First semester, we have an unusual schedule at George Mason, because everyone must take a class on economics. The other classes are typical: Contracts, Torts, Property, and Legal Research and Writing.

This semester, I still have to take more Torts and Contracts, but also am taking Civil Procedure and Criminal Law, along with another writing course.

The first week (last week), we did something interesting in the writing class: a mock client interview, and a letter to the client. It caused me to think much more about how it will feel to actually practice law. It also made me realize how much power a lawyer has to influence people. It's a great power if used wisely and responsibly, and can do a great deal of good. It's so appealing to me because I've been denied the power to make decisions at many of the software companies I've been a part of.

Managers and engineers at software companies often are at odds. As an engineer, I always wanted to create something well-designed, useful, and relatively bug-free. Managers wanted to meet deadlines and make money. For this reason, managers can't usually trust engineers' positions on technical issues, because they suspect that there's always a cheaper, faster way. News flash: often, there's a direct trade-off between quality and time. I was often forced to deliver low quality in short time, something I detested.

In Law, however, it's somewhat different. For one thing, you're not always designing something from scratch, but rather analyzing precedent and predicting within certain limitations. I think it's extremely challenging and interesting, but not as difficult to predict as a software idea that's never been implemented before. Additionally, lawyers are held to ethical and qualitative standards, so they are not allowed to cut corners beyond a certain point, or face the risk of malpractice suits.

At any rate, these are some of the things I've been thinking about. In Criminal Law, we're talking about the morality and philosophy behind the idea of punishment. It's difficult to pin down, but very interesting to think about. This week, we're just starting to get into issues of what responsibilities lie in the judiciary versus the legislature, with regard to creating and interpreting criminal law and laws in general...

Civil procedure is about how civil trials are performed, specifically, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Complaint, Motions, Answer, Reply, etc. It's less interesting than the other classes yet, but it's nice to finally pin down the specifics as to how a lawsuit proceeds.

We've been talking a lot about medical malpractice in Torts, and read the book "Damages" by Barry Werth. Very interesting account of a big medical malpractice suit. It's 400 pages, and I read it in about 4 days, along with other class reading.

Contracts is now about unconscionability... Not much to say about that right now.

I'm also looking for jobs for the summer. They say it's difficult for a 1L (1st year law student) to find a good summer job, but not impossible. I am still optimistic right now.