My Life Was Better Before Law School Because I Never Knew These Words/Phrases Existed

As some of you may know, and as the rest of you are going to know unless you stop reading now, I, for some inexplicable reason, went to law school.

I also, for some reason, stuck it out and graduated this spring.

Why, you ask? I don't know. Why did you finish all of those Power Hours in college?  Why did Warner Bros. finish making the third Matrix movie?

Because some things sound like a good idea at the outset, and after a certain point you're committed and it's better to push through than back out, even if you're only at minute 37 and you've already puked up all of the shots of Steel Reserve you drank, or even though the plot is so convoluted and the acting has gotten so shitty that the audience laughs their asses off when Trinity dies. 

It's like streaking during church - by the time you're butt-naked wearing nothing but your dress socks, standing there your khakis ares down around your ankles, and the decon has already turned around and seen your junk and screamed, you're gonna look like a bigger asshole if you don't follow through, so you might as well take a lap up to the alter, do a little "windmill" and "painting the fence," and ask for forgiveness later.     

Anyway, that nicely circles me back to what I was saying earlier. I also for some reason took the Bar Exam in July, and although I surbibed with only tribial blain damblage, the results come out this Friday, and I have been thinking about law school stuff that I had stuffed into dark corners of my brain the minute the exam finished on July 29.

One night back when I was studying for the exam, after I had been in the library for the 7th hour on the 53rd day of study and was desperate to do anything other than continue memorizing latin and 7-part factor tests, I started a list of words and phrases that, as a horrible consequence of sticking out law school, I now know, and cannot ever un-know, no matter how much I drink.

In honor of this being the week that bar results come out, I've decided to share this list with you. These are words that I have stuck in my head for the rest of my life unless, God-willing, I get early onset dementia and start believing that I am a space ninja sent to Earth from a parallel universe to save the monkeys that have been infected with a nearly incurable specie of lice. In that case, I will have no use for these words, I will most likely have forgotten them, as all I will care about is finding out where I can get my hands on a pair of salon-grade trimmers so I can shave all of the monkeys in the world lest they be doomed to be itching their shoulders and butt-holes their whole lives. 

Most of these words rightfully sound like complete jibberish to a normal person. So, I might throw in some helpful explanations here and there to give you some context by which to understand them. Who knows, after you're done you might say the hell with getting a lawyer the next time you're arrested for indecent exposure for streaking in a church and decide to represent yourself using one or all of these words/phrases. The judge might even appreciate your attempt to use the jargon of her profession before she charges you with contempt and adds a few more months to your sentence. 

And hey, when you're in your cell, if you find yourself bored, you can simply recite the list of words out loud to keep yourself entertained. Plus then the other inmates might think you're insane, maybe insane enough to do something dangerous and unpredictable. Then they might leave you alone. You can look back fondly on this blog and silently thank it for helping you avoid becoming Bubba's bitch. 

If you already know what these words and phrases mean, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you're a nerd. 

Oh, by the way, the list I made was 42 words/phrases long, and those were just the ones that I could think of off the top of my head that one day I was bored in the law school library. There are many, many, many more. So, instead of inundating you with 42 words an explanations, I  have decided to break up this list into a 4-5 day mini-series. It will save both of us some sanity, and it will also allow me to write 4-5 blog entries without thinking of a new topic. In other words, everyone wins, especially me. But especially you. 

Anyway, without further ado, I present PART ONE of the "MY LIFE WAS BETTER BEFORE LAW SCHOOL BECAUSE I NEVER KNEW THESE WORDS/PHRASES EXISTED" LIST:

• "Jx"--probably the worst of the entire list for many reasons, not the least of which being that you have to use it in just about every class you take. It's shorthand for "jurisdiction." Why is jurisdiction so important, you ask? Because without it, a court can't do shit in a particular case. How do you know if a court has jx? I'll save you the trouble and tell you to just go kill yourself now. And please kill me while you're at it, preferably in a way that's less painful than trying to understand when a court has jx. Like that mask from Saw that pulls your jaw apart. 

• "Decendent"--a fancy-pants way of saying "dead person."

• "Pretermitted"--this one is relatively straightforward. A baby could grasp it. If someone is "pretermitted", they are most likely a potential heir or beneficiary that was inadvertently omitted by a testator in the creation of a valid holographic will. This might necessitate a "codicil" to correct. See, simple, right?

• "Codicil"--see above. No other explanation needed. 

• "Joinder"--identical twins whose bodies are joined in utero. A rare phenomenon, the occurrence is estimated to range from 1/50,000 to 1/100,000 with a somewhat higher incidence in Southeast Asia and Africa. Wait, sorry. That's "conjoined twins". I forget what "joinder" means. Something legal-y.

• "Res Judicata"--this is where you have, like, a case  . . . and there was a case before it . . . and they decided the case . . . but someone else is trying to bring a case . . . and so they can't bring it . . . because . . . Goddamn I shouldn't have drank so much my first year. 

• "Promissory Estoppel/Detrimental Reliance"--Oh boy, it's a horrible fact of life that if you go to law school you will learn the word "estoppel." Here is a fun thing about "estoppel": it's used in every area of law, but it always means something slightly different. So you are never sure what someone is talking about when they say "estoppel." Neat, huh? Another interesting fact: the word "estoppel" is not recognized by Microsoft Word spell check. It auto-corrects it to "estoppels." What the fuck is an "estoppels", you ask? I don't know. They were afraid to tell me.  Also, it never gets old when people say " please estop that", even when it's been said 9,853 times before. Never.

• "Extrinsic Evidence"--this is evidence that's not intrinsic. Duh.

• "Forum Non Conveniens"--this is just a fancy way to say "inconvenient forum." That just means that the case shouldn't be heard in a particular court, but some asshole decided it would be cute to put in in the terms of a dead language so that everyone has to say "Excuse me?" the first time they hear it, and then nod their head knowingly and say "ohhhh" while not really understanding the second time they hear it. Don't mix this up with jx though, it has nothing to do with jx--they are separate doctrines. God have mercy on you then.

• "Subpoena Duces Tecum"--a subpoena for you to bring physical evidence. "Duces" means "thing", and "tecum" means "take-em," as in "take them," as in "I'm going to take them things from you." It is rumored that this phrase comes from Native Americans, though attempts to verify this rumor have resulted in a sharp increase in hurt feelings, so it's better to just chalk it up to Latin like all the other weird sounding phrases. Oh, and a "supboena" is like a shitty annoying bossy piece of paper that you have to listen to or else bad things happen to you. Sort of like a fortune cookie. 

• "Declarant"--a "dude" who "talks." This word is used in discussing the meaning of "hearsay" evidence. If you're curious what "hearsay" is because it gets thrown around a lot in TV and movies, the literal, actual definition of "hearsay" in the Evidence Code is this: "a statement, other than the one made by the declarant when testifying at trial, offered into evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted." Hearsay cannot be offered as evidence. Not too bad, right? Oh except you have to define "statement." and who the "declarant" is. And whether the "statement" was "offered" to "prove the truth of the matter asserted." And sometimes, hearsay isn't hearsay, so the "statement" can be "offered" even if it is "to prove the truth of the matter asserted." Also there's at least 15 hearsay exceptions that you have to MEMORIZE for every test you ever take on it. Have fun with that. Also, "declarant" is not recognized by Word either. That should tell you something.

• "Affiant"--sort of like a declarant, except they are swearing to the truth of shit in a warrant. This means, if you ever are searched by the police who come to your house with a warrant, you are going to want to find the "affiant" and ask what the fuck you ever did to them. Also, no one knows whether it's pronounced "AFF-ee-yant" or "aff-EYE-ant," not even that judge from The Wire. 

Anyway, that about does it for PART ONE of this LIST. If your head is hurting right now, I don't blame you, but keep your damn whining to yourself. I have at least 30 more of these words, and their definitions, in my head, and I had to keep them straight and regurgitate them onto a page (not literally though, thankfully). I'm not saying that to impress you. I don't want your admiration any more than I want your pity, your money, or your first born sons. All I want is to make you share some of my pain and have to carry the burden of knowing some of these God-awful words. And also your money.

And in that sense, I've succeeded. You now know 12 of words that I had to learn in law school. We suffer together. The past is the past, and I don't have a time machine (yet), so I can't go back and not have gone to law school. Just like you can't go back and not have read this blog. You're already committed, so you might as well keep reading. 

See you tomorrow for more learnd-ing!

Affectionately yours (and my yours, I mean mine),

MikeeP