Lawl school stories

I've been working various part-time jobs at the Cornell Law School during the last 3.5 years, including library assistant, Interlibrary Book and Copy Service, A/V tech support, and computer lab consultant. I don't think I ever fully knew my way around the corridors and stairways of the law school until this semester. There are so many secret shortcuts you can take through doors and stairs.

One perk of working with the A/V team is filming all-day law school events. Of course, you're stuck in a room for most of the day, but they have free food (usually breakfast and lunch). This weekend and next weekend are the Trial Advocacy finales downtown in the real courtrooms.

The mock trial cases are interesting sometimes. Today's was interesting in particular. In the beginning of the trial, it felt like the objection rulings were always in the defense's favor (despite the numerous objections that the plaintiff's team threw out), but at the end of the trial when the defense called up their last witness to testify as an expert, they were unable to have her admitted as an expert. Three times the defense tried to lay foundation questions for expertise of their witness in a different (but related) field, and three times an objection against the defense was sustained. It must be very frustrating to prepare questions for a witness that you couldn't actually ask because they could not be identified as an expert, but it was impressive how calm the law students were.

I think that watching mock trials for the Trial Advocacy class for 4 semesters has familiarized me with some legal jargon, but if I use legal jargon in my everyday language, I'd be talking about stuff that I know nothing about. I feel more comfortable sticking with cameras and projectors.