After a couple of years where things seemed torked out of perspective by events beyond my control, I have a new hobby. I am going to law school. Okay, not exactly, but I am sort of going to law school in a roundabout fashion. I have bought the first year of law school lectures on audio CDs (30 CDs) from the Law School Legends Series (Gilbert Law Summaries), and I plan to dig my way through them and then move on through as many as I can.
I hear my attorney friends snickering.
So far I have gone through seven lectures – three on property law and four about criminal law. I’m sure there is an order I need to follow, but I figure after OJ’s trial, more than a few viewings of Gerry Spence on “Larry King Live,” “L.A. Law,” “Law & Order” and “Boston Legal,” I can practice law as well as people who believe they are qualified to do what I have spent 25 years doing. Besides, I have seen every single legal movie from “To Kill a Mockingbird” to “Fractured.” It’s a long list of legal movies: http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/law-505/movies/atozlist.htm
There’s an education that will give you just enough information to be dangerous – to yourself, if not everyone else. According to those who know, however, the course I am going through is the source used by people who have been to law school are preparing for the bar exam.
I let an attorney friend listen to a few lectures and he said, “Geez, if I’d had that, I could have partied harder and still passed law school.” I doubt that would have been humanly possible (the party harder part).
So my plan is to listen to all of these CDs twice, take notes, then listen to the CDs with the notes and, after all of that, maybe I’ll take the bar exam. Scary thought, isn’t it? Me practicing law.
Being from the Deep South and having seen poverty up close and personal, I have close relatives who have been on the receiving end of the law in a hard way on more than a few occasions. I have been there myself a time or two. As anyone who has ever heard a string of legal terms uncorked by an attorney in court knows, ignorance of such dark secrets is no fun. Finally, I can read a contract or an insurance policy, just for the fun of it. I can’t wait to dig into that cell phone agreement.
After rearing three children, it seems that almost every decision these days involves a legal dilemma of some kind. A person can’t even die without an attorney. So at the end of the lectures and notes and study, what do I have to lose? Even if I don’t pass the bar, I will know more than the average Joe about such things as volitional acts, accomplice liability, conspiracy, inchoate crimes, specific intent and the difference between murder and first-degree murder. I am getting a heavy dose of real property law as well, churning through everything from complete defeasance to adverse possession and extortion, burglary and arson. I’ve been in a fire, so just reading about the legal aspects of one is much preferred.
These lectures are what the students at the law schools at SMU, Southern Cal, Emory and several others hear when they go to class. At my age, this is called fun. I went to school too early to appreciate the knowledge to be collected by just showing up and giving a smelly pinch. I made straight A’s and seldom cracked a book, but that was back when A’s were easy. God was in the third grade and I was in the first. Granted, these lectures are like wading through cane syrup on a cold day, but if you look at it as a sport, it’s truly enjoyable.
Some people say my extracurricular activities in jurisprudence are just another eccentricity, of which I have many. Yes, of course, absolutely. I stabbed myself before a fight once so I wouldn’t be shocked by that possibility in the scuffle. This doesn’t hurt like that. Besides, these professors are entertaining.
Some people hunt. Some play golf. Some collect stamps. Some spend hours in front of a computer living a digital life in a fake world on the Internet. So Abe Lincoln-ing my way through law school doesn’t seem that strange to me. And if I screw around and pass the bar and find a way to practice law, then what?
Guess I’ll see you in court.