Good grief. I've got to start paying attention to the invisible memos that surely must be passed around telling you that second semester is infinitely more crazy than firsts... and that's applicable all years of law school, or at least, in my experience, the first two years.
So all is happy and so forth with my note being published, but man that's a lot of extra work to pile onto my daily plate. So I am trying to implement some strategery (thank you, Bush). I've got all my busass read for the week, unless of course she does one of her random "let's cover about 40 pages each day for a couple of days" spurts.
I've read the bloody 100 pages of evidence plus the E&E chapters on Hearsay. Unfortunately, I took a little quiz last night to see how I was coming along. Um, yeah. Hearsay is the current bane of my existence. I only got 9 of 25 questions right. And of those 9, 5 I had marked with a ? mark to indicate that I really had no clue and just guessed. Which basically means: I only actually knew the answer to 4 of the 25. Should I just take myself out behind the shed now and shoot? or will this get better? The part that is tripping me up is just identifying the intended assertion of fact (mostly whether it's really an assertion) and then whether the purpose of the testimony is to determine the truth of the matter asserted. Yeah, I like saying it that way. I mean, now it seems like I am just confused about 2 parts of hearsay... and if you are reading this and have taken evidence, then you know that those are the only 2 parts that are difficult. Sigh. Hopefully, I will have an epiphany on it soon.
So back to my strategery: it's just to get the day to day work done this weekend, so I can spend all my free time on my note this week. I really need to send it to a prof who specializes in this field by the end of this week, so hopefully, I will have feedback on it by the last week of this month. The managing editor wants it ready for copyworking in early March. Realistically, I think I need to work on three areas to make it less embarrassing: 1) throw the new cases relying on the circuit holdings into the note because for whatever odd reason it's coming up much more now (probably because of the way the 10th circuit held last year; it's quite a boon for plaintiffs), 2) take a very critical look at my analysis and ultimate conclusion--I'm just not sure about it and because of that I think my whole note is weaker, and 3) this is all based on a statute that has two mutually exclusive pieces but I've mushed the cases together--it's because both pieces of the statute define something the same way, which is the focus of my note. Hmmm. are you confused by my vagueness yet?
In any case. Long ass week ahead.
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4 comments:
Last semester I used those little flashcards that come in the yellow box. Helped ALOT. They have sixteen billion different examples of hearsay issues and then the back of the card clearly explains why it is or isn't hearsay. After going through a hundred or so cards you're like, "Oh! I get it!"
I think hearsay is one of those things that just takes practice. Identifying it doesn't really come naturally and you just have to get used to it. I was OK at it when I took evidence, better when I took the bar. You'll get it figured out. And everyone else is having trouble with it, too (whether they admit it or not).
I have to highly reccommend the flashcards (Law in a Flash) as well. Good luck!!
:)
Like the blog. I've added a link on my own which is a fictional diary of a pupil barrister in England (see http://babybarista.blogspot.com). Cross links much appreciated though no worries if not. Best wishes, BabyBarista
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