things you think about when you're a legal intern
Sometimes I think our legal system is very passive-aggressive. Think about your typical relationship stereotype: person X has these internal standards that if transgressed piss her off. Sometimes these fluctuate. Sometimes she doesn't exactly let on what they are because she doesn't want to be seen as crazy or neurotic or maybe she just assumes that they are obvious. Person Y doesn't know what these standards are and so inevitably he eventually pisses X off. Person Y realizes this after finding his clothes in a pile at the bottom of the stairs and a tiny key-sized dent in Y's car. Person Y gets confused and scared; he tries to go over all the things that have been said or done in the last few months to figure out why X is upset, knowing that simply asking would garner a "if you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you" or "... I'm... ok" followed by maybe a few more "accidental" dents to his nice new car. Y instead avoids the problem as best he can and meanwhile asks friends and similarly-gendered family members for input - missed an anniversary? didn't notice a new hair cut? left the toilet seat up? If Y is really panicked, he might try to go through X's diary, planner, email... all the while trying to also pretend that everything's ok, because until he knows what to apologize for, he's just gonna piss X off even more. Of course, Y manages to further piss off X because he still doesn't know how he's pissing her off and eventually Y gets pissed off himself. Both make snarky comments to each other and "forget" the usual pleasantries, while acting like everything's fine, until one day there's a huge blow up over what brand of coffee creamer is better and the clothes end up trampled in the street because X wanted Y to *want* to do the dishes after that dinner party they had five years ago.
Basically, the legislature passes some laws, but they do it in this mixed-signal-kind-of-ambiguous-confusing way. These laws neatly apply to a total of one scenario out of the million potential scenarios out there. So lawyers have to figure out what the laws actually mean in the 99.99% of the time that the one scenario isn't cut and dried applicable. Judges make some shit up and if the legislature doesn't like it, the legislature changes the law just to stick it to the judges for being wrong throwing the entire legal community into more turmoil because now there are new tiny little sections that although seemingly simple things like changing the definite article in a section to an indefinite article, these changes manifest in a complete butterfly effect that might cost clients billions. Then some more unforeseen scenarios come up and we're all afraid of making the legislature change the law again that we spend hours formulating these complex rules of statutory construction and figuring out intention and nitty gritty legislative histories and word definitions all in the hope that we don't go back and make the legislature get mad and change the law again, which it's going to do anyways, but at least it will do so in a less pointed manner. The process takes years and years, usually taking us over and over again to judges and attorney generals (who are kind of like our friends and family giving us advice over our communal cup of cheap beer), costing us hours of work, all because at the end of the day we never knew that we're supposed to WANT to do the dishes. Sometimes I think it would be much easier just to call up some lawmaker and say "ok, in WAC 90.349.957.994(24)(c)(iv), when you said "post-fact de jure health care facilitative appropriations" you meant ___ but then two regs later you meant _____, so seriously that's a typo right or is there a nuance I'm not getting?" but somehow I expect I'd be told "... I'm... ok" and find my clothes at the bottom of the stairs.
Basically, the legislature passes some laws, but they do it in this mixed-signal-kind-of-ambiguous-confusing way. These laws neatly apply to a total of one scenario out of the million potential scenarios out there. So lawyers have to figure out what the laws actually mean in the 99.99% of the time that the one scenario isn't cut and dried applicable. Judges make some shit up and if the legislature doesn't like it, the legislature changes the law just to stick it to the judges for being wrong throwing the entire legal community into more turmoil because now there are new tiny little sections that although seemingly simple things like changing the definite article in a section to an indefinite article, these changes manifest in a complete butterfly effect that might cost clients billions. Then some more unforeseen scenarios come up and we're all afraid of making the legislature change the law again that we spend hours formulating these complex rules of statutory construction and figuring out intention and nitty gritty legislative histories and word definitions all in the hope that we don't go back and make the legislature get mad and change the law again, which it's going to do anyways, but at least it will do so in a less pointed manner. The process takes years and years, usually taking us over and over again to judges and attorney generals (who are kind of like our friends and family giving us advice over our communal cup of cheap beer), costing us hours of work, all because at the end of the day we never knew that we're supposed to WANT to do the dishes. Sometimes I think it would be much easier just to call up some lawmaker and say "ok, in WAC 90.349.957.994(24)(c)(iv), when you said "post-fact de jure health care facilitative appropriations" you meant ___ but then two regs later you meant _____, so seriously that's a typo right or is there a nuance I'm not getting?" but somehow I expect I'd be told "... I'm... ok" and find my clothes at the bottom of the stairs.