Southwest Virginia Blogs

Archive for the ‘Law School’ Category

Law Student threatens a CWA Citizen Suit

Monday, May 8th, 2006

At some point between graduating from E&H with a B.S. in Environmental Science and taking every environmental law elective offered by ONU, I knew a good bit about the Clean Water Act. Since then, though, I have never had reason to look back at any environmental statutes. During my study of the CWA, I remember thinking that the citizen suit provision would be interesting to use sometime.

Patti McKenzi, a third-year law student at USC, however, has taken her study of the CWA to a new level and gave notice to Richland County, South Carolina, and state and federal officials, that she intended to utilize the citizen suit provision and sue them for $36.4 million for failing to enforce environmental laws. After receiving her notice, SC officials fined Richland County $830,549.00.

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Banned Laptops

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Another law school professor has banned the use of laptops in her classes. Professor June Entrman, from the University of Memphis, “nixed the computers in March because she felt they were turning her students into stenographers and inhibiting classroom debate. The full AP report is available here.

During my first year of law school, ONU did not have wireless in each room and I hung on every word the professors said. By my second and third years, however, we had a wireless connection in each room and I spent more time than I should have on blogging, IM’ing, and general surfing.

These distractions of having internet were outweighed, though, by the benefits of having an internet connection in class. First, more times than I can count, I was able to pull up cases via Lexis that were being referred to and skim along with the lecture. Second, by having a searchable version of codes, statutes, regulations, etc., I was able to find them much faster than people flipping through the index of a code book. An added bonus of this was not having to carry the huge code book around too. Finally, by typing my notes during class, when I got ready to do make outlines, I could copy and paste a substantial portion of the information.

For me, having a laptop during class was certainly more of a benefit than a distraction, although I can see how it could go both ways.

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Bar Results

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Not that long ago, when bar results came out the last time, I had a lot of sleepless nights and refreshed the results page about one million times. Last week, however, when bar results were released and I did not even notice. I never will forget that feeling - knowing that I had finally passed and would never have to worry about that again.

I did, however, want to congratulate Seth Baker from Clintwood and Jennifer Sturgill from Wise. The full list of Virginia’s 345 new attorneys is here.

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Bar Leaders Institute

Friday, March 17th, 2006

Today, Jerry and I attended the Bar Leaders Institute in Abingdon. Several interesting topics were covered and I met several folks I had heard a lot about.

Probably the highlight for me was meeting Robert Grey, ABA President, who gave an exceptional talk over lunch. Grey is without a doubt, one of the best speakers I have ever seen.

All of the other speakers and panelists were also good and informative.

Noticeably missing were fellow bloggers, Steve and Chad.

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So Long Student Loans

Monday, March 6th, 2006

I could have saved a fortune if this had been around and I would have wanted to take the risk.

Here is sales pitch from Evan:

GET YOUR LAW DEGREE ONLINE . . . Are you hooked on legal weblogs? Do you get offended when you tell someone about your favorite “blawgs” and they think you’re talking about your favorite “blogs”? Do you subscribe to the belief that real lawyers really do have weblogs? Are your favorite blawgers more important to you than your best friends? Do you spend time reading The Volokh Conspiracy even though it’s nice outside?

Turn your wacky law-related Internet introversion into a career by signing up with the online law school Abraham Lincoln University School of Law.

It sounds good, but I am glad I went with the old fashioned way.