Today in Tallahassee, I found pollen on my car for the first time this year. I also turned on the air conditioner in my car for the first time since September or October. During my drive to school, I saw a dogwood tree in full bloom. I am glad that the cold weather is fading away...
And last weekend, I had the privilege of competing in my final Mock Trial tournament. I was part of a team that Florida State Law sent to the Texas Young Lawyer's Association (TYLA) regional competition. This tournament is one of if not the most popular Mock Trial tournaments in the country. It is a national event, with many of the law schools in the country sending a team to their respective regional contest. Our region includes Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. The regional winners go on to Houston in April for the finals.
The Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham served as this year's regional host. The city has a beautiful courthouse where all the teams competed. My team did fairly well. We beat Barry University, the University of Miami, and lost a close contest to the University of Alabama. Our 2-1 record wasn't quite good enough to reach the semifinals, so we were done with the competition on Saturday night.
This gave us the opportunity to see a little of the city. During our trip, we stayed at the Sheraton in downtown Birmingham. On Saturday night, Kid Rock performed right across the street. To my surprise, he has quite a following. Kid Rock groupies filled up the rooms of the hotel, and well before the concert began my hall was littered with beer bottles and empty cigarette boxes. I enjoyed mingling with the fans before I hit the town Saturday night. I was used to their thick southern accents, but to hear guys speaking the southern working class dialect while wearing all black and eyeliner was a bit unique.
When we left the hotel, my teammates and I took a cab to a section of town called "The Five Points." This area had a good feel to it. We discovered a cool little place called The Blue Monkey Lounge tucked at the end of a cobblestone street. My teammates' company, the atmosphere, the music, the drinks, and the women there were fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and all of us, I think, appreciated blowing off some steam. If I am ever in Birmingham again, "The Five Points" is a place to which I would return. Here is a link to the Blue Monkey Lounge website: http://bluemonkeylounge.com/
As far as the competition itself, my only regret is that I did not get a chance to go in more trials. Each time I compete, I feel myself getting stronger, getting better. I was conscious of how good I felt once the trial got going. Sure, I was nervous before and during the competition. That will probably always be there, and sometimes the nerves show through a bit. But I was also aware of my confidence. It is not an overstatement to say that for certain flashes during the trial, I felt invincible.
That feeling, that rush, is the best thing the Mock Trial Team has given me. I have learned and continue to learn a lot about how trials work and what I need to do to win. And, foolishly or not, I now believe that I can beat anyone in a courtroom on a given day... Bring in the top trial lawyers in the country. I'll go head to head with them. Bring in anyone with style and presence: President Obama, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise from A Few Good Men, I'll take on whomever walks into the courtroom. This is silly boasting, I know, but it is really a great, rare feeling when this kind of rush hits me before or during a trial.
Anyway, my Mock Trial competition days are over, and I am a little sad about that. I think that if there was a 4L year in law school, I would stop focusing so much on my grades and instead compete in as many tournaments as I could. Once you really start learning what to do, Mock Trial can become addictive.
Until Next Time,
Nathan Marshburn
Friday, February 25, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Preparing for the Practice of Law
My decision to go to law school was a way to hit the reset button on my life. I was not happy with the direction I was going, and I wanted to learn skills that would make me more valuable in society- a trade that would make me more employable.
Prior to law school, the closest I had come to learning a trade was sales. I had also worked for the Post Office, but this simply involved brute manual labor. Working for the Post Office did nothing to prepare me for any sort of other job.
Sales was a fascinating experience, though. I took a job with a car dealership in Las Vegas. Management put me out on the lot, and the veteran salesmen were amused to watch me crash and burn with one customer after another. It was clear to everyone that I had no idea what I was doing. But I was paid totally on commission, so I was only really hurting my own wallet. Management watched me, though. If I got a qualified buyer in and seemed to be making progress, they would send over one of the three or four "closers" who worked there to make sure the deal got done. One closer, a sharp guy named Rod who was originally from Hawaii, would actually kick me under the table if I said something wrong to a customer.
Sales was a complete fog to me at first, but I eventually began to learn some things through failed experience, watching what the veterans did, and reading a very good book on selling.
I continued to work in auto sales after I made the decision to return to school. Ironically, in the five or six months in between my decision to go back to school and the start of classes, I became pretty good at my job. It was probably due in part to the fact that I was more relaxed. I had made my decision. There was no need to push too hard, as I knew I was leaving soon.
Anyway, management began letting me close my own deals. During one of our weekly sales meetings, a manager had me stand up. He told the group that my progress over the past few months had been tremendous, and he wanted me to share the secret of my success with them. I said that I simply found a part of the deal that I believed in. I got excited about it, and I tried to convey that excitement to the customer...
Now, less than three months from graduation from law school, I find myself trying to learn a new trade again. The practice of law will be far different from law school . Law school gives you some fundamental tools, but school is largely a world unto itself. There are also certain similarities between the practice of law and the art of selling, but there is no doubt that I have to get myself into a new mindset. Here are two of the most stark adjustments I am trying to make:
1) Changing the importance of being a nice guy.
In sales, "Make the customer like you" is a cardinal rule if not the most important rule of all. My sales performance improved once I began thinking of the business as "the science of being liked." You never argue with a customer in sales. You may win the argument, but you will lose the sale.
In law, I am not convinced that being a nice guy is important. Sure, you should always be courteous and polite. But your client is not hiring you to be a nice guy. Your client is hiring you to win their legal argument. Particularly in trial law, I think this holds true. Many of the trial lawyers I am meeting strike me as being confident to the point of arrogance. I do not hold this against them. You almost have to be arrogant and stubborn to be successful. Time and again in law school, I have heard that law is an adversarial system, and I've seen a little of how contentious it can get. If I am always being humble, trying to adhere to the science of being liked, then I am probably not serving my client very well.
In sales, ideally you want the whole process to be so smooth and pleasant for everyone involved that the same customer will come back to you again and again and also send you referrals.
But in trial law, you want to inspire fear- or at least hesitation- in the other side. There are some great lines from the movie, The Verdict, starring Paul Newman. Newman plays Frank Galvin, an attorney representing a woman in a coma due to the medical negligence of a Catholic hospital.
At one one point in the movie, another attorney, Mickey, asks him, "Do you know who the attorney for the Archdiocese is? Eddie Concannon."
Galvin replies, "He's a good man."
Mickey: "He's a good man?! He's the F***ing Prince of Darkness! He'll have people in there testifying that they saw this broad Tuesday on a surfboard in Hyannis!"
...Hopefully, in sales no one ever calls you the F***ing Prince of Darkness.
2) Eye wear.
Repetitive motion jobs take their toll on parts of the body. I observed this in the mail carriers I worked with and the health problems that they experienced.
If you're going to be a lawyer, you might as well resign yourself to the toll all the reading off computer screens is going to take on your eyes. Several people I know have had to get glasses or stronger prescriptions since coming to law school. My own vision has slightly worsened- though not to the point where I need glasses (my dominant performance at table tennis over the Christmas break convinced me that I don't need glasses, yet).
Losing my eyesight has always been a big fear. I always thought that people who wore glasses could not see anything beyond a certain range- that it all literally turned to black after 500 yards or so. As my own vision has suffered some wear, though, I am relieved to learn that vision loss does not quite work that way. I can still perceive color from far away.
One day, I was looking down Jefferson Street at a stoplight. It had to be over 500 yards distant. The light looked like a fuzzy prism and had no clear borders. I thought to myself, "Now, three years ago I would have been able to see the circle of that light clearly. It would not be fuzzy."
But I could still see the change from green to yellow to red.
That's good enough, I guess. As long as I can perceive color and light from as far away as I always have, and as long as I can clearly focus on things close to me, I'll take it.
In sales, this was obviously not a problem. I was outside on the car lot most of the time, and got to stretch my eyes, so to speak, by looking at the mountains on the horizon outside of Vegas. Or I could look up at the huge tower of the Stratosphere casino. Planes also came in for a landing right over our dealership. I could see strange white passenger airliners with no markings on them but a red stripe down each side. Rod, the closer from Hawaii, told me that those planes carried the employees of Area 51 back and forth. They landed at a location called JANET at the airport, which stood for "Just another non-existent terminal." Who knows if Rod was telling me the truth.
There are other changes to my mindset worth noting, but this entry has already taken too much time. I need to get back to studying Complex Civil Litigation.
Until Next Time,
Nathan Marshburn
Prior to law school, the closest I had come to learning a trade was sales. I had also worked for the Post Office, but this simply involved brute manual labor. Working for the Post Office did nothing to prepare me for any sort of other job.
Sales was a fascinating experience, though. I took a job with a car dealership in Las Vegas. Management put me out on the lot, and the veteran salesmen were amused to watch me crash and burn with one customer after another. It was clear to everyone that I had no idea what I was doing. But I was paid totally on commission, so I was only really hurting my own wallet. Management watched me, though. If I got a qualified buyer in and seemed to be making progress, they would send over one of the three or four "closers" who worked there to make sure the deal got done. One closer, a sharp guy named Rod who was originally from Hawaii, would actually kick me under the table if I said something wrong to a customer.
Sales was a complete fog to me at first, but I eventually began to learn some things through failed experience, watching what the veterans did, and reading a very good book on selling.
I continued to work in auto sales after I made the decision to return to school. Ironically, in the five or six months in between my decision to go back to school and the start of classes, I became pretty good at my job. It was probably due in part to the fact that I was more relaxed. I had made my decision. There was no need to push too hard, as I knew I was leaving soon.
Anyway, management began letting me close my own deals. During one of our weekly sales meetings, a manager had me stand up. He told the group that my progress over the past few months had been tremendous, and he wanted me to share the secret of my success with them. I said that I simply found a part of the deal that I believed in. I got excited about it, and I tried to convey that excitement to the customer...
Now, less than three months from graduation from law school, I find myself trying to learn a new trade again. The practice of law will be far different from law school . Law school gives you some fundamental tools, but school is largely a world unto itself. There are also certain similarities between the practice of law and the art of selling, but there is no doubt that I have to get myself into a new mindset. Here are two of the most stark adjustments I am trying to make:
1) Changing the importance of being a nice guy.
In sales, "Make the customer like you" is a cardinal rule if not the most important rule of all. My sales performance improved once I began thinking of the business as "the science of being liked." You never argue with a customer in sales. You may win the argument, but you will lose the sale.
In law, I am not convinced that being a nice guy is important. Sure, you should always be courteous and polite. But your client is not hiring you to be a nice guy. Your client is hiring you to win their legal argument. Particularly in trial law, I think this holds true. Many of the trial lawyers I am meeting strike me as being confident to the point of arrogance. I do not hold this against them. You almost have to be arrogant and stubborn to be successful. Time and again in law school, I have heard that law is an adversarial system, and I've seen a little of how contentious it can get. If I am always being humble, trying to adhere to the science of being liked, then I am probably not serving my client very well.
In sales, ideally you want the whole process to be so smooth and pleasant for everyone involved that the same customer will come back to you again and again and also send you referrals.
But in trial law, you want to inspire fear- or at least hesitation- in the other side. There are some great lines from the movie, The Verdict, starring Paul Newman. Newman plays Frank Galvin, an attorney representing a woman in a coma due to the medical negligence of a Catholic hospital.
At one one point in the movie, another attorney, Mickey, asks him, "Do you know who the attorney for the Archdiocese is? Eddie Concannon."
Galvin replies, "He's a good man."
Mickey: "He's a good man?! He's the F***ing Prince of Darkness! He'll have people in there testifying that they saw this broad Tuesday on a surfboard in Hyannis!"
...Hopefully, in sales no one ever calls you the F***ing Prince of Darkness.
2) Eye wear.
Repetitive motion jobs take their toll on parts of the body. I observed this in the mail carriers I worked with and the health problems that they experienced.
If you're going to be a lawyer, you might as well resign yourself to the toll all the reading off computer screens is going to take on your eyes. Several people I know have had to get glasses or stronger prescriptions since coming to law school. My own vision has slightly worsened- though not to the point where I need glasses (my dominant performance at table tennis over the Christmas break convinced me that I don't need glasses, yet).
Losing my eyesight has always been a big fear. I always thought that people who wore glasses could not see anything beyond a certain range- that it all literally turned to black after 500 yards or so. As my own vision has suffered some wear, though, I am relieved to learn that vision loss does not quite work that way. I can still perceive color from far away.
One day, I was looking down Jefferson Street at a stoplight. It had to be over 500 yards distant. The light looked like a fuzzy prism and had no clear borders. I thought to myself, "Now, three years ago I would have been able to see the circle of that light clearly. It would not be fuzzy."
But I could still see the change from green to yellow to red.
That's good enough, I guess. As long as I can perceive color and light from as far away as I always have, and as long as I can clearly focus on things close to me, I'll take it.
In sales, this was obviously not a problem. I was outside on the car lot most of the time, and got to stretch my eyes, so to speak, by looking at the mountains on the horizon outside of Vegas. Or I could look up at the huge tower of the Stratosphere casino. Planes also came in for a landing right over our dealership. I could see strange white passenger airliners with no markings on them but a red stripe down each side. Rod, the closer from Hawaii, told me that those planes carried the employees of Area 51 back and forth. They landed at a location called JANET at the airport, which stood for "Just another non-existent terminal." Who knows if Rod was telling me the truth.
There are other changes to my mindset worth noting, but this entry has already taken too much time. I need to get back to studying Complex Civil Litigation.
Until Next Time,
Nathan Marshburn
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
3L Stress
Beginning last semester, and increasing this semester, I sense a new kind of stress among some of my fellow students graduating with me in May. The tension is completely related, I believe, to the pressure of finding a job.
Florida State Law has an outstanding career placement record- perhaps better than any of the other ten law schools in this state. We will all land jobs eventually. But the current condition of the economy has hit almost every occupational area hard. The legal field is no exception. Fewer of the big law firms are hiring. It is harder than in years past, I think.
I am feeling the stress a little myself- not so much because I'm worried about finding a job. There is always room for a good lawyer, and I have the tools to become a great trial lawyer. Even if it is September before I get a job, one is coming. The stress, for me, arises from not knowing exactly what the next chapter is, along with hoping I do not rush into a situation where I will be unhappy- while at the same time making sure that I do not pass up a golden opportunity. Also, there is the peer pressure. Many of my friends are in the top 10% of the class. Most of these students do in fact already have jobs lined up. When they ask me where I am going and what I have lined up, I have to say, "I do not know, yet."
Last semester, these same top students were probably feeling a stress similar to what I am feeling now. Last semester, they were applying for judicial clerkships. A judicial clerkship is a prestigious position in which a person works for a specific judge. The judicial clerk reviews pleadings and other documents submitted to the judge for the accuracy of the legal arguments. Clerks also help judges with research and in drafting opinions. In short, clerks work side by side with the judge and do much of the heavy lifting.
For federal judicial clerkships, the top students from the best law schools submit their application materials via OSCAR (The Online System for Clerkship Application and Review). The judges then cherry pick whom they want to interview and hire. One of the best things a new lawyer can have on his or her resume is a federal clerkship. The clerkships typically last one or two years. Large law firms will be more than happy to hire a student fresh out of law school, and then hold the job for that student while he or she works as a judicial clerk for a couple of years.
Last semester, when the window on the OSCAR system opened for applications, I remember a friend posting as her Facebook status, "Let the rejections begin!" Another student commented, "Let the anxiety begin!" Both of these students received well deserved clerkships and will be working for federal judges after graduation. The FSU students who were not selected still have a wealth of options available.
Even if I had the top grades to get a foot in the door with OSCAR, I am not sure that is a job I would enjoy or one in which I would excel. You have to be tremendous at research and legal writing (and legal writing is a completely different animal from writing a blog, believe me). You must have the ability to become competent in different areas of the law in a short amount of time. Much of what we learn in law school is so complicated and related to logical reasoning that I compare it to math proofs or algebraic equations. Working as a judicial clerk, for me, would be like having to sit in a room and quickly solve proofs and equations, one right after the other, all day, every day. Judicial clerks finish their tenure with a wealth of great legal experience, especially in dealing with the arguments on paper.
I would not want to have to go up against a former federal judicial clerk in an appellate brief writing contest.
But standing in front of a six or twelve person jury at a trial- that is a different story. I am more comfortable there, and I have a lot more confidence in my ability to win. Using the law and facts to persuade a jury is much more up my alley than analyzing all sides of the legal arguments for a judge.
Anyway, we will see what happens. I think the immediate future is largely unknown for most students in my class at FSU Law. It is not unnatural for us all to feel some anxiety about that.
Until Next Time,
Nathan Marshburn
Florida State Law has an outstanding career placement record- perhaps better than any of the other ten law schools in this state. We will all land jobs eventually. But the current condition of the economy has hit almost every occupational area hard. The legal field is no exception. Fewer of the big law firms are hiring. It is harder than in years past, I think.
I am feeling the stress a little myself- not so much because I'm worried about finding a job. There is always room for a good lawyer, and I have the tools to become a great trial lawyer. Even if it is September before I get a job, one is coming. The stress, for me, arises from not knowing exactly what the next chapter is, along with hoping I do not rush into a situation where I will be unhappy- while at the same time making sure that I do not pass up a golden opportunity. Also, there is the peer pressure. Many of my friends are in the top 10% of the class. Most of these students do in fact already have jobs lined up. When they ask me where I am going and what I have lined up, I have to say, "I do not know, yet."
Last semester, these same top students were probably feeling a stress similar to what I am feeling now. Last semester, they were applying for judicial clerkships. A judicial clerkship is a prestigious position in which a person works for a specific judge. The judicial clerk reviews pleadings and other documents submitted to the judge for the accuracy of the legal arguments. Clerks also help judges with research and in drafting opinions. In short, clerks work side by side with the judge and do much of the heavy lifting.
For federal judicial clerkships, the top students from the best law schools submit their application materials via OSCAR (The Online System for Clerkship Application and Review). The judges then cherry pick whom they want to interview and hire. One of the best things a new lawyer can have on his or her resume is a federal clerkship. The clerkships typically last one or two years. Large law firms will be more than happy to hire a student fresh out of law school, and then hold the job for that student while he or she works as a judicial clerk for a couple of years.
Last semester, when the window on the OSCAR system opened for applications, I remember a friend posting as her Facebook status, "Let the rejections begin!" Another student commented, "Let the anxiety begin!" Both of these students received well deserved clerkships and will be working for federal judges after graduation. The FSU students who were not selected still have a wealth of options available.
Even if I had the top grades to get a foot in the door with OSCAR, I am not sure that is a job I would enjoy or one in which I would excel. You have to be tremendous at research and legal writing (and legal writing is a completely different animal from writing a blog, believe me). You must have the ability to become competent in different areas of the law in a short amount of time. Much of what we learn in law school is so complicated and related to logical reasoning that I compare it to math proofs or algebraic equations. Working as a judicial clerk, for me, would be like having to sit in a room and quickly solve proofs and equations, one right after the other, all day, every day. Judicial clerks finish their tenure with a wealth of great legal experience, especially in dealing with the arguments on paper.
I would not want to have to go up against a former federal judicial clerk in an appellate brief writing contest.
But standing in front of a six or twelve person jury at a trial- that is a different story. I am more comfortable there, and I have a lot more confidence in my ability to win. Using the law and facts to persuade a jury is much more up my alley than analyzing all sides of the legal arguments for a judge.
Anyway, we will see what happens. I think the immediate future is largely unknown for most students in my class at FSU Law. It is not unnatural for us all to feel some anxiety about that.
Until Next Time,
Nathan Marshburn
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