LAWYER BOY doesn’t come out until Tuesday, but my local Barnes & Noble was selling the book today. They had four copies of the book on the “Hardcover New Releases” table, and one of them was propped up on a bookstand.

I went to that Barnes & Noble to study for the bar exam—22 more days (!)—but ended up spending my time hovering nearby my book, waiting for somebody to pick it up. Trouble was, this bookstore is in Chicago’s business district, and nobody really goes there on weekends.

But FINALLY, some guy carrying two or three other books picked up LAWYER BOY and flipped though it for five whole minutes. He read the jacket description. Read the blurbs. Read a random page. But then he put it back on the bookstand.

“Didn’t make the cut?” I said.

“Excuse me?” he replied.

“You flipped through the book for like five minutes. And it looked like you were into it. You only flipped through that other book you’re holding for like sixty seconds. What the hell?”

“Do we know each other?”

The guy’s name, I learned, was Sam. Sam was in town for a summer clerkship at BigLaw…and I’m pleased to report he ended up buying a copy of Lawyer Boy. And no I don’t feel weird about talking somebody into buying my book; I’m panning to persuade people for a living, after all.

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On Friday night at 1AM, I ran into one of my classmates at Sigara, which is a hookah lounge in Wicker Park.  I’m pretty sure this guy was at the very top of our graduating class.  Here’s the story he recounted to me:

“My cousin took the bar last year.  He said he did barely any studying in June.  He constantly left the BarBri review lectures early, and got wasted every night.  A week before the exam, reality hit; he got serious and spent every single hour studying.  And guess what?  He passed.  He told me this: “If you just study for one hour every day, you’ll be fine.”

And now, a somewhat related statistic: Last year, of all the students in the upper-half of DePaul’s graduating class (of 220 or so), all but six passed the bar. 

So what the hell am I supposed to do with this anecdote and statistic?  Using them as an excuse to study less?  Probably not.  Any suggestions?

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Figured I’d try a political blog entry out.  I did study Political Science in college after all—like half of my law school classmates.

Yesterday a McCain adviser told Fortune magazine that a terrorist attack would help McCain’s chances on winning the election…and EVERYBODY is freaking out about it.  Specifically he said, "a fresh terrorist attack 'certainly would be a big advantage to him.”

John McCain, in response said, “It’s just not true…If he said that, and I do not know the context, I strenuously disagree."

Okay, let’s start here, the advisor was obviously right.  Terrorism is a Republican issue, for better or worse—and what I mean by that is people who prioritize homeland security above all else vote Republican more often than they vote Democrat.  Common knowledge, right?  And if a terrorist attack were to happen in the US, it would bring the terrorism issue to the political foreground.  Commonsense, right?  ERGO, a terrorist attack would help McCain’s chances of getting elected.

John McCain obviously knows all this.  So why does he have to play dumb and pretend that he doesn’t?  (This is rhetorical; the answer is obvious: if he did, the media/Obama camp would have a “John McCain wants a terrorist attack” field day.)  I always thought he was one of the most honest politicians around, and this false naivety doesn’t suit him well. 

Of course, his advisor boarded the false naivety express earlier today: “I deeply regret the comments—they were inappropriate. I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country.”

And I’m sure if some reporter were to remind McCain that Presidential Elections are zero-sum games and that his quote implicitly suggested that an attack would help Obama, he’d keep the false naivety shtick going and say something like, “Terrorist attacks don’t help anybody—not me, not my opponent, and certainly not the people of America.” 

And don’t you think the John McCain of 2000 would have said, “Yes, an attack would help my campaign, but not, I don’t want one, and anybody who suggests otherwise, well, I’d like them to tell me that to my face”?

For more on this story, check out http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com, http://rawstory.com/, http://www.thedestinlog.com/, or http://www.newsgroper.com,

So...more....less political blog entries???

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A few months ago some people started a blog dedicated to nasty things about me.  At first, I was a bit flattered and a bit annoyed.  Then they started defaming me, so I got upset.  They started saying malicious, specific things about me that just weren’t true.  (Without getting into the really nasty stuff--really, I don't want it repeated--an example of an untrue thing they said was this: one semester they said I was at the bottom of my class, when, in reality, I had made the Dean's List.)

Then the blog went away one day.  Never quite sure why…but then I read something on a great law school discussion forum, Top-Law-Schools.com, that gave me a hint.  The post (which may or may not have been true) said that Anthony Ciolli, the guy who runs xoxohth.com (a law school discussion site that practically begs people to defame each other) has had a job offer with his law firm rescinded after a defamation suit.

Maybe the people who started the blog dedicated to making fun of me got the message that defamation is a serious matter. 

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Whenever somebody contracts some awful disease or undergoes some awful family tragedy and gets interviewed by the local news about it, they always say the same thing: “You see this in the news all the time, but you never think it can happen to you. And then one day it does…”

I think failing the bar exam is the opposite. Everybody thinks it will happen to them, but it only really happens to a select few. I realized that early on, that the math says I’ll likely pass the bar exam, so I haven‘t been too worried about it. Well, yesterday I found out that one of my friends took the bar exam six months ago…and failed it.
 
Sure, she took it during the school year, so she probably didn’t have enough time to study. But still, she’s a smart girl and she failed. Took a prep class and everything. Now it’s starting to hit home. Some people really fail this thing.

Tomorrow I’m going to figure out how to get my hands on review books. And then, beginning Monday, I’m going to start studying. I’m going to try to study all day, every day. Oh, and I’m going to work all day, every day to promote Lawyer Boy.

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Graduation was rough. First of all, I was sick. Soar throat, runny nose, that sort of thing. Second of all, under my heavy robe, my hood, my cap, my wool suit, my dress shirt and tie, my undershirt, I was sweating like a pedophile. Third, I still had a paper due. In the middle of the semester, my prof said that I could turn it in whenever I wanted.

“You mean, I can turn it in after graduation?”

“Sure you can. I know you’re good for it.”

At the time it seemed like a blessing. During graduation, not so much. I know I would have easily got it done if he had set a due date. Can’t blame him, though. Only myself.

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It's done. Law school is done. Away from the bookstores and libraries, and off to the bars and clubs for me. Time to reconnect with old friends and maybe make some new ones…because law school is done.

Kinda. See, I just took my last test. (It went okay; I'm thinking B or B-). And I'm already starting to get my grades in. Got an A in Negotiations. It was originally a B, but I argued my way up to an A.

…kidding…that would have been cool, though…

So now I'm done…except for this one paper. It's a one-credit, un-graded paper, and it has no official due date, but it needs to be done and it needs to be good. (I really like the professor I'm writing it for and don't want to let him down).

The topic is there; the motivation isn't. Any words of encouragement?

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I’ve got my Wills, Trusts, and Estate final on Monday…and the studying isn’t going well. Rather, it is going well, but there’s not much of it. In the past week, I’ve had to make one 9-1-1 call, file one Missing Person Report, speak to two police officers (one at length), and two detectives.

Long story short: I got involved with somebody who had gotten involved with the wrong people.

And I’m supposed to focus on studying…how?

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I ran into my friend Tom on the train and asked/told him to write a blog entry for me. Here’s what he came up with:

“So I got on the train heading home from Chicago to Ann Arbor and bumped into my old friend Rick. Rick and I both go to professional schools – Rick, obviously, is in law school, and I’m a soon-to-be third year medical student. Different paths, to be sure, but I feel we’re both pursuing careers that suit our personalities.”

(Editor’s note: What does Tom mean by this? That he wants to help people and I want to fight with them, right? That’s how I read it, at least.)

“In any case, running into Rick on the train was fortunate, as I had assumed my trip would be a boring late-night return, and instead it turned out to be a grand adventure full of reminiscence, controversy, mystery, intrigue, and even a little hostility.”

(Editor’s note: You gotta love how Tom classifies what happened on the train but doesn’t actually describe any of it.)

-Tom O’Lynnger

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