Comments on: Things I’ve learned in law school, part 1 of…well, a lot http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/ Ramblings on software, law, and the spaces in between. Wed, 23 May 2012 07:48:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Poleris's Bookmarks on Delicious http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-30107 Poleris's Bookmarks on Delicious Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:36:04 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-30107 <!--%kramer-ref-pre%-->[...] Luis Villa's Internet Home / Things I’ve learned in law school, part 1 of…well, a lot SAVE [...]<!--%kramer-ref-post%--> Kramer auto Pingback[...] Luis Villa's Internet Home / Things I’ve learned in law school, part 1 of…well, a lot SAVE [...]

]]> By: Some Things Learned in a Week or so of Law School http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-29670 Some Things Learned in a Week or so of Law School Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:11:42 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-29670 [...] From Tie Guy: [...] [...] From Tie Guy: [...]

]]> By: Harish Mallipeddi - First week at Columbia Law School by a GNOME hacker http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-29483 Harish Mallipeddi - First week at Columbia Law School by a GNOME hacker Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:36:31 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-29483 <!--%kramer-ref-pre%-->[...] First week at Columbia Law School by a GNOME hacker Luis Villa (one of the hackers at PlanetGnome) blogs about the observations he made during his first week of law school. Personally I have always wanted to see how it would be if a computer geek ever went to law school. There you go! Read Things I’ve learned in law school, part 1 of…well, a lot [...]<!--%kramer-ref-post%--> Kramer auto Pingback[...] First week at Columbia Law School by a GNOME hacker Luis Villa (one of the hackers at PlanetGnome) blogs about the observations he made during his first week of law school. Personally I have always wanted to see how it would be if a computer geek ever went to law school. There you go! Read Things I’ve learned in law school, part 1 of…well, a lot [...]

]]> By: Luis Villa’s Blog / The Plan, for now http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-29126 Luis Villa’s Blog / The Plan, for now Sun, 03 May 2009 14:49:51 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-29126 [...] I’ve decided to take Orrick up on that offer, and I’m very excited that the non-profit I’m going to work with is Mozilla. I’ll be working with Moz’s general counsel, Harvey Anderson, on a variety of issues; some of them of broad interest (which I’ll discuss more here once appropriate) but some (hopefully) of the nitty-gritty unpleasant type that all lawyers are expected to handle, and which I’d like to get some experience doing. Hopefully it’ll leave me some time on the side to write and publish a bit, and maybe even read some fiction for fun, which I’ve done damnably little of since August 2006. [...] [...] I’ve decided to take Orrick up on that offer, and I’m very excited that the non-profit I’m going to work with is Mozilla. I’ll be working with Moz’s general counsel, Harvey Anderson, on a variety of issues; some of them of broad interest (which I’ll discuss more here once appropriate) but some (hopefully) of the nitty-gritty unpleasant type that all lawyers are expected to handle, and which I’d like to get some experience doing. Hopefully it’ll leave me some time on the side to write and publish a bit, and maybe even read some fiction for fun, which I’ve done damnably little of since August 2006. [...]

]]> By: Luis Villa’s Blog » Banning Laptops in Classrooms- a Student View http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-4382 Luis Villa’s Blog » Banning Laptops in Classrooms- a Student View Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:27:18 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-4382 [...] [Cross-posted from First Movers; comments off here but on over there.] In the Contracts and Civ Pro classes I just finished yesterday, laptops were banned and ’strongly discouraged’, respectively. At the beginning of the semester, I described this as understandable but ‘regressive and damaging’, so I thought it was fair to revisit this, especially since Prof. Dorf blogged his own thoughts on the experience in our Civ Pro class. Some thoughts in response to his post and my own at the beginning of the semester: [...] [...] [Cross-posted from First Movers; comments off here but on over there.] In the Contracts and Civ Pro classes I just finished yesterday, laptops were banned and ’strongly discouraged’, respectively. At the beginning of the semester, I described this as understandable but ‘regressive and damaging’, so I thought it was fair to revisit this, especially since Prof. Dorf blogged his own thoughts on the experience in our Civ Pro class. Some thoughts in response to his post and my own at the beginning of the semester: [...]

]]> By: Matej Cepl http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-2307 Matej Cepl Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:06:49 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2307 BTW, google for "mcdonald's spilled coffee million damage" -- you will get hundreds of pages explaining the real background of the case. For example http://www.usalaw.com/a-gen-McDonald's-spilled-coffee.html Matej BTW, google for “mcdonald’s spilled coffee million damage” — you will get hundreds of pages explaining the real background of the case. For example http://www.usalaw.com/a-gen-McDonald's-spilled-coffee.html

Matej

]]> By: Matej Cepl http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-2306 Matej Cepl Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:52:55 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2306 Hi, I am actually going in just opposite direction -- from lawyer I would love to be a professional geek (aka system/network admin). Concerning the woman with McDonald's coffee, I would suggest everybody this book http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Tort-Law-Thomas-Koenig/dp/0814747582/ borrow it somewhere in the Library, it is well written and interesting. You would learn that for example McDonalds' for years ignored industry standards (there is apparently pretty sharp distinction between temperature of coffee which when spilled is just unpleasant and when it is actually dangerous for your health), that there were hundreds of other cases, where McDonalds' settled out of the court, with NDA attached, and that actually the lady has third-degree burns all over her lower parts (because of the first item in my list). Of course, these things are not told you by Jay Leno, who is sometimes recklessly ignoring anything which doesn't make his story funny (I know, it is his job, but on the other hand, there should be some professional responsibility, IMHO). And so no. Crows are not what they seem to be! Matěj Hi,

I am actually going in just opposite direction — from lawyer I would love to be a professional geek (aka system/network admin). Concerning the woman with McDonald’s coffee, I would suggest everybody this book http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Tort-Law-Thomas-Koenig/dp/0814747582/
borrow it somewhere in the Library, it is well written and interesting.

You would learn that for example McDonalds’ for years ignored industry standards (there is apparently pretty sharp distinction between temperature of coffee which when spilled is just unpleasant and when it is actually dangerous for your health), that there were hundreds of other cases, where McDonalds’ settled out of the court, with NDA attached, and that actually the lady has third-degree burns all over her lower parts (because of the first item in my list). Of course, these things are not told you by Jay Leno, who is sometimes recklessly ignoring anything which doesn’t make his story funny (I know, it is his job, but on the other hand, there should be some professional responsibility, IMHO). And so no. Crows are not what they seem to be!

Matěj

]]> By: for every action -- andy wingo http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-2155 for every action -- andy wingo Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:07:44 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2155 [...] Luis records his law school perceptions, which I find very interesting. (Since I first wrote this he’s written a bit more; exercise for the reader.) The fellow has a lot of human perspective. [...] [...] Luis records his law school perceptions, which I find very interesting. (Since I first wrote this he’s written a bit more; exercise for the reader.) The fellow has a lot of human perspective. [...]

]]> By: Luis Villa’s Blog » taking on giants and living to tell, and misc. law school thoughts http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-2051 Luis Villa’s Blog » taking on giants and living to tell, and misc. law school thoughts Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:20 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-2051 [...] We wrestled a lot with the notion of language at stopbadware- how to define badness beyond a porn-like ‘know it when I see it‘. Ed__ said it well in one of the comments to my post about law school- there is no ENGLISH99, and it is all downhill from there. :) [For any non-coders reading this, ‘C99′ is the standard that tells coders exactly what the ‘C’ language means. No ambiguity, no penumbras, no emanations. Those kinds of things drive coders (all engineers, really) out of their minds. To see an example of what coders have done to give english slightly more reliability, see the RFC on language for RFCs, which specifies what words like ‘MUST’, ‘SHOULD’, etc., mean in a technical context.] Tangentially, the slipperiness of language here at law school has made it clear that this will be more fertile ground for the politicized teaching that I keep hearing a lot about but never seriously saw at Duke. Should be interesting, especially as my own political views have gotten more defined and slightly less mainstream (on either side) since I left Duke. [...] [...] We wrestled a lot with the notion of language at stopbadware- how to define badness beyond a porn-like ‘know it when I see it‘. Ed__ said it well in one of the comments to my post about law school- there is no ENGLISH99, and it is all downhill from there. :) [For any non-coders reading this, ‘C99′ is the standard that tells coders exactly what the ‘C’ language means. No ambiguity, no penumbras, no emanations. Those kinds of things drive coders (all engineers, really) out of their minds. To see an example of what coders have done to give english slightly more reliability, see the RFC on language for RFCs, which specifies what words like ‘MUST’, ‘SHOULD’, etc., mean in a technical context.] Tangentially, the slipperiness of language here at law school has made it clear that this will be more fertile ground for the politicized teaching that I keep hearing a lot about but never seriously saw at Duke. Should be interesting, especially as my own political views have gotten more defined and slightly less mainstream (on either side) since I left Duke. [...]

]]> By: Josh http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/comment-page-1/#comment-1992 Josh Sun, 27 Aug 2006 02:33:07 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/08/25/things-ive-learned-in-law-school-part-1-ofwell-a-lot/#comment-1992 "hard to read any substantial amount of product liability law cases before realizing that increased litigiousness has done a great deal for our society" : try reading the one about the woman who received 1 million $ after burning her mouth on hot coffee ;-) Sure responsibility for ones actions can be "good", anyhow it's human nature : one does something bad, one gets ones ass kicked. However when it gets to the point that severe punishment is handed out for small acts of violation, or even accidents, I believe it has a notable effect on society - it makes people scared, and scared people aren't the nicest people. Overdoing things in this respect is, I believe, a factor in the alienation we see in many societies today, more than you may think... probably not as much as favouring punishment over rehabilitation though ;) I do realise that you are not advocating this, but I'm just using the occasion to mention a point of view that fewer and fewer would even consider. “hard to read any substantial amount of product liability law cases before realizing that increased litigiousness has done a great deal for our society” : try reading the one about the woman who received 1 million $ after burning her mouth on hot coffee ;-)

Sure responsibility for ones actions can be “good”, anyhow it’s human nature : one does something bad, one gets ones ass kicked. However when it gets to the point that severe punishment is handed out for small acts of violation, or even accidents, I believe it has a notable effect on society – it makes people scared, and scared people aren’t the nicest people. Overdoing things in this respect is, I believe, a factor in the alienation we see in many societies today, more than you may think… probably not as much as favouring punishment over rehabilitation though ;)

I do realise that you are not advocating this, but I’m just using the occasion to mention a point of view that fewer and fewer would even consider.

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