Dissertation Update

Yes, in between job apps, work, blawging and all the rest, I am managing to get a bit of this damned dissertation done. I’ve written my first 1200 words so have at least got the thing off the ground.

As ever when writing extended papers such as these, my planned structure has evolved  - nearly out of all recognition.  Come to think of it, I think ‘blown out of the water’ might be a more suitable phrase.

But it’s actually all quite positive. I’ve successfully wrestled the myriad of disjointed fragments that my dissertation synopsis consisted off into one (vaguely) harmonious whole. For the most part, I’m very happy that I did choose this topic, despite my somewhat wobbly start.  I feel I know where I’m going with it, have got a rough but logical chapter outline and feel I’ve given myself good scope for whacking plenty of critical analysis in there. Yes, the dissertation seems to be firmly on track, people.

Let’s hope I’m still saying that in a few weeks time.

Open Source Law Student

As I edge ever closer to the dreaded LLM territory, I’ve been giving increasing thought to an idea I had earlier this year re my computer needs on this course and whether using open source solutions is a viable option. Can a law student successfully get by with just free open source and cloud-based options and still turn in the multitude of essays and other work required? Would I really trust Open Office with my precious dissertation or, God help me, Google Docs? Is either option even man enough for the job? Given that the latter doesn’t even support the inclusion of footnotes, I think we can quickly answer that.

So as the world heads further and further down the path of the cloud computing paradigm, much has been made of whether the traditional desktop apps are already becoming obsolete. Opinions differ of course, though I think the consensus would fall on the side of ‘we’re not there yet’. Probably, not by a long shot.

I’m certainly very curious as to whether I can survive studying an LLM using just open source software, underpinned by a battery of online cloud-based services. I certainly don’t have the unwavering confidence to place all my eggs in the open source basket and will be dual booting with Vista. But that being the case, will I resist the temptation of resorting to the tried and tested commercial programs from Microsoft, Adobe and the rest? I think I can guess the answer but it still promises to be an interesting experiment. Albeit possibly a short one.

While I haven’t definitively decided on the programs and services I’ll be using, my proposed line-up looks something like this:

• OS: Ubuntu – Hardy Heron or Opensuse 11..... probably the former.
• Office Productivity: Open Office ...If I hate writer, there’s always Abiword I suppose .... :-\
• Email: Google’s Gmail – I’ve been using this since mid 2004 anyway!
• Calendaring: Google Calendar
• Web Browser: Firefox 3.x – again I’ve been using Firefox as my primary browser since early 2004!

Roll on September so we can get this party started. Or something like that! Sigh.

Dissertation Doldrums

In the past week or so I’ve been somewhat troubled over my apparent lack of motivation to press ahead and crack out this dissertation. Although this could be attributed to pure laziness or post-exam buzz coupled with that summer-of-fun mentality that so often hits students, on reflection, I think my ill-timed inertia might be understandable.

Besides the hot weather we’re experiencing at the moment – exacerbated by my monster PC pumping out serious heat in my office – I think the postgraduate schedule conflicts with the natural yearly rhythm that’s ingrained in all law students.

The final stage of the orthodox academic cycle can be expressed thus:

Hot weather + sunny days = summer

End of exams = summer = (fun + no academic work)

Obviously having the dissertation spread out before me for the rest of the summer – we’re supposedly to spend 10 weeks wrestling with the beast – throws something of a spanner in the works. For every academic year that I can remember, the end of exams always signalled freedom from the shackles of academia – a chunk of downtime in which we could do exactly as our little hearts desired. Facing up to the reality that things are different this year has not be easy.

Fortunately, I’ve already arrived at the conclusion that procrastinating over this final hurdle of the LL.M won’t do me any favours. I’ve already done a chunk of research for it yesterday – adding considerably to my ‘depository’ of resources as well as hitting some proverbial dead ends – and have my first allotted meeting with my dissertation supervisor tomorrow.

Hopefully, that meeting will provide some help in tracking down a couple of killer sources which the university and their myriad of subscriptions seem to have circumvented entirely.  Actually, to be clear, it’s not the tracking down which is proving the problem - it’s the cost of them.  I’ve heard my uni are quite generous when it comes to subsidising sources for postgrad dissertations so fingers crossed I won’t be dipping into my personal funds over this.

How to Revise for a Law Exam

Just before the exams started, I mentioned that I might release a revision-method type post. I so often make these promises of posts which never subsequently appear so thought I’d make good on my intentions for once. I realise the exam season is pretty much over for everyone now, but I guess it might be of interest to procrastinating students next year looking for inspiration or a boost of motivation. I’m not sure this post will provide either, but the revision method I outline just might be of interest.

Way back during my A-levels, I discovered a method for revising which worked fairly well and which I’ve gone on to tweak over the past few years. I feel I’ve graduated to a revision system which works well for me, though I realise everyone is different. From personal experience, I think many students’ approach to revision is, to put it mildly, less than optimal, though I recognise that we all learn in different ways. Ultimately, though, your method needs to work well for you – and if it does so, who am I to suggest something else? That said, it doesn’t hurt to mix things up occasionally and to try a different approach; what works for me might work well for you also.

I think one of the biggest mistakes students make is to start learning the material before they’ve got a damn good set of consolidated notes. The fact that creating those notes is actually an effective means of ‘breaking you into’ the revision process is an added bonus. Taking your time at this stage can reap huge dividends later on.

Hardcore Notes

The basic objective here is to know the topic backwards - literally. That way, coupled with an effective plan in the exam, you are well placed to answer virtually any essay or problem based question on the topic at hand.

In essence, I create a list of structured points, which form the basis of my revision notes. The order is crucial and spending a fairly long time on perfecting those notes is time very well spent. If the exam is open book, think about using the natural structure of the casebook as a pointer for the order of the notes. When under the pressure of an exam, this might just save your skin and anything which means you worry less about the order of the material has got to be good – particularly when pulling out the relevant content for answering a problem question. The idea is simple: you then learn those notes inside out, being able to dip into them at any point, picking out the relevant parts for a problem question or being able to follow it through coherently for discursive essay question.

I’ve always referred to these notes as ‘hardcore notes’ – and please, don’t look at me like that! The ‘Key Facts’ books published by Hodder Education form an excellent structure for hardcore notes; in fact, for many of my subjects I used those as the basis which I complimented with my own notes. The better organised you are throughout the year, the easier it is to compliment the structured notes with your own content, of course.

Each point is usually supported by authority. Connecting case names to a particular legal principle is one of the more fun parts of the revision process where you can inject some creativity into what is often a boring and monotonous process. For instance, if there is a batch of successive cases and associated principles connected with a sub-topic, using mnemonics and the like can help recall the order.

Certain content lends itself to being tabulated and doing so adds structure around a sub-topic that can aid in recalling it. For instance, I tabulated the legal principles regarding fraudulent and wrongful trading for my recent company law exam and assigned a distinctive colour to each.

Tough Times

Certain legal topics are just killers and incredibly dry – I’m thinking back to contract law in my first year and property law, and equity and trusts, in my last. I found the only way to conquer them was to brute-force the facts into my brain. And the emphasis really is on force here; as Nigella Lawson might say, ‘this is no time for restraint’. The first step in this process involves writing out the hardcore notes by hand and then, taking it section by section, regurgitating it from memory –either through writing and/or repeating them orally. Of course, it’s crucial to pay careful attention to the order. Then, it’s a question of repeating, repeating, repeating. It’s not a method for a faint-hearted: I would go through several hundred pages of A4 paper over the course of the revision process, scrawling out regurgitated content. But seriously, once you get going, it’s not as hard as you might think. Doing so much writing has other benefits too: as you recall the facts faster as the process wears on, you find yourself writing faster – excellent practice for those impending exams. I also feel that it strengthens the writing muscles, meaning you don’t succumb to the dreaded ‘writer’s cramp’ as easily.

To spice things up, I would also practice writing the content out from memory on computer. Later on when you really know your stuff, I found it useful to brainstorm the material, using A3 sheets. I found a white board and dry wipe markers particularly efficient for this, and far less wasteful. I have even created powerpoint presentations on the material I’ve been revising. Quite how you do it doesn’t matter, but the more time you spend immersed in the material and practice reciting it in various ways, the better and more comfortable you will feel applying it in the context of an exam. I have, on occasions, even resorted to pacing around the house recalling it orally from memory. Others I know record the material and listen to it repeatedly. I never found this worked well for me as my brain tended to switch off far too easily.

In addition, I create gap-fill tests as another means of learning the material – even creating the template is a good learning experience. I found this an excellent way of learning the basic order of the notes early on in the process. Finally, as you are nearing the end of the revision process, applying the knowledge you now know very well in practicing past papers is an excellent means of final preparation – providing you don’t get too hung up on the specifics of the question in hand.

Revising the Revision Process

My hardcore notes started out at about 2.5 pages, Times New Roman, 12 point font. Over the years, they were becoming progressively longer – Company Law, Directors’ Duties weighed in at a heavy 7 and a bit pages with a ‘narrow’ margin. Back in 2005/2006 I found the need to consolidate the hardcore notes down in further by making a flowchart printed in landscape mode, in even more succinct language. This serves as a useful exercise in condensing the material down – an excellent means of revising. Making good use of colour at this stage can better improve your chances of recalling the material quickly and accurately in an exam by helping to focus your mind’s eye in recollecting the content on the page. Practicing recalling the content of the flowcharts can be done in writing, orally or through roping a friend into testing you. The flowchart makes this possible as you’re just following simple points on a list but the knowledge is in your head to expand on any point if called to do so in the exam. Don’t try thrusting the hardcore notes in front of them and asking them to test you; I think we’ve all had experience at some point in our academic lives where you’ve roped some poor soul into ‘testing’ you who hasn’t the foggiest of what they’re doing and end up pulling you up if you get a mere word out of place or for explaining something which doesn’t match verbatim what s/he has on the sheet in front of them. A very frustrating experience – for both parties involved.

The flowchart is perfect for ramming the order of the material firmly into your brain – which is so crucial in answering a question in a law exam. You know the general content of the hardcore notes by this point to be able to expand sufficiently on any principle, but with so much material floating around in your head, the flowchart helps to make more sense of the overall structure. I always make sure I stick to the same means of ordering the material in the flowchart – usually left to right rather than clockwise as this makes the structure more fluent if it is (as it almost certainly will be) spread across more than one page.

Generally when revising – by which I mean actually recalling the material - I would always work through a topic to completion rather than setting myself 50 minute chunks of work-time and the like. Whether it’s a perception thing or otherwise, I always seemed much more productive that way.

So there it is: my technique when it comes to law exams and revision. It works for me and works well but it doesn’t come with guarantees. It was good enough to get me a A’s at A level and a First for my LLB but hey, what do I know? Some people revise through postcards or post-it notes stuck on their walls – I’ve always found that a little too much of a ‘soft touch’ approach for my tastes. My technique calls for dedication in spades but then it yields worthwhile results too.

Knowing the topic so well also means you are far less likely to have revised it but avoided answering it in the exam because you ‘didn’t like the look of it’. Using this method as an undergrad and postgrad, I have never prepared for a subject and then not answered it in the exam.

And Finally

Revision group work can be useful, when used in moderation and at the right stage. In my experience, it should be used quite late on, close to the exams when you know your stuff and you can effectively test each other and straighten out the one or two remaining queries. But the bulk of the work should be done and dusted by then as group sessions can so easily turn into an excuse just to ‘catch up’ socially and wind up being totally unproductive. And a word to the wise: it’s time to socially shun the guy who utters late on in the game, “uhh, I haven’t started revising yet”. 

Exam Season is Over

Yes, it’s finally finished and I can put the trauma of LL.M exams firmly behind me. My final exam (competition law) went fairly well with only one distinct curveball (I guess the cricket equivalent ‘googly’ would be more appropriate here) in the 3 questions I tackled. As per my plan, the desired questions in the desired format all came up on vertical restraints, abuse of a dominant position and refusals to supply.

I was somewhat perturbed, though, to discover that I was going to be sitting my final exam at desk 13 (unlucky for some). I’m not a particularly superstitious person but I have to admit that it had a slightly unsettling effect on me, albeit for a few minutes. Perhaps exam halls should omit the number 13 when labelling desks, if only to appease the more superstitious candidates out there. For instance, hotels often avoid numbering a room ‘13’ and Formula One skip the number 13 when numbering the cars for the season, though there is a P13 grid slot of course.

So I’ll be enjoying some downtime after a very hectic LLM schedule, and I’m heading back home to Cornwall next week. Hopefully, I’ll get a couple more fishing trips in when I’m down there.

Sadly, that’s where the good news ends, though; I realised the other day that I’m working the evening of my birthday. Damn.

One exam down – one to go

This morning saw me take the first of my two exams on the LLM - company law. Despite the exam room being incredibly hot, the exam itself was ‘textbook’ with barely a curve ball thrown at us throughout the entire paper. In fact, two of the three questions I answered on the corporate veil and directors’ duties respectively, were incredibly similar to the practice essays we had done throughout the year. Our tutor had informed us that attempting those practice questions would stand us in very good stead and she certainly wasn’t kidding! Thank God I duly completed both and looked them over yesterday as part of my revision.

Despite prepping my statute book with the requisite plethora of page markers, I reflected on leaving the exam that I didn’t refer to it once. Still, I rarely thumbed through a statute book during all of my exams as an undergrad either. If you’ve revised properly, I’ve always said that statute books are more like security blankets for law students; you don’t really need one but you’re comforted that it’s by your side. Under pressure of exams, law students are sometimes prone to ‘tizzies’ when that section number obstinately evades them.

I’ve been understandably focussing on revision of late (and had booked the entire week off of work, though that was at the time when BOTH of my exams were scheduled for this week). That said, it hasn’t been all work, as my girlfriend and I ventured out on one of our (increasingly rare) trips over the Bank Holiday weekend, engaging in a little retail therapy and checking out the movie ‘Angels and Demons’ - amongst other things. Having just finished the book, my girlfriend spent the rest of the day bemoaning the inaccuracies and inconsistencies between the book and film, concluding as is so often the case, that the book was infinitely better. She isn’t much of a lover of fiction but that was one book that she barely put down.

Anyhoo, while I won’t be back to regular posting for another 10 days or so – my competition law exam is on June 9^th – I thought I’d generously brief the blawgosphere with a Law Actually update. I’ve always feared the competition law exam and I’m praying there won’t be any curve balls in that paper either.  Until the next time, then.

Try not to miss me too much! :p

Oh, I almost forgot: for the first time in my life I also had to ask for extra paper in the exam.  How the hell did that happen?  Has my handwriting suddenly swollen or have answer booklets gotton thinner?

Brief Hiatus – Courtesy of the Exam Season

Yes, it’s that time of year, again, and much as I would love to carry on blogging with full vigour, I feel compelled to focus on revision for my two exams: company law and competition law. Happily, the dreaded exam season only has 3 and a bit weeks left to run, with my final exam on June 9^th.

This hiatus is particularly ill-timed, though, as there is a wealth of potentially bloggable material out there at the moment:

- Lawyers protest over ‘Tesco Law’ as it takes one further step towards reality. Oh yes!

- The findings of Lord Justice Jackson’s report on the status and future of civil litigation. As the Times reports, somewhat predictably, the prognosis isn’t exactly one of unmitigated good health. The article made some interesting suggestions for reform as regards lawyers’ success fees and alternative payment structures as well as suggestions in response to the broader problems that ensue from contingency fee arrangements, particularly in respect of personal injury cases.

- The EU fining Intel for competition law infringements. Actually, if I’m honest, competition law and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now, so I doubt I would have blogged about this anyway.

- I had intended to post a ‘revision procedure’ post, based on my tried and trusted methods. That might still emerge at some point but quite when, God alone knows.

Despite this heads-up re. the hiatus, I might still throw up one or two posts in the next 3 weeks, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m relying heavily on caffeine to see my through these 3 weeks and need all the help I can get, particularly as far as competition law is concerned. Wish me luck!

The sign of a hard-working law student

Checked my LLM folder on my computer today, you know, just for the hell of it.

Was surprised to see it had reached the mammoth size of 283MB and had 862 files with 66 folders. Wow. And I’ve still revision work and the full fury of my dissertation to be thrown at it yet.

The fact the folder houses 862 files doesn’t really surprise me. The size is certainly an eye-opener and is due in large part to all of the journal articles I’ve used for assignments that I’ve downloaded in PDF format. The downside of open standards I guess!

While on this topic, I thought I might share my back-up and syncing strategy with the blawgosphere. Law students, in my experience, tend to be lousy at backing-up, but with the wide range of free automated backup and syncing tools available today, there really isn’t an excuse any longer.

My precious LLM folder is backed up (and synced) to a USB key using Microsoft Synctoy 2.0. Creating a folder pairing between the folder on my PC and the USB key means that syncing is just a one-button-click job – just as it should be. You could even automate the process via Task Scheduler in Windows. My LLM folder is also backed up (and synced again) to the cloud and a laptop using the fantastic Microsoft Live Mesh, though I guess MS haters out there can make use of services like Dropbox instead which works well across Windows, Mac and Linux. Technically, Live Mesh is still in Beta but I’ve been using it for virtually a whole year and have had no problems with it. Overall, I’ve found this happy back-up and syncing arrangement to serve my needs well for the past year or so.

I also perform random backups to external hard disks and the web. I’ve been a user of BT digital vault (their free service, that is) for a couple of years or so and find it adequate. I’ve used a variety of web-based back up services over the past few years (a few which have since disappeared from cyberspace) but with Live Mesh and BT’s digital vault, plus my variety of on-site backups, I think I’m reasonably well prepared. Still, there’s room for improvement, I guess: I might add a Networked Attached Storage (NAS) solution or a Home Server to my computing arsenal. After all, it’s the type of thing you can’t have too much of - when it comes to backups, more really is more.

Summer Term Starts

I knew this day would come but that hasn’t made its arrival any easier to accept. Yes, today marks the start of the summer term and all of the revision/exam fun that goes with it. Before the games can begin properly, though, I’ve got to wrap up the coursework-based modules.

I’m not quite up to where I’d wanted to be as have my final corporate governance paper to write before I can switch properly into exam mode. (Before the start of the Easter break I had stated I wanted ALL papers written by the end.  Hmmmph: so much for that). Still, I started the research for the paper last week while I was down in Cornwall so aim to have it finished by the end of this week (subject to change and all that).

Unfortunately I have to head into the city for the next 3 days straight – which is a bit of a hassle. Still, I don’t want to miss a single session at this stage in case any precious exam-hints are given out. More so this year than any other, even before Easter, it felt as though things were wrapped up and it was all over bar the shouting exams. Unfortunately, two classes have spilled over into this term – Company Law and Corporate Governance. Just brilliant!

I’m also bracing myself for the final instalment of course fees to be snatched from my bank account in the next few days but can at least take comfort from the fact I will not be shelling out on any more education for the foreseeable future. 

Oh and if there were any doubt that summer term has arrived in full vigour, the fantastic weather has descended and I’m stuck inside tapping away at a computer keyboard.  Sounds about right!

Cornwall

I’m heading back home to Cornwall for a few days tomorrow. The weather isn’t supposed to be great – that’s Cornwall for you – but it should be good nonetheless. I’ve not been back since early September so I guess this trip is overdue.

I’d originally set myself the goal of completing my IT law paper before leaving. It’s virtually done now but I still need to edit about 300 words out and finish the referencing. Quite why this assignment has been akin to having several teeth pulled I don’t quite know but I’m certain it’s going to feel great when I’m the other side of it. :-)

Anyhoo, I expect I’ll still be keeping my finger on the pulse of the blawgosphere while I’m gone – just a bit less frequently, that’s all. In any case, we seem to be going through a bit of a lull at the moment. It’s that time of year, I guess.

Sloppy Writing Habits

It seems like I’ve done more writing during this academic year than any other and I can’t help feeling I’ve developed some rather bad habits – right when I needed them least. Perhaps I’m just becoming paranoid or over-analysing things, but it just seems that my style of planning, writing and editing essays has become very inefficient.

Although, I’m doing a lot of research at the outset, I think the ‘planning’ stage for assignments has been lost – it’s somehow merged into the research and writing stages. On the LLb I used to force myself to take the time to write a coherent plan and would refer to it throughout the writing process. On the LLM, though, I’ve found myself doing this less and less. And when I do produce a plan, I seem much more inclined to veer off at tangents and not refer to the plan again. Not good.

I think modern technology is partly to blame. I’ve found myself relying heavily on writing key phrases as reminders or key elements of my paper straight into Word or Onenote (if I’ve used that in the research process). That used to be reserved for refining arguments part way through an essay. Now, though, I’m using this as my actual essay plan.

Because it’s so easy to manipulate and amend these ‘digital’ plans, I refer to them less than I would a plan roughed out on paper. Writing essays on the fly can be much more efficient than the old fashioned ways but, left unchecked, I think it can result in bad habits too. Perhaps I should make more use of mind mapping software, or simply force myself to get that pen and notepad before I touch the keyboard? On that subject, I think I should flag-up a recent great find - Mindmeister. This seems an excellent mind-mapping solution that keeps your plans in the cloud which you can even share with others. Best of all, it’s free.

The level of study affects things also. I think at this level of academia, the essay content can change dramatically during the writing process. It’s not feasible to aim to finish the research stage entirely before writing; there’s just too much material and too many nuances to that material for that to be possible. The whole cohort has been continually assured that this is ‘normal’ for LLM students as the material being dealt with is extremely complex and multi-faceted.  And because of this, it’s natural for opinions to evolve during the process and to form a rigid thesis at the outset will necessarily exclude the inclusion of key refinements in the paper.

Comforting as this might be, it doesn’t help me much right now. I think a much more disciplined approach might be in order.

A Second Virtual Veil

In keeping with the concept of the ‘virtual veil’ which I propounded in my previous post, I thought this story was worthy of mentioning too, despite the fact it’s been doing the rounds for a while now and is probably best considered ‘old news’.

The virtual veil in question here is the one worn by a virtual bride who married the avatar of her newly married husband in a second wedding after their real-world one in St. Austell, Cornwall in 2005. Having first met in the online game Second Life, they eventually met up in person and subsequently married. However, the happy days weren’t to last:

Amy Pollard, 28, discovered her husband's character having sex with another female player online filed for divorce citing "unreasonable behaviour".

She claimed that David Pollard, 40, committed adultery with the animated woman and said that it is the second time she had caught his character cheating on her.

In February last year, she said that he was having sex with an online call girl character and she even hired an online private detective in the game to investigate his adultery.

Mrs Pollard said that she discovered her husband's most recent online infidelity in April after she had awoken from an afternoon nap and caught Mr Pollard in a compromising position on the game.

She said: "I caught him cuddling a woman on a sofa in the game. It looked really affectionate.

"I went mad - I was so hurt. I just couldn't believe what he'd done," she said. "I looked at the computer screen and could see his character having sex with a female character. It's cheating as far as I'm concerned.

When I first earmarked this story as ‘bloggable’ material over a week ago, I failed to notice that the couple had in fact met and married in St. Austell, an area of Cornwall not a million miles away from where I grew up. For what it’s worth, it’s also an area of Cornwall best avoided if your impression of the county is one of unspoilt scenic bliss. I consider myself lucky to have lived just sufficiently far away from the town so as not to be stifled by its oppressively depressing and ungainly nature. Seriously, it’s a dump.

My second reason for finding this story interesting is the fact that the regulation of virtual worlds is an area of law which I find fascinating and, I hope, remains a potential topic for my dissertation. It’s certainly an area which is wide open as to quite how the law should handle the regulation of virtual events and the inter-relationship between the actions of real-life humans and their online personas. Effectively being a parallel virtual-universe, virtual worlds are potentially plagued from nearly as many issues as are encountered in the real world, ranging from intellectual property infringement to crime.

The virtual veil concept I spoke of in my previous post is applicable here too. Some people, including Mr Pollard (given that he was caught with his virtual trousers down) would (probably subconsciously) argue that there IS a virtual veil in operation which clearly segregates his online persona from that of his real-world one. His wife, no doubt, takes the converse view: for these purposes, the personas are one and the same. By cheating online via his avatar, the husband is just as unfaithful and culpable as if he cheated in real life.

It would be interesting to know whether Mr Pollard thought through the gravity of his actions and the potential consequences that might flow from them as seriously and thoroughly as if he went and embarked on an affair or paid a prostitute for sex, say.

The article points out both Mr and Mrs Pollard’s differing views:

"But he didn't see it [the online sex] as a problem, and couldn't see why I was so upset.

"He said I was just making a big fuss, and tried to make out it was my fault for not giving him enough attention.

Is it right to regard Mr Pollard morally culpable for his avatar’s antics when he, Pollard, didn’t physically do anything to constitute an act of infidelity? Is there any difference between conducting a virtual affair and simply having real-world thoughts of infidelity which are not acted upon? Was he not just victim to the virtual veil which clouded his judgement and left him blind as to the dividing line between reality and the virtual world? Did he not just naively mislead himself into believing, because of this mysterious virtual veil, that his online acts would have no real-world consequences? While I think I know where the consensus of opinion lies in response to these questions, it remains a contentious talking-point.

Sympathisers might, at a push, try and argue that Pollard merely became inescapably immersed in the virtual world and got ‘carried away’ in the (online) atmosphere of it all and he’ll wake up some day soon, suddenly realising it was all just a huge error of judgement on his part? Well, it seems there’s little chance of that:

"[L]ater [Mr Pollard] confessed he'd been talking to this woman player in America for one or two weeks, and said our marriage was over and he didn't love me any more, and we should never have got married." Amy [Pollard] said her estranged husband is now even engaged to the woman he had an 'affair' with on Second Life – even though they have never actually met in real life.

But it gets worse. While Mrs Pollard might have been successful in getting her divorce, it seems as though she hasn’t learnt all of the lessons from this experience that one might have hoped.

[Mrs Pollard has] also found a new partner, who she also met online, while playing the fantasy role-playing game World Of Warcraft.

Oh I give up.

Facebook, Jurors and the 'Virtual Veil'

From Guardian.co.uk: 18.11.08:

A female juror was dismissed from a trial after posting details of the case on Facebook and asking friends whether they thought the defendants were guilty.

The woman went against strict rules forbidding jurors from discussing cases with family and friends by posting details of the sexual assault and child abduction trial on the social networking site.

After her actions were discovered, she was removed from the case at Burnley crown court, in Lancashire, and the trial continued with a jury of 11 people.

A Courts Service spokesman said today: "A juror was dismissed from a case on November 18 for discussing a case outside the court."

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a Facebook related entry so this one seemed an obvious choice. For what it’s worth, I’ve largely given up with my Facebook-bashing, as I got sick with it falling so invariably on ‘deaf ears’. I get it: the world loves Facebook and only I don’t. Oh well.

The story does, though, highlight interesting behavioural patterns when people are online, particularly when engaged in social networking activities. I think it shows up a serious divide in many people’s brains over regulating their actions in the real world and the online one. Did the juror really think she’d get away with it? Did she think that her ‘online persona’ is so divorced from reality that any actions carried out online would not be attributed to her real ‘human’ person? It’s almost as though some people view their online conduct as being separated from reality by a ‘virtual veil’, which their real, human person can hide behind without fear of being troubled by disagreeable repercussions that flow from the actions of their ‘online person’. You know, something analogous to the 'corporate veil' which derives from the twin pillar characteristics that a company is blessed with: separate legal personality and limited liability. No?! Anyone?! No, my girlfriend wasn’t interested either.

Sidenote: I’ve become more than a little bored with studying the majestic intricacies surrounding the corporate veil and its lifting, piercing or otherwise penetrating for what seems like an eternity in my Company law module. It still amuses me that on the LPC in Business Law and Practice it was merely mentioned in passing with perhaps two sentences dedicated to the topic. On the LL.M, though, we’ve dissected it to absolute death and then some, more or less from the start of term. God, I love academia.

Pre-Easter Update

And I thought vacations were for a bit of downtime when work levels, you know, dropped off a bit. Now the Easter vacation has started proper, though, it seems I’m busier than ever.

In the run-up to the end of term, I had to complete an IT law paper, a Corporate Governance paper, a presentation for Corporate Governance and my dissertation synopsis. This was on top of the preparation required for seminars (though, I’d turned the revs down on that front for the final few weeks). Thankfully, I just about managed to get it all covered, although I had to take a rain check on the two remaining company law lectures. 

I have two IT law papers to complete, yet another one for Corp Gov and then, thank God, that’s it – except for the two exams and dreaded dissertation. On that note, I did opt for a title concerning the regulatory issues plaguing virtual worlds – pretty much exactly as I had intended from last October. In essence, it concerns examining the role criminal law can play. In the last week of term, I also scheduled a second last-minute dissertation meeting with the unit leader who gave my dissertation synopsis a resounding thumbs-up so I can relax somewhat on that front until the exams are over.

So Easter is looking like a busy period for the Michael. I’m hoping to pick up some overtime at work in the next couple of weeks which would bring a much welcome boost to my finances. I’ve also got to help out a former employer with a couple of projects in the next 3 weeks or so and, it’s just dawned on me, prepare for that final company law seminar in the first week back. After next month, I’ll be able to happily report that my tuition fees are fully paid and I don’t intend shelling out for any more courses in the foreseeable future. 

Perhaps most importantly, I also need to find time to get out and buy Quantum of Solace on DVD.

Is gaining a legal qualification still worth the cost?

Having stupidly subscribed to the ‘Junior Lawyers’ e-mail list at some point in the distant past, I stumbled across this rather interesting poll earlier today:

 

Wow: 61% voted No.  I knew sentiment was strong out there regarding the exorbitant qualification fees for the legal profession but, I have to admit, I was predicting the ‘Yeses’ to have it – if only by a narrow margin.  To be clear, scanning through the comments on the site, most seem to refer to the LPC rather than ‘academic’ law degrees which has clearly shaped their thinking in the cost versus gain equation.  I’m sure there are many BVC students lurking out there who share similar sentiments regarding the perceived value of their professional qualification. 

For what it’s worth, the comments, such as they are, seem to pretty much stem from mature students with hard-luck stories.  While I guess the nature of their general situation is a little different from that of the masses, there’s no getting away from it: there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there.

Another Assignment – Another ‘Legal Space’

I’m currently busily occupied cracking out the 2nd of my 3 Corporate Governance assignments – due in the middle of next week.  Happily, I’ve been able to tick-off from my checklist the IT law assignment and dissertation synopsis – both of which were causing me no end of trouble.  I’ve got a bad feeling about my IT law paper – more with the flow of the essay than the content – but it’s too late to worry about it now, I suppose.  I definitely find it much more difficult to whittle the range of material down in that subject – probably due to my ‘boundless enthusiasm’ for cyberlaw in general.

Not much has changed in my ‘legal space’.  Different assignment – but still reasonably tidy.  I got on with a bunch of filing on Monday (while Zetoc was down – a very, very sore subject with me at the moment) so cleared the backlog previously cluttering my desk. 

Fun fact: it’s not coffee in my ‘coffee’ mug – it’s tea.  Unusual because I’m not much of a tea-drinker.

While adjusting the curves (contrast to the non-technically minded) of the image in Photoshop, I created this inverted, rather freaky version:

 

I kind of like it. 

Still About....Just

Yes, despite the dearth of posts that this poor blog has seen in the last week or so, I am still about.  I have to admit, though, the workload for my LL.M and working part time to help stay afloat is taking its toll.  Last week was particularly bad as I had to attend the 3rd day of training on the Thursday which is usually my 'free' day and something I desperately needed to keep free to prepare for the 3 seminars I have every other Tuesday.  Yes, that's tomorrow.  Let's just say that my preparation for Corporate Governance has received rather scant attention so far and I'm not hopeful that that's going to change in time for tomorrow.

Anyway, despite this hectic schedule, I've found the time to go and see Quantum of Solace, a film which pretty much met most of my expectations.  Obviously, I'll be writing up my 'Quantum of Solace Review' at some point (at this rate it'll hopefully be before the end of 2009 ) so I'll save all comments in respect of the film until then.  What I will say, though, is that in one 'screen' in a certain branch of Vue, they've insisted on placing the front bank of seats ridiculously, bizarrely and migraine-inducingly close to the screen itself.  Seriously, I had never seen anything quite like this.  Granted, we were cutting it a bit fine for the viewing we'd planned for so only had ourselves to blame that we had to plumb for the said seats, but nobody seriously could have enjoyably watched a film from them.  So, our tenure in those seats was short-lived: we walked out 30 seconds later to request a re-scheduling.  As my girlfriend and I observed at the time: it was like watching a movie on a widescreen TV with your nose pressed against the glass.  Shame on you Vue.  Shame on you. As if selling crazily priced refreshments wasn't bad enough!!

Alas, all was well and having queued up a good 45 minutes before the next viewing was due to start, we were more or less on pole position for our choice of seats. 

Oh boy: what's that I hear, calling quietly in the background?  Of course, it's my competition law work reminding me that it won't do itself and that seminar (along with the others) is TOMORROW!

“Law school is a factory for depressives”

From The Brazen Careerist - Don’t try to Dodge the Recession with grad school:
It used to be that if you had a law degree it was a ticket to a high salary and a safe career. Today many people go to law school and cannot find a job. This is, in a large part, because law school selects for people who are good with details and pass tests and law firms select for people who are good at marketing themselves and can drum up business. Law firms are in a transition phase, and they have many unfair labor practices leftover from older generations, for example, hourly billing and making young lawyers pay dues for what is, today, a largely uncertain future. Which might explain why the American Bar Association reports that the majority of lawyers would recommend that people not to go into law.

Wow.

While some of this might smack of hyperbole, there is a degree of truth in it too. Law has long been seen as a sure-fire ticket to ride on that elusive gravy train – in the UK just as much as the US.  I remember noting in my first year as an undergrad that half the people on my LLB course were ostensibly doing it for the ‘wrong reasons’, based loosely on perceptions of money falling from the sky and into their greedy pockets with that ‘qualifying law degree’ behind them.

So is law still a good bet in the current climate? There are worse things that you could be studying out there, that’s for sure. And, as ever, I think it’s a good background to have for a lot of other career paths. As for those hell-bent on a career practicing law, God help you, the ‘over saturation’ of the legal job market that has been an issue for years now is arguably made worse by the effects of the credit crisis coming through with full vigour. But it doesn’t end there: for those that do manage to secure an elusive position, the productivity pressures bearing down on them have surely never been higher, nor the likelihood of their services suddenly being deemed surplus to requirements.

With all this in mind, I entered the LLM course feeling understandably uncertain about taking on extra debt and financial commitments. Thus far, though, I’m very pleased I did so and feel I have derived considerably more value from this course than any other I have taken. Getting a job does worry me, but rightly so – it’s tough out there.

I think the Brazen Careerist’s advice that seeking to educate your way out of recession or un-employability is not necessarily advisable. Education is usually always a good thing, but now more than ever, it has to be done for the right reasons and as part of a coherent career plan. Potential students also need to be realistic: with grade inflation and a career market dominated by a supply-demand equation which has never looked so unfavourable, a number of hard, searching questions need to be asked as to whether this is really going to add to your career prospects.

My ‘Legal Space’ – Part 1

Paying heed to the adage ‘if you can’t beat them – join them’, I thought this would be a good opportunity to document what is my ‘legal space’. I first saw this over at No. 634 – a US law student blog which is well worth checking out as it happens– who in turn got the idea from someone else.

I guess all of our working practices differ markedly and I’ve certainly seen some strange sights in law school libraries over the years. I’ve actually witnessed much more startling (and at times worrying) student study habits – including bizarre laptop positions - in previous universities where food and drink and general demeanour is less rigorously regulated than at my current and  very ‘traditional’ university.

Here, in all its raw, unaffected glory, is the natural habitat of a postgraduate law student in the midst of a pressing assignment. I should perhaps qualify the terms ‘raw’ and ‘unaffected’ here: my desk is currently considerably tidier than it has been of late owing to one of my girlfriend’s tidying fits that she is afflicted with every now and then.

Reflecting on it, my ‘legal space’ isn’t very ‘legal’ at all; in fact I could be studying almost any subject judging from the items littered on my desk. My textbooks and other legal goodies are stowed at haphazard – or as I’d rather think of it – strategic locations all around my office. Being without a suitably sized shelving unit to fit within arms’ reach of my desk, most of my folders are stowed behind me, leant up against the wall. I guess they form part of my ‘legal space’ too. Pictures will probably follow.

For the time being, here’s my legal space checklist: 

· Coffee mug – check.

· Textbook - check.

· Papers – check.

· Computer – check.

· Lamp – check.

· Friendly leather frog – check. Yep, he’s sitting on the lamp base. Don’t ask!

So there you are: everything a hard-working law student needs.

Strangely, no pens are visible: they’re probably buried under the papers though there is a stationery organiser behind my monitor.

ill but not forgotten

I've been struggling along with a bad cold this week, my first in over a year.  Hardly a statistic to boast about, I suppose, as before the winter of 2006, I'd gone 3 years without contracting one.  Oh well.

Suffice to say, I've been moping about, spluttering and sneezing and generally feeling very sorry for myself. As proof of the severity of my illness - seriously, despite what you're thinking, it's more than man-flu - I've only made it in for two lectures this week!  Luckily, this was one of my scheduled 'quiet' weeks at uni. 

Sod's law being what it is, I was scheduled for an interview on Wednesday when I was more or less at my roughest.  Given that the odds of my passing the lurgy on to my interviewer were pretty high, coupled with the fact that by the time I'd got there, I was reduced to a snivelling shell of a person, I didn't rate my chances too highly.  Nevertheless, they offered me the job.  I had actually already landed a job which I started last weekend but found it not to my liking. 

Who said that beggars can't be choosers?