Dear Blog...

I've severely neglected you, and I am sorry. Love, Deb.

I haven't posted in forever, as usual. I've been busy and not in the habit of posting for such a long time. So, I figured it's about time for an update.

This is my 3rd and final year of law school. I have mixed feelings about it ending. It's not that I want it to keep going, but sometimes I wish I could change how some things went. More on that later...like, sometime in the future when I start posting regularly again?

Third year is definitely the best year so far. I'm doing a lot of different things this semester that I have never done before. First of all, I'm working at the company where I worked over the summer. It's an in-house legal department at a fairly large corporation. I like it. It was a good summer. I still don't know what I'm going to be doing less than a year from now when I graduate and have to have a full time job. Hopefully I'll be figuring that out this year.

Another thing I'm doing this year that is different is representing real clients in real cases. I'm doing this for credit in the law clinics at the Law School. The law clinics represent primarily low income clients in many different practice areas. The clinic I am in is called "Child Advocacy." The major case I'm handling right now is a third-party custody matter, and I have my first real court appearance next week (I'm arguing a motion). In case you're wondering how I can practice law even though I'm not licensed as an attorney yet (I'm sure you weren't), the Minnesota Supreme Court has a student practice rule that allows 2nd & 3rd year students to represent clients under the supervision of a licensed attorney. It's been a great experience, albeit very time-consuming lately.

Finally, for my fourth "class," I'm taking not a traditional class with a comprehensive final exam at the end, but a seminar - a class focused on a specific topic (mine is Comparative Antitrust) that requires only a paper. The seminars have very limited enrollment - there are about 6 other students in mine. You sit around a table as opposed to in a traditional classroom, and there's supposed to be more discussion than in a traditional class. I say that "only" a paper is required, but I'm not sure if it's going to end up being less or more work than a regular class. At the moment, I have a 35-page paper comparing European and American antitrust law, specifically with respect to Microsoft's dispute with the EU and Sun Microsystems over Microsoft's server software, staring me in the face. I have to write it. It's going to take a long time. But I have so much else to do...

So that's probably good enough for updates for now. Sorry this is so dry. But then again, I think that's just how I generally write. Get the information across.

More later! Ciao for now. :)