Occasional cases

Have you tried googling?

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 13:54:53 GMT

It's not very pleasant of me to start off the year by complaining. Ah, well.

A friend who's in the JD programme emailed me earlier about obtaining an internship. Specifically, what to put in your email to law firms and could I send along a sample email? I'd explained before that as most law firms know what you are on about so long as you put 'Internship' in the subject line, there's no need to do anything else than include your name, year of study (and maybe grades) and availability. So I don't understand why there's a need for a sample email. It's like the time I explained that it's like a job application email, except shorter. That didn't sink in either, I guess.

It's kind of frustrating. I'm happy to help, but I'm puzzled when it's for something so straightforward.

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Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:44:57 GMT

Now we've seen everything: hail!

Did hail fall in 2008? I certainly don't remember that.

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Sat, 22 Jun 2013 15:55:43 GMT

The haze did clear up by a lot this afternoon, so despite the unrelenting heat, I stood outside the library and took lots of deep breaths. T'was nice not to feel like you're being smothered.

Although now it has resurged and it's making me cough just a bit. Well, it was a nice little respite. I was starting to forget what a blue sky looked like.

This may be just my singular experience, but the only people who want to take the TOEIC that I've only ever come across are Japanese people. Everyone else (ELT or EFL learners, I mean) take either the IELTS or the TOEFL. Apparently you get career brownie points if your company knows you got a good ranking on the TOEIC. Meanwhile, I'm at the 'but the TOEIC is such a lame test!' stage. (It really is! It has questions that test, lemme see, your ability to match a photograph to spoken descriptions, the same type of question and answer thing for grammer and vocabulary you get on the TOEFL except easier and then reading comprehension on things like mock emails, posters, and the like.)

(Ok, I will concede that it is less lame now that since they've added a speaking and writing section to the test.)

A student came in today so I talked to her about what she wanted to achieve: better general English skills aka all-round improvement, or improved TOEIC scores. Guess what she chose. Look, standardised tests are no doubt very useful to have, but really, isn't it more productive to use your precious time - since you work such long hours (7am to 10pm every day is just crazy) - to improve your English overall rather than drill yourself on test-taking skills? Even business English would be more interesting!

Not to say that you won't learn something whilst doing the preparation for TOEIC as I can see I'm going to have to do a quick run-through on basic grammar, etc, but the starting and ending point is TOEIC. So this necessitated picking up the TOEIC preparation kit at Kinokuniya. Have just been looking through it. (Lame!)

Also stopped by the school library to get a book on bankruptcy law. Because my knowledge of bankruptcy law can be summed up in one scientific term: zero. So basically I ended up lugging a textbook, the TOEIC kit, another novel that caught my eye and another knitting magazine. Lugging books is not an advisable activity in this haze, right? *feeling self-aggrieved, even though it was self-inflicted*

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Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:08:19 GMT

Ex-professor gets 5 months for sex-for-grades

Could. Not. Have happened to a nicer guy.

Also a postscript of sorts to previous post: Dead American man's parents issue open letter.

I'm quite impressed (albeit not in a heartwarming way) that his parents feel that the "Court of Public Opinion" would give them the answers they want.

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It's June

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:14:01 GMT

Item one: Caught an ad for Vasantham (the Tamil channel) for a series of Bollywood and Tamil movies to be aired in June. All feature (judging by the ad) doe-eyed beauties and well, manly men gazing forlornly into the camera... and the tag "an unspeakable love".

I'm not up to date on urban-speak but I think "unspeakable love" usually refers to same sex relationships?

Item ~~two lips, indifferent red~~ two: AP article on coroner's inquiry of dead American was inaccurate - and they were called on it. As far as we know, the man was found dead with suicide notes and it emerged that he had suffered from depression. The man's parents theorised that he'd been murdered because apparently his work was to have endangered US security. Coronor will have the verdict next month.

Wiki page has links. I'm boggled that initially, the parents requested for FBI to lead the investigation. You're not in the USA!

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email age?

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:24:47 GMT

I'm sufficiently a child of the email (never mind internet) age that halfway through reading this judgment I recoiled and thought to myself "STOP SHOUTING and who even writes a will in ALL CAPS and wait it's not a will it's a PROTEST."

Come to think of it, I do have a problem when I come across documents that go: "NOW IT IS WITNESSED HEREFORTH..." Never mind the hereforth, the all caps make me blink. Even in dead tree form.

***

Still delighted with Kindle ebooks. Those that I'm iffy about buying, I can download an extract first! But first there's still loads of $0 books.

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study of law

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:12:59 GMT

Hm, this is the first time I felt good about what I'm studying: that it can be helpful, I mean. Not giving legal advice as I'm not qualified, but it felt good to tell a friend that the so-called agreement he'd signed was not worth the paper it was printed on, and that he should tell his "partners" to take a long walk off a cliff. (And it's weird being believed because of what I'm studying when really, anyone of common sense could say the same.) And to say that if his arsehole "partners" threaten to go to a lawyer, you will go to one too, instead of being frightened off. (It's my personal belief that they are too chickenshit to do so.)

***

Checked grades today; only raw scores but I think I'm safely in B territory again. (One last subject remains unveiled still.) Well, considering I'd been having fears of a string of C's, I guess I can't be blamed for feeling blithe. The daydream of A's I'll grant you.

I sort of hate being so grades-fearful. It just goes around and 'round in my head: if only you'd studied more, if only you'd did those extra reading, if you only you had asked more questions, if only you'd read fewer fics, etc, etc. (I actually did ok on my exams; it was my midterms and term paper that I'd bombed, and well, by the time exams came it was too late to hope for better than a B.) So, realist am I. I didn't understand the subject with any sort of, well, insight until well into the term, so that is either due to a lack of intellect or I'm a slow learner. Ugh.

***

I've recently discovered I can buy books on my kindle! It's not supported here, so I'm quite pleased that I can still pay via my (differently-addressed) account and it will go to my kindle. So that's kind of awesome. Previously I'd heard you had to hack it through VPN disguises and a gift card.

Tho' I'm more knitting these couple of weeks.

***

Interning continues to be kind of hectic and kind of hilarious. As I mentioned, I'm the minor-est person in the team that's representing a client in court. (I just sit and take transciption-like notes.) I'm finding it hard to keep a poker face when the cross-examination goes rapidly to pieces. And I keep trying to send mental commands to our side's counsel: "Stand up and say 'objection'!"

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revision-y still

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:35:52 GMT

I'm using my icons as mood indicators but I don't have one that says "arghhh revision!" Pity.

Was reviewing parts of the Rules of Court online (if printed, about size of telephone directory) and discovered that there are in total 229 different forms for various purposes: issuing a writ, a memo of appearance, possessing property of debtor, etc. And just goes to show, paperwork is the only certainty in life. Although life is supposedly easily with electronic filing, sometimes only hard copy will do. Also learning about costs this term has been something of an eye-opener.

I mean, anecdotally I always knew that legal stuff and going to court was expensive but I did not know exactly that they ran to hundreds of thousands (or even more) instead of just, erm, thousands. Admittedly that kind of expense is for complicated stuff and for commercial stuff and very rich people. But um, legal aid is pretty limited and even that's only for certain categories of criminal matters so if you get into other sorts of trouble you're screwed. Well, you could try to do it yourself but those results have not generally been pretty if the other side is rich and can afford lawyers whilst you can't.

But yeah. I did know this, in the back of my head. Just grumbling.

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Long week, short sleep

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 03:37:26 GMT

1) Is it only Wednesday? It feels like it should be Thursday already, mainly because now the bulk of my classes are on Mondays and Tuesdays. Tho' am going to start going to gym today now that my cold seems to have cleared up; knees starting to get creaky again.

2) Got into contract drafting class after all, yay! (Someone dropped it and I squeezed in.) It's pretty interesting, even with the prof's tendency to read from judgments.

3) More interesting news: My Kindle Paperwhite has arrived! I lost my Kindle Touch at the beginning of the year and decided to try the Paperwhite. (Or should that be Paperwhite Kindle?) Thoughts:

(a) It does not have text-to-speech capability. I did not know this. Admittedly, I hadn't used it much with my Kindle Touch, but it's still a nice-to-have feature.

(b) Don't have much use for the lighted (lit?) screen feature yet, though it feels a bit glaring. Will assess again when I finally read it in dim lighting.

(c) Enables you to have dictionaries in different languages - admittedly only in the 7, 8 languages that it supports. But it's a step up from the determinedly monolingualism of before.

(d) Much, much better looking Chinese font. And Japanese font. (There's only two choices tho' - the nice one and the ugly one.) For that matter, the (limited) choices of font for alphanumeric scripts are nice to have too.

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Evidence Act

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:01:25 GMT

s 3(2), definition of "relevant":

"One fact is said to relevant to another when the one is connected with other in any of the ways referred to in the provisions of this Act relating to the relevancy of facts."

Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like the rules for filling out sudoku?

On the elective class front, things are a tad sticky. A classmate wants to drop out of the class that I originally wanted to take, but isn't sure. And if this heel-dragging goes on, I'm not sure if I want to take it now, in the second week (or possibly the third week). Am perhaps crazy for now (slightly) preferring the class on legal theory because exam.

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Reading lists 1/2

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:36:43 GMT

Textbook list

Property law
( amended list )
Equity and trusts

( It gets long )

Although at this junction what's really important to me about trusts is to better appreciate:

"'...But only consider, my dear girl! The whole fortune left in trust until I'm twenty-five, unless I marry before that date! You must see what a devil of a fix I'm in!'" (Friday's Child, Heyer).

Evidence and procedure
( Read more... )

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shortage of brain cells

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:58:36 GMT

It must be. I tried to log into my school account to check my grades (the heck with being terrified to know what they are, I'm curious as hell!). There I was, psyching myself up, telling myself it's not the end of the world however bad grades those are, and...

I forgot my password. I've been racking my memory trying to recall it, and can't.

Talk about an anti-climax! Will have to go to IT desk tomorrow on my way to guzheng class and get a password reset before I can log in.

Unless I remember it by morning. >_>

I watched the Hobbit movie earlier this week. 'twas all for Martin Freeman. The fight scenes were too long, as were the mountain-climbing parts. But it was still pretty entertaining. Although thank goodness I watched it on a Monday because tickets were cheaper then.

Also watched the Rurounin Kenshin movie last week, which was only a little draggy and wasn't too cheesy. Plotwise was as expected, so not too bad. I kept getting distracting by noticing machine-stitched seams on those supposedly 19th Japanese clothes - made me feel as though I was watching a cosplay rather than a movie.

What's annoying about having a 'big' movie come out is that it's squeezes all the other movies out, besides also depriving people of additional choices they could have had. I mean, after watching the Hobbit, there are no other movies out there. Or if there are, theatres screen them maybe once a day which doesn't necessarily help with scheduling. I wanted to catch Life of Pi and maybe The Guardians but most theatres have already stopped screening them.

The holiday season, it's weird.

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Who doesn't love Nash?

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:50:08 GMT

Judge JH Gillis, in Fisher v Lowe (1982), 122 Mich.App. 418, 333 N.W.2d 67 (an appeal):

We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree's behest;
A tree whose battered trunk was prest
Against a Chevy's crumpled crest;
A tree that faces each new day
With bark and limb in disarray;
A tree that may forever bear
A lasting need for tender care.
Flora lovers though we three,
We must uphold the court's decree.
Affirmed.

Not only is the entire thing in verse, Westlaw also got into the act by rendering the headnotes in verse.

(found through http://www.loweringthebar.net)

ETA: It's a pretty famous judgment (for all the right reasons - it rhymes!) so you might have seen this already.

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Yosh!

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 02:47:45 GMT

Am done with conflicts presentation!! W00t!

An exaggeration of course. I have worked thr' the question and I think I've covered what needs to be covered. Some niggling points to discuss over with teammates, and more reading up to do. But I think the outline is fine.

Next, shipping presentation. It's ironic that I'm working on contractual issues in charterparties considering how contracts are not my strongest subject. But am I being overly optimistic in thinking that the more studying I do, I understand it better?

Was groaning about preparing for corporate law class today when I realised I've already made notes for the presentation today. Thank goodness.

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Rage-induced (see previous post) insomnic studying

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:51:41 GMT

The word "whereas" is starting to not look like a real word any more: European Community's Council Directive on liability for defective products.

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Drop box

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:46:28 GMT

Dear other users of dropbox for cases

Hagugesund Kommune & Anor v Depfa ACS Bank & Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 579, yesIknow people, it's the reading* for tomorrow, will those who choose to upload stuff on dropbox get a grip and stop reloading it over and over again?

The dropbox thing was created last year and it's been... not that helpful? Helpful in a pinch when I've genuinely forgotten to download a case and I'm lazy, but otherwise I'm not using it much, because the other users all prefer pdf files and I go with Word files because it's less stressful on my internet connection to send Word files for conversion for the kindle.

Oh well.

Reading week was a nice break - maybe too nice because I didn't get as much done, eg, the second banking paper, and the resulting stress from that is/was not worth the enjoyment of watching k-dramas for two days.

Will draw a line over that and start again. Constant self-berating is unhelpful. I'm trying to get over this mentality of "I suck at law school anyway so I don't have to work so hard at it." So, constant reminder to self: you don't get to slack no matter what.

Otherwise reading week was ok. And Waiting for Godot was pretty sweet. Altho' at certain points I had to wonder why it sounded so trite, and belatedly realised it was because my god, the lines have been echoed in so many other dramas, sitcoms, movies, etc.

I'm eating Korean grapes. They are very weird because they're soft (not crunchy as I'm used to), the flesh is chewy and has a very intense flavour, like (ta da!) grape jelly.

*one of them, at least

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reading week I mean mid-term break

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 14:28:46 GMT

So I'm staring at the email from our TA (hours after) apparently explaining to other people who were supposed to have taken the same midterm, just where the midterm question was to be found in the online student website. Bizarre, because the TA has been very conscientious about emailing everyone with the requisite information/instructions a few days ahead and I thought it was fairly straightforward. Log on, get question*, type answer on Word doc, save and upload doc. No problem, right? For people who are supposed to be computer literate and have been downloading movies/movies for years. (Barring crazy internet connections, that is.)

But apparently there are others who didn't get it. I don't get it. Oh, well. I'm just glad I never did see this email until the midterm was over because I would have panicked. As it was, right after (ok, 5 mins later) I finished uploading my answer and felt like gibbering, my student turned up and I was so frazzled that I taught him for 90 mins instead of our usual 60.

Thots:

Earlier I was at the Bras Brasah library and I never did realise what a lovely courtyard (8 levels up) it has! Reading/study rooms had chockful of students but they were wonderfully, fantastically quiet. So much nicer than uni library, which is too often full of students who want a place to chat and go to the library to do it.

Public library is still very posh-looking, compared to uni building right across the street. It's striking because both are pretty new buildings - less than 10 years old.

And reading week is up! I'm sort of happy about it despite having suddenly self-imposed lots of things for self to do - though more honestly, I'm knackered.

Last night, I decided to try drinking coffee to keep awake. Yeah, right. I face-planted into my notes twenty minutes later. Coffee doesn't work (but tea does) though it smells so good, I keep getting suckered into drinking it. So after I woke up from my nap, I overdid it with the studying and slept much less. Ugh.

Must watch at least one movie this reading week. In an actual theatre. I don't care which one.

*granted, there are two class sections for this particular course, so there are two possible places for the question to be. But the TA already told us which one and even if you cannot remember, there's only two.

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I should be sleeping, right?

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:53:21 GMT

The TA for the CLS* class emailed earlier this afternoon - I mean, yesterday afternoon - to ask that we email the slides over for collation** - by midnight. I didn't see that email until I was just about to go to bed! And it was definitely after midnight. Oh well, hope the TA didn't mind.

The bad thing about getting MS Word to accept and interpret my lazy typing is that when we get to write our midterms using laptops tomorrow (today), it will be logged on to a system that has no such conveniences. (Sort of like typing on Notepad.) I'm trying to get myself to stop typing liek ts, wc is wot i usly do. N yet i stil type e whn i shd type t-h-e.

Ah, technology.

*Comparative legal systems
**yet another reason why I loathe doing slides

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midterms

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:31:07 GMT

Just out of *conflicts class, a classmate commented that this class was confusing and I was thinking, it's not so bad, I think I get it. But that's likely me having a case of "if you think you understand conflicts, you don't" kind of deal. At least it's preventing me from panicking about conflicts midterm on Saturday. It's a take-home exam. Well, I say take-home exam. The question's released online and you have to submit the answer within 2 hours so I guess everyone's sitting at home working in front of the computer. We're allowed to use any written materials. Much scope for cheating? I guess, if you got an expert to do the work for you or collaborate (prof's email sort of mentioned DON'T COLLABORATE - did it need saying?) with friends, but given the way so many of my classmates are less than 100% firm about concepts discussed, it'd be the blind leading the blind...?

I've managed to discuss with workplace to let me use a classroom for that precious 2 hours to work on the midterm. Advantage: don't have to travel to workplace afterwards, just send off answer and continue working! Reminder to self: bring earplugs as workplace has thin walls. Disadvantage: must make up missed work on Monday evening.

The other midterm that I'm reserving my panic for is corporate law. My mind blanks out when I have to answer a hypothetical question, so my job is to practise that (answering, I mean, not blanking out).

Also how much do I love my kindle? Because I have nearly all my reading on it. Disadvantage of using it to read cases is you can't scan ahead so you have to read every page. Not that that's a bad thing...

*commercial conflict of laws

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sneezy cold

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:24:11 GMT

More running nose than sneezy, though, since this morning. Drat.

On my way to the library just earlier (am inside now), a young... twit, is probably the only sensible tag, said (gist), "OMG so many people are going to the library!" Yes, next comment? And from the way she stared at everyone, either she's never been to the library herself or thought it incredible that other people also wanted to, you know, use the library.

Gah. Reminder to self: please don't listen to those who 'tell' you a topic is easy. You gotta find out for yourself whether it is so. Too persuadable, you. And also stop agreeing with people (inwardly) that this term is tough and "everything is tiring". Nope, self, keep working.

Have banking paper due this weekend. What a treat for me.

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taking stock

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:16:52 GMT

So, I've chosen my classes (maritime law and banking law, because I'm really weirdly becoming very curious about what d'you mean, banking law because from reports about recent and ongoing banking crisis, one is forced to conclude that those laws haven't really been of much use). It means having to have classes on Saturdays, which majorly sucks, but it's only for one term and I will deal.

Having a leisurely time mostly knitting and reading. Went to a garden show on Thursday with my mum, which was awesome, and not just because we bought orchids! Ok, because we bought orchids, because previous years I wanted to but didn't. And now I have.

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5 min update

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:01:40 GMT

Contract law exam over, three more to go.

How much do I want to start knitting now? Very much. The more stressed I get the more I want to make a sweater.

Unfortunately I have an exam on constitutional law on Friday and must revise. I have bad visions of being asked about Malaysia's replacement of the ISA because my level of cynicism about the ISA (Singapore's, which is similar to Malaysia's) is too high for me to examine it objectively. I feel like I'm about to write "ISA, you suck!" all over the exam paper.

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je suis desolee

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:59:40 GMT

I just realised that I lost my shawl (the one in my icon). All this while, I thought I'd left it at work and then today when I went to work ... no shawl! Means I dropped it somewhere and didn't even realise when or where. Boo. I loved that shawl - okay, even tho' it was starting to pill rather badly due to heavy use. But it was still an awesome shawl!

And what's really galling; I started thinking of making a replacement (since it was getting old anyway) and then I realised that I have no time to knit. So sad. The nice thing about making your own stuff is that you can always make more - as opposed to buying from a shop, I mean. So you always have it the way you want it, unlike shop stuff.

***

Tort mid-term tomorrow, which means I should either go to bed now or study some more.

A friend who glanced at this blog said that I was too dispassionate in blogging and sounded very cold. My warm and friendly nature was disputed. I was accused of not even owning a cuddly toy.

Well, you might be happy to know that while studying for tort, I hugged my teddy bear about eight hundred times.

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Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:24:04 GMT

I'm trying, but I can't stop referring to contract law as "econs". It's funny to think that the free-association pattern in my brain goes "talks about money stuff = economics" even though all I'm memorising is cases on damages and compensation for botched deals.

Business law curiously doesn't create the same sort of connection. Maybe it's early days yet. By the by, we're finally breaking free of partnership law this week to do company law. Yay!? At least the cases mentioned come from casebooks so I won't have to trawl about on Westlaw to "get" the cases. Ordinarily I'd enjoy exploring Westlaw but time constraints.

Back to doing contract law assignment. Y'know, I think I understand what this case or that case is about, and what underlying principles there are, but when the prof gives out a hypothetical problem, I just go "huh?" I think I need to read more criticism to give my brain the tools and language to discuss the issues.

I have now discovered in myself a propensity to use green ink when making notes on (printed) cases. Also pink, orange and purple. Just adding a bit of fun to the reading process. :)

Feeling under the weather. Hope it passes soon.

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Funny things in class

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:24:56 GMT

Whilst listening to the discussion about what happens in a partnership when a partner dies, I found a new pet peeve:

"When someone dies" is not the same as "when someone passes on".

And what is even more annoying: "when someone passes"

I don't mind so much "passes away" but wtf is "passes on"? Passes on what? She passed on the baton to her teammate?

***

Classmates whom I guess are trying to cover their asses while expressing opinions use a surfeit of expressions such as "it seems to me", "it seems", etc. I feel like I could create a drinking game out it this.

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