I think I'm going to start a Quote of the Week feature where I'll post some law-related amusing quote. If you're lucky, it'll be a real quote and not from class. The quote this week is from oral arguments in Harris v. Forklift Sys., 510 U.S. 17. QUESTION: You would seem to be developing a more complex test, and I was wondering why? You said severe, and pervasive, and --MR. VENICK (For Petitioner): That's the language in Meritor, Your Honor, which we heartily embrace....QUESTION: But you said sufficiently severe to alter the conditions of employment. That is utterly meaningless to me. I don't care if we did say it. 

I almost never take "quizzes," and I certainly never post them. I couldn't help myself with this one, though.   Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?YOU ARE RULE 12(b)!While you might be a defendant's best friend, you aren't exactly polite to others. You have seven separate grounds on which to dismiss a plaintiff's case. You are a bit paranoid, since if you fail to raise your 12(b)(2,3,4, or 7) in a motion or a pleading with one of the other 12(b) defenses or a 12(e) motion, you waive those objections for the rest of trial. Some might say that 12(b) is the biggest bully of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, but hey, somebody needs to keep the peace. You might not be the most popular guy in the office, but you're probably the most important.Take this quiz!Quizilla |Join| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

It has been my experience that law students take pride in their notebooks. Not everyone is as crazy as me about it, but the majority of my sectionmates definitely have a complex tagging / sorting system set up for OneNote, or whatever other program they use. I thought I'd show off my notebook a bit in this post. Last summer, I spent some time testing out different note-taking software. I didn't like anything on the market, so I decided to code my own. I didn't want to start from scratch, however, so I settled on a MediaWiki. Here are the features that I find useful. #1 - No internet connection required - This may be a circular point, since not many notebooks will require an internet connection. MediaWiki would, however, if I weren't running an Apache server on my MacBook Pro. #2 - Brief Templates - The way this was coded is that whenever I make a [[WikiLink]], I search the link for a v. (indicating that it's a case) and it auto-generates a blank template for me to fill in. This is really useful when professors yell out cases on the fly, or for briefing cases for homework purposes. #3 - ...

The volunteer income tax program that I've been studying for went live today. It was kind of neat to be able to work with real people; I feel like law students become severely desensitized by reading case law all the time. Post November last semester I probably could have eaten dinner while you told me any number of hideously disgusting murder/rape stories (thanks to crim law). Anyway, I obviously can't discuss details of the people that came in, but I was able to get someone a substantial refund. I find myself a bit annoyed with charitable donations, though. It never occurred to me that even if you make a charitable donation (which is a substantial portion of your AGI) you may not get any money back from it if the standard deduction is higher than the donation + other itemized deductions. From what our supervisor told us, it's not uncommon to see the lower and lower-middle class people donating to churches and still being forced to take the standard deduction. It seems like it would be a good idea that if standard deduction > itemized deduction, you could elect to have a percentage of your donation counted as a credit. Good idea? ...

I woke up this morning to see the following post in my RSS feed: Snow/ice has caused Penn State to delay scheduled activities at University Park, including classes, until 10 a.m. Classes that begin at or after 10 a.m. will be held as scheduled. Only employees previously identified as performing essential services should report as regularly scheduled, unless advised otherwise by their supervisor. Is it possible for this message to be more ambiguous? Is my 9:05 con law class cancelled or delayed until 10? I figured that it wouldn't make sense to make us start at 10 since it would cause room scheduling conflicts. Either way, I text messaged ~20 of my section mates to let them know of the delay/cancellation, and then proceeded to waste my potential sleeping time by debating back and forth over text message about the wording of the message. Only in law school. [My professor just confirmed that con law is cancelled. Yay.]