What I Learned Today

Nothing related to the bar exam.

But did you know they make Chocolate Pirate's Booty?



I'd like to think this product was created, in part, to address the problem of having white snack powder visible on black work pants after a lunchtime booty binge. Chocolate powder is much more professional.

Faculty Flair Favorite Round 2

This week's Faculty Flair award goes to Professor Frederic Bloom of Brooklyn Law School. Professor Bloom recognizes a break when he sees one. Here was an opportunity to get out of Brooklyn, and dammit if he was going to let the shoddy work of a tripod and a drab tie hold him back. This is a man who demanded to see the dailies and insisted on wardrobe and camera angle alterations to maximize his star potential.

Upon first encounter with Professor Bloom in video 1 of the New York Evidence videos, he appears diminutive and underwhelming in his broad green tie and three button cardigan.




But by video 3 of New York Evidence, Professor Bloom has viewed his earlier footage and understands that changes must be made.

He dashes from the portrait studio and into the men's section where he finds a new, yet equally broad, orange tie. As he holds the tie up to his neck to ensure that its color is adequately striking, he notices his bangs are in disarray. After a few sideward glances to make sure no one in the store is watching, he quietly spits into his fingers and slicks his side-bangs forward. With his bangs in place and new tie in hand, he returns to the portrait studio. Along the way, he passes a family with two screaming toddlers dressed in Easter finery, impatiently waiting their turn to pose before the studio's marbled brown backdrop. Professor Bloom offers them a weak smile, knowing that the family will be waiting many more days, perhaps even weeks, for Themis to relinquish the portrait studio.

Once inside the studio, Professor Bloom moves the tripod on which the camera sits a few feet closer to his podium to create the illusion of a commanding presence. Before he begins recording, he remembers to correct his stance, placing his arms away from his torso and instantly slimming himself 10 pounds from videos 1 and 2.




Professor Bloom continues lecturing, confident in his editorial changes. Until video 4 when he is overcome with uncertainty and switches back to his video 1 and 2 attire.



By video 6, fickle Bloom is back to orange, and the family with the screaming toddlers is no closer to having its Easter portrait taken.

So here's to you Professor Bloom. Your wry humor, Wu Tang Clan jokes, and collection of broad ties kept my attention long enough to hear that New York only allows reputation evidence. I hope that was the main takeaway from your lectures. I look forward to seeing you in a whole new cardigan in Conflict of Laws.

Creative Solutions

Today I bought Dove® Men+Care™ Deep Clean Body and Face Bar, the soap of men, because I find there is not enough time to smell real men while studying for the bar.

Introducing Faculty Flair Favorite

I've spent a fair amount of time with my bar-review-certified professors via internet streaming of their lectures. When not scrambling to fill in my legal Mad Libs, I sometimes question how these professors were selected to lecture for a bar review course.

I do not question the expertise of these professors in their legal field, nor do I envy their task of talking at a camera for hours on end in what appears to be a J.C. Penny Portrait Studio.

I sometimes question why these professors are willing to have themselves recorded for the benefit of law graduates, whose resentment at having to sit indoors watching them grows with each completed Mad Lib page. But then I remember that these poor professors are just standing alone in that Portrait Studio, trying to earn an extra buck or two to tack onto their six-figure salaries.

I always question the outfit choices of these professors. The dreariness of watching men in neutral suits and ties speak against a neutral backdrop is hard to take, and is likely the reason I so often open a new browser tab for celebrity gossip updates.

The monotony of the lecturers' appearance is also the reason for a new segment I would like to call "Faculty Flair Favorite" (name subject to change). Each week in Faculty Flair Favorite I will highlight one bar review lecturer whose personal style (fashion, lecturing, etc) did not cause me to minimize or click out of his or her video within the first 15 minutes of his or her lecture.

This week, the Faculty Flair Favorite is Professor Susan Vivian Mangold from the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School for her PTA meeting style and confident, if lengthy, self-introduction. Professor Mangold adds some Coldwater Creek-chic to her Family Law lectures with a robin's egg blue cardigan and turquoise necklace. Additionally, at the beginning of each lecture, Professor Mangold makes clear that, though she may dress like your mother, she has a fifteen word title, and she is not embarrassed to use it twelve times over. So kudos to you, Professor Susan Vivian Mangold from the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School.

Coronation

Today someone told me that three years of law school and countless hours of bar exam preparation were not in fact leading up to a ceremony in which I would be given a crown, scepter, and satin sash emblazoned with the word "LAWYER."

Duped.