Ah yes, the joys of the legal memorandum. Somehow, in all my pre-law-school research into life as a 1-L, this is the one thing everyone seemed to leave out. And thus far it has been the biggest thorn in my side.
The Socratic lecture method? Check. Not a problem. Keep up on the readings and have your cases briefed before class and you have nothing to worry about. Complex concepts? Check. Piece of cake. If you’re stuck on something, the faculty is more than willing to help outside of class.
But the memorandum has caught me off guard. We are on our second one in as many weeks in my Legal Research, Writing, and Appellate Advocacy class. Basically, for the uninitiated, you are given a set of facts and asked to research possible courses of legal action available given said fact pattern. For someone with a lot of experience with legal research, it is not that daunting. But for someone like me, who still feels like the law library is nothing more than a giant haystack of information, it can be a little overwhelming.
Today in contracts, my professor said to the class, “Do you guys have a memo due soon?” When the class replied with a unanimous “Tomorrow,” he chuckled a sinister chuckle and said, “I thought so. I could see it in your eyes.”
Haha. Very funny.
6 comments:
Legal research is a boring pain.
Writing is easy as long as you remember Calvin's motto.
In the real world I find that in the end, research rarely carries the day, the facts of the case do.
Any case can be distinguished and you can do an end-run around any ruling.
I use my journalistic skills to put together a compelling story that will grab the judge, appeal to his sense of fairness and force him to rule in my favor.
I keep the legal arguments and research to a minimum and focus about 95 percent of my energy on presenting the case and the client the way I want them to be presented in the statement of facts. If you do that, believe me, the Judge will find a way to rule in your favor.
My biggest advantage is that most attorneys can't write worth a darn. After reading 15 pages of their gibberish, a Judge (or more like his clerk) will be falling asleep.
My rules are:
1) Make the statement of facts read like a good, compelling novel,
2) no gibberish,
3) attack them hard on the facts.
Guess what? I don't lose, even though opposing counsel's brief is usually 5 to 10 times longer than mine.
If your brief is really good, by the time oral argument comes around the judge will be totally on your side and will be unable to keep himself or herself from attacking opposing counsel and making your arguments for you.
When this happens I usually just apologize to the judge on opposing counsel's behalf for the fact that they had to waste their valuable time hearing opposing counsel's clearly frivolous motion. Then I'll thank the judge for his time and tell them that in the interests of judicial economy I won't waste any more his valuable time going over arguments that are already in my brief.
Opposing counsel hates that. It is a lot of fun kicking these guys rears and then seeing the look on their faces afterwards.
Nothing beats that...
Israel, that is really cool! I know this is not exactly like that, but in my day I was a good salesperson. I used to sell resort memberships. All these slick California boys were here trying to teach us how to sell. They said whenever the guy came up with an excuse why he wasn't buying, we needed to kill that excuse basically by arguing with him till he agreed with us. I thought that was a dumb idea cause then the guy didn't really like me that well anymore and he was just gonna come up with another excuse. They all came up with the same four or five. I decided to buy his first excuse and keep him on my side. It was usually "I can't really afford this right now" which I repeated back to him as "I know you can't afford this, but my boss is watching and I have to show you the whole thing" which made him relax and try to help me out. The second excuse was "this lake is too small." but I never had to hear that one cause I had already "bought" his first one. I'd say, "I know you can't afford this, but if you could, wouldn't you and the kids have fun on this lake?" Completely relaxed and off the hook, he'd say, "Oh yeah, that's a great lake, we could have a lot of fun out there." And so on with the recreation hall and all the others benefits of the membership. By the end of the hour we were great friend and the guy would begin to feel a little embarressed about me having said he couldn't afford it so many times. Then I'd put him down by saying something about all the guys who were able to afford it and he just had to tell me that he really COULD afford and I'd say, "Great! Welcome to the Club! Hey, everybody, meet our newest member!" There was really nothing he could say. Believe it or not, they would just go ahead and lay out the $5500.00 and try to act like they wanted to be members all along. It was crazy! He couldn't say the lake was too small or he didn't like the clubhouse or he couldn't afford it. It was over. I made some good money. I couldn't sleep nights but I made some good money!
I'm sure that was probably illegal or it should have been. It was a long time ago. Don't sue me.
It is exactly like that, except for instead of selling resort memberships I am selling the judge or the jury the opportunity to do the "right" thing and rule in favor of my client.
That's the job of a lawyer, we are advocates. We "sell" our client's versions of the truth.
That's the way the system works.
In the end, we may never really know what the "truth" was, but we often, we do know who has the best lawyer.
As my Civ Pro prof said today, "What are the facts? The facts are what the lawyers say are the facts."
And lawyers wonder why everybody makes jokes about them? LOL.
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