Grades, Hearsay, and Bugs That Should Never Be In The House

The last piece of my 1L year showed up this week: grades. With one semester a little above and one semester a little below, my cumulative GPA for the year is about 3.0.

Law school has a reputation for cutthroat competitiveness. W&M doesn’t really live up to that reputation; the atmosphere here is best (and appropriately) described as collegial. But there is still an unavoidable undercurrent of worry about grades.

One of my professors acknowledged this last semester as he tried to allay fears about his final exam (on which a good grade is somewhere around 60%, if I remember correctly). “No one gets a C…” he told us with a shrug.

I don’t know if that is always true, but I am content to have a B average.

Truth be told, I’m even a little relieved. That relief goes two ways: I’m relieved that my grades are high enough to still qualify for in-state tuition next year, and I’m relieved to not have the pressure of really high grades. There’s something liberating in knowing they aren’t perfect, but they’re good enough.

The posting of grades gives me one other bonus: now I can clean out that stack of paper I was holding onto just in case of grading problems. (Law school uses a surprisingly large amount of actual paper. That took some getting used to after working in an office that was moving steadily in a paperless direction.)

Meanwhile, after two weeks we are about halfway through summer classes.

In Evidence we’ve just begun discussing hearsay. Hearsay is an out-of-court statement given as evidence (in court) that a fact is true. It has been the bane of law students (and probably lawyers and judges) for generations. The rule has, at minimum, 28 exceptions. It’s like telling a child that bedtime is at 8:00…unless the toys aren’t put away… or unless teeth aren’t brushed…or unless it’s Christmas …or unless there’s a monster in the closet…or unless they really need a drink…

There are good reasons for the hearsay rule. And there are good reasons for the exceptions. It’s just unavoidably messy.

In Professional Responsibility, my most frequent reaction is that the “problem” wouldn’t really be a problem with the simple application of morality. But we aren’t studying morality. We are studying ethics, which is a minimum, fuzzy standard of good conduct.

That being said, I think most lawyers hold themselves to a higher standard than the bare minimum. Yes, there are some who take advantage of loopholes and grey areas (and the legal profession is perhaps more susceptible to that than many other professions), but there are so many lawyers who really want to make a positive difference.

The York River (just outside of Yorktown)

Other happenings for the week include a run/walk through the woods (the volume of foliage here is still amazing to me), a staring contest with a deer in the woods (the deer won), and a nice Sunday drive down to Yorktown (a fun little water-front town which I’d like to explore some more).

I also caught one of these in my apartment:

I still think the bug population here is a bit excessive.