wait for a replacement screw than be told that maintenance doesn’t matter. (pfft, so what if one wing falls off, why do you think there’s another on the other side?)

So we had a delay. That’s what laughing at SkyMall is for. Let me tell you, people will try to sell the most bizarre things to a captive audience. Penny Arcade did it best years ago, and I think it deserves a tip of the hat here. Oh, see the map and the crossword? They still sell those! An hour later, the part was installed. I swear it must have been in the obscure hoard of some greasy shrieking gremlin that ambushed those poor unsuspecting mechanics in a shack on the far end of the airport. Those guys never knew what hit them.

Finally we took off. Let me just say, it was not a trip for those that don’t like air travel. The pilot handled the turbulence quite well. ‘Still felt like we were in the pre-crash sequence of every movie known to man. We went from “we will be passing out snacks and offering drinks momentarily” to “the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign” mid-sentence. An hour and a half later, we were descending. The descent was smooth as gravel. We were glad to be on firm ground.

The rest of the trip was just fine. The rain was pouring on us most of the way, and most of I-85 towards the state line was under construction with closed shoulders and Jersey barriers on both sides. I hadn’t driven in two months, so it was a crash course in …er, steep relearning curve in foul weather driving. Adrenaline is your friend. Jeep-Jeep proved its value once again, and we made it just fine. Here are some of our pictures. Enjoy!

-Pete

I'm a real lawyer at last!

Due to construction, we couldn't take any photos on the courthouse steps. Still, nothing says "Special Occasion" like a picture next to a chain-link fence.

If you've ever wondered what Kate and I will look like in 25-30 years, check out the people on our left. This is Kate's mom, Carolyn, my dad, Sam, Kate, and myself after the ceremony.

Lunchtime! We went down the street to Dreamland, an Alabama barbecue institution, for some good (much needed) southern barbecue and a decent glass of sweet tea.