It's nicer than the UNT campus. Seriously. Also, we were driving around the perimeter trying to figure out how to get in and my friend KD and I nearly simultaneously said, "Dammit! I wish I'd brought my camera!" Fairly inappropriate sentiment, all things considered, but it was really impressive!
We weren't the only ones. After walking out of the interview, we were walking between buildings and another girl I like said, "This is kind of awkward, but the grounds are really well maintained!"
I'm really enjoying writing this motion, but it's just a draft at the moment and I'm not sure I'm doing it right. But I'm certainly investing a lot in it, so hopefully it will be useful.
Ok, so the long way around is this: the defense clinic I have been working in has been really great because it involves (quite obviously) real clients and forces you to learn the courtroom culture (of your city/town). The lawyers here all refer to each other as "my sister" or "my brother," which I fucking refuse to do because not only is it a really local thing to do (and hence a habit I do no wish to pick up and have to unlearn) but it can also confuse my clients. They already think the system is against them and it's all one team, and they often tend to take language like that quite literally. But my point is that the clinic is really one of the very few things in law school that get you out of the theoretical sphere.
On Friday I went to the ACI in Cranston, RI to meet our client from the IP. As I'm writing my motion, I'm realizing all the guys from these cases were ALSO sentenced to prison terms at the ACI, so I guess most of them were there, too. Weird.
I say "weird" because so much of law school revolves around bullshit hypotheticals. We have spent the better part of the semester reading (2000+ pages of testimony and statements) and while I GET IT that it involves real people, it's very, very easy to see it as more of a problem on paper. Well, we met him on Friday and not that I expected anything different, but he's incredibly nice with a wicked RI accent. It doesn't surprise me that I like him, but it happens in the clinic more often than I expected as well. It's hard, though, because you already think this guy (the one in for life) is innocent, so meeting him can potentially weigh you down in unexpected ways. This process is, frustratingly, still in its infancy, after all.
Four of us were driving home and talking about our weekend plans. My friend BA said, "I was on the fence about going to a Halloween party tonight, but I think I'd feel like a total asshole going to a party instead of working on my draft after that." I had the exact same problem in my head and couldn't agree more. (Plus I have two other papers of 30 pages each to write, so there's that.)
The girl who commented on the groundskeeping and I also found out that all the old newspaper articles from [small town] are not within the materials we received but are in fact preserved in microfilm at the city library. I totally want to go and look them all up, I think it sounds exciting. So if nothing else, I guess I'm not in the wrong field! ;)
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