BY JEREMY BLACHMAN
The campus is about to be yours for a week. I know – it’s almost too amazing to believe. You will have full access to the tables outside the Hark, without having to compete with the bigger-and-stronger 2Ls and 3Ls who often muscle you out of the way right as you’re about to sit down with your “early Thanksgiving” turkey special from the cafeteria. There will be no lines at the distribution center, so you can pick up course readings with ease. You will find a desk in the library, without having to search for the fifteen or twenty seconds it normally takes. You’ll be the first to see a week’s worth of Harkbox notices, about class rings, tuxedo rental, a new lecture series on the illusion of your education being worth anything, and an exciting session on living a life in soul-crushing debt, sponsored by your new friends at the Office of Career Services, who, like dogs in heat, are waiting for their cage to be opened at the November 1st “you can start making 1Ls regret coming to law school” job-search start date.
I know you’re all wondering: how can I take best advantage of flyout week, given that I’ll have the campus all to myself? Here are three ideas to get you started:
1. All the office hours you want. No 2Ls and 3Ls bullying their way in to see Professor Tribe with their important question about the Constitution, or some silly old document like that. You can spend the whole week engaging him on whether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 13 is more important than Uniform Commercial Code Section 2-205. Wow!
2. Convince the administration to change the codes on the bathrooms in the tunnels. Just imagine: a thousand 2Ls and 3Ls come back to campus next week, and can’t get into the bathroom! Hilarity ensues.
3. Draw funny moustaches on all the portraits around the school. Well, I guess you could do that even before flyout week. But maybe it’s more fun during flyout week. I don’t know. I’m glad I only promised three ideas and not ten, because I’m clearly having trouble here. Oh well.
After all, surely there are things that a 3L like me is too jaded to even remember about 1L year. Was there really a time when we had to write legal memos? I think I’ve blocked it out of mind completely…. In any case, Happy Flyout Week. And don’t go too crazy. After all, it’s our future donations that are going to pay for your low-income protection. Wow, that’s about the best I can do. Gosh.
A 2L’s guide to flyout week
Off you go, to far-flung cities like New York, Washington, New York, Washington, New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. And, for some of you, four of them in seven days because you can’t just make up your mind about where to spend the rest of your life. Ridiculous. It’s only the rest of your life. Make up your mind already. What’s taking so long? You may think the point of flyout week is to get a job, but, really, you’ve already done that. You’re going to get some offers. Maybe not with every firm you’ll be visiting, but you’ll do fine. So don’t worry about that. The real goal for this week is to cost the law firms as much as possible. You have the amazing opportunity to make these places spend thousands of dollars on making sure you have an enjoyable week in their city. Take full advantage:
1. Walking? No. Taxicabs? Gosh no! Limousines. From the airport to the hotel. From the hotel to their office. From their office to your friend’s house in the next state. From your friend’s house in the next state to Las Vegas. From Las Vegas to Atlantic City. From Atlantic City to New Orleans. From New Orleans to Bermuda. Except Bermuda’s an island, right? Oops. But you get the point. Travel in style. After all, you’re not the ones paying for it.
2. Four-course breakfasts. Eight-course lunches. Thirteen-course dinners. Room service. Read the fine print. They give you some ridiculous amount of money they’ll reimburse you for meals. It’s like fifteen bucks for breakfast. You can eat two dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, and the firm will pay! That’s amazing! You can get almost one whole Starbucks Frappucino for that price! You can get the new Dunkin’ Donuts double-bacon, double-cheese bagel sandwich! Ten of them! The perfect breakfast to start off the day, if you think about it. How else will you get into the heads of 50-year-old partners, slowed by their first two heart attacks, running on a caffeine high, after four hours of sleep and a recurring nightmare about a missing semicolon. In a previous draft, there was a follow-up sentence here, but I decided a missing colon is not really something to joke about.
3. Petty cash. No recruiting coordinator in his or her right mind would refuse a polite request from a law student on his way out of the building for a few extra dollars of spending money. Especially after a good set of interviews. You’re being walked to the elevator, just turn and say, softly, “You know, I was hoping to buy my mom a souvenir from the airport gift shop, since I love your city so much and can’t wait to work here. But I’m a little short on cash… I was wondering if the firm might be able to help me out a little bit. Nothing major, just a couple twenties. Consider it a cash advance?” Who’s gonna say no to that one? And if you’ve got eighteen callbacks in six days, like most of you do, that’s an awful lot of money…. Think about it.
4. “Excuse me, airline employee. I was hoping to upgrade this coach ticket to first-class. Sure, just bill it to the account that paid for the ticket originally. Thanks.”
A 3L’s guide to flyout week
1. No classes.
2. No real restrictions on what you can do and where you can go, besides your own budgetary constraints, since we’re all probably $600,000 in debt by this point.
3. No reason to be concerned about much of anything, since there really aren’t any consequences at this point, short of breaking the law, and even then – we’re lawyers, we can talk our way out of anything! “I think the policeman violated my 4th amendment rights.” Do you think a judge remembers what that means any more than we do?
Hey, it sounds like a normal week!
Have an awesome flyout week, whether you’re here, or in glass-walled offices overlooking a gorgeous cityscape, or on a beach in Chechnya. I mean Costa Rica. I get those two confused.
Jeremy Blachman is a 3L. Read more from him daily at http://jeremyblachman.blogspot.com