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First convention day

I made it to the 7:30 a.m. breakfast, five minutes late by the time I found the correct ballroom, and when I walked in, I was the only one there other than the panelists. Nice. Eventually a few other people showed up. However, it was worth showing up at 7:30. Not the breakfast, that was a stale bagel. But it was an excellent panel on current domestic violence issues. We've recently had some changes to our laws after a former state politician (allegedly) murdered his girlfriend, after he'd already violated the DVO against him once before. Also, there were folks there from legal aid, where I just sent my resume, so it was a good schmoozing opportunity. I'd like to get that job. I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable going out on my own if I had a year in the trenches of legal aid, and it would be nice to pay off some student loans too.

Some of the CLE's were pretty good, and others were mind-numbingly awful. I went to CLE's based on what will be useful practicing on my own, rather than what I found most interesting. But oh well. The best one I went to was actually on Administrative Law, about defending claims against professional licensure. It was very informative and not horribly dull. The fed courts one? Ohmygodboring.

But, I got to see a lot of my friends there, some I hadn't seen for quite awhile, and some former coworkers too. And I successfully dodged the people I don't like. So, two more days of this, and Friday is the "new lawyers" section where, even though we've been practicing law for 8 months already, we get to sit through stupid panels on 1L topics such as "legal writing." You know what wouldn't be effing useless and a total waste of our time? Is if right after we got sworn in there was a conference that went through how to actually practice certain areas of law. For instance, a seminar on how to practice family law if you're a newbie, and you don't even know what documents to draft to file for divorce even though you took family law. Or basic estate planning. Instead, we get stuck with a one-hour seminar on "legal writing," among other useless topics. But, that would be useful, so we can't have that. Kinda like if in law school they actually taught you how to practice law, or even what the law actually is, instead of "how to learn the law." (Again, still bitter about learning the rule against perpetuities when we don't even use it.)

So, back again tomorrow for more convention fun. Weeee!

Full post as published by Knocked Up (and in Law School) on June 16, 2010 (boomark / email).