Barrister's Ball, Law Review and Law Revue

First, i feel that i have to comment on the recent happenings at Legal Badger and their consequences. For those of you who don't know, Legal Badger is a blog run by several University of Wisconsin law students. It is a blog devoted to poking fun at the law school, law students, the law, pretty much everything. One of the contributors to that blog posted a semi-serious piece asking for comments on the Wisconsin Law Review's diversity policy. This lead to several comments and then several replies. The converstation became quite heated, as is likely to happen when such an important issue is being discussed.

This is all very well and good. But what is completely unacceptable is that the conversation devolved into accusations of racism and intolerance. I want this to be clear: Racism is bad, and it should be combated at every turn. However, i know several of the Legal Badger contributors that were involved personally, and can state, with 100% certainty, that they are not racists. They are good people who are interested in making sure that all groups are represented in the law school society. There is no basis in fact for any of the accusations that have been made or implied against them.

Some of the comments that were made on Legal Badger could be seen as offensive (even though i am confident that they were not intended to offend). Certainly, it is someone's right to be offended and to respond to the offensive thing as they see fit. But i feel it is necessary that i go on the record in defense of any of the people whose reputations might be questioned.

In any event, please support Legal Badger; they make law school fun. Or, well, as fun as it can be.

In other news . . .

Last night was the Barrister's Ball, which is essentially law school prom, which should not be confused with law school homecoming, the Malpractice Bash. The two can be easily differentiated because the Malpractice Bash involves med students. A med student is readily identifiable: just look for a forked tounge, hooved feet and pitchforks. You can almost smell the evil.

But i digress...

The Barrister's Ball was fun, and i will post pictures soon. The fun was tempered, however, by the knowledge that elections for the Wisconsin Law Review senior board started promptly at 9am Sunday morning (i know that they technically started at 10am, but daylight savings time is an abomination before god and it robbed me of an hour last night). I was out until 3 (again, i'm ignoring the time change). You do the math.

I got up in the morning and i was tired. I showered and put on my suit and went down to the school. I was running for two positions: Editor-in-Chief and Senior Managing Editor.

EIC was the first position to be voted on. There were three candidates. The process was as follows: First, you give a speech. Then, you answer questions from the current holder of the office you're running for, followed by questions from the general membership. Then, you leave the room and the membership discusses you, making comments or criticisms. I was the first EIC candidate to undergo the process. The two other candidates followed, and we waited for the votes to be counted. The current EIC came in and wrote "EIC" on the board followed by the new EIC's name. I did not win, but a very talented and committed candidate did, and that's fine with me.

Senior Managing Editor was second. I came in, did my song and dance, and left. There were two other candidates. Again, the votes were counted and the current EIC came in and started writing names on the board. The first name she wrote was: Andy Martinez. I was excited and happy. The EIC then wrote the other SME's name on the board. Another excellent candidate was elected (that doesn't mean much - all the candidates were excellent).

The Senior Managing Editor's main responsibilty is overseeing the cite checking process, which is one of the most important things in the system, and the major time consumer for 2L members. That might sound lame to you, but i can't wait - i love the Bluebook.

Voting for more positions followed. Several of the races were uncontested, which, frankly, is disappointing. It makes me sad that more people weren't as enthusiastic about the Law Review as i am. I hope that that's something that this year's board can work on. The upside to the uncontested races was that elections were over very quickly, relatively speaking. They took about 7 hours, as compared to 11 hours last year.

After the Law Review elections, i headed down to Memorial Union to join the cast of the Law Revue (the show) during their rehearsals for the show that night. The Law Revue is a sketch comedy show that runs once a year and is written and produced entirely by law students. The humor would be almost entirely lost to non-law students, but we like it. Several of my friends, including Cole, Ryan and Zachar were involved in the writing and acting.

Among the skits:
A Family Fued parody pitting law students against their professors.
Zombie Rehnquist and Ann Coulter face off against Larry Church and Leonard Kaplan on Hardball.
A parody of Brokeback Mountain entitled Brokeback Hill (the law school is located on Bascom Hill) in which Walter J. Dickey and Michael W. Smith must hide their secret love of Torts in order to keep their livelihoods as professors of criminal law.
Masked vigilantes bringing justice to the law school.
And, of course, Martinez, Zachar, Ruby & McNamara squaring off against a uppity woman with the gaul to ask for a job. (The role of Andrew Martinez was played effectively by Texas Scott because we had no way of knowing how long the Law Review elections would run and i could not be counted on to be there in time.)

The show went off without a hitch (well, almost) and was generally considered the best effort in several years.

Now, it's time to bask in my own Senior Managing Editor glory. And by that, i mean sleep.