‘It Looks Like <i> Fun</i> to Be a Lawyer’

Dear Mom and Dad,

Here we are at National LawCamp in L.A. The first day here was a little weird, though, especially that earthquake. I wonder if someone’s trying to send us a message that there are enough lawyers around already.

Oh well, they say after kids spend two weeks here--”kids” have ranged from 14 to 55--they’ll know whether they really want to be lawyers. Right now it’s hard to tell.

Our camp is at Loyola Marymount in Westchester, but there aren’t any law students around because the law school is on a separate campus in downtown L.A. Do you think they’re trying to hide them from us?

The camp counselors (um, I mean professors) actually make it look like it’s fun to be a lawyer. This is the first time anyone in L.A.’s had a chance to find out.

The camp’s always been on the East Coast and this year only about 20 people were brave enough to come here--the rest chickened out after the riots and transferred to the session in Washington. Now there’s a safe city.

The professors laugh a lot and like to play with their food. On our first night the criminal law professor told us to watch while he made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in class. Did you know you’re spending $1,595 for me to learn how to make a sandwich?

Just kidding. It was really neat. Most of us didn’t know the sandwich was an example of how eyewitnesses remember an accident or a crime. We didn’t notice which side of the bread the jelly went on and which side the peanut butter went on, or that the professor used the wrong end of the knife when he put it into the jar. Then he really tricked us: the “jelly” turned out to be jam. Ah- ha !

In another class, the criminal law professor gets arrested. But they let him stay to finish teaching us. It turns out the cop who came in with the arrest warrant and handcuffs was really there for “show and tell.” He showed us how he arrests people and told us what their rights are. But we already knew that stuff from TV. Book ‘em, Danno.

After the police officer took off the handcuffs, the professor all of a sudden ducked behind the podium and didn’t stand back up for a long time. We were wondering if he was afraid of the cop. Or maybe the professor knew something we didn’t--like there was an aftershock coming.

But it was nothing that exciting. The professor wanted us to guess how long he had ducked for. We all said a minute or two, but it was only 20 seconds. So we’re not great eyewitnesses. Does that mean we won’t be great lawyers?

Chris Salamone, director of the national camp--which is in its third year--told us not to worry about it. “The past does not equal the future,” he said. I dunno, maybe he’s been watching too many Michael J. Fox movies or something. (Speaking of movies, they’re going to let us watch two every night. They said one would be about law and the other one would be funny.)

One of the guys who’s teaching us knows a thing or two about movies, I bet. He’s a lawyer and a vice president at 20th Century Fox and he gets to make contracts and hang around with movie stars all day. And catch this--he thinks his job is boring. Boy, are lawyers weird.

Another professor likes to play with banana peels. We get to look at them and feel them and smell them--and even taste them, if we dare--to figure out how old they are. It’s something about negligence and how people slip and fall on supermarket floors. Guess if I decide I don’t like law, at least I’ll be able to be a produce manager.

I’ll also know how to be on time for work. Chris told us what happened on his first day of real law school. Some kid walked into class a few minutes late and the professor stopped lecturing in the middle of a sentence. “Mr. Jones, do you know what time is it?” he demanded. “Well, from now on you will.” The professor tore a clock off the classroom wall and dropped it, cords dangling, onto the student’s desk. (We don’t know if he got to keep it.)

At LawCamp, some of us try to play it safe by sitting in the back of the room. But that doesn’t work. The professors call on us anyway and ask us lots of questions. One of them told me, “Hey, you up there in the cheap seats. You can run, but you can’t hide.”

Mostly the professors are cool, but you have to call them professor in class. They dress up in suits, but one guy wears tennis shoes every day and another one wears slip-ons without socks. My favorite professor wears suspenders but has long, wavy blond hair like a surfer.

You can tell they’d all rather be in shorts and T-shirts like us. And when they come out and play volleyball with us, you can’t even tell they’re lawyers (except that they’re always fighting over the ball).

In class they make us act like lawyers. They call me “Ms. Ricker” and make me stand up to talk about cases. Sometimes I don’t want to talk. Funny, you always said I talk too much. I’m confused about something else too. You said I shouldn’t argue so much. But my teacher says I have to learn how to do it better. Are you sure you want me to spend two weeks learning how to argue?

I am learning something you’d like, Dad: golf. Our torts professor walked into class with a golf club one day and told us to pretend that we own a home next door to Bill Murray in “Caddy Shack.” The professor pretends to be Bill Murray (a lot of these lawyers seem to think they’re actors) as he tees up, stares us in the eye and supposedly drives the ball right between our eyes. We learned that’s a tort.

Another day the same professor wound up and threw a Nerf ball smack into the middle of the class. The kid he hit didn’t get hurt, but the professor was more interested in whether the kid sitting next to him had been afraid. Then the professor bounced a tennis ball off the right wall and asked the left side of the room if they were afraid.

Finally he hurled another tennis ball straight through the middle of the room and asked one of us to read the ball. It read: “TNT.” By then we were all afraid--and voila, we had learned the legal concept of foreseeability. (All I could foresee was this guy’s aim failing when he tried to teach us manslaughter.)

After all the excitement, we’ve all become pretty good friends. Lots of us still aren’t sure if we want to be lawyers, but at least we know what law school’s like. That’s better than what one student, a 35-year-old mother from Las Vegas, told me. Her best friend just finished a year of law school and decided to drop out because she just couldn’t stand it. That experience cost her $20,000.

Oh well, I’ve got to go now. It’s time to practice for the trial we’re doing on the last day of camp.

But I haven’t figured out yet where “the bench” is or how to treat it properly. The professors say it’s important during the trial to show respect for the bench. Hey, I’ll even respect the chairs if they want me to.

Love,

Darlene