My youngest roommie

This is Molly, my youngest roommate, after we discovered the fun features on my webcam... just thought I'd add a visual to go along with the previous post.

I don't know what's scarier

This morning Mollie (my latest roommate, age 18 months) and I were walking down a very big flight of stairs after blowdrying our hair. She tripped on her jeans and flew face down the stairs (we were at the very top) for about 2-3 stairs before I caught her, literally by the crotch of her pants. She cried for all of 1.5 minutes but it took me MUCH longer to recover. I think it'll be a while before we do stairs together again. An hour later I was sitting on the sofa playing websudoku and got the crap scared out of me again as 2 huge dogs came bounding in the house and went straight for my head. They're the newest visitors this week.... I'm hoping my allergies hold up.

Suffice it to say that today has seen too many surprises for me.

2 hour lunch! :)

The nice thing about juvenile court is that it doesn't resume until 1:30 in the afternoon - that means, if i finish my morning work in time for an early lunch (like around 11:30) and want to take the afternoon to observe in juvenile court (which my boss is okay with), then I have a 2 hour lunch! :)


So today, during my 2 hour lunch, I discovered what is quickly becoming my preferred law firm for my 2L job: not-so-heinous-firm
One of my biggest concerns this summer has been the fact that of all the firms doing On Campus Interviewing this fall, very few of them have practice areas I'm actually interested in and NONE are from Denver. So this one looks really promising although I could be in trouble b/c they seem to have a strong preference for people who go to Colorado schools, but here's hoping!

Question: does any law student out there know, if I'm applying by sending them a resume and cover letter on my own, what's the earliest I can/should do that?

And speaking of applying for jobs for next summer, since whenever you google my name and school, this blog comes up, i'm thinking of changing it up a little. Hopefully all I'll have to change is my profile to get this site to stop popping up in google, otherwise, I might have to take it down for a while or move it.

Today I'm done being a 1L!

That may sound weird to say now that it's 5 weeks after my last final and one week after I got all my grades, but this morning I finally mailed in my writing competition entry and this is the first time I've felt like my 1L year is finally over. Here's hoping I get on to a journal now - I don't know that the entry was good enough for Law Review, but I don't think it sucked.

Hooray, I'm officially a twol!

It pays to do your bailiff's homework!

So yesterday I spent most of the day observing (per usual) and in the afternoon I went to a trial that another intern, Jennifer, had been observing already for most of the day. Apparently, the bailiff in there had been bugging her, trying to get her to do his outline for him. The outline was for a speech that he had to deliver later that night for his communications class. She flat out refused, but later that afternoon when we ran into him another court room, I started asking questions about the outline and before I knew it he had his computer in my lap with his outline up and his speech up and had me working on it.

In reality, I didn't do much, I just read them both - he had already started the outline and was doing fine and the speech was entirely written. I was just curious. So I made a lame comment or two about how maybe he should stick this segment into that box on the outline (the outline was actually a template the professor had given them and he was expected to fill it in), and didn't actually do anything for him. (Which he blamed Jennifer for, entirely. He said that she was screwing everything up for him. ;>) The whole thing was just kinda entertaining and this morning when I ran into him, I asked him how it went.

It went well, apparently - he won the award for best speech in the class. So then we randomly started chatting about various other things and I mentioned how I went to the gas station this morning to get a soda b/c i'm exhausted! (haven't slept well for a couple of nights) It wasn't till I got into the gas station that I remembered that you can't bring liquids through security in juvenile court. So I was screwed.

Low and behold, apparently, in a back room that you need employee access (like the kind a bailiff has) to get to, the court reporters keep a big canteen of all sorts of food and drinks. JACKPOT! instant caffeine. I was soooo grateful, I might just spend the rest of my summer running around the court house seeing if there are any bailiffs who need their homework done for them. :)

I will never sleep again!

I just woke up from a nap to discover that I missed my sister Courtney's only call so far this summer. FLIP! New plan: I will never sleep again. She's at camp - so the only person who gets to use the phone less than she does is her bf who is in boot camp. I tried to call her back, but it's been so long since I've called her, I forgot her number on speed dial. and I got her voice mail anyway.

Week 2 of work is over, and I did a naughty thing and left work early today. The problem is my boss is out of town and there were all of 5 people in the office, none of whom could give me any work. Here's hoping they don't fire unpaid interns for leaving at 2:30 on Fridays...


This weekend will be very low-key for me. I'm locking myself in and finishing this darned writing competition entry. Which means I'll have very little human contact with other people because the family I live with is out of town. I see this as going very badly.... be prepared for some very dark, sad entries. I don't handle being alone very well.

(p.s. I realize this post is really long and rambling for the squat amount of interesting info it conveys. you're going to have to deal though, I'm a dull, self-involved person. ;>)

Why have a blog???

Yesterday morning, I found myself getting frustrated because I was bored and trying to read people's blogs, but none of my regular blogs had been updated in a while. I found myself muttering out loud: well, why have a blog if you aren't going to update???

Pot calling the kettle black. Obviously.

SOOO - the job has started, and while I've come close to posting a couple of really interesting stories on here many times, I stopped myself because I'm not actually sure how much information I'm allowed to share. But as for general observations, now I'm really glad I opted for this internship over the public defenders - from what i've seen of the PDs, I was not at all impressed. I even saw one case where an attorney came to represent his client (who was incarcerated at the time) in a termination proceeding (meaning that the state had filed to have his parental rights terminated forever) and the darned PD hadn't even contacted his client! I've found that a lot of them are so disheartened or jaded that they barely even represent their clients at all, let alone to the best of their abilities.

Meanwhile, this job is different than what I thought it would be in a lot of ways. For example, so much of what I've been doing is actually parent-focused. Basically, if there is a case for abuse or neglect and the children are removed from the home, then the focus switches to what services the state can provide the parents and have those parents completed them. There isn't a really wholistic evaluation of the problem or situation or causes or solutions as far as I can tell, just an evaluation of is this person mentally competent, and if so, what services should we make him/her do before he/she can get the kids back. But the services are really limited to services the state already provides (like substance abuse, parenting classes, domestic violence classes, etc.). So in court, usually we sit down for any given case and just discuss what services the parent has or has not completed, and typically, there isn't even an evaluation of what put the parents in the courtroom in the first place. So it's not a very thorough system in as much as it doesn't really address the problem as a whole and how to solve it or whether it's solved.

That said, I do enjoy watching the process. The job isn't as sad as I thought it might be - mostly our cases involve substance abuse on the part of the parents. Although there have been some really sad cases of molest where it's pretty certain that the kids are going right back to the home (and in one case this will be for the 3rd time) without anyone ever being charged with molestation or treated for that kind of a problem. My favorite part of the job so far is probably mediation - those occur when the state has initiated termination suits against the parents and the parents and the foster parents sit down to try and work out a guardianship or an adoptive agreement or whatnot, without the use of a judge or courts. My second favorite part of the job are the characters in the courtrooms cuz between the judges and the bailiffs, you never know what will be said. One judge got annoyed when a mother who gave birth to a crack baby asked why she can't have her baby back. She leans over the bench, looks her straight in the eye, and yells: BECAUSE YOU POISONED HER!!!! well put, I thought.

Let's see... not much else in my life. I might be getting a part time job at a country club soon though - keeping my fingers crossed. But for now I've rambled for so long that I should get back to work.