First, I should note that, when I took the torts test yesterday morning (at my apartment...I saw little point in going into the law school to do that which I could do in the comfort of my own home), I got a 24. If you'll recall my post from yesterday, according to Feinberg, if you're getting half at this point, that's really good. So, let's hope that keeps up.

Adventures with Feinberg continued unabated in Room 1013 of the College of Law yesterday afternoon, although, mercifully, the temperature was back to a normal state. The man has two verbal devices I forgot to relate on Monday: "Gang, you need to know your enemies. And your enemies are the national conference of bar examiners. They are trying to make these as tricky as possible. They want to take food out of your family's mouth." Slightly extreme. Better yet, after a difficult question..."That's tricky! That's tough! That's...the Multistate!" He says this so much, the entire room is repeating it with him by the end. It appears to be this guy's intention to create memorization by irritation. I hope it works; else I will just be irritated.

A few other moments worth remembering or forgetting, I'm not sure which: First, if you want to create a collective gasp in a roomful of law school graduates, just announce that last year, 72,000 people took the bar exam and 26,000 failed it. (I haten to note I did not join in this gasp; I look on the bright side, that 48,000 passed it. I guess maybe only slightly more than a third of the class gasped. ;-) )

Feinberg has certain questions where he asks if you picked a certain answer and, if you did, he then proceeds to say what a dumb choice that was, in not so many words. He did that, and people again raised their hands, whereupon, he pointed (from behind his video screen) and said, "That guy's raised his hands every time I've asked the question. Has he gotten anything right?" Heh. Heh.

But, by far, the most memorable was the story of the meter maid. Now, this takes a little explaining. In New York Times vs. Sullivan, the Supreme Court made it very difficult for public officials (think the President, the governor, the mayor, et cetera) to sue people for defaming them unless you can show actual malice. The idea is this will make people feel free to criticize the government. Well, there was a question about a letter that was sent about a police officer and the question had to do with whether or not he was, as a public employee, a public official.

"Well, that's not true!" Feinberg bellowed, "otherwise that would mean every meter maid was a public official. They're not public officials! They're public nuisances! I ran into one of them a few weeks ago." I sensed a major detour that was going to put me no closer to passing the bar. "I had parked somehwere for a few seconds and I came back and here's this guy writing me a ticket.

"So, I said, 'Please, I'm just leaving,' but he said he'd already started writing it. So I said, "OK. Let me ask you a question. Do you have kids? He said he had two, ages seven and eleven. And I asked him, 'When they do, what does my daddy do, are they proud to say their daddy's a meter maid?'" We all gasped at how nasty this guy was. He must have known we were going to do that, because he moved quickly to the next question.

At the end of the day, he laid out what he said should be our study schedule; although, judging from the reactions of the class, it is unlikely many folks are planning to follow it. When the Barbri class starts in a few weeks, he suggests we go to the Barbri class from 9-12; then from 1-5 studying the outlines given in the particular topic lectured on that day by Barbri, PMBR and Conviser. From 7-8:30, we should do fifty questions in that area, and then from 8:30-10, review the answers. People reacted with some horror to this idea. Although it may not be as bad, because I've been getting through these questions pretty quickly.

Speaking of which, I'm off to do evidence!