Circumlocutions

n case any­one who reads this blog is unaware, I’m a non-traditional law stu­dent. I work full-time and attend classes in the evening. The nor­mal time­line for evening stu­dents at my school is 4 years until grad­u­a­tion; I’m an impa­tient type, so I opted to take a full course load each sum­mer as well. This deci­sion — not nec­es­sar­ily good for my san­ity — cuts down the time it will take me to grad­u­ate by 2 full semes­ters (roughly one year).

Now that that’s out of the way, allow me to get to the point: I par­tic­i­pated in my schools Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Clinic this sum­mer. For­merly based in an incu­ba­tor (it has since moved to a school cam­pus), the clien­tele ranged from authors to web-based busi­ness to bio-engineers to finan­cial audit­ing con­trac­tors.

When I first applied to the clinic, I was not aware of the amount of time that it was going to take. Tak­ing the clinic for 5 cred­its, I had to clock in 28 hours a week (not “bill­able” hours, sim­ply work hours) — stu­dents tak­ing 7 cred­its had to clock in almost 40. I can­not con­sider tak­ing a clinic again, since I sim­ply can­not com­mit that amount of time to it again — it was a stretch this past summer.

That being said, it was the sin­gle most infor­ma­tive and edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence of my law school career to date. I met with clients; I drafted agree­ments; I per­formed trade­mark searches; I was exposed to the kinds of issues that are com­mon in the realm of real busi­ness — there was no men­tion of acres of any hue!

My class was eli­gi­ble to peti­tion for a jour­nal this past sum­mer, but I knew that I would have time to either peti­tion or attend the clinic. I might have com­mit­ted career-suicide by opt­ing for the clinic over the jour­nal, but I don’t regret the deci­sion; if an inter­viewer asks about it I’ll sim­ply answer in good Jew­ish tra­di­tion with the ques­tion: “Which is more impor­tant: being on a jour­nal or actual work expe­ri­ence?”