The Bitter Law Student

Adventures in the Meat Market (aka Three Degrees Below Freezing)

In life, I have just recently learned that there are TWO forms of meat markets: I've known for quite a while about the kind that you expose yourself to at the bar (You know, where you go downtown with some friends to kick back. You hit the bar and then the dance floor, and before you know it, you're shoving away drunken morons who think that putting their hand on your ass is a great way to get you back to their apartment at the end of the night.) So yeah, I knew about THAT meat market... Unfortunately. (And no, the "hand-on-the-ass" thing did NOT work, at least not with me.)

There is ANOTHER meat market out there, though. It's the meat market that I've been working in every day this summer. As far as just-completed-their-first-year-of-law-school students go, I've got a fairly cushy job. The pay is good and I'm researching/assisting on a case that will have an ENORMOUS impact on asbestos litigation in the future, as well as being one of the largest class action lawsuits in the history of the State. That's the part that looks good on my resume.

But you know, great looking resume or not, this job definitely has some downfalls, one of which being the temperature that the office (or at least the room I work in) is kept at.... which is three degrees below freezing. I'm exaggerating a little. But not much. I feel like I'm a slacker (which is funny because I'm fairly certain that I'm the most productive out of all the legal interns, but as the Anonymous Cog may want to argue with me, QUANTITY and QUALITY are not the same things. However, I'm not dealing with people. I'm dealing with coding documents, which requires no customer service. I stand by my numbers. :) ) because I am doing nowhere NEAR the amount of work that I COULD be doing if I wasn't so damn cold all the time! Does anyone else react to extreme heat or cold the same way I do: they fall asleep? I swear to God, I spend half the day shivering and the other half trying to stay awake. I need one of those machines straight out of A Clockwork Orange in order to keep my eyes open. I wonder if there's a market for that?

Anyway, this entry is taking a lot longer than it should, but that's for good reason, because I just got pulled out of researching in the asbestos world and got assigned a mini-research project, which meant that I got to put my rockin' legal research skills to use on something! Woo hoo! Now THAT made the day fly by. :) Nothing like delving into a new chunk of the law, as well as applying my knowledge of the Rules of Civil Procedure, to brighten my day. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I've been so burnt out with the monotony of this job (time of employment: 2 months) that I actually kinda forgot how much I love the law. It's days like today (and other days where we find a document that strengthens our case... most days, we're just sorting through a GIGANTIC stack of papers that is literally neverending) that remind me of why I want to be a lawyer. But, I'm not gonna schmooze all sentimental about my love of the law, because that's not fun to read.

What IS fun to read, however, is the ongoing saga of O.J. Simpson, who just got busted... AGAIN. Or what about the man who won the annual bad-writing contest? Doesn't THAT just give a whole new meaning to, "Oh, baby, you're looking better than a new set of snow tires?"

Oh, lord. On THAT note....

posted by The BLS @ 7/28/2005 03:30:00 PM