When I started my externship, the field placement professor was extraordinarily helpful in getting me placed with an IP law firm.  She explained that traditionally, the higher ranked students don’t participate in field placement and instead focus on their academic work.  In retrospect, I have a lot to say on that subject, but it’s really the topic for another post.

It wasn’t long before the professor and I began to butt heads.  My focus was on meeting deadlines with the firm, and her focus was on collecting records about what I was doing at the firm.   She often expressed her confusion about why I had such a good reputation amongst the faculty because our interactions were less-than-great on account of my giving the administrative portion of the placement a very low priority.  It was a pass/fail class and I came *very* close to failing about midway through the second semester; that was the point at which I started realizing that the vast majority of my life is going to be filled up by stupid paperwork, arbitrary deadlines, and angry authority figures.

I do give a lot of credit to my field placement professor for getting me on track.  I think the turning point was when she said, “I’ve beat a lot of people just like you in court.”  I didn’t really take offense to the idea of her beating me in court — she’s a very intelligent Yale Law alum — but I was fairly abhorrent to the theoretical idea of a less skilled attorney winning on a technicality.  I definitely turned around my game after that, and I think it’s probably one of the most beneficial lessons I learned in law school.

I was reminded of this story today as I sat in my livingroom compiling write-on scores and determining who will be invited to our law review later in the month.  One person towards the very top of my list, who would have been invited to the law school’s flagship journal, for some reason forgot to submit the required form linking their name to their anonymous number.  Since we have no way to contact them, they’re disqualified and won’t be invited to any journal.  How’s that for a lesson in not submitting the necessary paperwork?

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