gregh's blog

Bar Review: Day 58

gregh — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:58:50 -0500

It would be really great if there could be just a few more minor, piddly little distinctions between California civil procedure and California evidence and the FRE and FRCP.

Messenger down.

gregh — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:44:15 -0500

A year ago, I wrote a post on a then-proposed alteration to one of the ABA's accreditation standards. The effect of the interpretation change has since been moderated by the ABA after much complaint, and the actual impact is likely to be much less pronounced. Nonetheless, the post continues to be the single most popular on the site.

I only mention this because of an interesting comment posted today:

yea, the whittie law schools make it -- while the others that give minorities a chance like WSU fail.

Racist pig!

Now, I assume "whittie" is "whitey." I first read it to be Whittier, which was, of course, heavily impacted. I'll suggest the poster probably doesn't belong in law school anywhere. Others will have more choices, and the actual interpretation was nowhere near as harsh.

Bar Review, Day 56

gregh — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:51:18 -0500

Will the 29th hurry up and get here?

Someone mentioned to me that the bar exam is an endurance test, what with 3 days and all. I responded that I'm not so sure it's the three days I'm bothered by; it's the 63 days of prep ahead of it. I am so sick and tired of bar prep now.

Bar Review: Day 49

gregh — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:02:23 -0500

Today was the simulated written exam. I did the morning (the essays) and skipped out on the performance test. I'll hit a few performance tests in the waning days to make sure I haven't forgotten anything about doing them.

(The beauty of Legal Drafting, unlike even the other so-called "bar electives," is that Legal Drafting is entirely geared to prepare you for one whole section of the bar exam.)

Written exam went well, largely, given where I am with respect to studying for essays. Based on the grading criteria, I'd say one answer fell in the "above average" category and the other two solidly in the passing category. 12 more topics and a lot more practice essays remain. I feel like it's coming together.

Bar Review: Day 45, cont'd.

gregh — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:38:07 -0500

So, what aggregate, raw written score does one need to pass based on MBE performance? Based on February numbers, here's the answer:

Bar Review: Day 45

gregh — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:39:45 -0500

It's getting real now. The "admittance ticket" arrived from the California State Bar yesterday. Oakland Convention Center, here I come!

In the meantime, I'm prepping for Monday's simulated essay exam. I took some suggestions and went ahead and gathered the topics covered in the essays, and rather than trying to cram everything, have decided to try to learn those topic areas.

OS X Leopard X11 weirdness

gregh — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:14:47 -0500

I finally upgraded my MacBook Pro to Leopard in preparation for the bar exam. I was pretty happy with Tiger and saw no real advantages in Leopard, so I wasn't in a hurry to upgrade. However, I wanted a fresh Boot Camp install of XP for the bar exam, and that required the upgrade, because the Tiger Boot Camp never left beta and had expired.

So, over the last week, I started noticing X11 running, even though I hadn't been running X11 apps. That struck me as odd and just a bit scary. I started hunting for some virus or trojan to no avail.

Apple added dynamic X11 support to Leopard through launchd. So, every time I cranked up an SSH session, X11 was being launched. Apparently, I asked for this behavior:

gregory-haverkamps-computer:~ gregh$ cat ~/.ssh/config
ForwardX11 yes
#ForwardX11Trusted yes

I don't remember setting that, but since the timestamp of the file dates to 2005, it's no surprise I'd forget. Normally, it's not an issue, because I don't have a display set, anyway.

So, I just need to disable automatic X11 forwarding (or execute ssh -x) to solve my problem. And finally, I can stop worrying about something going nuts on the machine.

Spring 2008 CALIs are posted

gregh — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:45:37 -0500

Outside the registrar's office, if you're interested. As usual, I'm not going to post them. They'll be online in due course.

(My last semester of waiting only to be disappointed. It's one thing when you get an A and don't get one -- a handful of people get As every semester -- but you really get your hopes up when you get an A+. Yes, I know this will result in a huge pity party for me...)

Bar Review: Day 44

gregh — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:33:58 -0500

The bar exam starts three weeks from yesterday, just over 20 days from now. I've now completed all of my substantive lectures, and now I'm beginning my essay rampage. I'm coming to terms with the exam, as it becomes clear to me that being able to say enough on topic is more important than mastery of the law. It's silly to think I could master Wills, Trusts, Community Property, or Corporations in weeks. If I followed the Bar/Bri schedule, I'd be taking the Trusts lecture today and the Community Property lecture on Friday. (I took the "make up" lectures over the weekend and through yesterday.)

Clearly, just enough is good enough.

This entire process has been a drain; it just doesn't fit my style at all. I am really looking forward to the whole thing being done.

Impact of USF's new curve

gregh — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:15:01 -0500

So, what's the impact of USF's new, unnecessary, inflated curve?

Obviously, it has greatly increased GPAs, which stands to reason. However, it should also be clear how much the altered curve will disadvantage those who have less opportunity to make use of it.

This year's 2nd-year part-timers had an entire first year under the harsher curve, but their class ranking will be negatively impacted during recruiting because, for ranking purposes, they'll be bunched in with students who have had an entire, full-time first-year under the new curve.

This year's 4th-year part-timers like me entered this year, with the gentler curve, with fewer units to take (and one semester entirely scheduled, even if we wanted to do something about it) before graduation.

All told, slipstreaming such a massive change in on everyone else with no method of correcting for the changes is wildly unfair. Next spring, when this year's 2nd-year part-timers are in the same pool as this year's first-year full-timers for rank, what are they going to tell employers who couldn't care less about GPAs (most of them) when their rank is lower, because they had a tougher curve?

The administration claimed they did this immediately because it was the best solution. I think it's pretty clear that they actually did it because it was the expedient solution. Well, they got what they wanted. People have higher GPAs. Yay.