On-the-job training

Yesterday, the JV-FPD team got its draft briefs in. Even though we selected relatively “simple” cases for the clinic, the briefs seem to raise pretty viable issues, so that’s all good, and I spent much of the day scribbling what we call feedback all over them. And yesterday I received 46 applications for next year’s clinic. Oh, and I taught the 1Ls about Justice Ginsburg’s contention that cool kids have a lower expectation of privacy than nerds. (That, by the way, is how much sense the Katz test makes.) So, it was a hectic day.

Whoever is on next year’s JV team will owe a debt to this year’s students, who are basically the test case for what works and what doesn’t. Beatriz and I have already identified ways to improve the course for next semester. Nonetheless, the initial briefs were all well within the range of our hopeful expectations, but I’m not necessarily telling the team that since I suspect insecurity makes people try harder. And, even though this first time out is not without its bumps, they are getting lots of attention from experienced brief-writers. Scott Srebnick came by last week to offer some advice, and Beatriz dropped by class today to share her feedback on the drafts. Yesterday, I also confirmed with USAO Chief of Appeals Anne Schultz that she and Interim United States Attorney Jeffrey Sloman, both of the Class of 1983, will meet with the group to talk about appellate advocacy after Spring Break. So, we’ll all be heading downtown.

Next year’s team will also get the benefit of access to the newly refurbished digs that the Powers That Be have set aside for all of the School’s clinics. It is already decked out with the School’s snazzy new color scheme and geometric carpet squares, and we are all eagerly awaiting furnishings. The new space will house all the clinical faculty plus me, client interview rooms, a student work room, and a classroom. I say “plus me” because there’s some sort of categorical crisis about whether I’m doctrinal or clinical since I started the clinic. To me, it’s all just law. Call it whatever you want. Lately, I am realizing that, since I have no plans to surrender Evidence or Criminal Procedure, the clinic’s viability depends on my not teaching upper-level seminars for the foreseeable. So, I’m starting to think of ways to roll the cases I teach in seminars into the clinic. Very soon—maybe as soon as March—this is going to be a doctrinal clinic. Don’t worry—this all makes perfect sense in my head.

No more words

I remember reading when I was a kid some probably apocryphal story—I think it was in Reader’s Digest, which has gone from America’s most widely read publication to just barely existing—about this “efficiency expert.” He would come into a company and ask for an office with a desk, a chair, and a big rug. He would direct that all memos be routed through him. And he would never come out of his office, but everything would somehow get better. And no one could figure out why. Then, when he left, they would find that half of all the memos circulated were under the rug. The point is there are too many voices. Faxing made it worse and email and texting have made it worse than that. Wait till they invent telepathy. The iThink or whatever.

I mention this because I am using a tiny sliver of a breather I have to clear out my email inbox. There are three emails in here about a yoga class the Law School is (for some reason) offering—and I’m pretty sure I deleted at least two on the same topic earlier. There’s a whole bunch of stuff about various faculty meeting agenda items. Probably a dozen about speakers and events and cocktails. Lots and lots about the newly renovated space for the School of Law’s clinics—which is really nice and will impress the ABA when they come back for the next inspection, not that I’m saying anything about what they said during the last one. Because I wouldn’t do that. There’s emails about coordinating interviews for a clinic receptionist and a new secretary. There are emails about putting signs on the door and about what the signs should say. And only once you wade through that thicket do you get to the ones about actual work: JV-FPD briefs to supervise, letters of recommendation to write, student papers to read and grade.

I know, I know. People with real jobs have inboxes the size of my sent-messages box. But I’m supposed to be really thinking about the law, you know? Anyway, it’s too much. So, with thanks to the Reader’s Digest guy, I’ve been adding certain work people to my junk mail list. That way, I just never see anything they send. Better yet, UM’s high-tech voicemail system, it turns out, can be programmed to delete messages from any extension so I never even know certain people called me. (I wonder whether this feature was invented because of sexual harassment or just regular harassment.) Point is, if you want to get rich, invent a junk-mail filter that can read and purge email based on it being pointless rather than based on author or domain. Then, I wouldn’t have to decide whether so-and-so has ever sent anything I needed or wanted to read. Still, for now, this beats the alternative.

“You’re scaring them.”

One of the six Eleventh Circuit appeals the FPD’s JV squad is handling is a supervised-release violation that entails internet restrictions. Having not had home internet access for going on five days due to what we call technical difficulties, I can tell you this borders on cruel and unusual. We are quickly arriving at the point where denying sex offenders internet access is tantamount to denying an obscene caller use of the telephone system. One could still function, I suppose, but it would be so daunting that many would just be functionally banished from society, as we tend to do to sex offenders. As for me, I am making due whenever I am away from the office with my original 2G iPhone. While that device would have seemed nothing less than sorcery even six years ago, now it’s barely adequate for everything I need it to do.

Anyway, the JV squad is all up and running. All the briefs are due in early March, so hopefully we will be able to draft replies before the semester is out. The United States Attorney’s Office’s Chief of Appeals and School of Law alumna Anne Schultz (JD ’83) could not have been more accommodating, especially with scheduling. The judges of the Southern District of Florida, particularly the Chief (JD ’78), likewise facilitated the assignment of the cases.

Needless to say, things are a little more hectic than they usually are up here in my Ivory Tower, what with doing practical work for real people. So, when I gave my 235 1Ls the little talk about the Crim Pro exam yesterday, I may have been more emphatic than strictly necessary regarding what needs to be in those essays and, far more importantly, what had better not be in those essays. One of the few 2L-transfer students in Crim Pro who was in Evidence last semester, looked right at me during a pause in my tirade and said, “You’re scaring them.”