Closed Memo Update

For context, law school is going well!

I like the readings and the classes (except Crim Law, makes me nauseous).

All of our cases are interesting and often have funny party names with hilarious backgrounds. The greatest example of this is Beaver v. Brumlow (2010), where the appelants (Beavers) own a race horse transportation business and employ the appellees (Brumlows).

The Beavers bought a large piece of land and invited the Brumlows to purchase a small parcel of it and build a house. The Brumlows cash in their retirement fund and bring a mobile home onto the property. They live there for three years, but the Beavers refuse to give them a deed.

The relationship deteriorates further when Michael Brumlow betrays Beaver and runs off to work with a competitor in the horse transport business.

The Beavers want to evict them.

The Brumlows sue the Beavers for breach of contract and want specific performance (as they should!).  The Beavers argue that this “contract” falls under the Statute of Frauds and the case should be dismissed. It’s a classic villain move.

On the other side, the Brumlows say that this situation is an exception to the Statute of Frauds because they “tak[e] possession of the property and mak[e] valuable, permanent, and substantial improvements to it.” (Quimbee).

The Brumlows win out on their exception theory.

Speaking of wins . . .

AND . . .

My Closed Memo assignment!

A few weeks ago, I met with Professor White (Legal Research and Writing) during office hours. He is such an excellent teacher, the best from a pedagogical perspective.

We talked about his time at Notre Dame and trajectory into academia. At the end of our convo, Prof. White asked me, “What is your greatest legal ambition?” I said I wanted to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I regretted saying it. It’s such an outlandish goal at a T50 school hahahaha.

Whatever, it was fine. He was nice about it.

A few weeks later, we have the closed memo conference and mine is in a rough spot. An Amazon delivery driver ran me off of PCH earlier in the week and I didn’t devote enough time to the memo draft.

So, for this meeting I brought this confusing, meandering, stream of consciousness draft with no citations (and I incorrectly wrote “Pickens” instead of “Skippins” throughout the entire thing).  

When Prof. White saw it, I’m sure he was like, “This is so bad. You’re delusional if you think you’re going to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice.”

I didn’t feel great about the meeting, but I was motivated to implement Prof. White’s suggestions. A big problem with it was that I wasn’t following the writing formula exactly like Prof. White explained in class.

It was disorganized and rambling. I re-drafted a few more times and did the Bluebooking. I went through the rubric and revised some more. I felt like it needed more, but the deadline came and I had to submit it.

These were my scores:

Issue Statement: 4

Brief Answer: 4

Statement of Facts: 5

Discussion: 44

Rules/Roadmap Paragraph: 7

Rule Explanation Paragraphs: Mobaldi/Kriventsov (9); Kately/Trapp (9);

Analysis Paragraphs: Mobaldi/Kriventsov (9); Kately/Trapp (8)

Conclusion: 2

Bluebook: 4 (just a few errors re: commas and periods not going inside quotes and one missing citation)

Writing Style, Grammar, Punctuation, and Mechanics: 9

Paragraph Structure: 1 (topic sentences not as strong as they could have been; see comments)

Sentence Structure: 2 (you are an outstandingly good writer)

Word Choice: 2 (I caught one instance of passive voice, but I’ll let it slide given that your other word choices were so powerful)

Proofreading: 2 (grammatical parallelism was lacking at several points, but that’s a nuanced enough concept that taking off points would be too punitive)

Mechanics: 2

Overall: 70 (wow!)

I’ve been stressing about how risky it is to be investing this much money into a legal education at a T-50 school. We just took midterms, and it’s not like I did terrible in my other classes (B+ in writing & MCQ for Crim; Check + in writing & 3/8 in MCQ for Civ Pro; 24/30 for Contracts).

But, I need to be towards the top of my class. And I feel the pressure.

So, getting a result like this on a graded, writing assignment felt really good.