Fiver-rah's Journal: IANAL, but I am a law student....

I started law school this last week. I've got classes, and reading--oh my head, the reading. It's not as bad as the movies make it out to be, really. So far, I'm actually enjoying it, don't tell anyone.

In other news, I wrote my first cease-and-desist letter today. I use unique e-mails for every commercial entity I interact with. One of them sold my address to another company. So I contacted them, quoted the statute they violated, explained how I could prove it was them as sold my address, and told them to cut out the spam or I'd file a civil suit to collect damages as allowed by Texas law.

Nah, I don't think I'd really do it. But I do hope someone somewhere reads my letter and says "Oh shit, people take this spam stuff seriously."

Post the letter?

[johndiii]

As a Texas resident (but not a law student), this could be useful.

Re:Post the letter?

[Fiver-rah]

Enh. It's not very lawyerly. In fact, they don't teach you stuff in law school like "this is how you write a cease-and-desist letter".

But it basically goes like this:

Hello, my name is Heidi Bond. You sold my e-mail. Prepare to die.

Okay, just kidding. This is it.

I am writing to express my extreme displeasure with your decision to sell my e-mail address. In direct violation of my expressed wishes, you have shared my e-mail address with third parties, and as a result I have received spam e-ma

Re:Post the letter?

[johndiii]

Thanks. Useful verbiage.

(looking back through your journal) Did you get your electrical outlets grounded? The GFI solution that someone suggested will not help you. (1) GFI outlets require a proper ground to operate. (2) They do not help in the event of a surge - ONLY a ground fault (that is, electricity going to ground from the outlet through another path -presumably you). Our house is relatively old (about 40 years), and we do not have proper grounding. I have grounded some outlets for the comp

Re:Post the letter?

[Fiver-rah]

The outlets aren't grounded, but there really wasn't anything I could do to make them happen without getting too deep into the wiring. I figured it wasn't something I wanted to do, so that was that.

I love Baen's free books. I try to patronize them with real cold hard cash as much as possible. It makes me feel good. Now I just have to wait in typical antsy anticipatory fashion until Paladin of Souls is released in another handful of weeks...

Re:Post the letter?

[johndiii]

I haven't read The Curse of Chalion. I take it that you liked it. What sort of story is it?

Re:Post the letter?

[TechnoLust]

Hello, my name is Heidi Bond. You sold my e-mail. Prepare to die.
Was the guy who sold your email a six fingered man? :-)

Started?

[Tet]

I started law school this last week.

Huh? I thought you'd started a while back, which was why you'd cut back on your slashdot presence. Whatever. Good luck! Hope it goes well...

Re:Started?

[Fiver-rah]

No... I cut back on my slashdot presence because my last year in graduate school was a killer. I ended up teaching a class which had twice the enrollment of the year before, with no extra increase in helping hands. It was murder.

And then over the summer I, um, uh. Did absolutely nothing. Except repaint the apartment. Since I had nothing to procrastinate, I spent no time on slashdot. Funny how that works.

Now that I need to read the Statute of Frauds, I'm back on. :)

Have fun!

[DDX_2002]

You come out of college a different person than when you went in, that's usually a function of getting older and maturing. Law school usually does its thing to fully formed mature people, which is why it is all the more interesting the way it warps their reality.

It isn't necessarily bad, but I found it does change your thinking. In particular, I don't read the newspaper like my significant other does, or like I suspect the editors intended me to. Issue spotting - once you learn it, you can't turn it off.

Re:Have fun!

[Fiver-rah]

I went to a touchy-feely law school that doesn't post marks and which disapproves of the socratic method.

Where'd you go? The "doesn't post marks" thing makes me think of Yale, but certainly I don't get the "disapproves of socratic method" bit from anywhere else.

The Socratic method isn't really that bad. I only have one professor who is heavily socratic, and while he freaked us all out the first day of class, I'm really beginning to enjoy his class.

I already can't turn off the thinking. Now when I

Enter the matrix

[DDX_2002]

I have law dreams already, and I've had four days of classes

Yup, you swallowed the red pill, alright. In the immortal words of Cypher, hold onto your hat Dorothy, Kansas is going bye bye.

I went to a Canadian law school (being a Canuck), so they're all pretty touchy feely by comparison. Canadian law schools tend to be picky about who they let in, but they usually don't fail people out, which I understand is somewhat different from US practice. Now, a certain percentage of the 1Ls each year realizes 'wh