contracts haiku

Contracts and I don't connect. I don't know why, whether it's my prof, the cases, or the judgments that seem all over the map. Anyways, in most contracts classes my main goal is not to stick my pencil in my eye. My latest efforts to avoid a pencil-stabbing incident has been rewriting the few laws of contracts I have learned in the form of haiku. Here for your reading pleasure are my first contracts haikus, more will follow and possibly even some haikus from other classes as well.

offer and accept
the reasonable person
it is up to them

--

the objective test
is in fact nothing more than
judges’ opinion

what would diefenbaker do?

This photo is from early October. It's me at Diefenbaker's grave, which is located on campus, not far from the law school. Diefenbaker, one of Canada's best Prime Ministers is from Saskatchewan, was a graduate from the College of Law and was the true prairie populist.

To this day my Dad still has Diefenbaker's One Canada books, and one is even signed by Dief himself. Diefenbaker gave Canada its first Bill of Rights, long before there was a Charter (more on my views of the Charter in later posts). Across the road from the law school is the Diefenbaker Centre which is a hidden treasure for political junkies like me. It is a great resource for information on him and what he's done for Canada.

Anyways, take some time to look him up, see what he did, and then when you're faced with a dilemma you can ask yourself "what would diefenbaker do?".

(maybe you'll get) lucky

For those hoping the title of this post indicates a dramatic change in my social life, 'fraid not my friends. I was driving the other day when I heard this song on the radio. Since then it's been thumping, thumping it's way around my brain. I'm passing it on in hopes it will get out of my head at least for a while.

take a memo

Well, those who have done law school will understand this post, it's all about the Memo. The 'office memo' appears to be a standard part of a lawyer's practice. In the memo, you review the facts, identify issues, analyze the law as it applies to the specific situation and provide a conclusion. This is also known as a legal opinion. From what I understand, as a lawyer I will be writing these for the rest of my working life (inset joyous cheer here).

Interestingly enough given how critical the office memo appears to be, we only do them twice in law school, in first year, in the first three months when no one has a clue what they are doing. As you may have guessed, I just completed and handed in my second memo, so this post may have a bitter, post-memo feel.

Writing the memo is a frustrating experience becuase you are not given any direction on how to write a memo, just told to do it. Upper year students will pass on words of wisdom such as "the answer is in the textbook" and "don't expect to do well, they don't tell you how to do it for a reason", but the typical type-A competitive law student stereotype clicks in and you want to do well, so you spend days researching trying to find that "one case" that will rule all the others. All this work goes into the 8-10 pages we have to write in each memo, which combined are worth a total of 16 marks in the final mark of one class. There must be a better way than the trial by fire, we teach thinking, not skills approach of most universities.

It's too bad really, because I have probably learned more doing the memos than in class. Anyways, the memo is dead, long live the memo!

post one

Well, so begins my self-indulgent trip into the blogsophere. For those who are used to my verbal rants or the strange inner-ramblings of my mind, nothing on this blog should be much of a surprise. For those not used to these things, fasten your seat belts it's going to be a long and bumpy ride. Hopefully, you'll find everything from the mundane to the outrageous. And to that certain someone who said "you should start a blog, so I know what's going on with you", well here you go...be careful of what you wish for!