I've finally been able to do some substantive work over here, and I kind of like it. Those of us in law school, or practicing, know how painful the citation system is in the states (look how international I am!). There are so many jurisdictions, so many reporters. The Blue Book is an exercise in anality (I just made that up!). Things are much simpler in Hong Kong, because they've got 1 jurisdiction and like 4 courts.
A typical US citation is like 244 N.E. 2d 421, 22 (1995) or something. Hey, I'm in Hong Kong and I didn't bring my Blue Book.
A typical cite in Hong King is like XXX 150/2008. That's it. I think there are a handful of substitutions for XXX, but not many. Awesome.
Anyway, here I am writing letters to opposing counsel saying why they're wrong. Aside from a simple citation system, office to office letters are pretty much like "this guy in another case hurt his leg and got $200k. We think your client's injury is less so we'll offer $100k". That's it. None of this crap we have in law school about laying out precedent, stating the holding, facts, reasoning. No spelling out exactly what negligence is, and giving a 2 page history. Evidently, in practice, they assume that the guy (or gal. We're equal opportunity on this blog.) reading the letter has also gone to law school, so why waste time with all the bullshit from law school.
As all of you who know me know, I enjoy arguing, and telling people why they're wrong. Now you may not think I'm right all the time, but that's ok. You're entitled to be wrong. Just kidding. I freely admit that I'm wrong sometimes. But I still enjoy the argument.
I admit to being a little down on the internship last week, as I was doing simple clerical work. And I could do clerical work without spending the $100k+ I'm spending on law school. So yeah, a tad frustrating. But as I've been doing some real work, it's getting better.
But I'm still stuck on that damn PIII 700MHz 256M RAM "computer". Today, the girl who used to own this machine was complaining about not being able to access some files she kept on the old machine (mine). Gentleman that I am, I turned and said "I will gladly swap this machine for that new Dell on your desktop". She missed the sarcasm, and said "no, no, it's ok. Ed (IT guy) can help me". Heh. I wasn' t really being polite there. But hey, I came off as polite! That's good. Oh, speaking of which, I've won over almost everyone (that matters. I'm not trying to befriend higher ups for obvious reasons. So long as I get a good recommendation, I'll be happy). There's just one hold out, but I'll wear him down. Maybe if he sees me laughing with the others, he'll want to join in. Hmm, maybe I have to isolate him. But that's another post.
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