Marbury at Midnight: It’s Not All About You, Atticus
By Rachel Kulhavy • December 04, 2015 •Writers in Residence
My Terrible Confession: I’m tired of hearing your name, Atticus Finch. Ok, ok. I can’t criticize “To Kill a Mockingbird” itself; it's a piece of literature that shows up on every recommended school reading list AND every banned book list, which is quite a feat. BUT: Atticus Finch. You perfect attorney, you. I heard your name invoked almost everyday as a 1L. “I went to law school because I admire Atticus Finch.” “I went to law school because I want to be like Atticus Finch.” “I went to law school because I AM Atticus Finch.” If you were one of…
Marbury at Midnight: November, November, it’s Almost December!
By Rachel Kulhavy • November 04, 2015 •Writers in Residence
If you’re like me, November is the month where everything seems to need to happen all at once, and everything needs to be finished right now or sooner, because the holidays are coming and there’s a lot of stuff to do before then. -Feel free to insert mental exclamation points here based on your stress level. For this busy, buzzy month, I present these listicles as a mental break from studying, working, studying, or maybe just because you’ve already scrolled through Buzzfeed 20 times today and need some additional interwebs entertainment. (Just disregard that the first link is, indeed, a…
Never Fear El Dia de los Muertos (Or: Don’t Fear the Bar Exam Pass List)
By Rachel Kulhavy • October 04, 2015 •Writers in Residence
Ah, October. The leaves are falling, the nights are getting colder, and there’s a whole lot of football on TV. October is also the time that some of you may be anxiously awaiting your July bar exam results. Many bar-takers receive their results at or near the end of the summer, but there are still some anxious attorneys-to-be out there who won’t know for at least a month (Texas) or more (California, you’re so fashionably late!) The pass list for the Texas Bar exam is typically uploaded anytime from Halloween to November 6, depending on how the exam dates fall…
Welcome to the Never Summer Wilderness! (Or: How to Survive a 12-Hour Night Law Semester)
By Rachel Kulhavy • August 31, 2015 •Writers in Residence
There’s a forest preserve in Colorado called the Never Summer Wilderness. It’s apparently named this because, well, it’s never summer there. It snows until July, then starts snowing again in August. It’s a solid trek over really steep mountains to the nearest ski resort or quaint antiques shop. The Continental Divide runs through it. It’s really, really high. And icy. There’s the threat of hypothermia. And there are bears. The Never Summer Wilderness is also what I would call that unspeakable thing that all night students dread: the 12-hour semester. It’s almost inevitable that you will experience this cold and…
Marbury at Midnight: Don’t Sleep through Patent Law (And Go Take that Exam!)
By Rachel Kulhavy • August 04, 2015
Before we begin, how about a little inspiration? In 1983, Michael Jackson wowed the music world when his dance steps lit up a sidewalk in “Billie Jean.” In 2012, London wowed the entire world when the city lit up the Tower Bridge with mind-blowing LED displays, one of which “raced” Usain Bolt across the Thames. We’re now exploring Pluto, wearing the internet on our wrists, and letting Google drive our cars. Who drives this innovation? And how can you become a part of it? We all love taking exams, right? Especially those tedious exams taken in a random computer testing…
Marbury at Midnight: Preparing Your Clients (And Yourself) for Stormy Weather
By Rachel Kulhavy • July 03, 2015 •Writers in Residence
“How’s the weather in your neighborhood?” may become a primary question in your client consultations. You might think, “Do you really suggest that I ask a client about the weather? What in the world does that have to do with their legal issues?” Depending on your practice area, the weather can play an increasingly important role in properly researching legal questions. After one of the rainiest springs on record, Memorial Day weekend in Texas gave us record-setting floods. Houses wiped clean from their foundations, lakes overtopping their spillways, and millions of dollars of devastation. The Blanco River crested at 43 feet, which was 30…
Marbury at Midnight: Work Doesn’t Have to be “Torture”
By Rachel Kulhavy • June 02, 2015
Since my love of pop culture knows no bounds, I decided to illustrate several valuable employment lessons by using a somewhat obscure Jacksons music video. The song, “Torture”, was the leading single from the album & tour of the same name. The story behind this song and music video totally intrigued me not only because it’s a great song (a song that did pretty well on the charts, but has kind of been overshadowed), but also because it was filled with so many 1980’s elements of high drama, disagreements, and excess. So, whether it’s our first job or our fifteenth job,…
Marbury at Midnight: Ode to Evening Law & Story of a Night-Law Student
By Rachel Kulhavy • March 31, 2015 •Writers in Residence
This is the story of a girl who wanted to be a heavy metal guitar player. Many people will ask you throughout your career, and especially when you first apply to law school, “What made you want to (go to law school, become a defense attorney, a prosecutor, a corporate attorney, go into real estate law, consulting, mediation, etc. etc.)?” Some people dream of serving their communities. Others, simply because they’ve always been drawn to the law, whether the research, reading, trial preparation, competition, or for a million other reasons that anyone becomes anything. I decided to become a civil…
Marbury at Midnight: A Light Unto My Path
By Rachel Kulhavy • March 22, 2015 •Writers in Residence
"…it gives them the right of free ingress into other States, and egress from them; it insures to them in other States the same freedom possessed by the citizens of those States in the acquisition and enjoyment of property and in the pursuit of happiness; and it secures to them in other States the equal protection of their laws. It has been justly said that no provision in the Constitution has tended so strongly to constitute the citizens of the United States one people as this.” – Justice Field, Paul v. Virginia Spring is in the air; that time of…