From 9 to 9

9 am: I set out to the administrative hearing that my clinical supervisor emailed me about last night. It's a discrimination case, but the client is also trying to get unemployment insurance, so the hearing's about that.

The adversarial method is so frickin' inefficient. The hearing officer was very inexperienced, so that made it slower, but the whole question-answer format of the direct examination is such an ineffective method of getting the story out. I came into the waiting room and got the story from the client and my supervisor in 10 minutes. Yeah, it was one-sided, but it was coherent. In the format of the hearing, which mimics a trial in procedure, it took an hour to finish direct examination of the client -- still to come are the cross-examination by the other party, the direct examination of the other party, the cross of the other party, and (possibly) closing statements by both parties. It's nuts. Adversarialism sucks!

1 pm: My supervisor and I get back to the office. He very nicely buys me lunch.

2 pm: Clinical staff meeting. It's pretty light this week -- two students are out (in Rio, for Carnival -- woo woo!). We chatted a little about my unpleasant phone conversation with an attorney last week who implied that we were filing frivolous lawsuits. Bad lawyer! Bad lawyer! Now go to the naughty room and think about what you've done.

I get assigned another case, and spend an amusing and frustrating 5 minutes on the phone trying to speak with a non-English-speaker about scheduling a meeting. I finally give up, roll my eyes at myself for growing up in California and not taking Spanish, and spend at least 25 minutes trying to schedule a translator, myself, and my supervisor for a meeting time with the client.

2:30 pm: Get an email from Mr. Destroyer, inviting me to come bowling tomorrow night. He ends his 3-line missive with: "Say yes."

I reply, with my regrets. I end my email with: "Suggest something else." (No, you di'int! Oh, but yes I did. I almost didn't, but life is short and brutish and unhappy, and you gotta laugh while you can.) No reply to my reply.

4 pm: Leave for school, because we have clinical workshop tonight.

5 pm: Workshop. Tonight we did negotiation, starting out with an exercise that went like this -- there's a hundred dollars on the table, and you get to propose how much to give to the person sitting across from you. If the other person doesn't accept, you both get nothing. Most of us offered fifty bucks and most of us accepted it. Which is fair. But suppose I offered you $1? If you were acting like the supposed rational person, you'd take it, even though I got to keep the remaining $99. I mean, you'd be ahead $1. Of course, very few people would take it, because that's a jerky thing to do with $100 of free money.

The exercise was to show us sample factors that might influence a negotiation. Then we went and did a mock one with the instructors playing opposing counsel. It was a bit nerve-wracking, a little like mediation, and felt like a lot of bullshit posturing at times. Really, I don't deal well with adversarialism. I felt like saying, yo, cut the bullshit, yo. There's no way in HELL we're taking $1000 when you'd be incurring at least $40,000 in attorney's fees just to get to summary judgement. What, do you think we're morons? Puh-leez.

7 pm: Workshop ends, I hoof it over to another building on campus.

7:10 pm: My phone rings -- it's the food I've ordered for the human rights group meeting. Mm, pad thai.

7:30 pm: My co-leader and I start our meeting, explaining that we're taking a little different approach this semester -- instead of a couple random projects, we're focusing on one project on the upcoming tribunal in Cambodia, and expanding our activities to reading/discussion groups. Just a couple meetings to educate ourselves about the history of the conflict and human rights abuses being addressed in the upcoming court. I'm pretty psyched about this, because going to Cambodia was one of the most moving experiences of my life, and this way my co-leader and I get to learn more about something that really interests us. This should cut down on the extreme resentment I have about having to lead a research project, since legal research = HATE for me.

9 pm: Back in the dorm. Joiner takes a couple digital photos of me so I can send one off to my summer job (they want a passport-size photo for some reason). They all look like crap. So I'll take another one in the morning; maybe a night's sleep will help me look less pissed-off and greasy.

Okay, time to bed.