Lawyering
Reasons why cross-casting is quite great:
"Tell me, Mr. Shuster, is there any reason why you cannot show enough respect to this court to stand up during your examination-in-chief?"
"I'm pregnant with twins, your honour."
(She later noted it was a good thing we were doing this today, and not in two months' time. "Otherwise I wouldn't even fit in the damned box.")
I spent my morning in a disused courtroom in Oxford Town Hall, sitting on the counsel's bench and enjoying myself far more than I thought I would; it doesn't sound all that fun, being told to turn up at nine in the morning for a mock trial when you have a morbid fear of litigation, and then the thrice-damned man who was supposed to be delivering the opening speech never turned up, but somehow it did come out all right. It's a really nice opportunity, getting to do a mock trial in a real courtroom rather than a prefab classroom sparsely furnished with imagination, but I really wasn't in a good place; see above re: nine in the morning, and also what with everything else that has happened to me/that I have happened to this week, I hadn't done much in the way of prep. But I paid attention and then stood up to deliver closing submissions, and it's amazing how the world constricts in moments like that: it's just you and the empty space in front of your voice.
When I sat down again, the judge found for the defendant. Hmph. But nevertheless I got some very nice feedback on it all: I didn't submit my referenced cases to the court (oops), my body language "suggested heading to the Pole in shirt-sleeves", but otherwise, the verdict was "extraordinarily good". I suspect I may be coming around to litigation.
Thank you, all of you, for the lovely comments you left on my post yesterday; I really appreciate your lovely congratulations, just as I've appreciated you cheering me up all the time I have been trying to do this! The training contract is in Cambridge, starting in September 2011, at just the sort of firm I wanted to be at, and I liked them a lot when I first went there. It is a blessing.
I haven't actually seen the letter yet - for some reason the firm chose not to email or call but write, and obviously the letter went to my parents' address, and they, seeing a heavy envelope with a law firm's stamp, couldn't resist. I think it'll all seem a bit more real when I actually see this letter, but in the meantime, I'm still a little flaily and it hasn't quite sunk in yet, but I've started to have little, happy thoughts, like, I'm going to choose where to specialise, and I could maybe get police station accreditation, and I'm going to qualify. I mean, once I'm qualified, no one can ever take it away from me, if all else fails I can get a market stall in Gloucester Green under a "GET YOUR SMALL CLAIMS HERE" sign. I can endorse other people's passport photographs, I'm going to have a real job.
And, I don't know, I will at last, at last, not be a student. I'll have a salary and somewhere to live of my own, I can start a travelling-abroad fund, I can go to bitchinparty, I can have a house plant. (And love it and adore it and call it George, and mourn it when it dies of overwatering.) I can start to pay off my loans and buy a goddamn garlic press.
And I still have a year with which to go to grad school, if it pans out, and to write fanfic in if it doesn't, and direction in either case. I mean, I still desperately want my LLM, but it's not the end of the world, any more, if it doesn't work out, I've got somewhere to be. I really, really thought this wasn't going to happen for me; this was my fourteenth interview out of fifty-seven applications in three years of applying, and I was... well, you know. I'm still not quite believing it. Thank you all.
"Tell me, Mr. Shuster, is there any reason why you cannot show enough respect to this court to stand up during your examination-in-chief?"
"I'm pregnant with twins, your honour."
(She later noted it was a good thing we were doing this today, and not in two months' time. "Otherwise I wouldn't even fit in the damned box.")
I spent my morning in a disused courtroom in Oxford Town Hall, sitting on the counsel's bench and enjoying myself far more than I thought I would; it doesn't sound all that fun, being told to turn up at nine in the morning for a mock trial when you have a morbid fear of litigation, and then the thrice-damned man who was supposed to be delivering the opening speech never turned up, but somehow it did come out all right. It's a really nice opportunity, getting to do a mock trial in a real courtroom rather than a prefab classroom sparsely furnished with imagination, but I really wasn't in a good place; see above re: nine in the morning, and also what with everything else that has happened to me/that I have happened to this week, I hadn't done much in the way of prep. But I paid attention and then stood up to deliver closing submissions, and it's amazing how the world constricts in moments like that: it's just you and the empty space in front of your voice.
When I sat down again, the judge found for the defendant. Hmph. But nevertheless I got some very nice feedback on it all: I didn't submit my referenced cases to the court (oops), my body language "suggested heading to the Pole in shirt-sleeves", but otherwise, the verdict was "extraordinarily good". I suspect I may be coming around to litigation.
Thank you, all of you, for the lovely comments you left on my post yesterday; I really appreciate your lovely congratulations, just as I've appreciated you cheering me up all the time I have been trying to do this! The training contract is in Cambridge, starting in September 2011, at just the sort of firm I wanted to be at, and I liked them a lot when I first went there. It is a blessing.
I haven't actually seen the letter yet - for some reason the firm chose not to email or call but write, and obviously the letter went to my parents' address, and they, seeing a heavy envelope with a law firm's stamp, couldn't resist. I think it'll all seem a bit more real when I actually see this letter, but in the meantime, I'm still a little flaily and it hasn't quite sunk in yet, but I've started to have little, happy thoughts, like, I'm going to choose where to specialise, and I could maybe get police station accreditation, and I'm going to qualify. I mean, once I'm qualified, no one can ever take it away from me, if all else fails I can get a market stall in Gloucester Green under a "GET YOUR SMALL CLAIMS HERE" sign. I can endorse other people's passport photographs, I'm going to have a real job.
And, I don't know, I will at last, at last, not be a student. I'll have a salary and somewhere to live of my own, I can start a travelling-abroad fund, I can go to bitchinparty, I can have a house plant. (And love it and adore it and call it George, and mourn it when it dies of overwatering.) I can start to pay off my loans and buy a goddamn garlic press.
And I still have a year with which to go to grad school, if it pans out, and to write fanfic in if it doesn't, and direction in either case. I mean, I still desperately want my LLM, but it's not the end of the world, any more, if it doesn't work out, I've got somewhere to be. I really, really thought this wasn't going to happen for me; this was my fourteenth interview out of fifty-seven applications in three years of applying, and I was... well, you know. I'm still not quite believing it. Thank you all.