Noteworthy: International Champions!

Congratulations are in order. One of BYU's newest singing groups, and one of the youngest a cappella groups in the country, Noteworthy, just won the final round of the International Championship of Collegiate A cappella. Rosa and I went out to NYC to enjoy the weekend with these amazing women and their families. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

Their win marks only the second time in the ICCA's 11-year history that an all-female group has taken the championship title.

And because last year's champs, Vocal Point, also came from Brigham Young University, that's two years in a row for BYU! Go cougars!!

A review of the show appears here, and the ladies got a quick nod with a lovely photo here. And check here for Meridian Magazine's recent article about the group. Congratulations, ladies!

Big nerds

Rosa and I spent our Saturday night at a Nerd Party. A couple of our friends passed the CPA exam, so their spouses planned a nerdy accountant party in their honor. The invitation looked like a tax form, and everyone was encouraged to dress in their nerdiest clothes. The party even included a test of accountance terms. I'm sure my accountant father would be proud of the fact that I knew terms like GAAP, FOB, SEC, and especially FASB.

This is what Rosa and I looked like at the party. Rosa actually won second place for nerdiest girl costume. That's my girl!

A few years back, my sometimes-nerdy brother gave me this Compaq shirt: "Department of Redundancy Department." I can't say why I kept it so long, but I'm glad I did - it was the trophy piece of my outfit.

For more awesome nerdy photos of our nerdy friends, check out the Walters' blog: http://babywalters.blogspot.com/.

Good news

Yesterday's trial was the most work I've put into anything in school, maybe ever. (My senior linguistics thesis was a close rival.) When all was said and done, I was very proud of our team. I felt we tried the case well. As it turns out, our jury came back hung. Boo. Three in favor of conviction and three against. Since I had been on the prosecution side, this wasn't great news.

But after I heard the explanations from the jurors, I felt much better. One of the three in favor of acquittal was the boyfriend of the defendant. So I don't necessarily value his vote as much. One of the others in favor of acquittal was 90% sure he did it, and I felt like if we sent them back to deliberate further, she would've been convinced the other 5% necessary. And the last person in favor of acquittal was mostly worried about why we hadn't presented more witnesses and a few other issues that were likewise outside the factual scenario given to our class. So basically her only concerns were details beyond our control. So overall, I had cause to rejoice. I feel we did well, and the professor's feedback was quite positive. Most importantly, I learned a TON through this totally hands-on exercise. And even more importantly, I'm DONE with that class this semester. Sweet!

In other news, right after our trial ended, I received my MPRE score in the mail - I PASSED!!! Yay!!! I'm ethical! My score will be sent to the New York Bar Association in the next couple of weeks. I'm one step closer to being a lawyer.

Happy Easter!

This photo brought to you by the Parmas of Texas. Their new daughter Bria is just adorable, isn't she?

Church was fantastic today - very spiritual, very Easterly. So rejuvenating! Plus the ward choir performed and did a great job. And get this - I was sustained as the new organist! Yikes! I hope my 6 months of organ lessons from high school come back to me soon...

After we got home from Church, we found out the Easter bunny came to our house. We got a couple of Easter baskets full of candy, just like the one Bria's got here.

Then we spent the afternoon having Easter dinner with the Forbes, Olsons, and Hartshorns. We had an Egg Bashing contest, which basically means two people rolling hardboiled dyed eggs on the floor toward each other at high speed. After a horrible losing streak at the beginning, Rosa came back and won the whole thing! What did she win? More candy! Yay! Some delicious desserts and fun games rounded out a lovely evening.

Tomorrow is my big "trial" - my final exam for Trial Advocacy class. I'm going to try to convict this obviously guilty armed bank robber. Wish me luck.

What?!

Okay maybe I'm just an ignorant boy from the west, but I gotta confess that when I moved to the southeast, I did not expect to scrape ice and snow off my car on a random morning in the middle of April.

But maybe that's just me.

catching up

The bad thing about having a blog is that it gets outdated very quickly.

The good thing about having an outdated blog is you can just spend a couple minutes writing something new and you're suddenly all updated.

New York was awesome, as always. I checked out the apartment where Rosa and I will be living this summer - Lower East Side, kind of on the edge of Chinatown, funky little neighborhood. It'll be cool. I also met many of my fellow Weil Gotshal summer associates - turns out there are A HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE of us. Several delicious meals, some schwanky non-alcoholic drinks for yours truly, and more information about the firm and the summer program. It's gonna be a rockin' summer. I can't believe I'll be getting paid to do so much cool, fun stuff.

General Conference Weekend was so rejuvenating and refreshing. I can't wait for the transcripts to be available.

Today I'm going to jail. Fortunately, they're not locking me up. Not this time, anyway. I'm going there with the local Federal Public Defender to interpret for him in an interview with a Spanish-speaking inmate. I did this a couple weeks ago at a different jail, same PD. It's not as easy as I had hoped (I don't keep up my Spanish as well as I could), but it's surprisingly rewarding. I don't get many opportunities to use my Spanish to help anyone, so this is a nice little chance to apply my Spanish in the real world. Wish me luck.

Happy Wednesday everyone.

Pre-Orientation Orientation

I'm off to Manhattan this weekend for a big firm Orientation. Well actually, orientation takes place in May, so they've called this the "Pre-Orientation Weekend." It's basically a big excuse to fly everyone to New York for a couple nice dinners and a learn little more information about the summer internship program. I'm going because (1) my fellow UVA Law students are all going, (2) I've heard it's a fun weekend, and (3) it's a good opportunity to start getting to know a few people from the 100-person summer program. Plus, who can turn down nice dinners and a free cool hotel in New York?

TV update:
Top Design is getting really good. I'm glad Michael's gone. I really like Goil, but I think Andrea's going to win.
The Grease finale is this weekend. We obviously voted for Laura; and I'm surprised to say this, but we also voted for Max. I never saw it coming, but now I really like him. Plus, Austin is just creepy.

Okay, enough of that. I'm off!

Wherein our hero turns 26

At 1:07am this morning, I officially entered the second quarter century of my time on this fine earth of ours. Many people don't make much of birthdays, but I think re-visiting the precise place in the universe where you were born is a cause for celebrating.

Let's examine my life in numbers:

• 26 --> years I've been breathing through my lungs
• 15,192,777,600 --> miles I've traveled around the sun
• 819,936,000 --> seconds I've been alive
• 10 --> length of my hair in feet if I had never cut it
• 39,760 --> dreams I've had
• 7 --> dreams I remember today
• 3 --> countries I've visited
• 33 --> states I've visited or driven through (not counting airports)
• 6 --> songs I've written
• 1,250 --> Sundays I've spent at Church
• 5 --> schools I've attended
• 20 --> years I've been a full-time student
• 1,093,973,400 --> times my overworked heart has beaten
• 3 --> freakin awesome siblings I have
• 11 --> beautiful nieces and nephews I have
• 409,968,000 --> breaths I've taken
• 8 --> full-length concerts I've personally produced
• 3 --> appearances I've made on TV
• 4,500 --> gallons of water I've drunk
• 0 --> fluid ounces of alcohol I've drunk
• 6 --> real jobs I've had
• 4 --> times I've gotten extremely ill
• 0 --> bones I've broken
• 200 --> "it's a boy" announcement cards my father had to re-print when he realized I wasn't born on March 21
• 9 --> holes of golf I've played
• 3 --> speeding tickets I've gotten
• 0 --> times I've been arrested
• 1 --> wife who woke up early this morning to get me Panera bagels
• 117 --> blog posts I've written

One awesome life: priceless.

One of those Sundays

Church today was like a big, tall glass of refreshing water. So refreshing.

the MPRE wrap-up...

I took the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam this morning. I come from the entitled generation, so I'm used to being an ace on standardized tests. But this one wasn't as easy as I had hoped. But I still think I passed.

The majority of students take this test in the fall of their third year of law school (their 3L year). So why did I take it early? (1) I just wanted to get it out of the way. (2) Also, I'm in Professional Responsibility class right now, and preparing for this test was like an early final exam review.

The MPRE is graded on a curve. So the bad news is that my competition for the test is fellow second-years who are overachieving, overprepared (like me, I think). The good news is that my other competition is third-years who are taking the test a little late. The other good news is that I'm not competing against only fellow UVA Law students (like on my every semester final exams); instead, I'm competing against all students across the country. This, I think, helps my cause.

I'll find out my score in five weeks. As I said, it's based on a curve, with 50 being the lowest, 150 being the highest, and 100 being a median score. A passing score in New York, and I'm not kidding you, is 86. Eighty. Six.

In the end, although I didn't love my performance on the exam, and although I'm competing against a few other 2L gunners, I believe I did well enough to beat out the national average, or at least beat out the bottom 35th percentile.

Knock on wood.

I L-U-V the OBX

Woohooo!!! Rosie and I just got home from our week vacation in the Outer Banks. Yes, we realize this is totally childish and collegiate of us to take a week off for Spring Break, but we just had to. Soon we will be sucked into the whirlpool known as Real Life, and spring break will no longer exist to us. So we had to take the chance while we could.

We spent the week at a beach house in Waves, North Carolina, which we split with our friends the Rufeners and the Wardens. The Rufeners have two adorable kids and a dog, which made it feel perfectly family-ish, and the Wardens are tons of fun too, so it was just a blast. It was kind of like my family's yearly vacations to Monterey Bay, in Cali, in that we played tons of board games, had organized meal times, made a trip to the aquarium, had an ocean view out the living room window, found sand in the weirdest places, and were many miles away from civilization. It was not like my family's yearly vacations to the California beach, in that no one knew how to play cribbage or Rummikub. But don't worry, Browns - I taught them.

In all, it was a marvelous trip. For early March, the water was expectedly cold, but we got lucky on the weather - mostly in the 50s with lots of sun. Fun at the beach.

Yay for Spring Break! Boo for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam I have to take in the morning. The MPRE is required before you take the bar, so I thought I'd get it out of the way before my third year of law school hit. My vacation comes to grinding halt right now as I head back to my Bar/Bri study book.

Pictures to follow (of the beach trip, not of the exam).

More press for symposium

The Law Weekly just published an article about our symposium:

Eight distinguished corporate law experts descended on Caplin Pavilion last Friday to participate in the Virginia Law & Business Review’s first annual symposium. The topic of the day was “Corporate Governance: The Impact of Institutional Investors.” The symposium began with ...[continue reading]

Wrapping things up

I wore my suit twice over the past three days, and neither occasion was for church!

On Saturday, I produced the ICCA South region's third quarterfinal. It was a pretty good show, and certainly my best produced. I'm finally starting to get the hang of how to run these shows. Looks like I won't be able to make my own Semifinals, though, so Rosa has kindly volunteered to run it for me! Which is really cool.

We awoke to the phone ringing on Sunday morning. Surprise! Church was cancelled. This wasn't such a big surprise, given that the weather reports were calling for nearly an inch of ice to cover the area. Nasty. So after hanging up the phone, we ran to the window, only to discover that there was no ice, and barely any snow. The snow wasn't even sticking to the grass! Charlottesville is definitely the most paranoid city I've ever lived in, when it comes to cold weather. I think the city has like one plow.

And Monday, I did my off-brief oral argument for the intramural Lile Moot Court. That's my final argument, this round of Moot court is over! If I advance, that would be incredible, since only the top 1/4 of the teams from this round advance. And it would also mean I get to put "Quarterfinalist" on my resume. On the other hand, if I don't advance, I don't have to write another brief! I'll find out my fate on March 31. 'Til then, I think I'll just enjoy this post-ICCA, post-symposium, post-Moot Court break.

Time for a nap.

My new article posted on casa.org: A Case for Competing

"As a former competitor, current adjudicator, and current competition producer, I am constantly fascinated by people’s reactions to a cappella competitions. I know some people are strongly against, and most are strongly in favor, and some lie in between. But that’s not what gets me. What astonishes me is the reactions people give at the end of the competition.

"Some people lose competitions with unbelievable grace and poise. These people practically deserve an award just for their professionalism. Other people..."<continue reading>

UVA Law article re: symposium investor panel

Institutional shareholders are increasingly taking an activist approach to investing by trying to influence how corporations govern themselves, but panelists at a business law symposium Feb. 16 agreed that more involvement by such groups will pay off for shareholders in the end. Representatives from institutional investor groups responded to scholars who spoke on the phenomenon during a Virginia Law & Business Review and Virginia Law and Business Society symposium, “Corporate Governance: The Impact of Institutional Investors,” held in Caplin Pavilion.... [Full article and mp3 podcast available here]

What a week!!

This was one of those weeks where you only sleep a couple hours at a time. I seriously was staying up until 2am working on my moot court brief, then I'd sleep for a couple hours, work from 4am-5am, then sleep again for a couple hours. And that was my night. That was the process a few nights this week. Crazy!

I'm happy to report that the moot court brief got completed, and it was not late! (I turned it in one minute before the deadline) But my partner and I are pretty proud of it - we hope to advanced past this Second Round to next semester's Quarterfinal Round.

Then, as if that wasn't crazy enough, my big symposium happened on Friday. Have you ever prepared for something for so long that the date just gets engrained in your mind? This was like that. I wrote "Friday, February 16, 2007" in a thousand emails over the last eleven months, preparing for this day. Then all of a sudden, it arrived! We had professors from around the eastern US, and several representatives from the institutional investor community (together representing many trillions of dollars). What an experienced, professional group! It was an amazing experience to eat dinner with them all on Thursday night (and sit next to the Dean of the law school), and then even more incredible to hear from them all on Friday. Our professors shared their research and insights with us, and the investors sat on a panel and fielded questions about fund activism within corporate governance. From my side of things, it couldn't have gone better for me; I was so lucky - catering was on time and delicious, microphones all worked, weather was gorgeous.

So by the time that was all through, I was ready to collapse. What a week!

Fortunately, this weekend I had basically nothing planned, so I was able to just relax.

In other big news, our bishopric was changed on Sunday. Great men were released, and new great men took their place on the stand behind the pulpit. We're sad to see the old ones go, but we welcome the new with open arms. And the rest of Sunday was really fantastic. What a day.

What a week!!

Our symposium is next week!

Things are really heating up for our journal's symposium next week. I'm excited to see it all culminate in a wonderful event. I've put over a hundred hours into this thing over the past ten months. I'm looking forward to it. The law school just posted a news story about it. Check it out:

http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2007_spr/corpgov.htm

Stella Awards

The 2006 True Stella Awards

Issued 31 January 2007

(Click here to
confirm these are legitimate.)

#5: Marcy Meckler. While shopping at a mall, Meckler stepped outside and was "attacked" by a squirrel that lived among the trees and bushes. And "while frantically attempting to escape from the squirrel and detach it from her leg, [Meckler] fell and suffered severe injuries," her resulting lawsuit says. That's the mall's fault, the lawsuit claims, demanding in excess of
$50,000, based on the mall's "failure to warn" her that squirrels
live outside.

#4: Ron and Kristie Simmons. The couple's 4-year-old son, Justin, was killed in a tragic lawnmower accident in a licensed daycare facility, and the death was clearly the result of negligence by the daycare providers. The providers were clearly deserving of being sued, yet when the Simmons's discovered the daycare only had $100,000 in insurance, they dropped the case against them and instead sued the manufacturer of the 16-year-old lawn mower because the mower didn't have a safety device that 1) had not been invented at the time of the mower's manufacture, and 2) no safety agency had even suggested needed to be invented. A sympathetic jury still awarded the family $2 million.

#3: Robert Clymer. An FBI agent working a high-profile case in Las Vegas, Clymer allegedly created a disturbance, lost the magazine from his pistol, then crashed his pickup truck in a drunken stupor -- his blood-alcohol level was 0.306 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in Nevada. He pled guilty to drunk driving because, his lawyer explained, "With public officials, we expect them to own up to their mistakes and
correct them." Yet Clymer had the gall to sue the manufacturer of his pickup truck, and the dealer he bought it from, because he "somehow lost consciousness" and the truck "somehow produced a heavy smoke that filled the passenger cab." Yep: the drunk-driving accident wasn't his fault, but the truck's fault. Just the kind of guy you
want carrying a gun in the name of the law.

#2: KinderStart.com. The specialty search engine says Google should be forced to include the KinderStart site in its listings, reveal how its "Page Rank" system works, and pay them lots of money because they're a competitor. They claim by not being ranked higher in Google, Google is somehow infringing KinderStart's Constitutional right to free speech. Even if by some stretch they were a competitor of Google, why in the world would they think it's Google's responsibility to help them succeed? And if Google's "review" of their site is negative, wouldn't a government court order forcing them to change it infringe on Google's Constitutional right to free speech?

And the winner of the 2006 True Stella
Award: Allen Ray Heckard. Even though Heckard is 3 inches
shorter, 25 pounds lighter, and 8 years older than former basketball
star Michael Jordan, the Portland, Oregon, man says he looks a lot
like Jordan, and is often confused for him -- and thus he deserves
$52 million "for defamation and permanent injury" -- plus $364
million in "punitive damage for emotional pain and suffering", plus
the SAME amount from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, for a grand total
of $832 million. He dropped the suit after Nike's lawyers chatted
with him, where they presumably explained how they'd counter-sue if
he pressed on.

©2007 by Randy Cassingham,
StellaAwards.com. Reprinted with permission.

Un-pause

OK so, as my commenters note, things have been busy. I got a whole MONTH off of school (one of the few benefits of not going to BYU), and somehow Rosa bargained for a full month off of work, and we spent Dec 22 - Jan 21 in Utah. Although our trip there and back was a horrible airplane/rentalcar/delays/overbooking/generally huge mess, both ways!, the time in between was absolutely delightful. Lots of relaxing, visiting with family, visiting with friends, wonderful Christmas, multiple birthday parties, BYU basketball game, Vocal Point performance, Noteworthy weekend retreat at our house, a Noteworthy alumni party, helping my folks clean the storage, and even a little skiing. Oh! And Rosa got her driver's license (she had her purse stolen a few weeks back, and now it's all restored!). So all in all, it was a marvelous month off.

Now I'm back in full swing, preparing four ICCA competition shows, one school-wide business law symposium, and trying not to get behind in school. It's only been a week, but so far I'm still caught up in reading. Let's hope it stays that way!!

We've got a handful of pictures from our trip. Now if I can just find that USB cable...

Woohooo!!!

Took my last final this afternoon!! Criminal Adjudication. The professor wrote it, intending we'd take it in about three hours, but he allotted us four just so we'd have plenty of time. I know so little about criminal adjudication that I took the full four hours, right up until the last second. Hahaha

But now I'm done!!! The semester is over, which means three down, three to go. As my parents told me tonight: I'm "half a lawyer."

The other reason I'm cheering today is because I advanced to the second round of our intramural moot court competition! Yeehaw! There were over 150 entrants in this first round; I survived with a combined brief and oral argument score high enough to make it into the magic 64. I did this round on my own, but all future rounds will be with a partner. I'm thrilled to be working in the next round with my buddy Jeff Miller. The guy's phenomenal. Mark my words: we're taking this thing all the way! The second round begins at the beginning of next semester (end of January).

Now Rosie and I just gotta clean up this place, pack, and hit the road!